Newbie In The House ~ #LynnCrain #RomanceBooks4Us #AmWriting

Good morning everyone! Sorry I’m late but I’m new here and still trying to get the hang of things as it’s been a while since I’ve consistently posted to a blog. But that’s another story.

I’m Lynn Crain and some of you may know me while others not so much. I’ve been in the writing and publishing business for positively years, so I guess that makes me ancient in some circles. I write a variety of stories with most of them being in the romance genre. For me, being a writer means I write the story I’m passionate about. Some days that may be a science fiction story with just a hint of a relationship whereas on other days, I just want to write straight romance.

I live in the Land of Enchantment and just love it here. Then again, I loved all the places I’ve lived and that includes Vienna, Austria, which I thoroughly miss this time of year. Vienna has a wonderful, wonderful holiday season. Here in New Mexico, the weather is cooling and the trees are in full color that just beg us to go on those wonderful Sunday drives. On any given day, I might see a deer or two in my yard or a bear walking down the street. We’ve been told that there’s a bobcat around as well. Can’t say we’ve seen those yet. I can’t believe it was at the beginning of the summer that our two pups treed a bear in the yard next door.

The best thing I find about New Mexico is the diversity of people and cultures. I have used this back drop for my latest story, The Summer Cabin. It’s about a couple who were high school sweethearts that come together again after a fifteen year hiatus. The results are explosive and segway right into the next book in the series called Body at the Cliffs. You can expect that one sometime early next year.

The genre of romantic suspense is new to me but these are stories I feel passionate about as I’ll be able to use all the knowledge I’ve garnered about the Southwest for the last thirty years. This place is full of mystery and the unknown in many ways. The history is full of Spaniards and Pueblo Indians and rock paintings and ruins. It is the land of turquoise and fetishes and Kachinas and so very much more.

It is just as enchanting as the name implies.

Some of you may wonder just how I got to this fabulous place but to be honest, I’ve been trying to get here for over a quarter of a century. The first time I ever saw New Mexico was when we moved to Nevada in 1969. It was desert with a touch of red and though we didn’t see too much from the moving van’s window, even then I could tell it was something special and much different than the places in Utah and Arizona that we would later visit on family vacations.

The next time I was able to come here was with a college trip in a geology class. We visited all over the state of New Mexico from the Rio Grande river valley to the plazas in Taos and Santa Fe to the mines in Silver City and the ruins at Chaco Canyon. From the moment I stood in the plaza at Taos, I was hooked. Sure, there was a lot of other things going on but I knew that New Mexico was where I wanted to live.

One of the most fascinating places is the Navajo Nation that stretches over Arizona and New Mexico. It starts right outside the Grand Canyon and stretches across that state to Shiprock, New Mexico. Going through the vast and sun-drenched land that many see barren, you can understand why the Navaho settled there. Driving through the beauty of Monument Valley and ending at the volcanic dike at Shiprock, totally sealed my fate of have a lifelong love affair with the Southwest and New Mexico.

About three years after that trip, I married my husband and proceeded to try and convince him that we needed to move to New Mexico. We took a trip to Chaco Canyon and other places in the state and while he did see the beauty of the place, he wasn’t convinced right away. Eventually, he got a job that had opportunities in the state but he never got chosen for a position. It took a move to Europe before we’d finally land to a place we had wanted to call home for a long time.

Right now, we’re living in a house that was built in 1951 and needs some remodeling. We’re having a retaining wall put in for a sloped path so we won’t have to climb the stairs in the winter. Having the yard dug up has caused a variety of issues but at least it’s getting done.

When we first moved here, reno was going slow, then it went at a snail’s pace as my husband of over thirty years was diagnosed with colon cancer. Now that is all taken care of and he’s in full remission, we can get back to the reno work that had been put off for nearly a full year.

So life is wonderful, yet challenging, here in the land of Enchantment. And I don’t want to miss a thing.

How about you…do you love the place you live? If not, where would you truly want to live and why? I’ll be giving away a copy of my story, The Summer Cabin, to one lucky commenter by next month’s column.

Hope you all have a great month…see you next time!

Lynn