Finding Home, the sequel to Gone Away Girl, is finally here! I had so much fun writing this one. This book is a little different than the others. It has more romance, which was necessary due to the plot, and I pushed myself to include more poetic language, after being inspired by gorgeously written books by Laini Taylor and Stephanie Kemler. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Buy your copy here. 💙
Four fun facts about Finding Home:
1) When I’d written the first few drafts of Gone Away Girl, I hadn’t planned on writing a sequel. Actually, the idea to write one came right before the first book was published. The plot points and new characters came quickly, sort of just falling into my head.
2) This duology was partially inspired by my crush on an art teacher in high school. He was much older and happily married, however, so the relationship was always strictly professional. There will be no soapy student-teacher romance/drama in my memoir, I’m afraid.
3) Benci’s character was partially inspired by a guy I used to know and by a handsome, mysterious Eastern European male model I watched on a reality TV show.
4) Several parts of this book are loosely based on my own life. More so than any other book I’ve written. For example, a few years ago I enjoyed a dreamy vacation in Thailand, where I got to feed and bathe elephants, one of my favorite animals. It was probably the best trip of my life. It was in no way romantic, however, because I went with my sister.
I have mixed feelings about finishing the duology. I dearly miss Chloe, Damien, Bones, Mel, Benci, Bree and Adeline. They were some of my closest friends—my imaginary friends, haha—the past couple of years. (Actually, I worked on the first book off and on for close to twelve years.) Who knew writers became so ATTACHED to their characters? To be honest, I’m having a difficult time switching gears and working on my next two projects. What are they? you ask.
For the past nine years I’ve been working on a project about a girl with OCD who loses her best friend to a cruel group of girls who now bully her. It focuses on mental health issues, grief, bullying and has an enemies-to-friends-to-lovers trope. With a hot English boy. Because why not?
My very first novel was so poorly written, I consider it a practice novel and plan to never let it see the light of day. However, the characters have haunted me over the last fifteen or so years. So lately I’ve been rewriting it, starting from scratch. I’ve streamlined the plot and taken out a few characters and added two plot twists that I’m excited about. It’s sort of a ghost story that takes place in a former ghost town in the 1960s. The main character had fallen in love with a young man she was writing. One day he vanished. He simply stopped writing and she never heard from him again. She road trips across the country to discover what happened to him, hoping to find him and rekindle their romance. She stays in a haunted historic hotel and hopes to avoid running into any ghosts. My first three published novels are all contemporary so this will be something new from me. Actually, as a teenager I devoured horror/mystery/thriller books and only dabbled with reading contemporary until my twenties, when I started reading them regularly.
I also have about fifteen other ideas for future books so only time will tell what I’ll be releasing next!
For more regular updates on my books and life, follow me on Instagram @juliette_the_writer. If you enjoyed my book, a quick review on Amazon and/or Goodreads —even a sentence or two—helps immensely! Your support means the world to indie writers like me. 💙
