Good mornin’ to all y’all folks at Fresh Fiction and thank you so much for inviting me back to your site to talk about THE STRAWBERRY HEARTS DINER. I’d always wanted to set a book in a cozy little 50’s style diner somewhat like the character Leroy Jethro Gibbs visits in the television show, NCIS. So it was exciting to get the opportunity to get to spend time in the Strawberry Hearts Diner with Jancy, Vicky, Nettie and Emily. Jancy wasn’t planning on being in Pick, Texas any longer than it took for her to visit her grandmother’s grave and then drive away. But fate stepped in and she found herself sitting in the Strawberry Hearts Diner parking lot watching her car burning to a crisp. With very little money and a driver’s license that was only good for a few more months in her purse, she would’ve rather had a job somewhere else than the diner. But there she was, taking the HELP WANTED sign out of the window. Things could have been worse but even with room and board plus a salary and tips, she’d have rather been working anywhere else. After all the sweetheart of Pick would…

“History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” Alexis de Tocqueville I love reading historical romance and have since I cracked open the cover of GONE WITH THE WIND as a teenager. Unlike my boring history classes, here was history worth reading. At first I skimmed over the battles, but then as I continued on with the book, I read more and more of the actual history contained in the story. This book was about people. Those who lost loved ones, those who waited at home for a letter, for some indication that their husband, brother, father or son was still alive. Fiction? Yes. GONE WITH THE WIND is a work of fiction, but what happened to Scarlett O’Hara, et al, was based on real life events. Babies were born during the height of battle. Plantations were burned to the ground, and thousands, both black and white, were left homeless, adrift in a world turned completely upside down. I closed that book with a sigh of pleasure, and then followed up with the story of Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr. That led me to read the stories of the other five wives….

Sometimes a story sits in the back of a writer’s head, waiting its turn to come out. INDIGO LAKE was like that. The two main characters came from two different worlds. Blade had no family who cares about him and Dakota was sometimes smothered in her responsibilities. Both were looking for someone, the right person, to fill the longing, but neither would admit it. Blade Hamilton had inherited a house he cared nothing about. After driving all day to look at it, he’d decided to sell it all, land, house and heritage. He hadn’t known about his father and he didn’t need an old crippled house with wild roses growing almost to the roof. Dakota Davis had heard her grandmother’s dark stories about the Hamilton house all her life. When she turned off the county road heading toward home, she thought she was seeing a ghost standing knee-deep in Indigo Lake. As they get to know one another they begin to care and the love they share seems to cut their problems in half. I love writing stories about people who become so real to me that I wake up nights worrying about them. That’s how it was with Blade…