Return to Rainbow Rock

It's been 18 years since RIDE THE RAINBOW HOME, the first book in the Rainbow Rock series, was published as a hardcover Avalon romance. My then-editor loved it and asked to see another with the same setting and some of the same characters. Five more hardback Avalon novels followed making a total of six in the Rainbow Rock series, the last one out in 1999.

One day last fall I felt the sudden urge to go back to my favorite fictional town to see what's been happening since I was last there. I remembered Marcie Carmody and what a spoiled, bratty teen she was when she first came to Rainbow Rock in Book #4, A LITTLE NIGHT RAINBOW. What if she had grown up and finished high school in Rainbow Rock and then returned, sadder but wiser, several years later?

Since "what it?" is the core of almost every fictional story, I knew I had something to work with and when Ryan Fields showed up in my imagination, I knew where Marcie's story was headed. It seemed only appropriate to call the new book RETURN TO RAINBOW ROCK since Marcie and I were both returning for the first time in years.

The seventh and newest book in the Rainbow Rock series, RETURN is now available. It's the first book in a whole new series all set in the same fictional town. Here is how it begins:

CHAPTER ONE

Late February

The sun was setting behind her, lighting the clouds ahead in delicate pastels that would have been beautiful on any other day. It was the kind of winter sunset tourists came to the desert to find, but Marcie Carmody only found it worrisome. “Dammit,” she muttered, slamming her hand against the steering wheel and pushing hard on the accelerator. It was bad enough to be crawling home broken and defeated. She didn’t want to have to call for rescue just because the lights on her old clunker had shorted out somewhere this side of San Bernardino.

She passed Joseph City on her way to Holbrook, grateful for light traffic on I-40. “Can’t you make it twenty more minutes?” she grumbled aloud. With luck, the miles would run out before the last of the light.

That was when she spotted the highway patrol car sitting under a billboard for the Sagebrush Trading Post: “See our Jackelope! Cold Cherry Cider!” As she passed, she glanced down at her speedometer and groaned to realize she was going some fifteen miles per hour above the limit. She wasn’t at all surprised to see the trooper pull in behind her and light her up. She ran a hand through her unruly auburn curls.“Dammit twice!” She slowed and pulled to the shoulder. “This is not my day. Or my week, month or year, for that matter.”

 

 

I hope you'll want to return to Rainbow Rock right alongside Marcie and me and I hope you enjoy coming "home" as much as I have.

Susan Aylworth is the author of 11 published novels, ten of which are now available for ebook readers. The 11th will be available before the end of September and a 12th is under contract. She lives in northern California with her husband of 43 years, a devoted old dog and two quirky cats. Her 22nd grandchild is expected next spring. She loves to hear from readers at www.susanaylworth.com, susan.aylworth.author@gmail.com or @SusanAylworth.