Happy 2019! I realized it’s about time to post an update, lol. What have you been up to? I’ve been immersed in art and freelance writing, although I haven’t worked on a novel until recently. Several ideas have been simmering on the back burner, but I held off, waiting for a spark, what I call those have-to-write ideas that grip me and make me write them. Those, incidentally, are also the novels readers really love.

So, I waited. And almost a year passed, and I kept telling myself, I’m an author. An good idea will come. A great idea will come. Because in the past, I would get great ideas all the time.

I’m so glad I waited instead of trying to grind out a novel that I wasn’t obsessed about writing. Now I’m 20,000 words into a first draft, and the words are flowing like I’m retelling a story I know by heart. But at the same time, I’m discovering it as I go.

I’m calling it A Stranger Like Me.

The story centers around Angie Duval, a private investigator of sorts, who comes to Eugene to locate a missing teen, 16 year old Candace. (She’s a pro but she also helps people that no one else wants to help.) She’s following a lead when she runs into herself–or, a mirror image of herself. Her newly discovered twin is named Vivi Leavitt, a school counselor who co-owns a women’s boutique slash bookstore with her mother.

Angie’s a loner who lives in her RV. Her family is Galaxy, a dog she found abandoned as a puppy out in the Eastern Oregon desert. Vivi is a perky bookworm, so basically Angie’s identical twin and complete opposite. Or so she thinks at first.

For most twins separated at birth, it’s awesome to find the other one. But these two both know they weren’t adopted. It doesn’t make sense, except that they were lied to. Angie’s mom passed away a year ago, leaving only questions.

Angie has a teen to find, who is apparently hanging with a man who calls himself Demon, so she can’t drop everything and dig into her birth situation. In fact, she’s worked hard to forget her childhood and wants to walk away from this too…except she can’t. So suddenly she has two cases, and one’s a little too personal.

Angie and Vivi don’t like what they find when they start investigating their parents, and the case with Candace gets complicated too.

The twins want to know why they were separated and lied to…but at the same time, they don’t. However, it’s starting to look like whatever happened is bigger than just them.

*So that’s the story so far. I can’t wait to share the rest of the story with you!