I have started my “next” book (#59) – DESPERATE HEARTS – a western romance set in a little gold town in 1880’s Montana. People ask me how I come up with so many ideas, and I just tell them that so much happened in the early years of America’s growth that it all provides an unending supply of food for plot. The gradual growth from Jamestown to California; the political upheavals (especially when the Civil War divided us); the era of carpetbaggers; the great discoveries (gold, silver, oil and more); the transportation advances (first the journeys by riverboat and covered wagons; then the Pony Express; then the telegraph; then the Transcontinental Railroad); the gradual change from lawless places to civil towns with schools and churches; years and years of wars with Native Americans and how our growth affected them; the gradual changes in women’s rights; the Emancipation Proclamation; the list goes on and on.
