One Week of the Heart Novella is Out Now!
A blogpost by Lisa Williams Kline
Lizzy Winston, the main character of my novel One Week of You, is one of my favorites of the characters I’ve written. She has such a good heart, but she just can’t seem to stop making mistakes. She never means to make a mistake; she always has the best intentions. I sound like a sadist, but it was so much fun to get Lizzy in trouble and then let her find her own way back. I don’t know about you, but when I’m reading a book sometimes a character will start to do something and I’ll say, “No! Don’t do it!” Well, Lizzy is always doing stuff like that.
When I finished writing One Week of You, I sadly said good-bye to Lizzy. I’d really enjoyed the time I spent with her, but figured she’d learned everything she needed to from that story and she was on her own now. I went on to other projects.
Then, a few months ago, my editors at Blue Crow Publishing said, “Can we have more Lizzy?”
More Lizzy? I thought we’d said good-bye. In typical writer fashion, I worried, could I find her voice again? And would anyone care about Lizzy’s problems during a pandemic? Lizzy’s story in One Week of You comes from a time before the pandemic, when life was safer and problems were more normal. Then I talked to some writer friends who said they thought that stories from a “safe” space might be a healthy and relaxing escape for young readers now. So, with that encouragement and also that of my editors, I decided to go ahead and revisit Lizzy.
And I had a blast! It was so much fun to get back in touch with Lizzy and her friends. I seemed to slide back into her voice like a favorite pair of flip-flops. And coming up with mistakes for her to make was a labor of love. This new story about Lizzy is a novella, and it’s a prequel to One Week of You. It takes place the summer before the novel, at a MedCamp on a North Carolina college campus. I’m sharing here the beautifully whimsical cover for the new novella, One Week of the Heart, designed by the multi-talented Lauren Faulkenberry. It’s an ebook only, and can be ordered from Amazon now. It will also be available through the Blue Crow Publishing website and here at my website. And the best news is that, at least at first, it’s FREE! I hope you enjoy reading One Week of the Heart as much as I enjoyed writing it.