Today I’d like to welcome one of my very favorite authors, Jeanette Grey. Jeanette is not just the author of today’s book, When It’s Right (reviewed here), but also one of the books on my Best Ebook Romances of the Year list over at Library Journal, Take What You Want (reviewed earlier this year). Last but not least, if you love science fiction romance, she’s a triple threat with her awesome Unacceptable Risk (reviewed here). But today she’s here to talk about…
New Year’s Resolutions
by Jeanette Grey
For the longest time now, I’ve have a love-hate relationship with the idea of making New Year’s resolutions. In theory, it’s great, right? January first marks the beginning of a new calendar, a new year—why shouldn’t it also mark the beginning of a brand new you?
It feels good to set a goal. To articulate your intentions for how you’re going to make things better this time around.
The problem is that it’s almost too easy. Hell, it’s positively simplistic to declare that you’re going to do X, Y, and Z. But no matter how much we might wish it, we wake up on the first day of the new year, and we are, at heart, the same people we were before. Beneath that shiny new resolution, there’s something harder. Something slower and longer and not nearly so glamorous: there’s the work of seeing it through.
Making a New Year’s resolution is the work of a moment. Sticking to it is the work of one moment after another, stretching on and on in perpetuity until the goal has been achieved. If the goal doesn’t have a specific termination point—if it’s more “quit smoking” or “write everyday” and less “lose fifteen pounds”—the slog of adhering to it is literally endless.
As evidenced by those empty parking lots at the gym come February, dedication to changing your ways is infinitely harder than just naming your intention before the clock strikes midnight.
In my new novella, When It’s Right, my heroine, Cassie, has just made one of the worst, most difficult to adhere to resolutions I can imagine: she’d decided she’s going to stop being in love with her best friend, Nate.
She has a plan for this, in theory. She’s going to stop spending as much time with him, she’s going to quit dwelling on him, she’s going to start actively dating again. But the sad fact is that she doesn’t want to do any of these things, and the closeness they currently have is going to be almost impossible to give up.
So when he suggests going on a road trip together for New Year’s Eve, she only hesitates for a moment. This might be her last chance to spend this kind of quality time with him before she follows through with her resolution to get some distance.
Little does she know, though, the trip is going to change everything. And thank goodness, because in the end, the best kind of resolution? Is the kind you never actually had to make in the first place.
About Jeanette Grey
Jeanette Grey started out with degrees in physics and painting, which she dutifully applied to stunted careers in teaching, technical support, and advertising. When none of that panned out, she started writing. In her spare time, Jeanette enjoys making pottery, playing board games, and spending time with her husband and her pet frog. She lives, loves, and writes in upstate New York.To learn more about Jeanette, visit her website and blog and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~
Jeanette’s giving away one ebook copy of a single-title release from her backlist: winner’s choice of Take What You Want, Unacceptable Risk, A Gift Of Trust, or Letting Go. To enter, use the Rafflecopter below:
About C.C. HumphreysChris (C.C.) Humphreys was born in Toronto and grew up in the UK. He has acted all over the world and appeared on stages ranging from London’s West End to Hollywood’s Twentieth Century Fox. Favorite roles have included Hamlet, Caleb the Gladiator in NBC’s Biblical-Roman epic mini-series, ‘AD – Anno Domini’, Clive Parnell in ‘Coronation Street’, and Jack Absolute in Sheridan’s ‘The Rivals’.
About Mark Henry
