Upcoming Booksignings for Captive Heart
Saturday April 9th, 9-10:30 Spanish Fork Seagull
Saturday April 23rd, 11-12:30 Springville Seagull
Saturday April 30th, 11-12:30 Orem State Street Seagull
Tuesday May 3rd, 7:00 pm, Provo City Library (with authors Sarah Eden and Jennifer Clark)
Saturday May 14th, 11-12:30 American Fork Seagull
It’s after midnight, and I’m just getting started on this post (long night helping youngest daughter make Tangled birthday invitations, rocking/comforting two-year-old who still has a difficult time sleeping, and listening to oldest daughter who is nursing a broken heart).
I was sorely tempted to leave blogging until tomorrow evening (after young women and a camp planning/presidency meeting . . . hmmm maybe not), but your comments about why you need escapist fiction have inspired me to stay up a little later.
I really ought to give away books more often, as it seems everyone out there has good reason to read something fun and lighthearted. All I can say to each of you who have commented here and on Facebook is WOW. I am appreciating my life right now! The good news is that your chance of winning a book is excellent. If you have no clue what I’m talking about and haven’t entered the drawing yet—more good news. There is still time. I’ll announce winners next week.
Now, about these pictures.
One of the standing jokes between our children is that the majority of our family vacations over the years have been to visit rocks. We’ve been to Yosemite (Half Dome, anyone?), Yellowstone, and Grand Teton (isn’t that whole mountain range one gigantic rock?) national parks. We’ve visited the Grand Canyon (looking over lots of cliffs at—a lot of rock), Arches (standing beneath rock), and Zion national parks as well. We’ve played hide-and-seek at Goblin Valley, climbed Independence Rock at Sunrise, and gazed in wonder at Devil’s tower in north eastern Wyoming. And the same year we all gawked at the real Close Encounters of the Third Kind set, we continued east, dragging our children even farther to . . . you guessed it, look at a few more rocks.
The idea to visit Mount Rushmore had been blossoming for quite some time when I began doing research for a historical romance set in the Black Hills. The more I read, then more I longed to go there, and finally, my husband agreed. Our children were not quite so enthusiastic.
“We have to go see more rocks, and they’re HOW many miles away?”
Good times. Really. They were, or at least that’s how we all remember that trip five years later. Ah, memories. Gotta love how they become sweeter with time. Which is why I hold out a lot of hope that our children will someday refer to their childhood as charmed (as opposed to some of the ways they consider it right now).
Our first stop in South Dakota was the ranger station, where we picked up an old national forest map. Little pick axe symbols dotted the map, indicating the presence of old mines. Towns I’d researched were listed too, though many I knew to have been abandoned for years. Clearly, it was time to put the suburban in four wheel drive.
Several hours and miles, four cranky kids, and a few no-trespassing signs later, we struck gold—from a writer’s perspective, anyway—when we located an abandoned community. The chalkboard still hung on the wall in the old schoolhouse. A partially-covered well sat in front of a tumbled-down house. An old mill jutted out from the side of a mountain. We even discovered an old root cellar, something that later became key in my story.
As we explored the old buildings, inhaled the fresh forest air, and really lived the beauty of the Black Hills, the wheels of my imagination were churning faster than our camera was snapping pictures. I was in heaven, and the story I’d been drafting—about a school teacher taken against her will to the Black Hills—came completely to life. Truly, there is nothing quite so wonderful as being able to visit the location you are writing about. On that trip I fell in love with both the Black Hills and my story.
For both my husband (who enjoys exploring) and me it was a vacation that rocked. Of course there were also those moments (possibly more than moments, but my memory fails) when things were rocky with our kids. It was an exceptionally long drive, and a trailer full of popsicles and ice cream bars notwithstanding, it wasn’t always fun. They—my wonderful husband and children—went on that trip because I wanted to. Because they loved me enough to cross two states so I could look at rocks.
So to each of them I say thank you. I held Emma’s book in my hands for the first time last week, and that wouldn’t have been possible without you. I continue to be grateful for the things we all do for each other in this family, all in the name of love.
Oh, and just so you know, Dad and I decided we’re going to visit Four Corners for our family vacation this year. We hear they have some pretty sweet ruins—built in a giant wall of rock.