Where Are You From?

First I want to thank Coffee Time Romance for inviting me to post as part of Crimson Romance Author Day! I'm excited to be here.

So where are am I from?

For the first, ahem, years of my life, that was an easy question.  I was born in Nampa, but grew up closer to Kuna, then went away to college, thirty miles away, to Boise.  After meeting the first Mr. Wrong, I moved to Eagle, and then finally, made a home in small town Meridian.  All of these towns are within thirty miles of each other in what’s called the Treasure Valley, in Idaho. 

So what happens when I hit mid-life?  Did I buy a new car?  Not quite.  I ended a long, unproductive marriage, sent my son away to Seattle to college, and quit my almost twenty year job with a state agency to try my luck working for private industry.  Some people change one thing in their lives, I changed everything.  And once I met the current Mr. Right, we also changed our address, for one sixteen hundred miles to the east.  We landed in the St. Louis area, which for some reason is called the mid-west.

Here, the question is where did you go to high school?  When I answer Kuna High School, home of the Kavemen, I get blank stares. My humor often gets that response.

So when I decided to buckle down and actually write that book I’d been talking about, my choice of setting was clear.  I write about my home, places I’ve been –Like a little fictional town nestled in the mountains of Idaho, Shawnee.

Shawnee is home for the first rodeo of the season.  The entire town gets involved in the party that starts Friday night, and ends in the early hours of Monday, when real life reclaims the town.  The Bull Rider’s Brother is the story of Lizzie Hudson, a single mom who grew up in Shawnee, dreaming of getting out with her three friends to the real world.  But she got stuck as the others moved away.  During a girl’s weekend, Lizzie’s world is about to get changed, again, as James Sullivan walks his Justin ropers back into her life.

Lizzie has her own surprise for James who left so long ago to manage his brother’s bull riding career.  He thinks just seeing Lizzie scares him; just wait until he discovers the secret she’s been keeping.

I loved writing this story about a guy who thinks he’s done the right thing for family only to find out he has to rethink his definitions.  And about a girl who sacrificed her dreams for what needed to be done. And learning that home is a fluid word.

I’m proud to call Crimson Romance home for The Bull Rider’s Brother.

 How do you define home?  Have you always live in the same place? Or are you a nomad, like the Sullivan brothers in The Bull Rider’s Brother?