Hi I am Ana and I am here for my first Monthly Author Post on Love Bytes.

I can’t remember when was the first time I heard of New Year Resolutions, and I can’t remember when was the first year I tried to make them.

I am not enamoured with the concept. It’s like we set ourselves to achieve something that doesn’t come naturally to us, which will probably lead to failure.

If it was that easy we would have done them already instead of waiting for the calendar to change from the number 31 to the number 1, which, by the way happens six other times in the year if we exclude December into January.

So why am I talking about them? Well, because I am one of those people who need a deadline to get something done. For years I dreamed of writing and it never happened until at the beginning of 2017 the fire inside my belly was lit and I wrote Made In Portugal.

I work full time so the best way to describe my planning when it comes to writing is that I’m going with the flow until I decide on a date to release and then it’s all guns blazing until I make it happen. And I do! I always make it happen. See? I need that deadline.

The problem with how I’ve been doing things is that it doesn’t account for the other stuff in my life, like spending time with my boyfriend, the days I spend with my family, holidays, and such. When I was writing Made In Manhattan life happened, so we ended up cancelling a holiday, which meant I was home for a week with nothing else but writing on the schedule. I finished the book that week. Did I rest? No. Did I go back to work feeling like someone had dragged me over a hedge backwards? Hell yeah. But I finished the book.

So this year I made changes and decided on a little more planning for my writing and my personal life. I will share them here with you so you can come back here next year and we can see how that panned out. Eek! Am I really doing this?

Looks like I am, so if you don’t know me or heard of my books let me tell you about them. I created the “Made In” world with down-to-earth kind of guys and families who help each other out, but can also kick your ass if you’re out of line. One of the big plot points of the books is that the characters and their stories cross the ocean between America to Europe. There is also food, and lots of it!

It all started with Made In Portugal when Joel, one of the MCs travelled to his native Portugal to scatter his parents’ ashes. He found his heart again in his childhood friend, David.

While I was writing Joel and David’s story their respective best friends decided they wanted to meet in New York at Christmas. I wrote Made In New York and published it before Made In Portugal was even out. Max and Isaac were sneaky, but I was sneakier by giving them a happy for now instead of ever after.

While I was giving Max and Isaac their happy ever after I also worked on two characters that first appeared in Made In New York. American Dorian and French Jean-Paul Charles had a beautiful love story I told via their letters to each other in Made In Paris, which was released this Christmas.

So now Made In Manhattan is out and Max and Isaac have their happy ever after what comes next? My readers have started speculating about which of the secondary characters in the books might be next in line to find love. If you’ve read the books do you want to take a guess?

I guess that’s it. My New Year resolutions for publishing are, well, published! Let’s come back to them in a year and see how I’ve done.

In the meantime, I will be back here once a month to ramble about stuff. Be good, and if you dared making your own resolutions why don’t you share them with us?