To mark the re-release of my first three books I have decided to do a weekly book blog featuring them. I will start with an overview of the whole series then jump into Murphy’s Rainbow. I’m planning to do about twenty blogs for the first book then move on to the next. I eventually hope to publish companion books for all three that will include the blogs, back story character interviews etc. More about that later.

Murphy’s Rainbow was the third book I wrote, though it was the first one to be published. When I wrote my first book Shadows in the Wind, I sent it to a friend who said I needed another character to increase the romantic tension. I created a brother. Now everybody likes Levi Cantrell, but I adore him! He had no more than walked onto the page than he started to take over the book. Luckily my heroine kept her head, preferring the handsome Cole Cantrell to his elder brother Levi.

It was obvious Levi had to go, so he rode off into the sunset and into his own book, Willow Creek. About halfway through Willow Creek I realized why I love him so much. He’s my husband! I hadn’t recognized him because Bru is a dairy farmer/truck driver not a six-foot something cowboy, but the personality is 100% my sweetie. Years later I discovered he is also a great deal like Ox Bruford, who appears in all three books of the Meadowlark trilogy. Guess we know who my hero is!

When I finished Willow Creek, I still felt I hadn’t told the entire Cantrell story, somehow. I got to thinking about a housekeeper named Mrs. Murphy who was in Shadows in the Wind. It suddenly occurred to me that she wasn’t the housekeeper; she was Cole and Levi’s stepmother! With that in mind, I went back and wrote Murphy’s Rainbow, the story of Kate Murphy and their father Jonathan Cantrell.