Thanks, Fatin, for inviting me to blog today! I’ll be giving away an autographed copy of one of my backlist romantic suspense novels to one lucky commenter.
But first, let me tell you about a very special journey. Once upon a time, you see, I visited the ends of the Earth. Or at least that was the way it looked to me.
Picture this: a detour (courtesy of my husband, who loves showing me the strangest places) during a trip to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, a drive through the most barren corner of West Texas on the way. We rolled across a flat, desert expanse so bleak that not even any self-respecting cactus could survive there. And then we stopped at the county seat, a town so tiny it held only a few dozen. Allegedly, at any rate, for we saw only a few dozen sun-scorched structures and a couple of dust-coated pickups.
Signs were posted, with information for the locals on when and where fresh water would be trucked in. The only business, a tiny, down-at-the-heels café, appeared to be closed. The sole resident we saw was a roadrunner, trotting down the main drag in pursuit of a luckless lizard. Not far outside of town, we saw the only natural water, a nearly-dry lake bed rimmed with salt.
“Who on earth would ever live here?” I asked my husband with a shudder. “Why?”
A few years later, that strange detour and those questions spawned The Salt Maiden, (Leisure Books, Dec. 2007) the story of one woman’s quest to save her missing sister in one of the most desolate corners of the country. With the life of a child hanging in the balance and every second critical, Dana Vanover refuses to let anything stop her, from rattlesnakes to small town hostility to her desert-hot attraction to the sheriff determined to run her out of town.
A Romantic Times Top Pick, The Salt Maiden is infused with all the eeriness of a land populated by more snakes, scorpions, and spiders than human beings. If you love suspense and a good, hot cup of romance, I hope you’ll join me there, at the world’s end.
Posted in Guest Blogger, S - T Authors
