Jane & CJ: Good Together!

I’ve been focusing on family for the last couple months, needing to be available to one of my sons who needed medical care and lots of love and support.  I missed several deadlines for my books but fortunately my wonderful agent and editors understood and allowed me to step back from work committments to do what I needed to do.  But now I’m finally starting to write again–its never easy after a long break!–and I’m slowly finding the words, and hoping that I’ll be able to finish my novels and get them out to you, my readers, very soon.

Fortunately, there are wonderful novels out right now to read, and one of my favorite new romances is the powerful, emotional (wonderful!!) new story, Good Together, by one of my best friends, CJ Carmichael.

I asked CJ to join me on my blog and share with you a little bit about how she and I met, and our friendship, which I very much cherish.

So here’s CJ.  I hope you’ll enjoy her guest post on my blog!

From CJ

Jane and I met at a conference in Victoria before either of us were published. Somehow she, Barbara Dunlop and I gravitated to one another. Within a year all three of us were published! (Maybe we were each other’s good luck charms…) I’ll always remember the nights we sat up late in our hotel rooms talking about our hopes and dreams. Just to have a book with our name on the cover seemed like the big goal then. We’ve all come a long way since that time. But we remain great, supportive friends, and try to get together, just the three of us every one or two years.

I think we just “clicked” – it’s hard to explain. We definitely respect each other’s talent and share a drive and passion for writing. But we also just enjoy spending time together. We feel safe talking about things that are most important to us. And having lots of laughs along the way.

Loyalty is big part of friendship for me. I know that if I need something, and ask Jane, she’ll be there for me. It works the other way, too. I also like friends who care about the world, appreciate nature and want to be around it. Jane’s love of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta is one of our bonds. I head to Banff and area regularly to go hiking, and this is one of Jane’s favorite places in the world, too.

Typically Jane and I will see each other at the RWA National Conference where we’re swimming in a sea of thousands. We generally carve out a little time to be alone and talk, but we have our best visits when we do our 3-5 day retreats with Barb. We’ve met in Banff, Kelowna and Salt Spring Island. We love going to quiet places, surrounded by beautiful scenery. One of my most memorable meetings with Jane was about ten years ago when she came to Banff for her fortieth birthday. She was traveling alone–a lot of crazy things were happening in her life at the time. The two of us went out for a celebratory dinner, but also spent time hiking to Bow Falls, talking and reflecting. The mountains are a great place to put your life in perspective.

I had already dabbled in the Indie publishing world by the time Jane told me about her idea for Tule Publishing. I felt boxed in at Harlequin and was ready to plunge right in. I love the immediacy, the creative freedom and the feeling of being closer to my readers that I get with e-publishing. Plus Jane’s vision allows me to work with other creative people without sacrificing control over my own career. Jane excels in areas that are my weakness–such as just about everything to do with marketing!

I love the fact that besides being empowered to write my stories, my way, I now get to spend a lot more time with Jane. Through her I’ve met other amazing writers, reconnected with old writing friends, and had a chance to really get to know Lilian Darcy and Megan Crane (awesome people, funny, smart and talented). The four of us, Jane, Lilian, Megan and I, wrote the inaugural Montana Born books (Copper Mountain Rodeo). It all began with a week we spent together in Montana last May. After that I knew this new venture was something I’d never regret!

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I asked CJ to join my Tule adventure because she’s not just my close friend, but one of the most talented writers I know.  CJ (like fellow founding author friends Megan Crane and Lilian Darcy) has serious writing chops.  She knows her craft and is constantly pushing herself to grow and deliver fresh, original and powerful stories that readers will love, and I think she’s written her best novel yet in Good Together, the first book in her Carrigans of Circle C Trilogy.   I absolutely loved Good Together and so have all the readers at Amazon that have discovered it (there are 68 5 star reviews!) and best of all, right now, Good Together is just .99 for the next 5 days.

So if you’re looking for a great read, check out Good Together, and if you ask me what goes good together, well, it’s amazing, loyal friends like CJ Carmichael, who always have your back.

For a chance to be entered to in my Good Together contest, which has an awesome good together mystery prize that includes three gift cards and lots more fun things, tell me what you think goes good together and you could win!  Contest runs through Thursday night with the winner announced on Friday morning so share with me now and then check back Friday to see if your name was drawn.