Safeword: Mayday by Candace Blevins

Preface

I began writing Heather’s story way back in March of 2010, and I’m finally ready to publish it in 2023. I’ve come back to it several times, intending to finish it, but the ending to the second book just wasn’t there. I wasn’t happy with it, so it wasn’t ready to publish. This time? Everything clicked, and Heather’s story is finally ready for other eyeballs besides mine.

I enjoy writing about things I’m knowledgeable of — dance, theater, guns and other weapons, motorcycle racing, meditation practices, history, mythology, and the many facets of kink, to name a few of the things I’ve pulled into my novels.

For a variety of reasons, I know a whole lot about sensory processing disorder, so it’s natural for the subject to make it into my writing. I wrote about one end of the spectrum in the Wicked Inked duet, and this book covers the other end of the spectrum — someone who feels no pain, and who needs extra stimulation in order to feel alive. In order to feel anything, really.

Because I wrote a good portion of the first Mayday book in 2010, it doesn’t fit into the timeline of where my characters are in the most recent novels. If you’ve read Acceptable Risk, you should know it happens well before the events of that book. Specifically, it occurs after Safeword: Arabesque, and begins during the general timeframe of Riding the Storm. It’s fine if you haven’t read those books, but important to understand if you have, since Eric in particular has gone through some significant changes in recent years.