The Other Sister is a Mystery Writers of America nominee for the 2017 Simon & Schuster – Mary Higgins Clark Award! I’m so honored. Absolutely thrilled!

The Other Sister hit the shelves two days ago, the first reviews are up on Amazon, and the book is off to a really good start.

I’m so happy early readers are enjoying the novel…I’m hoping you will, too!

You can read the reviews here:

 

Until I wrote my new book, The Other Sister, the concept of forgiveness was a mystery to me.

Even when I was a little kid, the whole forgiveness thing not only baffled me, it annoyed me. One time, when I was six, I actually marched out of Sunday school because of it. My need for fairness was fierce and here was the Sunday school teacher telling the story of the prodigal son, like it was a good thing. All I could see was that the bad boy who ran away and broke all the rules got a party and a do-over when he came home. And the good boy, the boy who did everything his father told him to do, hardly got noticed.

I’ve been gone for quite a while. At first, tucked away healing from family trauma, and then working on a novel I’ve wanted to write for a long time.

The novel is The Other Sister and Sourcebooks is publishing it in November. Creating this book was a wonderful experience. From the moment I started writing The Other Sister I was intrigued by the story and fascinated by the relationship between the two main characters. I hope you’ll have the same experience in reading the book. The story follows the lives of Ali and Morgan, twin sisters deeply bonded yet wildly different from each other. From the moment of their birth they’re on a collision course of love and hate. It plunges them into an appalling crime and an unforgettable mystery. It also leads them from darkness into light—and in the end it gives them a connection that’s more beautiful than they could ever have imagined.

Excited, exhausted, blessed, and really looking forward to summer, is where I am right now. Excited because next week I’m heading to Book Expo America in New York to sign advance copies of my second novel The Book of Someday. Exhausted because I’ve just finished the manuscript for my third book (all three hundred ninety eight pages!). And blessed because so many early readers of The Book of Someday have said such nice things about it.

Writing is a heart and soul effort, and when work, that you put your heart and soul into, is received with enthusiasm, it’s like being given the most beautiful gift imaginable.

This morning I realized had forgotten one of life’s most important lessons. I discovered it in a phone call to a very wise Boston girlfriend of mine. We were talking about the awfulness that happened at the Marathon. I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of evil that exists in the world and was wanting Kate to help me find some way to explain it. Her response was that she wasn’t sure how to explain evil, but that she didn’t think it was the issue we should be fixating on.

One of the nice things about being a writer is getting to spend a lot of time doing something we all enjoyed when we were kids—playing with imaginary friends. But I woke up this morning and realized, that as much as I enjoy hanging out with these characters, they’re a very demanding bunch. And they’ve managed to lure me into being pretty much of a hermit.