Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Apologies your Christmas Eve-Eve traditional gift is late. I returned home from a fun little trip to watch the final four of college volleyball just in time for my boys to get “the Christmas Crud” and be in varying degrees of sickness.

It seems our entire Christmas break has been filled with sickness now and it’s almost over. Can I get a do-over?

Before we get to the new stuff, a bit on 2025 and what I will be working on. Well, I am pleased to say that audiobooks for the Enchanted Kingdom series are in process! That is taking up a huge portion of my time currently, trying to get at least books 1-2 to you in 2025. And Enchanted Kingdom book 6 (Owen’s book) too, of course, which I just got back from edits!

I also usually aim to write two books a year. For 2025, I have one book in the secret project to finish, and one Enchanted Kingdom book to finish. However, there is also another story I am dying to write which I may or may not have had the audacity to start one wild day this December. I’d like to be able to get to all three, but with audiobooks also in the mix, I have promised myself I also will not push myself to burnout. I’ll know more once I get a feel for how fast those audiobooks will be done, so stay tuned!

A piece of Enchanted Kingdom news for you before we shift gears: after Enchanted Kingdom 6, a time hop will be needed to wrap everything up nicely in book 7. So Owen’s book reads like a standalone. Yes, it has a title. No, I will not slip up and tell you yet. Was there a huge hint in book 5 relating to Owen’s book? Yes.

  I posted a poll on Instagram and the vast majority of you voted for the first little bit of “The Secret Project” as your something new for this year’s gift. (Keep scrolling to find it.) I was mildly surprised!

This book is currently on submission with my agent and has been since April, so I cannot say too much about it, but I will say that it is a YA magical academy series. And unfortunately for you all, the main players aren’t all introduced until the end of the second chapter. But you’ll get the gist of the start of the story… One foster kid. One dog. And one yard mysteriously goes up in flames.

Reese Ayer isn’t your typical eighteen-year-old girl, but she thinks she is. She has no idea she can wield the elements.

I have been often asked about this series and when you will be able to read it. I don’t have a definitive answer. Which is why I haven’t shared much about it. But now that I have two of the three books at least roughly written and just sitting there, I am dying to get them to you somehow. And that second book . . . gah!

This is the hard part about submitting a book to the traditional publishers: the wait.

So I still don’t have all the answers. I’m just rolling into 2025 tired yet clinging to hope. The hope that the hard work of 2024 shows up in 2025. I didn’t hit all of my goals career-wise, but I did live the heck out of my life. I wrote words and books I love with everything in me. I lost my beloved furry writing assistant. I was wrecked. I grieved. I laughed hard. I loved hard. And recently, we got a new furry family member. 2024 may have felt like a gravel road when I wanted the newly finished highway, but I am oddly okay with it. The bumps and dips of that road made me slow down a bit. Breathe a bit.  

I’m not sure what you accomplished this year, or didn’t, but I am proud you made it to 2025 with me! I am cheering for you. Whether you take on a mountain in 2025 or need rest for your soul, I am cheering for you all the same.  

As always, may your 2025 be kind to you. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year! With Much Love,

-Tricia And here is your something new. The first few pages of "The Secret Project." Attempted murder wasn’t really on my to-do list today. Stealing a dog, however, was. Some might even say it was an honorable cause of an almost eighteen-year-old girl. I didn’t want to really kill the dog’s owner anyway, only scare him a little. Hence the water bottles of gasoline stashed in my backpack.

I inhaled deep, the crunch of gravel beneath my tennis shoes. The rising sun provided only enough light for me to walk without impaling myself on branches or sticks as I cut through a wooded area. The only creatures stirring at this hour were the frogs in the swampy pond one street down. It was prime time for dog snatching.

I easily hopped over the three-foot wooden slat fence to get to the ill-kept yard Max called home. He was too frail. Too broken by his owner.

His ears perked up as I landed.

“Hi, sweet boy,” I whispered as I reached into my back pocket and brought out a milk bone treat for him. “Wanna get out of here today?”

He wiggled his way over to me. The velocity at which his tail wagged warmed my heart. It hadn’t always been this way. I had been feeding and checking in on this dog for a while now. And though I wanted to save him for weeks, I knew the streets were no place for an orphan, much less for an orphan plus dog.

The day I met Max had been over a month ago, one of those first outrageously hot days of the summer where hell itself tries to seep into your pores. I usually spent my summers at the air-conditioned public library, lost in better worlds. The quickest way for me to get from Nottingham Acres, or Snob Hills as most of us called it, to the cool library, was to cut across the trailer park.

I was late that day. I had intended to only read one more chapter of my book at the library, but one wound up being three. Normally I left in plenty of time to avoid the trailer park and take the longer route. I truly had nothing against that area of town, there were numerous nice families living there, but I also knew from experience there were some drugs to be found as well. Drug dealers thought us orphans and foster kids would make the best runners, so I avoided the trailer park. Rather intentionally.

Except for that day. It was the last house on the corner of Lakewood Avenue and Seventh Street. Never mind the street was named like it was in a classy part of town, except it really wasn’t, with the only lake in the area being the smelly old pond. Maybe this area of town used to be nicer, the pond actually a lake before people ruined it. People tended to be exceptionally good at that.

I had almost been across the wooded area and to the train tracks, but I heard a dog whimper in pain. I hadn’t been able to ignore the sound. So I’d hid behind a massive oak tree to crouch down and listen in. I was just a sucker like that.

“Get back, Max!” the owner had yelled before kicking the dog once more, stumbling back inside the house.

The minute my eyes had first seen Max, a yellow lab mix of some kind, a righteous anger burned in the pit of my stomach and seemed to spread throughout my veins. Max hadn’t been doing anything to deserve that, merely existing. His only fault was being foolish enough to hope for some pets instead of kicks when he approached his owner. Max didn’t bark or fight the man through it. He did not move. Years of constant abuse had taught him better.

I had crouched there against the bark of that tree far longer than I should have. Far longer than was comfortable. Max’s ears had perked up as he looked my way, having felt my presence.

“I know,” I had whispered to him. “I know it’s not fair. I know.”

What I saw looking back at me in those brown eyes was me. A piece of myself. A broken and beaten spirit. A spirit that in any other circumstance might have thrived. And though I couldn’t do anything about my own situation for a few more months, I knew I could save him.

From that day on, I became a regular at the trailer park, but only in the mornings on my way to the library before most people were up. As much as I wanted to rush back the very next day and save Max, the streets had taught me that everything was about timing.

And that desperate times called for desperate measures...