Forever and One Day - available February 6th

Forever and One Day will be available in print on February 6th! The Kindle version will be available for $0.99 on pre-order for a week following the print release. Here is the synopsis and a long teaser.

Synopsis:

Everyone has wondered “what if?” But how many get a chance to live it?

Seventeen years ago, Olivia Watson’s world was turned upside down when she discovered Justin, her high-school sweetheart turned fiancé, having sex with her best friend, Petal. Unable to muster up any forgiveness, she turns her back on him and every friend connected to that part of her life, leaving many questions about the details of the betrayal unanswered.

When Olivia receives an invitation for her twenty-year high school reunion, she decides that she’s been avoiding the past for too long. It’s time to go back and revisit that part of her life, her old friends, and the betrayal that created the wedge between them.

As soon as she and Justin lay eyes on each other at the reunion, they immediately sense the vibrant remains of their unbreakable connection. The spark between them never faded. However, Justin is now married to Petal and Olivia is involved with Adam, her handsome, best-selling-author boyfriend. But is healing old wounds enough for Olivia and Justin to move forward together, or will it help them make peace with the new lives they have chosen?

Each of the four main characters remain bound to their past by unresolved issues, demonstrating that sometimes we can’t find our future until we settle our past. But, most importantly, Olivia learns that forever isn’t time eternal; rather, forever is a place we share with the people we love the most — even when they’re gone.

Teaser:

“Have you thought of me at all? Was there ever a time when you wondered ‘what if’? I have been driving myself nuts thinking what if.”

“There was never a ‘what if’ for me. You slept with my best friend. I’m not upset about it anymore, but it’s the reality. I did think about you. I missed you, but I wouldn’t let myself feel it, not deeply, at least. The pain. When it came on, I pushed it aside. Then ten years passed. And I find out you married her. Married. If there was ever a ‘what if,’ it was taken away when I found out that you were married.” She put her hand over her mouth. That last sentence spilled out. She didn’t even know that she thought it until it slipped past her lips. Would there have been a second chance if he hadn’t married Petal?

And for the first time, she admitted to herself, perhaps, yes.

Now she looked at him and felt the what if washing over her. The desire to touch him, to remember how his lips felt kissing her mouth, her skin, her hair, felt irresistible. She gulped.

He stared into her eyes and she felt a kiss coming. Their faces hovered in an awkward dance as their mouths drew closer. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her lips. My gosh, she shivered, leaned in, then quickly pulled back. She broke the eye contact. Trying to shake the sensation, she gulped down some wine. “Justin. We can’t.”

“I know.” He responded. But she could see the longing in his eyes. And the love, she could feel it, enveloping, like she was immersed in a deep sea surrounded by Justin’s feelings, by their feelings. She ached for him to touch her. As much as her words said we can’t, and as much as she was saying no in her head, her heart was saying please kiss me.

Please just grab me and kiss me before I can say no.

 Thank you for reading. I’ll be giving away some signed copies. If you’d like to be entered to win, please sign up for my newsletter at the top of the page.

She wasn't broken

She wasn’t broken.
She was made up of a thousand tiny little cracks.
She was always trying to keep herself glued together.
But it was hard, she felt too much.
No matter what she did, her emotions seeped through,
sometimes in drips, other times in floods,
She felt everything,
the heaviness of the clouds right before rain,
the rush of the subway cars as they left the station,
the feeling of goodbye as she watched someone walk away,
wondering if it was the last time she would see them,
the feeling of a kiss lingering on her cheek for hours.
She felt the loneliness of the sun as it hung in the sky,
shedding light on the day,
without companion.

And she longed to give as much as the sun.
If she could brighten someone’s day,
bestow warmth were there was cold,
make someone smile, give someone hope,
then for a minute, an hour, maybe even a day,
the cracks would fill with love
and the pain would become only a voice,
reminding her that her pain was important.
She knew how fragile life was, how hard,
and how precious.

She wanted to feel it all.

- Jacqueline Simon Gunn   

When Perpetrators are Victims: Noah's Story

When I think back to my experiences working in the criminal justice system as a psychotherapist and forensic evaluator, I am reminded of this quote by Carl Jung: “The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”  

As you may know, a basic tenet of psychotherapy is to listen empathically, which means that we suspend our own beliefs and feelings in order to hear and feel someone else’s experience. What I quickly realized when I sat in the room with murderers, rapists, armed robbers was that I had what I am going to call “an empathic conflict.”

Hearing atrocities committed toward other people – stories oft told with cold, detached gazes, flat voices and an absence of emotion, my first inclination was to feel empathy for their victims. But I was there to hear their stories. I was there to listen to them, to try to reach the few inmate-patients that I could.

Soon I learned that many of the inmate-patients I worked with were victims too. I heard awful stories, stories I wish I could erase from my mind. Histories of abuse and neglect: people being burned by their parents, people being raped by one parent while the other one watched, people being offered for sex in exchange for drugs.  

Some didn’t have any history that would explain their criminality, but in situations where they were a victim turned perpetrator, I wondered: Who were they to me? Were they victims or were they perpetrators? My empathy swung back-and-forth between their victims and them. Sometimes I would be so angry at them – my own patients, while listening to the crimes they committed. I stopped doing clinical work in forensics because of this, but continued with my research.

I used my experience, both as a clinician and as a researcher, to write my Close Enough to Kill series. Each of the characters taught me something, and the stories weren’t always easy to write. Before writing the series, I had only written non-fiction. I had no idea how much fiction writing was like being actor. When I’m deeply engaged in my characters’ minds, I feel their feelings, all of them, like a roller-coaster – up and down, good and bad.

My forthcoming release is a story told from the perspective of Noah Donovan, whose betrayal (in Circle of Betrayal – book 1) inspires the entire series. Writing Noah’s Story was painful, exhausting, disturbing, eye-opening. A few times I stared at the computer, my jaw hanging, wondering what the hell just went from my fingertips onto the screen. What really happened to Noah Donovan? Perhaps he wasn’t simply the cold, manipulative man I had thought. Perhaps Noah was also a victim.

Noah exploits women. As a woman, I felt furious with him. And yet, as the story went on, it became clear that he was the greatest victim. A few times I felt sick as the story of how he became who he was unfolded.

Being inside the head of someone while writing fiction is more intimate than psychotherapy; I am not listening empathically, I am (through the characters) telling the story. I become them. They tell their story through me. The experience of writing through Noah created an empathic conflict.  One that was more intense than what I had experienced in a clinical setting. Fascinating and disturbing.

Another thought I had after finishing Noah’s Story was that I had met and even dated a few men like Noah Donovan. Maybe if I had written the book while I was still single, I would have recognized the inner conflict and saved myself some heartache.

 Live (Write) and Learn.

Noah’s Story will be available Tuesday July 18. For a chance to win a signed copy, please sign up for my newsletter at the top of the page.

Between the Miles

I have always counted the miles.

Sometimes they came quick,

Other times slow.

The distance between things,

The way I could know.

Close could feel far,

And far could feel near.

The miles that passed too quickly,

The ones I ran out of fear.

They weren’t all the same,

So I had been told,

The unmarked trails,

And the days I was bold.

Some miles went down,

Spiraling so low,

When I was afraid to look forward,

There was nowhere to go.

The sunset came fast,

And the day turned to night,

But the trails could be endless,

If I looked at them right.

Everything I knew,

All I was told,

The conversations left behind,

The people who grew old.

When the miles stretched out before me,

I wanted to sew them at the seam,

Looking forward and then back,

Holding everything in between.