The inside of my head is an anxious place to be these days. My fiancée can attest to this. In the hours, days, weeks surrounding any new novel, I obsessively check my social media and Amazon to get a sense of what you've thought about a new story.

Bittersweet Homecoming was a gamble. On a surface level, I experimented with a different verb tense. This may not see like a big deal, but all of my other novels have been written in the past tense. The new tense sets the mood and feel of BH .

More anxiety-causing, however, has been the deception at the center of the story. I make my characters imperfect because we all have flaws. But it's a thin line between a character having flaws and making decisions that make a character unlikeable.

But beyond the things that keep me up at night, Bittersweet Homecoming is a love-letter to my hometown and the people who still live there. I didn't grow up in Grand Marais--where the majority of the story is set--but the place where I'm from is very similar. As Abby says, it's a slower pace of life. People make eye contact and say hello to strangers. BH is a commentary about the role of technology and communication in relationships today.

I'm excited (and anxious) to hear what you think.

Eliza