Love Finds You in Sweet Home, Oregon

I’d heard that Summerside Press was looking for romance stories set in small towns with cute names. And since I consider myself more of an idea person than an actual writer I thought, “Well, I can come up with an idea.” My first idea was for Bridal Veil, Oregon. But somebody else had already taken it. (Hi Miralee.) So then I picked Sweet Home.

I’m not sure how the idea actually came to me. I think it was because the only time I’d ever been to Sweet Home was when we stayed with my husband’s cousin at her mom’s house on the river. And since all I knew about Sweet Home was that it had a river, I decided to make it a rafting story.

Sweet Home is not very far away from where I went to college—in Eugene. And one of the cool things about the University of Oregon (besides the fact that Nike got started there and their mascot is a Disney character) is that they have the only trampoline program at a university in America. And the cool thing about the trampoline program is that many of the students go on to become stuntmen in Hollywood. They can do things like throw themselves out of a boat for Baywatch. So that’s where the idea for my stunt woman heroine came from.

My favorite character in the book is Jor-El. I’d forgotten about him after I sent in my proposal, then after I found out that they wanted the novel, I went back through my outline to see what I’d be writing. I was laughing pretty hard when I called out to my husband, “Honey, there’s a chubby kid in my novel who is named after Superman’s father, and he rides a unicycle!”

I named the kid Jor-El because I thought it would be good fuel for his super hero obsession and his crush on the woman who played Wonder Woman. The unicycle must be from the one time I was called up onstage at a juggling show to ride on the shoulders of a unicyclist. Really.

Tracen (the hero) has four brothers just like my husband has four brothers. I thought it would be a good contrast to how Emily was raised as an only child with hippie parents. The hippie parents come from the culture of Eugene as well as the changes to my childhood home after we moved away—a purple fence, rainbow flags and a totem pole now reside where I used to. As for the Christmas tree farm, I really knew a guy who drove Christmas trees from Oregon to Florida every year.

So, basically this book is going to be a silly romance, but some of my favorite books are silly romances. I first found out about authors Debbie Macomber and Nora Roberts by reading their silly romances. Maybe a better term for such a story is “romantic comedy.” Or as my husband likes to call romantic comedies, it’s a “corn dog movie.” He recommends that if a guy is going to watch such a movie he should eat the corn dog then use the stick to poke his eyes out.

Anyway, I now have the first novel I ever wrote—Fake Blonde—submitted to Summerside with the revised title Love Finds You in Star, Idaho. There’s a whole other behind the scenes story for that one.

The Water Fight Professional

The idea for The Water Fight Professional came from a church picnic of all places. My son Jordan was probably only five at the time, and I could tell he really wanted to join in with the water fighting going on around us. So I gave him a cup of water and told him to go dump it on his dad. My husband saw Jordan coming though, and offered Jordan a dollar to dump the same cup on me. I got wet, and Jordan got paid. That night Jordan fell asleep with his dollar. I said to my husband, “Look what you created. He’s going to become a water fight professional.”

The title stuck with me, so I wrote a short story starting with what really happened and going on to have the little boy named Joey Michaels (after my brother) explain the basics of his water fighting business. I didn’t know what to do with this story until I saw a call for submissions at a small press who was putting together an anthology of short stories about the summer. When I got the email saying that my story was accepted, it started growing even bigger in my head.

It just so happened that the publisher of Blooming Tree Press was coming to Boise for a children’s writing conference. I arranged it so that I got to take her out for breakfast before she flew home. This is where I pitched her the proposal for my middle grade novel. She wanted to see the whole thing! So then I had to write it.

The story came from my own memories of fourth grade. I remember the boys talking about how pretty circus girls were. This inspired Joey’s crush. I remember their love of go-carts, giving me the idea to have Joey do a little drag racing in a golf cart. I remember the way they wouldn’t eat dinner the night before we went on a class field trip to a buffet restaurant so they’d have more room in their stomachs. I gave Joey an obsession with ice cream.

The part about licking slugs actually came from my brother-in-law Scotty. Scotty licked a slug on a field trip, making his tongue go numb. All the other kids thought it was cool.

The part with the crazy mailman came from our old mailman. I got such a kick out of wondering what time our mail would show up and trying to figure out why sometimes we got mail twice in one day. And once I saw the mail truck make a U-turn in the middle of the street. I became super curious about the driver. Did he have to go to the bathroom or what?

The tennis lessons Joey takes are from a coach in a wheelchair. I took lessons in college (and was horrible), but my coach didn’t have a wheelchair. No, the guy I wrote about actually coaches here in Boise. As for the golf lessons, my son really did learn to putt by saying, “Hi ball. Goodbye ball.”

The other scenes came naturally from the settings in Idaho. I had to have a scene where Joey turns the paddle boats at the downtown lagoon into bumper boats. And of course he would go to Roaring Springs Water Park and whitewater rafting.

Don’t worry, I didn’t give everything away. You’ve still got to read the book to find out if Joey wins his bet against Chance. Or if he has to kiss the prissy neighbor girl because he lost.

I’ve had a lot of fun with Joey Michaels, and I’m hoping to write sequels: The Snowball Fight Professional, The Pillow Fight Professional, and of course, The Food Fight Professional.