I have so many friends online, some I’m blessed to meet in real life, and some we just never quite get there. One of my friend’s, fellow author, Jackie Barbosa is always one I’ve never managed to meet up with. I get to her neck of the woods every once in awhile, but she’s always busy with stuff for her kids. This is something I always remember about her. There is ALWAYS something she’s getting to for her children.

Jackie’s son, Julian, was killed on the 20th of March in a head on collision.

I simply can’t even imagine.

When I started writing #Twitchy and she started going awry I looked for books that did what this book was doing. Ménage. The fact was, in mainstream historical romance it doesn’t happen— we know this. My original intention for #Twitchy was for it to be a mainstream historical around 80k, published by New York. I already had an editor interested in what I was writing next, after the success of The Rake and The Recluse.

But my precious Twitchy, she kept rewriting the story and her men kept misbehaving and insisting I was doing it all WRONG. So I put a call out on twitter and was referred to a single book. It was Jackie’s GRACE UNDER PRESSURE.

Her book helped me continue because I knew that even if the audience wasn’t broad, there WAS an audience. It wasn’t just that I was writing a book that wasn’t going to pubbed by a big house, it was a book that needed to find a home of any kind. I was stepping off into the great abyss.

It’s these kinships I find that would never have happened without the connections on social media. Because that’s exactly how I found Jackie’s book— I put a call out on twitter and someone responded and she was tossed in my lap.

Over the years, we’ve chatted, laughed and debated romance and everything else on twitter, she’s one of the people that’s just there and has something to say, and it’s wonderful. Jackie also has one of my images on The Reiver, another of her historical romances. I can’t begin to tell you how much it means to me to have my images on the covers of my friends’ books.

So this—this happening—is so simply inconceivable. So terrible. So tragic, heartrending, horrible, painful. I can’t begin to fathom the depth and the breadth of the pain Jackie and her family are experiencing at this moment.

There will be a new normal for them, something nobody ever contemplated.

Because the romance community pulls together, because we love each and every one of our own, we are raising Jackie and her family in our thoughts, and we are doing what we can to support them through this. There are two ways in which you can reach out to Jackie, the first is to support her as an author.

You can find buy links to all of Jackie’s books here. I think Jackie honestly has something for EVERYONE, historical, contemporary, erotica… really.

There is also a memorial fund set up in Julian’s name. You can find more information on that here: Julian Fraire Memorial Fund

This is the book that started our friendship:

Buy a couple books (there are even a couple freebies that you can download to check her out) or donate to the memorial fund. And from all of us in the romance community, thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Jenn