I just finished the second round of edits on my latest manuscript, Chloe’s Secret. This is number seven and I’m rolling along to finish and submit. There’s a trend that has popped up in a few of my manuscripts. It was subtle at first, nudging at me to add in a dog, cat, bird, or horse. Simple reminders that since real life people have pets, the characters in my books should too. Am I an animal activist? No, but I do have pets and they are an integral part of our family. So, you will find that some of the characters I write are dogs, horses, or perhaps a parrot. I even have a ferret in one of my books and he’s funny. The animals aren’t main characters but do add to the personality of the manuscript. My latest book, though, centers around a family whose entire life was affected by their animals in the most amazing way.

While researching for a new idea that I could set in or near Kansas City, an area that I was born and raised, I stumbled across the story about the stock yard floods in the 1940s. If you have ever been to Kansas City, they have one of the largest and oldest railroad stations in the United States. It was a point where cattlemen delivered herds to send to the packing plants, and also for settlers to transfer from rail to wagon trail in their search for the western frontier. My new book, Chloe’s Secret, takes place in present day but everyone in the story was impacted by the stockyard flood of 1941. How? Well, I hope you’ll read it and find out.

Here’s the first few words:

Sometimes the smallest of things can make the biggest impact on your life. I don’t know what possessed me to step into a carriage on that cool November day but I don’t regret it. Well, maybe once or twice, but only because I wish I’d done so earlier.

So, on a spur of escapism, I stepped onto the rickety sideboard and plopped into the seat.

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