I finished writing the novella for this anthology last April. I did have some minor editorial hissy fits while on the way west in June, but all the various edits and revisions turned out fine. And now it’s real.
Last week I organized 47 books. 43 were originals, 4 were repackaged reissues with gorgeous covers and my name in big letters.
I admit I loved those the best.
My Idaho books, ONE OF THE FAMILY and PLAIN JANE’S MAN made me happy. When I wrote ONE OF THE FAMILY, my first book, an editor told me that no one would buy books about divorced women with children set in small towns.
She was wrong.
The cover of STUCK ON YOU, where the heroine looks like Dancing Mandolin Player, made me smile. I bought the original painting for that cover from an artist in Canada.
Other favorites?
I’LL BE SEEING YOU, which begins in World War II at a North Platte, Nebraska train station and led me to research my father’s Navy career, pleasing him no end.
THE ONLY MAN IN WYOMING, with a very homely hero. Did I ever tell you that Hoss was my favorite brother on “Bonanza”?
THE PERFECT HUSBAND, because every woman who saw that title laughed.
THE COWBOY, because it was a time travel and I *finally* had the chance to write a Western, with train robbers and outlaws and horses and guns. This was the book that made me want to get up in the morning and run to the computer.
MADELEINE’S COWBOY. It was my first “cowboy” romance (and tribute to Zane Grey) and after I mailed it to Harlequin I sat in the car and cried for long, long minutes because I was sure that I had ruined my budding career.
THE TEXAN TAKES A WIFE, which won several national awards and still makes me laugh when I think about those characters.
Anyway, I unpacked a dozen or more plastic containers filled with books and I created six complete sets of my “life’s work” (as Banjo Man calls it) for my children and for me. I labelled the containers and stored them in a closet under the stairs.
But there are many, many books left. I’m not sure what to do with them. I have donated some to the Salvation Army. I packed the rest of them back into those plastic containers and put them back on the basement shelves, but I wish I could donate more of them.
Does anyone have any ideas?
