What makes a cover better than a horse and a bright splash of sun! 🙂 Welcome Stephania to the Index with her latest book revolving around a woman desperate to save her horses!

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Questions about Stephenia’s Story

Is there anything in this book that is inspired by/modeled after something in your own life or someone you know in real life?

I actually have a degree in equine science, so I used my knowledge of natural horsemanship and my experiences with horses in this book. It was a lot of fun for Nora to share my love of horses and a few of my more interesting debacles with training!

Did any of the characters in this book “surprise” you?

Silas Cavallero turned out to be different than I expected him to be. He asserted himself on the page with a quiet strength that not only captivated Nora, but me as well. He continued to insist that he wasn’t the character I’d originally planned him to be and he ended up be the perfect complement to Nora’s strong spirit.

What research did you have to look up to make your character(s) authentic?

There were a lot of things to research for this book, including horse training methods and tack of the time as well as how harness racing would have been in the early 1900s.
I also spent a lot of time researching the Neshoba County Fair, which is a tradition that continues in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to this day. Every July, an entire population moves into a small city of fair cabins for a full week of horse races, contests, the midway, and time spent with family and friends. Cabins have been passed down for several generations, and it’s a place where you almost feel as though you’ve stepped back in time.

For this story, I got to go back to the early days of the fair when two hotels stood around the square with the original founders’ cabins. I dug through the Mississippi historical archives and studied maps laid out from the early 1900s fair. I was also able to find several newspapers from around the state advertising both the Neshoba County Fair and the Mississippi and Alabama Fair, which heavily publicized their harness races.

What research book or website used to write this book was your favorite to peruse?

I bought a reproduction copy of Gleason’s Horse Book, which Nora studies during the novel, an original copy of Correct Social Usage—these are the things Nora’s mother insists upon and Nora chafes against—and I have an original copy of a Mississippi State Fair premiums list from 1927. While this one was a few years past the time of the story, it gave me great ideas for the types of prizes that would have been offered. There were a lot of other research materials, but these were my favorites.

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Questions about Stephenia’s Reading

Stephenia is giving away either a signed paperback (USA Only) OR an ebook to (Internationals entries welcome). Enter the Rafflecopter below!

**If you don’t want to enter the Rafflecopter, tell me in a comment below: “I’m not entering the Rafflecopter, but please throw me in the hat” so I can manually put you in there for a chance.**

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Looking for a very unusually set book? Look no further than Come Down Somewhere, a coming of age story of two women involving the Trinity testing site during World War II in New Mexico.

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Questions about Jennifer’s Story

What inspired this story?

My family and I moved to southern New Mexico in 2014, and we actually live less than 100 miles from the Trinity test site. Although I’d heard of the test, I didn’t know much about it. Living here, however, changed Trinity from something that had happened to something that is still very much happening to this day. This isn’t just history; where I live, it’s present in many people’s everyday lives, especially when you consider the effects of the test still being felt over seventy-five years later. I wanted to bring this story to the forefront and draw attention to the overlooked and underappreciated sacrifice of the people of southern New Mexico during World War II.

What was the hardest part of your book to write?

I have been to Hiroshima and seen the remnants of the bomb dropped there. Now I live in southern New Mexico as part of a military family but also part of a community that is still feeling the effects of the test. Because of this, my own personal feelings about Trinity are very complicated. I don’t think it was all bad, but I definitely don’t think it was all good either. Attempting to honor both those who worked on the bomb, believing they were doing something that would win the war and save lives, as well as those living here who were affected in monumental ways through the choices of others, was an extremely difficult balancing act.

Why did you choose the year in which your book is set?

The 1945 story line was obviously set to coincide with the Trinity test itself. Jo’s subsequent story line, however, was set in early 1952 because, later that year, the “green glass sea,” a layer of trinitite left over after the explosion, was bulldozed and buried. I knew I wanted to give Jo an opportunity to see it, as Trinity played such an important role in her journey, so I had to make sure she made it back to Alamogordo before the waning months of 1952.

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Questions about Jennifer’s Reading

Jennifer is giving away either a paperback (USA Only). Enter the Rafflecopter below!

**If you don’t want to enter the Rafflecopter, tell me in a comment below: “I’m not entering the Rafflecopter, but please throw me in the hat” so I can manually put you in there for a chance.**

a Rafflecopter giveaway