Yay!
If you haven't seen the gorgeous cover, here it is:
The Clergy Affair will be released digitally and in print on the same day-July 31st of this year. And for any of you who really know me, I must tell you that, yes, this is a work of fiction. None of it really happened though in my head some of the settings are real. It takes place in Mississippi where we lived for over ten years. The state gets a bad rap, but I found most everyone there to be very kind and good to know. The church where I worked in Mississippi is also where I imagined the fictional character of Deborah Reynolds to be pastor. Many small southern towns are thick with atmosphere. Everyone knows everyone's business, people are hospitable almost to a fault, and there's always a little cafe where the retired men go in the mornings, drink coffee, and gossip. Those are the kinds of things I appreciated where we lived and that, I think, is what makes this book so great.
Julia, my editor, just raved about the setting. She expressed her affection for some of my secondary characters, Lon Carter, for example. Lon is a member of the church and loves to give everyone a hard time. Julia encouraged me to write another book in the same little town using some of the same characters. Following her advice, I have begun that story. On my website, the work in progress is called Password. The main character of Password (a working title, most definitely) is Amy Mann, Lon Carter's daughter. Though I'm only about ten pages in, my hope is that one day it will be a sequel to The Clergy Affair. I'll keep you updated.
