Author: Joely

Blizzard Bound (Sharan Daire) was supposed to come out years ago. I had the pre-order up and everything. I had the blurb written. I knew general information about Darby. I even hired someone to help me plot out the book so I could “write faster.”

But I literally could not even START the book. It just wouldn’t fire. I didn’t feel connected to it. I didn’t hear the voice. I didn’t know the guys’ names, only very high-level archetype details (e.g. former hockey players, doctor, etc). There was no spark there.

So it sat. The pre-order was canceled.

I let readers down. Which I HATE. But I could not write the book. I couldn’t even blame it on the divorce stress because I’m pretty sure this was after That Man was out of the picture. I blamed getting blocked on the plotting process. I’d never worked with someone before, and while she was lovely, I didn’t FEEL the story. I had a mentor ages ago say I’m a very sentimental writer, and that’s true. I need to feel the emotions flowing in me to make the words connect. Maybe having a plotter disconnected the flow. (Ironically, the other book she helped me with is Dig the Graves… which also is not written. Nowhere close. So it very well may be having external plot assistance interferes with my process.)

Or maybe it just wasn’t TIME.

Because there were a few things that happened in my real life that finally helped make Blizzard Bound (as it is now) possible. The book I would’ve written years ago according to the plotter is NOT the book that you got. The only similarity is the heroine’s name, and there are still four lumberjacks in Colorado. Everything else is different.

So what changed?

A friend at work stepped in–in more ways than one.

I wrote about the terrible day in October 2022 where I found out the part of the company I’d worked in for over 25 years had been sold. My business area was gone. All those users–many also friends after decades of supporting the same system–were sent to the new company. Those of us in IT had to support the transition of the sale over the next 18+ months with “white glove” support — while knowing we may not have jobs at the end. We had to find new teams. We had to learn new technology, because our system was gone.

My resume at the time was older than my youngest team member. Not joking.

It was so unbelievably fucking stressful. But I was also angry. I felt betrayed. I’d spent decades of my life supporting this team and business because I cared about the people so much. Now they were all gone. Nothing personal in the company’s decision, right? It was all about money. They said all the right things but it sounded like the adults in the Peanut cartoons. If I wanted to stay and retire with the company after staying for 25 years… I had to find a new team.

I was on my own.

Until I wasn’t.

Because I had a friend in the company who wasn’t even on my team. I’d never worked directly with her. But my very first day at the company, she volunteered to take me out to lunch, and we’d been friends ever since. We used to cross stitch over lunch while I was still in the St. Paul area, and once we moved to MO, she and her husband came to visit us. Then I would visit her whenever I went to the home office. It was only a couple of times over the years, but we stayed in touch.

She called me and said apply to this team in her area. I’d have the chance to work with her, though she wasn’t directly on that team. She knew all the business people and teams and ran defense for me as I got my feet under me. When things started to go sour on the new team (I was told I wouldn’t be doing support except maybe once or twice a month. Yeah, right.), she let me bitch about it. We tried to make things better. We tried to change things for the newer associates who didn’t have decades at the company. We started talking even more because we had the excuse to talk more now. I even went on a corporate conference trip to FL with her last year.

I sent her a giant box of all my books, and out of that box….

She fell in love with Sharan Daire’s books.

She BEGGED me to write Blizzard Bound. Every time we talked (at least weekly), she’d ask me about it. It reminded me that readers still cared about that book. It wasn’t too late. Yeah, I’d let people down by not writing it when I said I would, but I could write it NOW. I could still set things right.

Once I made that connection, everything started to realign. I used Kirstin’s name as inspiration for the main male character, and also created a friend for Darby. I leaned into something else I’ve grown to love in the last year. Something the plotter nixed, actually, because it wasn’t a popular trope. But it felt right. I had to do it. And it worked. (Not being specific because of spoilers – it’s slowly revealed as you get deeper into the book.)

All the pieces snapped into place. The magic was there. I started dreaming the book again. I woke up with snippets of dialogue playing in my head, even at 4 AM. They’re still chatting away too, even though I finished Blizzard Bound. I’m already 14k+ into the follow up book.

Darby’s time finally arrived. Just a couple of years late.

And you can thank Kirstin Zondag. I sure did.