place, person, and moment, asking nothing more than belief. Within us, and beyond us, magic waits for us all.
Dear Reader,
If the dedication in the front of this book had you questioning my opinion of firefighters, I hope reading Call It Magic assured you that I am fully aware it’s not just about the trucks. But I also hope Gunnar and Katy were able to show you it’s not about the glory, either. (Lord knows it’s not about the money, as most firefighters—at least here in Maine—have to work two jobs to support their families.) And despite all the news stories highlighting the creative ways we honor our heroes, firefighters and medics more often than not continuously study and train in quiet obscurity until they are suddenly and desperately needed.
So yeah, I may have exaggerated the cockiness of my fictional responders a bit (hey, if we can’t poke fun at our children, why have them), but those of you familiar with my work already know that I don’t care to read, much less write, emotionally draining stories. That doesn’t mean I shy away from the more serious subjects; I simply prefer to use levity to inspire hope. And like Gunnar, I, too, am fully aware that firefighting is serious business, so I hope you’ll forgive my taking a few liberties with their protocols and procedures for the sake of story. I don’t think I strayed too far from their collective mind-sets, though, for surely if firefighters and paramedics, our military, policemen, doctors and nurses, and everyone who works with the elderly, the feeble, and the disadvantaged, didn’t step back and have a good laugh on a regular basis, they’d likely never stop crying. Not only do those dedicated men and women possess hearts befitting the warriors they are, they also have lion-sized (if slightly warped) senses of humor.
So, consider honoring your local fire and rescue squad by maybe giving them a gift card for a nearby takeout eatery, having pizza anonymously delivered, or stopping by and simply saying thank you. (But if you really want to make their day, ask if you can take a selfie with the entire team in front of one of their beautiful, badass trucks.)
And God bless all who tirelessly hit the ground running every time those alarms go off.
* * *
* * *
Okay, what you just read was originally the full extent of my letter, that is until I was nearing the end of writing Call It Magic and realized I had a bit of a problem.
Let me explain . . .
If you’re a returning reader, you’ve also probably figured out by now that I’m an insatiably curious person. In fact, I may have a bit of a reputation for driving people crazy with my incessant questions. I’m not only curious about how everything in the world works, but also how people think. Such as how we connect the dots to reach the conclusions we do or why one person will judge an action as wrong and the person standing right beside them, witnessing the exact same action, will believe it to be right. Are our morals formed solely by the societies we grow up in? Or is our view of good and evil programmed into our DNA, much like our personal perspectives as to whether something is loud or quiet, tasty or terrible, and pretty or ugly?
When I first conceive a storyline, it’s usually because I have a question about some aspect of human behavior that’s caught my attention—usually for no particular reason that I can fathom. For example, in Charming the Highlander, I found myself wondering if there might ever be a circumstance where a woman is justified in not telling a man he’d fathered a child. Like what if she felt the guy was a jerk? Or a deadbeat or even dangerous? Wouldn’t that be a convenient assessment if she happened to love the child too much to hand it over? (You might not believe me, but I truly didn’t know if Grace Sutter was going to give up Baby even three-quarters-way into the book, even right up until I began writing that heart-wrenching scene.)
And because I apparently like looking at things from different angles, I revisited the same question in Tempt Me If You Can, only this time wondering what might happen if a woman—or in this case an entire town—didn’t tell a man he’d fathered a child, and one day out of the blue, he receives an anonymous letter saying