I am of the opinion that fiction writers are born. We just
don’t all realize we’re writers at the same age/time. But if you polled
writers, I bet you’d find that from an early age, we spun stories in our heads,
we lived vividly through the characters in books, and that we spent more time
in a fantasy world than in the real world.
Some of my fondest memories as a child revolve around books.
When I was young, I lived an intense inner life populated by the characters I
had come to love in Marguerite Henry books, L.M. Montgomery books, John Richard
Young books, and so many more. I pioneered with Laura Ingalls Wilder, rode race
horses with Alec Ramsey, and solved mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown.
I not only lived those stories with the characters, my
imagination picked up where the book left off, and I created stories with those
characters, taking us all to new adventures. I was always reading a book,
whether in school when I should’ve been doing schoolwork or with a flashlight
under the covers at night.
It was that time spent in another world that made me feel
happy. I needed that escape, and I still do, though now it isn’t only reading
about made up people, it’s making them up myself that is so refreshing and
exciting.
When I was explaining this to my teenage son, about how I
needed to spend time in my own head to feel like things were going okay, he
nodded in complete agreement and said, “Me too, but a book will get me there
faster.”
He gets it. He might even turn out to be a writer himself
someday.
About the Author:
Erica Vetsch is a
transplanted Kansan now residing in Minnesota. She loves history and reading,
and is blessed to be able to combine the two by writing historical fiction set
in the American West. Whenever she’s not following flights of fancy
in her fictional world, she’s the company bookkeeper for the
family lumber business, mother of two terrific teens, wife to a man who
is her total opposite and soul-mate, and avid museum patron.
A Bride Sews With Love in Needles, CA
A Harvey Girl waits on
True Love.
With her brother already on the front lines in France,
Meghan Thorson becomes a Harvey Girl in Needles, California. Ready and willing
to wait on the hundreds of doughboys heading for Europe, Meghan deems this
service her way of contributing to the war effort. When a Red Cross representative breezes through town, Meghan
embraces the challenge to do even more, committing to completing a Red Cross
signature quilt and canvassing the town for donations to the cause.
Horseman Caleb McBride makes his living by training stock
for the US Cavalry and keeps his pride by remaining a loner. When Meghan meets
Caleb, she senses something mysterious and wounded about him, piquing her curiosity.
But after the townsfolk scorn him as a coward and a profiteer, Caleb feels her
pity and becomes even more guarded.
When Needles is hit by an influenza epidemic and the Harvey
hotel is made into a temporary hospital, Meghan discovers Caleb’s shameful
secret. Will both Caleb and Meghan find a way to kill their pride
before their chance of love rips them apart at the seams?
