The Gabriel Problem (AKA what happens when readers are right)

Here's a thing nobody tells you about early reviews: sometimes several people say the same sentence in slightly different ways, and the sentence is correct.

Mine was I needed MORE Gabriel.

One reviewer wrote it in caps with a crying emoji. Another one said the middle of the book went quiet on her. I sat with those for about a day, feeling sorry for myself in a very professional manner, black coffee and chapter breakdowns before me like I was building a case. And then I went and looked at where Gabriel actually is in this novel and found a hole I'd walked past a thousand times.

There's a stretch in this book where Gabriel does the costliest thing he does in the entire story, and I'd written it offstage; you were robbed of what it actually took out of him to get there.

So... I wrote it--there's a bottle of expensive scotch involved and it might be the best thing in the book now for showing a glimpse into Gabriel's psyche.

But then I wrote a second Gabriel chapter that lives in the gap between the climax and the epilogue (no spoilers, but you be the judge which new chapter gets under his skin more).

There's more of his history woven through the rest of the book too. His father. His sister. What Westfield actually was to him, not just his new team's owner, and never just that.

Two new chapters. Roughly 4,500 words of Gabriel that didn't exist in the copy some of you already have.

If you've already downloaded The Penalty Box, the updated file includes the new chapters 22 and 31. If you haven't started yet, you're getting the finished book, and I'm a little jealous of you.

To everyone who's read it, reviewed it, or sent me a message about a scene that got you: thank you. Truly. You made this book better by telling me how you felt about it.

xo, Rebecca