What a great weekend my husband and I just had as we attended the 2020 Readers’ Favorite Awards Ceremony. We used the weekend to not only celebrate my awards, but also our 20th anniversary which was at the end of September.
I’ve been writing since Oct 2010, and I have won a few awards, but I have never attended an award ceremony before. It was a blast! I met new friends, ran into a few that I had lost contact with, and even learned a few things along the way.
Actually having the honor of walking across the stage to receive my awards was humbling, and I am so thankful for the opportunity to do that with the first three Rise Again Warrior Books. Because of the pandemic, the ceremony wasn’t held the last three years, so this year, they honored everyone authors and illustrators from 2020, 2021 and 2022.
In the Military Fiction category, Mission: Believe won Bronze in 2020. Mission: Accept won Gold in 2021 and Mission Repair won Gold in 2022. Check out the video my husband took of my crossing the stage.
I huge thank you to all my readers, and to those at Readers’ Favorite who put the award ceremony on!
We have all seen how much the world can change in the last two years. With that, so do priorities. With significant issues needing to be focused on around my house, I had to prioritize my family and our household. In doing so, I started working outside the home again.
My job is a very important one, and I am passionate about what I am doing, but it is intense, and it is hard to switch that intensity off to write sometimes. I travel a lot and spend hours teaching classes online and in person. My creative side isn’t always at its best when I am home.
I have been working on Mission: Gratitude for the last several weeks. It was set to release in November, but unlike the first four books, this story is not flowing the way I expected it to. It’s been like pulling teeth, and I know better than to force the issue.
With the deadline closing in, the stress was growing. These books go through a much more in-depth editing than my other romance novels. Scenes are reviewed by special people who have given input on the technical aspects of the story. The story is then read by a couple of ARC readers before it even goes to editing, then it goes through 3-4 rounds of editing with my main editor before it goes through two separate proofreaders, and then on to more ARC readers. This process takes months, and I don’t even have a quarter of the story nailed down.
That is why I have canceled the pre-order for Mission: Gratitude. It was a tough decision, but one that I believe I needed to make. I will not rush this story. It is not like I am just trying to give two characters a happily ever after, but I am showing how people overcome struggles that some of us could never quite comprehend.
When will it be released? Well, when it’s ready. I will not put it on pre-order again but will immediately release it once it has been written to my satisfaction and has gone through the entire editing process.
My sincerest apologies to those of you who have been waiting for it. I know this is the second time I have canceled the pre-order, and it frustrates me to no end that I have had to do that. I just can not rush the books in this particular series. I do hope that you can understand how difficult this decision has been.
Mission: Courage is the fourth book in the Rise Again Warrior Series. A series that focuses on what our veterans go through after the war and their careers are over.
After years in the Army, Gianna Roberts is detached and unsure of herself and her future. When a chain reaction occurs, she finds herself falling into the deep, dark, den of demons called alcohol.
With Gianna physically self-destructing with her abusive addiction, she’s unable to care for herself and her son. The day that Nate Hardy takes a stool beside her at the bar, is the day her life might change.
Nate is not a stranger to addiction and has been battling with it himself for five years. His job is to find servicemen and women and bring them back to Rise Again Warrior for help.
Behind the wire, a fragile relationship will grow. Nate will help Gianna find the courage to face sobriety, but will it be at the cost of his own?
Join us for another emotional, intense, heartbreaking, and realistic story of hope, despair, addiction, and PTSD inside the wire of the Rise Again Warrior Complex.
From tragedy to triumph, this book took me on a roller-coaster ride of anguish, pain, and suffering as Gia went from the brink of total destruction to finding hope in a long, dark tunnel. Although a work of fiction, the plot made me wonder about the many thousands of people around the world who have served their country in the military, or who have to deal with the effects of human tragedy and destructive forces on a daily basis as part of their work.
Margarget Watkins – Amazon
This is a gut wrenching, emotionally charged story that will have you reaching for the tissues all the way through this book!!
Patti – Goodreads
Stacy has done it again with book 4 of the Rise Again Warrior (RAW) book. This time we meet a female veteran – Gianna, an amazing mechanic who has served multiple tours in the sandbox. This is a story that runs you through all the emotions – and some of it is hard to read. But, knowing veterans who have served over the last 20 years in the sandbox and returned – this is real, this is raw.
Kate – Goodreads
Stacy blew me away with this book. Emotions were pushed to the limits. She gets into the heart and soul of what service people go through. The guilt, the anguish of being alive when so many don’t make it. The depth is incredible and raw!
Suze Joyce – Goodreads
This book is so emotional so be prepared to have Kleenex with you! It is such a moving book that I felt all the emotions going on in the book. Ms. Eaton has such a gift with her writing that I am always in the book with the characters or become the character.
