Gwynn Again--Relative Dangers and "Coincidences"

I am going to butt in and talk about one of my books again. Deirdre is getting caught up with her releases, just a few more to go, so it's my turn. We shared the spotlight as guests on Sue Ellen Welfonder's wonderful Tartan Ink blog (www.tartanink.wordpress.com)  the other day and had a lovely time. Maybe we will get some new fans from sharing with her great group! Sue Ellen writes Scotland-set medievals so that is a far cry from our mostly southwest set contemporaries but we both almost always have a dog in our books and we have been very close  friends for a long time.

Anyway the book I want to talk about today is another of my Awe-Struck releases, Relative Dangers. In it I revisit the InDinay people I discovered when writing Powerful Medicine and as I often say, I tried to give my first love and me the happy ending we did not get in real life. There is a lot of me and my life woven into that book, so if there was ever a real book-of-the-heart, that is it. I too was a horse trainer and grew up under sometimes tough and impoverished conditions although my life was certainly less harsh than Mari's, the heroine of Relative Dangers. I too had an older gentleman friend who did a great deal to help me break various chains that bound me to a complex and difficult situation and move on with life. There the parallels pretty much end but there are still some uncanny precognitive bits scattered through the book. The motor home Dustin Layne has is very similar to one a good friend of my later years owns and that friend did grow up on a "cow-starving ranch" in New Mexico. The special friend I honored in the book came from back east but had adopted the western manner very well. In fact, Dustin Layne is almost as if one morphed the two men together but I had not yet  met my more recent friend when I wrote it. Coincidence? I do not think so as I am positive I knew both of them prior to this life and just renewed connections that had existed for many lives. Art imitates life imitates art...

At times I will pick up and read one of my older works. Mostly I am fairly well pleased with them. I can still 'tear up' at some of the very emotional spots and although I do find some typos that were missed or a place or two where I should have edited a little more or modified a scene, I am not ashamed of any of them. I'm glad of that. It validates for me to a degree that writing is what I was really meant to be doing!

A good friend who also writes did the cover of Relative Dangers for me and I really like it. As we've talked about over on the Deirdre-fourds blog, sunsets are a favorite thing. When one of my covers has a sunset, it is special! Anyway I will make a small pitch for Adele "Delle" Jacobs who does covers as a sideline and has written some good books herself. I have lost her email at present and am not sure her new URL but I am sure a search would turn it up. I'll try to find this info ans share it soon.  So that is some background and whys and wherefores for this book. Next post I will share an excerpt or two and the pertinent info if you want to check it out! No, I do not really have a "favorite" for I love each book I have written and they are all special, gifts in some ways, but this one is maybe just a smidge 'specialer' than most of them.