Ten Days in May is quickly becoming my personal favorite of all the novels I’ve written for Bella Books, and not just because it’s my newest or because it’s my longest at 91,000 words.
Don’t worry, I’m not trying to orphan my other thirteen romance novels…they are all my “children”. But with each book, I try to push the character development a little more. As a fiction writer and long-time newspaper reporter, I’m curious about people: what they think, why they do what they do, what their backstory is, who they are. I not only want to know (and want the reader to know) why my characters are falling in love, but where they’ve been and who they are and why they are the way they are. I want to understand my characters and bring them to life in as three-dimensional way as I can. In Ten Days, I strive to make Cam and Brooke as real as your friend or colleague or neighbor or girlfriend.
Cam and Brooke have a shared history but have been on very different paths since. They are nothing like the people they were when they fell in love as college students and parted a few years later. Cam is a death doula now, some eighteen years later, and Brooke owns a restaurant. Both women have been grinding their way through the pandemic, which, they are beginning to realize, has changed them in significant ways, leaving them more introspective. And adrift.
The pandemic, as awful as it’s been on a number of levels, has also been a reckoning for many of us. How do we want to live our lives going forward and with whom do we want to share it? What’s important to us? What makes us happy? And more importantly, what kind of person do we want to be, going forward? Brooke and Cam are struggling with these very questions too.
Cam is helping a man on his final journey, and she’s only beginning to realize that her heart needs something for itself, someone to love. Brooke doesn’t want to love anyone right now…she’s too bruised and exhausted from trying to keep her business afloat. But Brooke also understands viscerally that she’s a long way from being happy and, worst of all, she doesn’t even particularly like herself. She knows she needs to make changes.
An unlikely opportunity throws both women on an island in northern Michigan together for ten days. They must decide if they can (or even want) to get past their bitter breakup years ago. They must decide if there is still enough love between them to try again. A new beginning, both internally and externally, are beckoning to Cam and Brooke on the beautiful island of Mackinac, Michigan.
My favourite quote in the book comes from a secondary character, who says to Brooke: “People save people. And love saves us all.” I’d like to think this sentiment is true and is, ultimately, the answer to a lot of never-ending questions about ourselves and about the state of the world.
Thank you, readers. I really hope you all enjoy Ten Days in May.
Tracey Richardson came to a love of books early on, thanks to a mother who took her and her two siblings regularly to the library in the Windsor area of Ontario, Canada, just across the river from Detroit. She even loves the smell of the ink and paper in books and to this day, when she opens a brand new book, she always gives it a good sniff! A journalist by trade, she worked at Ontario daily newspapers as first a reporter and later a copy editor. Semi-retired now, she finally has more time to devote to her fiction writing.
Her latest romance, Ten Days in May will be released by Bella Books September 15th.