Ready to start meeting the characters for my new novella, Romance at Register Five? This collection of stories releases February 14th, and each story has a fun delivery theme. Today, I'm introducing you to Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn Daniels is supposed to be working her grown-up job--teaching elementary school. But she moved after the beginning of the school year. She couldn't help it. Her mom's MS has flared up enough lately that she needs help. Now, Kaitlyn is living in Sassafras, Arkansas, subbing, and back to working for the Grocerease app.

Every family begins somewhere, right? All the way back to Adam and Eve. Stories are no different. Characters all need a back story, a beginning, a place to come from.
Well, when Heather Greer, Regina Merrick, Erin Howard, and I all started planning out our stories, we realized this. Heather discovered a neat website where you can actually plug in names and dates and make a family tree. Since all of our stories are based on the same family, this was perfect. We could add and update as we wrote, and each could see the other's changes. Some of us even added pictures of our inspiration. Erin's the only one still needing to plug in her people, but hers are way in the future, so this could look interesting. ;)

Do you love history? I have a fondness for it, though maybe not as much as my history teacher husband. ;) And now, my friend Heather Greer has dabbled in it too. She's taking over my blog today to tell you a bit about her newest book.

​Did you know that even though potato chips were first invented in 1853, it wasn’t until 1926 that someone had the brilliant idea to package them in wax sealed paper bags so they could be marketed to the masses?
Did you know that in 1926 what is considered the first aerial bombing on US soil took place outside Marion, Illinois at the site of Shady Rest, a known gangster’s establishment?
Did you know that Harper’s Bazaar was Harper’s Bazar in the 1920s?
Neither did I. Not until I began writing Window of Opportunity.
Being a contemporary romance writer, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began developing Evangeline and Brendan’s story. I’d read a lot of historical fiction. Not being a fan of history class, fiction was where I learned the most about the past. But I’d never attempted to write a historical story. Too much research was involved for my liking. At least, that’s what I believed. 

Have you heard the term Quadrilogy before? If you know that quad means four, you can probably guess its meaning even if you don't know for sure.
Basically, it's a work in four parts. Where a trilogy is a series of three books, a quadrilogy is a series of four.
So, why am I teaching you this fun word?
​Because this year, I am part of a quadrilogy that will release every three months!

Do you love fairy tale retellings? I do! And today, I am pleased to introduce you to an author I just discovered myself. Rachel Kovaciny writes ... you guessed it. Fairy tale retellings. But not just as fairy tales. She puts a western spin on it. And I can't wait to get to know her with you. Read on to find out more.

Rachel, welcome! Your books are fairytale retellings set as westerns, right? How did you come up with that idea of a crossover?

Thanks for having me!

I had the idea of retelling the fairy tale "Twelve Dancing Princesses" as a western about ten years ago.  It struck me that the hero of that particular fairy tale is a soldier returning home from the war, and I knew that many Civil War veterans went westward when the war ended, so that kind of made the story a natural fit for that era.  I actually considered doing a series of fairy tale-based mysteries set in the Old West, but it never went farther than daydreaming.  I had other books I was working on instead.

Then, in 2015, I heard that Rooglewood Press had announced that Sleeping Beauty would be the focus for the new contest for their third anthology of fairy tale retellings.  I had recently been to Colonial Williamsburg and learned about the larger kind of spinning wheels, called walking wheels, which have a large spindle that sticks out horizontally about three feet from the floor.  The interpreter demonstrating that wheel made a joke about what body part Sleeping Beauty might have pricked if she'd been using that kind of wheel.  That joke came back to me, along with the idea of drifting gunmen being a sort of correlation to the knights errant of yore, and suddenly, I had the idea for my novella The Man on the Buckskin Horse.  

I won that contest and my novella was included in the anthology Five Magic Spindles. By the time the anthology was released in 2016, I had ideas for six more fairy tales retold as non-magical westerns.  I decided to write them as a series of interconnected standalones.  And here I am six years later, with four books out and two to go!

So exciting! Of all the fairy tales out there, do you have a favorite? Why?

My favorite is "Twelve Dancing Princesses."  I love that the hero triumphs because he is kind and clever.