I write to you today with a sad, heavy heart. I am not happy or proud over what I have to do, and I’m certainly upset, even ashamed, to have to make this announcement to you all. And I don’t want to beat around the bush or go on and on about things you don’t care about…so I’m just going to come out and say it.

So get ready for it…

Are you ready??

The truth is, I have to delay the release of Sweet Redemption. I’m extremely sorry to have to do it. I know how much all of you NEED this book. I really, truly do. I’ve lived through this exact situation as a reader myself before and wanted to throttle the author for delaying the release of the last book in her series. But when that time passed and I had the book in my hands, I was glad she took the time needed to make the book perfect. Because it honestly WAS perfect. It was the most perfect book/series I’ve ever read and will always be my favorite. If the author hadn’t delayed the release, it probably wouldn’t have been as good as it was.

And that is the reason I must delay Sweet Redemption. I know, I promised that I would never delay a release again after I had to delay Sweet Requiem’s release. I absolutely hate that I’m breaking another promise. But the thing is – you are going to thank me for it in the end. If I were to release Sweet Redemption on 10.24 the way it is now, you’d hate me. *I* would hate me.

The way it works is, I finish writing my manuscript, load it onto my ereader, and then start reading from beginning to end and make notes on what I want to change/modify before sending to my editor. Well, when I started my first read-through with Sweet Redemption, for the first time in my writing career, I couldn’t even get to the end. Normally, I’ll enjoy what I’m reading and feel confident enough to make my changes and then it’s off to my editor and beta readers. But this time, there is so much I don’t like about my writing that I had to stop. As I said, this has never happened before and was completely unexpected. I truly believed I was going to read through the manuscript, make my changes, then send it to my editor and betas by the 17th of September. That would ensure the book would be FINALIZED and ready for publishing by October 14th, and then released on the 24th.

But the unexpected happened. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not the story that I don’t like. The story is what it should be. It’s the WAY I wrote it that I don’t like. And that can take time to fix. I need to go through each chapter and heavily modify it so that when it ends up in your hands, you love every word until the very end.

Now, no one but me has seen this manuscript yet. So, maybe you would like it the way it is. I don’t know. What I do know, is that *I* don’t like it. I’m not comfortable with it. And I CANNOT release a book that I myself don’t like or am comfortable sharing with the world. I haven’t even sent it to my mother – and she is always the one I’m most comfortable sharing my WIPs with. So that’s really saying something, guys. That’s how much I don’t like it.

And maybe it’s because this is the FINAL book in the series and I’m being extra critical. But I need this to be a great ending. The characters and the story mean so much to me that I want so badly to do it justice. Or maybe it’s because there is so much stress in my life right now that I can’t get in the proper mindset to write something amazing. Or a combination of both. I don’t want to list excuse after excuse, but I hope you can find it in your hearts to understand that this story means a lot to me, and EVERY single one of you – my readers – mean just as much to me. I do NOT want to disappoint you. That would be the worst thing in the world to me. Please know I am truly sorry for this.

I hope you can forgive me and have the patience to stick with me until November 23rd – the new release date. If you have pre-ordered the book, you will be notified by email from the retailer that the release date has changed, but your pre-order will not be cancelled. Trust me when I say I take this VERY seriously and have thought of nothing but this one thing for the past month. I do not take this lightly – Amazon will be punishing me for delaying the release by not allowing me to set up pre-orders for a whole year. That killed me. But I completely deserve it. And I’d rather that than hordes of readers come stone me for releasing a crappy ending to a series that they invested their hearts in. So I’ll take the punishment and hope this never happens again.

Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read this post. If you have questions, please feel free to let me know.

<3
Bailey