January was a difficult month. A few people I know lost loved ones. The Naughty Literati lost one of our own authors. And I lost my biggest fan.

That may seem self-serving, perhaps a little trivial. Except my biggest fan was my mother-in-law.

Writers of erotic romance frequently get the question “does your family know what you write?” Yes, everyone in my family knows what I write and some have even read some of it. My mother-in-law read everything I wrote. She was a voracious reader and, after I became a published author, added my books and stories into the mix of mysteries and history and what-not.

Whenever I had something on pre-order, she immediately pre-ordered it, and then when it showed up on her Kindle, I would get an email or a comment at a family function. She loved that she could pre-order my stuff and it would “suddenly” appear one day. She would read it immediately.

We saw her in December. She asked about Naughty Chances. She was certain she had purchased it, thought she had read it, but it seemed confusion was slowly starting to take hold of her.

Of course she was more than a fan. She was a mother, a grandmother, a matriarch, a listener, a teacher. But to me she was also one more reader who looked forward to my next story, one more person who always asked what I was writing and listened intently.

And one more person I will miss very, very much.