The Half-Truth (Drowning Book 2) Read online

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  I never intended to write a sequel. My Deliberate Mistake was a stand-alone novel. The story of a young girl who desperately wanted to run away from her tortured past and make a new life for herself. Only the more she tried to get away, the more she started to unravel. It was the story of one summer and the summer was over. But as people started to read the book, they had questions and they wanted answers. People asked me what was going to happen to Ana. Had she ever really had a sister or was it all a product of her twisted mind? I didn’t have any answers.

  You see some people write books by plotting. They have giant pin boards full of timelines and notebooks full of character details. They know what is going to happen when and who is going to do what before they’ve even written a word. I’m not like that. I’m what they call a pantser. Yes, I fly by the seat of my pants, all the while holding on for dear life. Sometimes there is less flying and more bumping along the road like a hot air balloon that’s lost all its hot air. Other times I’m like a fighter jet, the wind blowing through my hair and my cheeks pressed back by the g force. Although, I’m pretty sure that in a fighter jet you don’t have your head stuck out the window like a dog in a car but you get the point.

  I sit at my keyboard with my cup of hot tea and I start to type. I read somewhere that all stories are waiting to be written and they’re just floating up there in the air. Sometimes they are begging to be plucked like ripe apples. They come off fully formed and you can’t get the words out quick enough. But other times it’s like pulling a festering splinter out of your finger, one shard at a time.

  But the characters are people and this is their story. They take me down the rabbit hole and I follow. Observing and writing so that their messages can be told. Sometimes those messages aren’t pretty. Other times they lie. Just like us their lives are messy and complicated and full of half-truths and innuendoes. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense. Until it does.

  This is the end of Ana’s story. There won’t be any more. I’m happy to leave her living with her family. She has Noah and Sophie and the new baby. But she also has the knowledge that maybe she wasn’t exactly crazy after all.

  So I’ll sit here at my keyboard and pluck more stories from the sky but I have just one favor. If you liked this book please take a moment to leave a review and let others know how you feel. It doesn’t have to be a book report (unless you want it to be!) but every review is a great help to indie authors like me who rely on you, the reader, to help spread the word. I couldn’t do it without you guys!

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  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

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  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  STAY CONNECTED