A question I get asked from time to time is where (or when) would I live, if I could choose a place and time from one of my books. That’s a very hard question. After 36 years of writing and 69 published books, I have a really wide range of places and time periods to choose from. However, I write mostly the “Old West” and mid to late 1800’s. Since that is my favorite genre/location/time period, I would have to say that if I could pick one place, it would be Colorado – any place in the foothills of the Rockies. I love the American West and its history with a passion that shows in my books, and a great many of my westerns are set in Colorado and Wyoming. You can’t beat the breath-taking landscapes. You also can’t beat the excitement of the gold rushes, so I would likely pick the 1850’s – 1860’s, the time period most gold rushes occurred. Imagine whole towns of 1,000 or more people springing up (literally) overnight, and the wild excitement that entailed – people from all walks of life, all forms of businesses, criminals and honest people, wild saloons but churches at the end…

For March, where can we look to for inspiring historical fiction but Ireland?  And as might be expected in a land of poets, leprechauns, fairies and tragic history, Ireland’s story lends itself to passionate sagas.  The first of the two series we’ll look at in honor of this St. Patrick’s Day is a three-book historical fiction epic featuring real Irish revolutionaries Robert Emmet and Michael Dwyer. In TREAD SOFTLY ON MY DREAMS, the first volume of the Liberty Trilogy, Gretta Curran Browne introduces Robert Emmet, born of the Protestant elite who rule Ireland.  But though, as the son of the State Physician of Ireland, his place is among the privileged, he also grows up imbued with a deep love of the land and a strong commitment to justice.  Troubled by the inequities and repression he sees around him, he sacrifices his brilliant scientific future and his standing among the elite by joining the United Irishman, a society which advocates the union of Catholic and Protestant.  Deemed a traitor to his class and religion, he is forced to flee to France, leaving behind Sarah Curran, the girl with whom he’s fallen in love. He returns five years later to begin his…