I'd call it: Painted Boots Inspiration: Chapter Six

From Painted Boots:  The world keeps right on spinning, same as ever.

It's amazing, how small and insignificant we are in the scheme of the universe--and more amazing still how difficult it is to imagine that the universe will continue existing, has always existed, without us.

I'd call it: Painted Boots Inspiration: Chapter Five

Shiny clean, black as black Chevy

From Painted Boots: "The only clear thought in my head is that Mom used to tell me In the face of confrontation, use your words."

Subliminal attraction is a key component of Aspen and Kyle's attraction for each other.  They don't know that they have common ground, but not knowing doesn't matter.  Something in them feels it.  And though an endless list of external events conspire to keep them apart, the driving force to be together demands they face their inner and external demons in an effort to--come what may--make their relationship work.

I'd call it: Painted Boots Inspiration: Chapter Four

From Painted Boots:  "Dreams are the only place I have left from where Mom glances up, everyday, to say, There's my girl.  Love you, sweet."

My great-grandmother died when her daughter--my grandmother--was eight years old.  When I was young I didn't understand my grandmother's angst over having lost her mother.  I didn't see then, just like she didn't see when she was a child, how that single loss changed the course of her life forever--and for the worse.

In turn-of-the-twentieth-century Wyoming, where family was everything and death threatened the survival of those remaining behind, my great-grandfather couldn't spare the time to grieve.  He couldn't risk running his ranch alone.  He wasn't equipped for raising young children.  He remarried within months and my grandmother, still bursting with a grief she couldn't express, suddenly found herself a second-class citizen in her own home.  Less cared for.  Less loved.

My grandmother was never truly happy again--not in childhood, not as a young adult, not in marriage.  Her mother's death set her on a path of looking for love and never finding it--a search that consumed her until her death at age seventy-nine.  The effects of her personal tragedy still, in a way, run deep in my family.

When I began writing Painted Boots I felt my grandmother's essence rise through the stories she'd shared with me and weave their way into Aspen's character.  Writing Aspen's life was for me, a deeply emotional experience.  As I crafted her, it was as though I felt my grandmother coming to terms with her life--at last.