BOOK BLITZ & GUEST POST: Every Little Piece by Kate Ashton

Book Blitz

Every Little Piece

by Kate Ashton

Publication Date: May 2013

Secrets never stay in the past.

The night before high school graduation changes everything. Lies are told. Mistakes are made. Secrets tucked away. Lives are changed in the span of a few hours.A year later, Haley is still reeling, numb with the constant ache of guilt. She's in a place she never expected to be: lost without her friends and Seth. Until he enters her life again, dredging up everything she's trying to forget. Everything about that night.Seth returns to his hometown determined to share his truth, his side of the story. He desperately needs to make things right with Haley, even if it means losing her forever. Because the truth will ruin any chance of her ever loving him again.Except neither of them are prepared for the shock of what really happened the night before graduation.

Guest Post 

 Sometimes the longest lasting stories, the most meaningful stories, are the ones that come from the heart. In the fall of 2012, I’d finished up a project, and my heart cried out to tell the story that became Every Little Piece. I didn’t really know what was going to happen. And that scared me. I knew the major details but I left a lot of flexibility.

So I sat down and started writing. I realized that a lot of it could get cut or completely rewritten. And, yes, some chapters I loved, I ended up cutting for the sake of the story. And some definitely got reshaped and revised. But for the most part, the storyline stayed the same.

I didn’t realize it until later, but two events shaped the emotion and the theme behind Seth and Haley’s love story. The first is perception. Some hurtful things were going on in my family, things that I realized would never be resolved without complete forgiveness. One event happened and different people saw what happened in completely different ways, ones that I knew would not be reconciled. That completely floored me. How could that happen? That definitely found its way into Every Little Piece.

The second is grief. A dear friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer and given 3-6 months to live. He passed away early in 2013 with an attendance of over 500 people crammed into a small church. And that wasn’t including the live video feed to the hundreds who couldn’t make it. My heart couldn’t accept this and was in denial all through the fall of 2012, while I was writing this story. It wasn’t until after his death that I saw the connection, between his life and passing and what I was writing, especially since Seth and Haley’s story has nothing to do with cancer or terminal illness.

So between the lines of Every Little Piece are a lot of little pieces of Kate Ashton.