Hi! Not too early at all! BWE 4 is coming out December 11 – that’s in four weeks! AAAaaaah I’m so excited!!!!

For a number of reasons, my story “Aftershock” is a very personal story, even though Tessa, the heroine, is quite different from myself (apart from the fact that we’re both German). Tessa is in a long distance relationship with Hector, a Mexican doctor, and arrives in Mexico for a visit just as the earthquake hits Mexico City in September 2017. Her flight is redirected, leaving her stranded far away from her lover in a country she doesn’t know and of which she doesn’t speak the language, and with no possibility to reach him. So what is she going to do? Take a flight home, like the airline offers, or embark on a risky journey to find Hector?

I’ve never been in a long distance relationship, and I don’t know what I would have done in Tessa’s situation. I’m too scared to board an airplane to begin with. So, why is this story so personal if pretty much everything is so different from my own life?

While I was writing Tessa’s story, my sister was living with me. She’s the most important person in my life, my person, to put it in Christina Yang’s words.  She’s also a German woman married to a Mexican man, who just had her first baby in a long distance relationship. She lived with my family for three months, waiting to return to Mexico City with my baby niece. Tessa’s story was born one morning when we sat in the kitchen, remembering the fear and impotence we (both, but she more than I, of course) felt when the 2017 earthquake hit while she was an ocean away from her husband. And we laughed when she told me that he had slept through it, because his apartment building is built on different substrate and barely shook at all.

It’s weird to have personal stakes in a catastrophe happening on the other side of the world, and being unable to do ANYTHING – besides feeling guilty for also being glad you (and your person) weren’t there when it happened. But we wondered: what would my sister have done, had she arrived for the first time just as it happened? Mexico City Airport was closed and evacuated, flights were redirected. And when my sister visited her then boyfriend for the first time, she had nothing but a mobile number – and there was no cellular network directly after the earthquake, so how would she have reached him? And how would I reach my sister if another strong earthquake were to happen now, while she’s there? I hope I would be like Tessa, who finds the strength to go on a quest in search of her lover.

Tessa’s story is one of romantic love, but it’s not that different from the deep, absolute love I have for my sister. In the end, it’s love that offers us the strength to cross into the unknown, to take risks and get out to help the people who need us, and save the ones we can. “Aftershock” is such a personal story because I, too, would move heaven and earth to find my sister.

You can preorder Best Women’s Erotica of the Year Vol. 4 here:

Kindle: http://mybook.to/bwe4ebook

Print: http://mybook.to/bwe4print

https://www.bweoftheyear.com/bwe-of-the-year-4 (Universal buy links)