Forever Innocent, 7 years later
Late last year, I was contacted by Radish, a reading app for phones, asking to publish a long serialized version of my series that begins with Forever Innocent. With six books, they told me, I would have a successful run with their readers.
So in January, we began the process of breaking the books into episodes, a lot like a TV series, so readers could unlock a chapter a day and begin the story of Gavin and Corabelle that I completed so long ago.
Tomorrow, the final episode of the very last book will go live.
Radish allows readers to comment on episodes as they read. The feedback on this tender, emotional story (which many readers call an “ugly cry”) has been amazing. It’s different from the reviews I get on the main book platforms like Amazon or Apple Books, where they talk about their experience with the entire book, one they may have read in a single long sitting.
These readers are experiencing the book a day at a time. And because of my writing style, where I rarely skip even a fictional day (I have entire novels that take place over a scant 72-hour period in the characters’ lives), it’s almost like you’re living the story.
I’m having a wonderful time talking with these new fans, learning about their own lost babies (so many, too many), and seeing their reactions in real time.
If you’ve never read the Forever Series, you can do that on your phone whenever you want. The setup is that one episode unlocks for free every day. If you get anxious to keep going on a given day, you can pay to unlock them faster. It’s not a lot, less than fifteen cents an episode.
I’m excited to see the direction books go in the coming years, from print, to eBooks, to apps like Radish. And as we celebrate the final chapter of my Forever series all over again, yeah, I’m shedding a lot of tears. I’ve been reading along with the new fans. Taking in the story after all this time is magical, as if someone else weaved the story and gave it just to me so that I can also remember those hard days after losing a baby, and relive the wonder of when I did finally get a family of my own.
If you’d like to check out Radish, look for it in your phone’s app store. To go directly to Forever Innocent on Radish, click here.
