Thank you for picking up Lucky. Lucky is the two book boxed set of the novel Lucky Break and the novella The Ballad of Jude. Lucky Break was originally published in March 2013 and The Ballad of Jude in December 2013.

I was always very proud of my rockstar romances, but in 2015 I started thinking about rewriting Lucky Break because I felt my writing had improved so much. In October of 2015, I unpublished both Lucky Break and The Ballad of Jude. But after a lot of thought, I decided to leave both books as is and offer them in this boxed set. I have added a brand new epilogue and fleshed out some scenes more, but other than that, the books in this boxed set are true to my original vision.

I can remember writing Lucky Break as if it was yesterday. It was early 2013 and iBooks readers had just discovered my serial His Every Whim. To say I was excited is putting it mildly. Soon after Amazon readers followed and I was living in this surreal world where people were actually reading what I wrote. It was a dream come true. And it still is. Every day I count my blessings with how lucky I've been to have readers like you pick up my books and email me letting me know how they touched them.

For those of you who are new to me, I grew up always wanting to be a writer, but never thinking I had the skills to become one. In 2012 I was holding my infant son and thinking about how I wanted to tell him he could do anything he wanted to in life, he just needed to believe in himself. As I looked into his tiny face, I realized I was a hypocrite. How could I tell him that when I never did it myself? I started researching how to get an agent, but I didn't like losing so much creative control. That's when I found out about Indie publishing. I published a couple of short stories in July 2012 and have been writing ever since.

Lucky Break came about because I was part of a group of writers back then and most of us hadn't written anything as long as a novel before, but we wanted to. We figured we could do it together and support each other, so the Insatiable Reads Tour was born. We released our first titles in early 2013. That tour helped launch some now familiar names in the world of Romance. The original tour line up included Jordan Bell, Tabitha Conall, Anya Karin, Julia Kent, Selena Kitt, Tanya Korval, Krista Lakes, Marina Maddix, Malia Mallory, Melanie Marchande, Erika Masten, Kensi Quinn, Liliana Rhodes (me!), Nadia Simonenko, Aubrey Watt, and Carré White.

For my book, I always found inspiration in music so I decided to write a Rockstar Romance called Lucky Break. Instead of writing about the usual bad boy rockstar, I thought it could be fun writing about one on the other side of fame. I imagined him not as famous anymore, but still in the music scene. And I wondered what a guy like this would feel about a new artist coming along and his having to support her on tour, when it used to be the other way around.

That's how Olivia "Lucky" Saldano was born. Lucky's last name was inspired by Soldano, which is a guitar amplifier company. And the name Lucky came about because my in-laws had this dog they named Lucky because that's what they said they were told about him when they rescued him. I can't explain why, but I thought it made a good name for an up and coming rockstar.

My initial thought about the band Silverlight, was of the 80s hair bands that were huge back then, but then faded away. When Lucky talks about seeing Silverlight perform and Jude's drum solo, my first thought was of Tommy Lee in the spinning drum kit. But as I got to know Jude, I realized he wasn't that guy so he performed a skillful, jazzy solo instead of a big display.

Lucky Break was written as a kind of a Behind the Music sort of documentary where we get glimpses of her life as a new artist. The different parts are song titles I felt had a connection to that part of the book. My writing has changed a lot since then, but being that this was my first novel Lucky Break will always hold a special place with me.

Jude really stuck with me after I completed Lucky Break. When I later wrote The Ballad of Jude, I imagined Silverlight getting together like the stories I heard about how bands like Pearl Jam were formed. I liked thinking of Jude as this talented musician who just wanted to play and didn't really care about the fame or anything else that could come with it. And I named him Jude Morrison because I like the name Jude and I used his last name as a tribute to Jim Morrison of The Doors.

It’s been a lot of fun for me to re-read these two books. I hope you enjoy them too.

Thank you for reading!

All my best,

Liliana