If you haven’t read the book, you might want to do so before reading this post. It contains spoilers.

I wasn’t originally going to write Jeremiah’s romance because I was afraid people might not want to read a romance where the age difference between the hero and heroine is so great. (We’re talking a little over twenty years). When I was writing The Rancher’s Bride, I knew the only person who’d make a good match for Katie was Jeremiah. I had a conversation with a writer friend who said I should pair Katie up with someone else. I decided to not write about Jeremiah because I couldn’t imagine him with anyone else, and by not writing the book, I could keep him with Katie. Well, long story short, a couple of people assured me that they had no trouble with the age difference. After knowing that, I decided to write the book.

Since Abby taught Katie to read in The Rancher’s Bride, I decided to make Katie an avid reader in this story. 🙂

I brought Pearl into this story to show what happened to her. I like knowing she turned out okay after what happened to her parents in The Rancher’s Bride and thought other people might like an update on her. That was the only reason I added scenes with her in the book.

Thayne needing to do an emergency c-section on Abby was based on a story a teacher once told my class about a doctor doing that on his wife. I don’t remember the details about that story. All I remember is that this was before c-sections were a thing. He took the risk in doing this procedure because he didn’t want to lose her. I was impressed by how much this man loved his wife and wanted to save her. The wife and baby turned out okay, so it was a happy story.

Wade now has a ton of kids. I felt it fitting to give him a bunch of them after what he went through with losing Lloyd.

I wanted to see how Lloyd was doing, so I added that scene where he shows Katie what he and his younger brother wrote. I had to do some research on the Three Musketeers for it. I have not read the original book or subsequent books based off the original, and I haven’t seen any movies on it. This kind of thing doesn’t interest me. I’d say about 50% of the books my characters like aren’t my cup of tea. I find out what’s in the books through online research.

Speaking of stories, there were two fables I learned about while writing this book. The ones with the frog and the peacock were new to me. Instead of reading them, though, I watched videos on You Tube that told those stories. I did find an old version of the frog one and quoted from it since it would probably have been the actual version Katie read. (I gave credit to this book at the end of The Loner’s Bride.)

I did read Oedipus Rex in the past, and I actually enjoyed it, though I have no interest in the sequels.

During the writing of the book, I kept getting “Lone Man’s Pass” mixed up with “The Lone Trail”. I had to go through the search function in Word a few times to make sure I got it right.

When I started the rewrite of the Wyoming Series, I kept thinking I would have something erupt between the US Army and the Indian tribes. That’s why I mentioned the tension between the Army and Indians a couple of times in the series. However, that idea never found its way into the stories. I’m a bit disappointed, but you can’t force a story to go in a direction it doesn’t want to go.

While I was writing this book, I was also writing The Cursed Earl. The thing about a peacock feather being bad luck led me to writing about Katie thinking of the men in town as peacocks. What happens in one story can influence what happens in another.

I never came out and said it in the story, but those widows in the orphanage played matchmaker behind the scenes. Stella backed out of the outing with Jeremiah and the kids so that he would have to go with Katie. None of the widows believed Jeremiah and Katie were secretly engaged, but they pretended to in order to coax him into agreeing to marry Katie. They even suggested he did something inappropriate with Katie in the kitchen to stop him from backing out of the wedding. Clementine only “chaperoned” Jeremiah and Katie on one of the outings with the children because she didn’t want them to have a chance to talk, lest they agree to cancel the wedding because there was no truth behind the rumor.

The widows did not know that Katie started the rumor, and they never found out.

At one point, Mic tells Jeremiah, “You’re not an old man. You have plenty of years left. The reason you feel old is because of what’s up here.” Mic tapped his head. “It’s all in your mind.” This is my personal philosophy. I believe a lot of stuff starts in the head. I know there are some physical stuff we can’t get around. Disease, cancer, etc, are outside of our mental control, but a lot of what we tell ourselves does impact how we physically feel.

The reason Jeremiah shaved his beard is because the model on the cover doesn’t have a beard. I wanted him to match the cover.

I figured it was only fair that after all the restraint Jeremiah showed up to the wedding that he should be able to cast all restraint aside on the wedding night. Personally, I got a chuckle out of that scene, but my sense of humor is weird so who knows what other people thought?

The information about the Cassiopeia and Cepheus constellations is what I learned while homeschooling my youngest for his science class. (I never did get any good at spotting anything in the sky, even though the north star was easy to find. My son did a better job of it.) There are a couple of different versions of the Cassiopeia and Cepheus constellation myths. Being a romance writer, I preferred the romantic version. That’s the one I went with in this story.

I ended up giving Katie a girl since she spent so much time prettying Abby up in The Rancher’s Bride. I gave her boys first because Jeremiah was secretly worried he’d lose another child, and that fear would have been greater if he had a girl first. By having the boys come first, he was much more hopeful when the girl was born. (I realize this never made it into the story with him being worried and all, but his character did have that lingering fear in the back of his mind.)