Far from it. She was a sweet and caring person, with more hugs and kisses than harsh words, but she was determined not to allow me to wallow in self-pity and failure. We married when I was a senior in high school. I know it's hard to believe, but even as young as I was, I knew he was the one for me. We live about twenty-one miles out of Corona, New Mexico.
Corona is predominantly a ranching community with a population of about two hundred.
Our ranch is located near an old ghost town called Pinos Wells, which was a stage stop between White Oaks and Santa Fe in the 1870s. A few years ago local internet access changed my research life and made long-distance critiquing a whole lot cheaper, since one of my critique partners lives in New York state, one lives in Kansas, one in Oklahoma, and my closest partner lives in Albuquerque, about one hundred miles away. I started writing my first novel when I was nineteen, but I never finished it. Since that first attempt, I've placed in several writing contests, and I've been submitting articles, short stories and novels for the last several years. At first I didn't want to write about the West.