It's a monumental day for me because it has been a monumental amount of work. I'm releasing the second edition of Living Next Door to Heaven, Books 1-5 in preparation for the release of Book 10, What Were They Thinking?
Where are they?
Well, they are still free, but not located here on SOL. This has been a very difficult process figuring out what to do and, like everything I say, there is a story involved.
When I wrote the Living Next Door to Heaven saga, I did it as a thank you to readers here on SOL who had rescued me from deep depression during the writing of my series Model Student. That is still my major purpose for LNDtH. But while writing, I found myself steeped in my own history, memories of times long ago, and images of people I grew up with. I got carried away and used a lot of names that were very close to the names of people I'd grown up with, places where I lived, and events that sort of happened.
When I finally released the series as eBooks on Amazon a year later, I realized I couldn't publish the book for the general public with all those recognizable names, even if the descriptions, situation, and storyline were completely fictitious. (Yes, people I knew from that era have bought the eBooks!) So, I created a released version of the story and did a significant edit of the material. I also added back a few scenes that were cut to meet SOL standards, cleaned up some timeline issues, and generally improved the story editing.
That means when I start posting What Were They Thinking? next week, people might be confused by characters and places they don't remember from the original series. (WHAT??? Rhonda is now Hannah? But I like Rhonda!)
The conundrum is that readers on SOL, who I wrote the story for in the first place, became heavily invested in the original characters and I don't want to change the story here to match the changes I made for Amazon. (WHAT??? Joanne is now Jessica? But I like Joanne!) Nor do I ever want to get in the position of making readers of free editions feel like they have to buy a new edition to see the real story.
So, to make a long story longer, I've decided to leave Living Next Door to Heaven 1 and 2 untouched here on SOL, complete with errors, spelling problems, and timeline issues and to release the 2nd edition free on my website for those who are confused by the names and events in What Were They Thinking? and want to re-read the story with all the edits. I've done a complete re-proofreading and have taken a lot of care to make the books readable and easy to navigate on my site.
I will not be updating the Amazon and Barnes and Noble versions for a while yet as I'm more focused on getting WWTT written and the free reading versions up on my site. When the .mobi and .ePub versions are finished, they will also be available for free on my site.
There's my long story. What Were They Thinking? will begin posting on SOL sometime next week. It probably won't be available on my website until it's finished here. Right now, Books 1-5 (Living Next Door to Heaven 1) are ready because the first part of WWTT runs in parallel with these five books. Hopefully, by the time the second part starts, the Books 6-9 (Living Next Door to Heaven 2) will also be available.
I know this decision and method leaves me open to criticism and to about a million other suggestions of how I could have handled it, but this is the one I've chosen and I invite you to take a look at the stories at http://www.devonlayne.com/books.html.
Thank you to all readers for continuing to be a major support in my life and source of unending ideas, encouragement, and well-earned criticism. Onward!