The importance of family, however the characters choose to define that term, forms the core of my Where the Wild Hearts Are series.  In some form or another, each main character is searching for a place to belong—even if they outwardly resist the idea.  Older generations play a significant role. Lou Warrenton, the eighty-year-old veterinarian in Wild on My Mind, gave the hero a family when Bowie was kicked out of foster care on his eighteenth birthday and helped him develop into an amazing single father.  Although Bowie now has taken over running the Sagebrush Zoo that Lou used to own, the older man still shows up to work every day and forms a significant part of both Bowie and his daughter’s lives.  Lou was based on my grandfather, who at the age of ninety-four, still went to work three days a week at the same company where he’d worked for over seventy years. Like Bowie, I still turned to him for advice.  Although Lou may be unsteady on his feet and require more naps than he had as a young man, he is still a vibrant part of his family and the zoo. In the second book, Sweet Wild…

My debut contemporary romance, WILD ON MY MIND, combines three gifts that my grandparents gave me growing up:  their love and support, long family road trips, and an annual pass to Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium.   Before their deaths this past year, my maternal grandparents were two of my biggest supporters.  My grandfather and I even worked at the same company where he could be found at his desk, three days a week until his death at age 94. I hope that their caring spirit and work ethic lives on in characters of mine.  In WILD ON MY MIND, Lou is partially based off of my grandfather.  The eighty-year-old veterinarian helps the hero, Bowie, run a local zoo.  But Lou is more than a coworker…he’s family. He’s the father that Bowie never had.  The elderly man gave Bowie a home when the formerly troubled boy was kicked out of foster care on his eighteenth birthday.  Together, the two of them are raising Bowie’s eleven-year-old daughter. Lou also serves as Bowie’s confidant through all of the ups-and-downs of his relationship with the heroine, Katie.  He has faith in his adopted son even after Bowie confesses that he’d engineered mean tricks back…