My Sophomore Album

 Have you ever fallen in love with a band/singer/rapper's first album, then listened to their second and not loved it as much? I have. It's like - you loved Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle so much and you want more of it. But then he releases Tha Doggfather and since it's not exactly the same, you freak out. (Can you guess the years I was a teenager from that reference?)

I've been worried I'm going to experience something similar with The Detective's Pleasure. It isn't technically my second book - that's Bad Boys Need Love Too. But that story was in a different world so it's not really an issue. The Detective's Pleasure, however, is in The Sergeant's world. I know many of you love Logan and Clay (thank you for that, btw!) so my neurotic writer's brain is stressing that people will read TDP, then spit it out and say, "Yuck! This doesn't taste like The Sergeant at all!"

You see, Ryan and Sam are very different people than Logan and Clay. I think we can all agree that Logan and Clay are pretty intense. But Sam is more laid back than Logan, and Ryan is too delightfully snooty to joke around like Clay. They are their own men, and their story is their own to tell. Because they are so different,  I sincerely hope that readers will give them a chance and read their story on their own merit, without comparing them to Logan and Clay.

So I get it now. Bands release sophomore albums that are them, but different, because they had different feelings to express through their music. They had new sounds they wanted to play with. As I wrote The Detective's Pleasure, I tried to shoe horn Ryan and Sam into the same type of story as The Sergeant. But Ryan paced and Sam patiently sat and waited until I figured out that the feelings they needed to express and the sound, or tone, of their love is their own. Once I accepted that, their story flowed, and my sophomore album was born. 

In the end, Ryan and Sam's story is my style, but different. You give it a try, and I'll keep my fingers crossed The Detective's Pleasure isn't the Crystal Pepsi of the romance world. Cuz man that stuff was gross.

Love,
Christa