My favorite place to write about is a place very dear to my heart. I know you think I’m going to talk about the setting for my Amish series, but I’m not.
No, much as I like Hope Springs, Ohio, I’m a Kansas gal at heart and I love, love, love the Flint Hills.
I love the wind-swept treeless expanses of rolling hills covered with prairie grass for as far as the eye can see.
I love them in the spring when the great fires turn the night orange with their glow.
I love them in the fall when the grass turns amber and gold like the fire lives inside of it.
I love them in the winter when the snow-covered hills look like gigantic loaves dusted with powdered sugar.
The Flint Hills look the same today as when covered wagons first rolled across them. Oh, the buffalo and pronghorn antelope are pretty much gone, but the bluestem grass that fed millions of them now fattens thousands and thousands of steers who will make their way to your kitchen table and BBQ grill in the coming year. Some of those cattle belong to my dad and brothers.
My current release, Balancing Act, takes place outside the town of Council Grove, Kansas. A real town with heavy ties to the old west. It's the story of a New York dance with a shameful past and a single dad rancher with twin daughters and a cat named Bonkers.
Cowboys are as common as pickup trucks in Council Grove.
Some of those fellows are cute enough to make a romance authors heart go pitty-pat.
By the way, the guy in this photo is my brother. He’s a true cowboy and he loves the Flint Hills even more than I do.
I hope to one day set more stories in my beloved hills, but truth be told, I’d rather visit them than write about them. There is this one beautiful, spring-fed creek lined with trees where the bass bite like there is no tomorrow.
I know we’ll be discussing our favorite places to set books this month, but where is the one place you’d love to go visit and why?
