The past will always find you.

Jos Archer was the girl with the perfect life; until the night it all came crashing down around her. Now, nine months later, she still hasn’t begun to pick up the pieces. Even transferring to a new college and living under the watchful eye of her older sister, Renee, isn’t enough to help her feel normal again.

And then she meets Dusty Sharp. For reasons Jos can’t begin to fathom, the newly reformed campus bad boy seems determined to draw her out of her shell. And if she’s not careful, his knowing green eyes and wicked smile will make her feel things she’s no longer sure she deserves.

But even as Dusty coaxes Jos to open up about the past, he’s hiding secrets of his own. Secrets about the night her old life fell apart. When the truth is finally revealed, will it bring them closer together;or tear them apart for good?

Writing Life

Any writer will tell you that sequels are hard. On the outside, they seem easy. You already know the world and the characters and you have parameters to work with. It’s not like starting from scratch.

Except when it is. When I embarked on the writing of My Sweetest Escape, my original vision was for a Hunter/Taylor sequel. I was convinced that I had it all planned out and it was going to be as easy to write as the first book. And then I started actually writing.

It. Wasn’t. Working. My second thought was to do a sequel from one of the existing couples. Darah and Mase or Renee and Paul. I tried both of those. Hit a brick wall. I spoke with my editor and we talked and talked and talked and tried to figure out what to do. In the background of my attempt at a Renee and Paul story, I’d mentioned one of her sisters, and the seed of an idea started. What if we brought a new character and threw her into the existing world?

BOOM. That was it. The magic solution. From there I saw her. This redheaded pissed off girl who was put in this house (under duress) with these people that she barely knew, other than her sister. And as soon as there was Jos, there was Dusty. I’d been dreaming of writing a beat boxer for a while, and then, there he was. Everything fell into place as if I had somehow planned it.

Not that writing this book was easy. Believe me, it wasn’t. I went through six or seven drafts of the first couple of chapters. Lots of dirty vanilla chai’s (vanilla chai with a shot of espresso). Complete re-writes. Tears. Rending of clothing. Doubts if I was a writer at all. Maybe I should just go back to banking. But finally, after listening to Pandora for hours and begging Jos to talk to me, she did. And then she wouldn’t shut up.

Once I got inside her head and listened to her music and figured out what made her tick, that was it.

Some characters just let you in. Others fight and kick and scream and make writing a chore. But at the end of the day, I almost love the “hard” books more. I worked hard to get them, harder than I’ve worked at anything in my life. I hope you love Jos and Dusty as much as I do, and I hope their journey is worth the ride.

Chelsea M. Cameron is a YA/NA New York Times/USA Today Best Selling author from Maine. Lover of things random and ridiculous, Jane Austen/Charlotte and Emily Bronte Fangirl, red velvet cake enthusiast, obsessive tea drinker, vegetarian, former cheerleader and world’s worst video gamer. When not writing, she enjoys watching infomercials, singing in the car and tweeting (this one time, she was tweeted by Neil Gaiman). She has a degree in journalism from the University of Maine, Orono that she promptly abandoned to write about the people in her own head. More often than not, these people turn out to be just as weird as she is.

Her New Adult Contemporary Romance titles include My Favorite Mistake, which has been bought by Harlequin along with a sequel, Deeper We Fall and Faster We Burn (April 20, 2013)

Her Young Adult books include Nocturnal, Nightmare and Neither, the first three books in The Noctalis Chronicles. The fourth and final book, Neverend will be out in 2013. Whisper, the first in The Whisper Trilogy is also available, with the second book in the series, Silence and the final book, LIsten coming out in 2014.

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