Having grown up in Illinois, I had my first real taste of the west when I lived in St. Louis and was introduced to Arizona Highways Magazine. I fell in love with the desert in those pages of that magazine. A friend suggested that we move there together, which being single, I could have done, but immediately this person came up with reasons why she couldn't go. At that time, I wasn't quite independent enough to try such a move on my own.

However, just over a year later, I met my husband who had grown up--guess where? Arizona. Among other things that was probably one of his biggest attractions. It didn't hurt anything that he wanted to return, too. After we were married we made several attempts to move to Arizona and didn't make it until after we went there in 1973 for a visit over the Christmas holiday.

I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed, everything looked dry and dead and I couldn't even find a grocery store, but I did love the warm weather. We moved there for the first time in May of 1974. We stayed one year then returned to Illinois where we lived for a couple of years then returned to Arizona in 1976. This time we stayed for nine years and this is when I started writing. I worked for an insurance company that had a very nice newsletter. My boss asked me to write a column for our department. I did so and found that not only did I have a talent for the writing, but I loved the work.

I started writing articles, but I loved romances.

I had written several non-publishable novels when I attended the Romance Writers of America convention in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1993. We had returned to Illinois for various reasons, elderly parents, etc., in 1985.

When talking with my roommate, who happened to be from Australia, at the conference, I had a vision of my heroine, Amanda, standing up to the sheriff who basically told her to keep moving. This particular scene never made the actual novel, but set the whole story. During my years in Arizona I came to love the west and everything that it stands for. This seemed like a logical location for my book.

That started what was to be a seven-year labor of love with the final product being the book that went through several name changes before I finally landed on The Colonel's Widow. In addition to having traveled to the area several times and having living in the state for ten years, I have always been a Civil War buff and studied that period extensively to write a book that has, as yet not come to fruition. However, several of my works have come from before and after the period.

I hope you will enjoy reading The Colonel's Widow. Amanda Green has been a nurse for the Northern Army in which her husband served until he died, not of wounds but disease. He has left her with a debt. Before he went off to serve as a Colonel in the Army, he was the president of a bank. Trusted by local residents, he gave a loan to the wrong person to start a bank in Mineral Wells, Arizona Territory. That's the last Amanda or her husband, Simon, ever saw of Maurice Oldham.

When Amanda arrives in Mineral Wells, she is greeted by sheriff, Wade Denton who, when he learns why she is there, immediately suggests that she would be better served to just move on. Mineral Wells and Arizona Territory are no place for a woman of refinement, which obviously describes Amanda.

Independent person that Amanda is, she does not let the sheriff's negative attitude influence her. She's been places where she wasn't wanted before, so she stays on to pursue her mission. Wade feels he has enough to do as sheriff without having to worry about this young woman. A former Confederate soldier whose fiancee jilted him, he's not interested in any kind of relationship with anyone, particularly a head-strong women like Amanda. However, when she follows him on his trek to search for the former banker, he has no choice but to either let her travel with him or take her back to town which will cut down on his chances of finding the criminal.

In her inexperience living in the desert, Amanda finds herself in trouble several times because she has gotten her major knowledge of the desert from inaccurate books and newspaper articles that she has read. Almost immediately she breaks her word at not getting in Wade's way as he searches for Oldham. Together they search for the criminal and eventually catch him and bring him back to Mineral Wells.

While they travel together, Amanda and Wade come to know each other better and have to rely on one another. When they arrive back in Mineral Wells, a group of Bible believing people have come to town who force them to marry because they have been alone together for several weeks and it is only right for them to marry. Without a choice, Amanda and Wade do marry and she goes to live with him at his house a mile outside of town. Eventually they fall in love in spite of their intentions not to. Oldham is imprisoned and the money is found. All the depositors are repaid.

This romance is placed in one of my favorite spots in Arizona. The actual name for the town is Clifton and it is located just a few miles from New Mexico in the Southeastern part of Arizona. We were perpetual travelers with the Clifton area, an old mining town, located between two cliffs, being one of the most scenic and one of our favorite places to visit.

Since this was my first book, a lot of people have read it and it has been the driving force in what has now been a six book career with seven nearly completed. It spent a year and a half hiatus with an agent who could not find a home for it. After that contract canceled, I fell into a six-month blue spell and came out with a company named B & E Publishing Company. The revised version, after the agent rejected it, one could find plenty of reasons why no one wanted to publish it, of The Colonel's Widow was the first book published. Reviewed at the on-line reviewers, All About Romance, (likesbooks.com) it received a B, not bad for a first book we thought. It was considered "not a cookie cutter" book and a good read.

I had fun writing this book and hope that readers enjoy reading little bits of humor as well as a story that takes place in the Old West. The work gives a look at Arizona Territory that one doesn't find very often.