Eight months.
Nearly 2,000 hours.
Most of them after everyone went to sleep.
Some stolen in the middle of chaos.
Some written with one eye open and coffee long since cold.
Some outlined in my head while folding laundry or standing at a football field pretending I wasn’t mentally drafting a crime scene.
“Give Mommy one more minute.”
I said it more times than I can count.
One more minute to finish a paragraph.
One more minute to fix a sentence.
One more minute to chase a character who refused to behave.
Hot Flash Homicide didn’t appear out of nowhere.
It was built in fragments in the quiet hours after homework was done, dishes were stacked, and everyone else was breathing evenly down the hallway.
But here’s what no one sees when a book goes live:
The people who carried it with you.
Kris handling one more bedtime.
Hailey stepping in with the little girls.
The older kids giving me space when I needed silence.
The grace when dinner was simple.
The understanding when I was tired.
Yes, most of those 2,000 hours happened after dark.
But exhaustion doesn’t care what time it is.
I still woke up.
I still ran the business.
I still showed up.
I still packed lunches and answered emails and lived all the in-between moments.
And they still supported me.
This book is mine but it was never built alone.
It was built in a house full of patience.
It was built by a husband who believed in it before it was anything more than a messy document.
It was built by kids who learned that dreams take time and sometimes Mommy needs a little extra of it.
When I hit publish, I didn’t just see a cover.
I saw every late night.
Every deadline.
Every quiet sacrifice that no one outside this house will ever know about.
Hot Flash Homicide is out in the world now.
It may be dark and satirical and sharp but it was written in the softest place possible: a home that made room for it.
And somewhere, in a half-filled notebook and the back of my mind, another woman is already stirring.
She’s quieter.
Colder.
Watching.
And she’s not finished yet.
For now, though
I’m grateful.
If you’ve already bought the book, thank you.
If you’ve shared it, thank you.
If you’ve cheered me on from the sidelines, thank you.
The 2,000-hour dream is real.
And it belonged to all of us.
🔥 Hot Flash Homicide — available now.
Crumbs and Chaos 
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