2021 can’t come fast enough for me, and if the catchphrase for next year is 2020 round two, I just might cry.

Hi everyone,

 

Y’all have probably seen me around, but probably don’t know an awful lot about me. I’ll try to fix that.

 

I am one of the most introverted people you will ever meet. I am the one who is quite happy never leaving the house. The mom who does the school run in her jammies as she has no intention of ever getting out of the truck. The one who at group and family gatherings sits in the corner, because if she talks to anyone, she’ll spend the following month dissecting every word she said to everyone trying to figure out if it was stupid or insulting somehow.

I’m the ‘friend’ everyone calls if they need someone to pick up their kids from school, or to watch their dog or feed their cat, because everyone knows I’ll drop everything and change my plans to ensure someone else doesn’t have to change theirs. Y’all know someone like me… right?

 

The thing about people like me, people who struggle to say no, is underneath the illusion that we have our shit together, we don’t always. We (or at least me) have routines, have steps we take to build up to doing something that’s difficult for us. Maybe that’s we park in the same spot for work, or we get to the school way before time and sip coffee in our travel mug while we wait for our kids to get done. Those little things we do, they help us keep our heads in the place it needs to be to get shit done.

 

The problems arise when routines and steps have to change. Take me for example, something that helped me function was my heart dog, Ziva. For 11 years she made my life easier. Her woos and grumbles and her bitching at me meant I had something to ground me when I needed it. Ziva went everywhere with me, if I was in the truck, she was too. If I sat at the kitchen table, she was under it. If I was on the couch, she was beside me. Run to the shop for milk… she went too. Every book I wrote, I wrote with her at my feet.

 

Last Christmas my mother died, we weren’t close, despite the fact I rearranged my life some years before to try and make that relationship better. It didn’t work. But I grieved for what should have been anyway. Then in January, Ziva started showing signs of something, a disease that as someone who has owned and bred malamutes for 27 years, ripped my heart apart because I knew the writing was on the wall. I knew without the DNA test that she was leaving me, and I couldn’t help her, couldn’t fix it. I grieved for months, because I knew it was coming and I knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.

 

Then freaking COVID happened. While it didn’t impact me overly much, after all I am happy to stay in the house all the time. There is something about being told I can’t go out that rubbed me the wrong way. I slept on a deck chair in the front garden for weeks, Ziva didn’t want to be in the house. She wanted to lay outside but struggled as she wanted to be with me too, so it was my turn to help her. I wrote and slept where she was happy, and if that was out of my comfort zone then so be it, because I wanted every precious second with her.

 

When I lost her in July, my world fell apart. For eleven years she had been my shadow. My grounding force. Maybe then I should have taken time off writing, I should have said no I need time. But emails and requests for when the next book is? when is release day? why did you move this or that? pushed me on. Remember what I said about the type of person I am? That played into it, the dropping everything, the pushing everything aside to ensure that I don’t let anyone down.

 

By the time Salvation’s Sinner released in August I was at breaking point. So much so, my man was growling and grumbling about me not looking after me.  At one point he threatened to hide my computer, especially after Amazon send out the wrong file and the emails from angry readers started. I understood you all were angry, I totally understood why. My guy not so much, he saw his wife who was still trying to find a new normal, get kicked over and over. So, I let him lead and I retreated to where he could look after me. I reminded myself that I am human too, and I matter. I buried myself in writing, stopped posting so much in groups, spent less time on Facebook. Tried not to get pulled into dramas my broken heart wouldn’t have been able to cope with. I needed that time, I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone apart from my guy. Stupid as it may sound, my soul needed him to fix me yet again, as he has done so many times over the years.

 

Facebook and similar platforms helped a lot of people stay connected, especially though lockdowns and such. But the same way it helped people stay connected also makes it easier to hurt people. The face people wear in public, sometimes hides a hell of a lot of pain or troubles, stuff people aren’t ready to share with anyone out their most trusted circle. I remind myself all the time to read and reread any posts that are even remotely critical, I never want to be the person who takes someone over the line of their ‘too much.’ It’s important for me to do that, I have a faulty brain to mouth filter, and I don’t see stuff the same way some people do. But for me to hurt someone because I didn’t think or because I just reacted instead of thinking, its unacceptable. If you are someone I either hurt or upset by opening my mouth before engaging my braincells, I am sorry. I will try to do better.

 

I can’t wait for this year to be done. My heart needs it to be over. I need the hope a new year brings to move forward. Hope that it’s better than this one. Hope that this year we can all breathe a little easier, love a little harder, and finally start getting back to being us.

 

Now that I have rambled and spilled my horrid year all over the page, I’m going to shut up before I drive straight into whining level. Just remember this holiday season, however and if you celebrate, BE KIND, not only to others, but to yourselves too.

 

Be safe, look after each other,

Annabella

 

Blurb:

After playing his part in Operation Perth in Afghanistan, former Australian Special Forces Commando Cade Kelly was officially declared dead. Recruited by Rock and Grif to join their elite team of Black Ops Operators, The Ghost Protectors, he has built a new life for himself as the team’s top intel analyst. A spur of the moment decision to spend his down time in Brazil lands him in the middle of a cartel revenge war. Cade has lived and died by the gun before, he’s not afraid of war. But the man he rescues, that man, makes him wish for the one thing he swore he would never have again—love.

Dragged into his father’s cartel world of drugs, blood, and money, for most of his life, Felipe *Rio* Oseguera González has been looking for a way out. He had it beaten into him to never trust a cop—even if you are paying him. But with his life on the line, the only one he can trust is the badass blond commando with the big ass guns. Rio knows better than anyone that freedom isn’t free, it always demands it’s price in blood. Even so, he’s grabbing this opportunity with both hands and if he has his way, he might just persuade this ghost that sometimes the dead can have a happy ever after too.

Death and vengeance may make them run… but can love get them out of this war alive?

Universal Buy Link

Amazon Buy Link

 

Annabella brought a free copy for you all to download!

You can get it here

https://claims.prolificworks.com/free/d9gmp9hn