Heather Vogel Frederick
Heather Vogel Frederick

My Books

The countdown begins …

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Rev your engines, readers!

Summer may be in full swing, but September 8th is just around the corner. Only two months to go until the final three titles in my Mother-Daughter Book Club series are released, featuring all-new covers…

 

… AND (drumroll, please) an epilogue!

 

 

It’s not a scrawny epilogue, either.

If you haven’t noticed yet, brevity is not the soul of Heather Vogel Frederick. I pulled out all the stops for this one. There are nearly one hundred additional pages brimming with everything you love about the mother-daughter book club! Appended to the last book in the series, Mother-Daughter Book Camp, the epilogue delivers a total of five full chapters, one for each of the book club girls (women, now, actually–it’s a decade after their last summer together, and they’re all grown up). Emma, Jess, Cassidy, Megan, and Becca each get one last star turn, one last moment in the sun, as we learn about their lives since we left them on the brink of adulthood, ready to spread their wings for college and the wide world beyond. Are there surprises? You bet. Romance? Of course! Drama? Naturally. Family, friendship, and fun? I wouldn’t have it otherwise. And there’s also what I hope is the best ending ever….

You can pre-order these three titles now from your favorite bookseller (the first four are already available). As always, the books will be published in both hardcover and paperback, and as e-books. PLUS, I just found out that there’s a boxed set of the paperbacks coming this fall, too.

September 8th can’t come soon enough for me!

 

 

Come write with me!

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Home for the Holidays

What are you doing this Sunday? Want to write in the company of kindred spirits? Come join me online from 1:00-3:00 pm, Central Standard Time (U.S.), for this month’s Betsy Tacy Society Drop-In Writers’ Lounge.

I’ll be giving us all a brief pep talk, and then we will have dedicated time to work on our individual projects. 

Although I was a latecomer to the Betsy Tacy books, as many of you know, they’re dear to my heart. In fact, in Home for the Holidays, I had my fictional book club dive into the series—something I like to do myself from time to time for inspiration. Maud Hart Lovelace is a wonderful writer, and her books deserve to be cherished by a wide audience. If you aren’t familiar with them, treat yourself and add them to your bookshelf!

You can find more information about Sunday’s event and pre-register here.

Hope to see you there!

 

Happy book birthday to me!

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Heather Vogel Frederick Truly Madly Sheeply

It’s here, it’s here, it’s finally here!

Altogether now, “Happy book birthday to me!”

Book birthdays are a big deal to an author. After months and sometimes years of writing, and then months and months of waiting, publication day is the day the finished product finally hits bookstores and libraries, and from there, the hands of readers. And if we’ve done our job well, those readers will be happy with what we’ve created.

Truly, Madly, Sheeply is dear to my heart. It’s the fourth and likely final in my Pumpkin Falls mystery series, and it features some of my favorite things: sheep and knitting and October in New England. Plus, it was an absolute joy to write from start to finish. Why, you ask? Well, for one thing, I switched up my process. (Process is what writers call the way in which they choose to write.) Time was, I could devote every day to writing stories–and I did. For a while now, however, I’ve had a full-time “day job” (that’s what writers call any paid work besides writing) at Longyear Museum in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. I absolutely love it, and will share more on that in a future post. Meanwhile, however, those work responsibilities meant I needed to change my usual process when it came to writing stories. And so I did. Truly, Madly, Sheeply was written over the course of a year, on Saturday mornings. Yes, only on Saturday mornings! That’s all the time I had to devote to it. Well, plus a week-long push at the end when I was knitting all the chapters together and polishing it up. You know what? I had FUN. Somehow, corralling my writing into once-a-week sessions and not worrying about the consequences (because there was no point in worrying–it was simply what I had to do) uncorked a sense of joy that I didn’t even know I was missing. I didn’t worry about meeting a deadline–I knew that would happen. I didn’t worry about making everything perfect–I knew it eventually would be. I just wrote for the sheer joy of it for those few hours, every week. 

So it turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks! I just assumed that once a writer had an established process–writing every day–they stuck with it–or were stuck with it–forever. Nope. It’s nice to know that I’m the captain of my writing ship, and can change course as needed.

Back to Truly, Madly, Sheeply and this picture. The sharp-eyed among you will notice what’s behind me. That’s my knitting cabinet. Just looking at it makes me happy! It’s full of wool and sheep and dreams of beautiful hand-knitted things to wear and to give to friends and family. Whether I’m knitting or writing, I’m always thinking of the person or reader who will enjoy the end product.

I hope you all enjoy Truly, Madly Sheeply!