Author Spotlight - Meet Linda McMaken

I'm actually a very boring person. Seriously, if the FBI ever tapped my phone I would be hailed as the cure for insomnia! When I was ask to write about myself, I had one sentence that said, "Hi, my name is Linda," blinking at me on my computer for about week. That's so sad for an author; you'd think I could at least "invent" something exciting to talk about.

Besides my family and writing, I guess I'm most passionate about travel. We have a very small fifth wheel and run away whenever we can. In recent years, with the kids graduating, parents being ill and hubby fighting cancer, those days are pretty few and far between.

When our daughters were younger, we had a very, very small travel trailer, only 18' and it was nearly thirty years old when we bought it. The girls named it "Tumbleweed," right after they saw their first tumbleweed, and that name has stuck with every camper we've ever owned. We towed that trailer everywhere, and had a blast. We've been fortunate to see 46 of the 50 states, had the most amazing adventures, and met some incredible people. This is probably another reason my stories are "character driven."

We yanked them out of school one October and headed west for two weeks. They were studying Native America culture, so we ended up at a reservation at Four-Corners. The place was deserted except for the folks working there. One of the ladies spied a textbook in my daughters backpack, and took an interest. Pretty soon, they were being taught Native American history by Native Americans. We spent several hours there, eating, laughing, and learning so many things even I didn't know.

Some interesting people - a Vietnam vet glassblower in Vermont, the mother of twelve at South Pass who panned for gold, the retired tug boat captain, and the cute Hispanic border guard, on the Canadian border! ☺

The plains of Wyoming


Then there were those other moments - getting stuck in the mud in the Big Horn Mountains, losing a muffler in Independence, Missouri, chased by geese in Tennessee, losing my daughter in the snow on the Rocky Mountain Parkway (sank up to her neck – in July!), blew a transmission line in the Appalachian Mountains, and got struck by lightning in Cape Cod. Through it all, we laughed, made s'mores, had some really awesome campfires, met truly amazing people and made incredible memories. Hopefully, with prayers and blessings from above, hubby and I will soon be "On the Road Again." I sing, hubby just politely nods.