This and That

Can you believe it? One-twelfth of 2025 is already behind us.

It was a busy start of the year for me, writing- and book-wise, so I thought I’d share the craziness with you in my post today.

First, starting in December, I refreshed my website. I installed a new framework and theme. I tweaked colors. I tweaked them again and again. Finally, just last week, I created a new logo. I love the new logo and my refreshed site.

If you haven’t visited robinleehatcher.com in a while (or ever), I hope you’ll do so. My website was born in the mid 1990s so there’s a lot of “stuff” there, including blog posts going back to 2002.

The refresh of my site is finished just in time for the release of my 93rd book, To Capture a Mountain Man (February 10, 2025). I am so excited to share this story with readers. I absolutely love Isaiah and Amanda as a couple, and it’s been a delight to receive feedback from readers and other authors about this book. One of my favorite quotes comes from author Trish Perry when she wrote: “The flow of Hatcher’s story will pull you along as swiftly as the Yellowstone river that triggers this adventure in the first place.”

When I came up with the idea for The British Are Coming series, I hadn’t dreamed up Isaiah Coltrane yet. He surprised me as he rode into my imagination, accompanied by his trusty black and white collie. In fact, there were a lot of surprises waiting for me as I wrote the book. To tell you the truth, that’s one of the things I love about writing. I get to be surprised by the stories my character live out in my imagination.

The paperback of To Capture a Mountain Man is already available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and the Kindle version releases on the 10th.

Have I shared about the writing sprints I’ve been part of since last August? Three mornings a week, I host a Zoom room where the participants write in sprints of 25 minutes each. There are usually about 15 to 25 writers in attendance on any given day. These sprints have reenergized my writing and, even better, made me love the process afresh. Another great benefit? The sprints have kept me ahead of schedule instead of falling behind.

Speaking of being ahead of schedule, after I sent To Capture a Mountain Man to my editor last fall, I realized I had a little extra time, enough to write a novella. In early 2024, my publisher granted me the right to republish I Hope You Dance (a contemporary novella set in Kings Meadow) as long as I did so in a collection with a new novella, also written by me. What I couldn’t decide for a long while was whether to write another contemporary story that takes place after I Hope You Dance or whether I should fall back in time to look at some Kings Meadow history. Finally, inspired by a country song (Bible and a .44), a story set during the Great Depression came to life in my imagination.

In January I wrapped up the editing of the two-novella collection, formatted it for paperback and ebook, had the cover created, and wrote the back cover copy. Now I’m counting down the days until From This Moment On releases (April 7, 2025). If you enjoyed the Kings Meadow Romance series, I think you’ll enjoy this peek into the past.

Now I’m at work on the fourth British Are Coming novel, To Reveal a Reckless Love. This is Roger’s story. Roger is an artist from England, and he is taking readers back into Yellowstone where he meets the ever-practical Victoria from Boston. What on earth is going to happen to them? I can’t wait to find out, and if all goes well, I will be able to share their story with readers by June/July.

And such was my January. Writing. Web design. Cover design. Cover copy. Promotion. Not to mention the start of the college class I’m taking called Writing in the Age of AI. But that is a different blog post.

So how was your January?

~robin