My Own Take on Flashback Friday

I’m often asked the usual questions about my writing – when did you start, what made you post it, what inspired certain characters or stories. So, I thought this might be a fun time to answer some of those.

My first story, was Destiny’s Bridge, which was also the beginning of the Lex & Amanda series. Several things came together for this story, including witnessing firsthand how a flash-flood can come out of nowhere.

When I was in high school, we lived atop a hill in a rural area. The road wasn’t paved, but was heavily packed dirt. There was a small, dry creek that we drove across to get to the hill that led to our house. In the early eighties, a massive amount of rain altered our little road, as you can see from the photos. It’s hard to tell from the second shot, but the water had cut out a space that was at least ten feet deep and close to twenty feet wide. So, there’s the “raging creek” from Destiny’s Bridge that brings Lex & Amanda together.

This is the road we traveled to get to our house. We wisely didn’t cross the heavily churning water.

Scary sight after the water receded.

As for the bridge – well, that’s somewhat of a funny story. Not far from where I now live, is a suburban housing addition called Tara. Yes, like Gone with the Wind. Anyway, somehow, *that* bridge was the one that I saw in my dream, which was where Lex & Amanda came from. My favorite thing was how I had to fight for a covered bridge on a book cover, since my publisher said there were no covered bridges in Texas. Years later, I was able to show her this particular bridge – and gloat. Yeah, I’m like that.