Played by Love (New Adult Romance): A #Played Novella (10 page)

First of all, I’d like to thank Mina Esguerra, AGAIN, for inspiring me to write a novella. Mina organized a class along with NYT and USAT bestselling authors, Marian Tee and Liliana Rhodes with the goal of writing a twenty-thousand word novella.

If you know anything about me, my books are long.
Michal’s Window
topped out at 172,500 words, and I had trouble keeping my other books around 100,000 words.

Thankfully, Mina created a mini-outline where she specified the things that must happen at each word count marker.
Played by Love
is the first novella I’ve ever written, and while there are places that could have been expanded, I’m happy with the way it turned out.

So happy, that I’m writing a bunch more. So thank you Mina!

Played by Love
would not have happened if my friend, Dani Evans, did not hand me two characters from her upcoming book,
The Next Contestant
. Dani and I are best writing buddies and we’re always brainstorming together, so it seemed really natural for me to take Jaden Sloup and develop him further. Jaden told Kimber in
The Next Contestant
that he wanted to get to know Ella, so voila, we gave him his heart’s desire and out popped
Played by Love
.

Much gratitude as always to my fabulous group of beta readers. Thanks for reading and giving me early feedback and clarifying areas that needed to be fixed.

Chantel Rhondeau

Jessica Cassidy (jessicacassidy.com)

Debbie (domesticvixen.com)

Jade Kerrion

Melisa Hamling

Lyssa Layne

Ey Wade

Vera Neves (sinfoniadoslivros.blogspot.pt).