The father she hasn’t spoken to in years.

The stepmother she can’t stand.

The sister she didn’t realize she needed.

Amy Edwards and her sister Lana hit the road for a little family reunion in the tenth Our Lady Companion book, The Edwards Sisters. This is an idea I’ve been toying around with in my head for close to five months now. I’ve made notes for the next Our Lady book, Louder!, but I’ve been having a hard time getting started with the draft. I decided to work on this book in the meantime, to help get my creative juices flowing. Thankfully, it’s helping.

I started thinking about seeing Dad and Liz again. What kind of conversation would we have? What the hell would we talk about? Was I supposed to act like I felt bad about Liz being in the hospital? Was I supposed to carry on like everything between us was great?

I have a lot of conversations with both my parents about the meaning of family, and we often compare our family to other families we know. Mostly, I talk about this sort of stuff with my mother. My extended family made our lives very difficult years ago, and I still fell like I’m dealing with the trauma behind certain events. Even though my mother and I are both in a much better place than we were several years ago, it still stings. Being homeless and broke is not something you just get over or forget about. Plus, my relationship with my father, while it’s much better now, used to be non-existent. But hey: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, right? Or in my case, take the events from your life, good and bad, and write about them in your books.

I’ve been carrying this idea around for awhile and I just wasn’t sure of where it would fit in the whole Our Lady universe. I tend to focus on the main characters of the series and not on their families. In Amy’s case, she’s the youngest of four. I didn’t want to go too deep into the backstories of all the characters, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write another companion book about my punk rock anthropomorphic cats, but this little side story featuring Amy and Lana seemed necessary.

The Edwards Sisters is for anyone out there who has experienced having their family life disrupted by divorce, and anyone who feels like they were forgotten about and left behind. It’s for anyone who’s trying to find their way to forgiving the person or persons who hurt them. And, it’s for anyone out there who’s doing their best to be the bigger person in a situation. I’ll begin posting it on Patreon next week, with the first two chapters free for everyone and all remaining chapters for Patrons. I hope you enjoy it.