Announcing the Sale of My Next Two Novels!

What do flowering blackberry vines and camellias have in common? They are the symbolic elements in my third and fourth novels … which were just sold today!

It was a very exciting day. I received an offer from my editor at Penguin for my next two novels, and I accepted! The first book in the deal, Blackberry Winter, is finished; and the fourth book, The Last Camellia, was sold on a three-page proposal, which means, yes, I have to get to work and write the book! It won’t be difficult, because I have the story vividly mapped out in my mind, and I’m itching to get going on it.

I’ll be telling you more about these stories in the months ahead, but for now, here’s the announcement that ran in Publisher’s Marketplace:

Author of THE VIOLETS OF MARCH, and the forthcoming novel, THE BUNGALOW, Sarah Jio’s BLACKBERRY WINTER, about the fateful late-season Seattle snowstorm that hits the city in 1932 and on the same day in 2010, connecting the lives and losses of two women in unforeseeable ways; along with Jio’s fourth book, THE LAST CAMELLIA, to Denise Roy at Plume, in a good deal, by Elisabeth Weed at Weed Literary (NA).