I am currently getting Book Four of my Pine Valley series ready to send my publisher. It's called The Valley of Dreams and continues the story of the small town of Edenville and its residents.

Trying to get it right, to capture the description of a place that is fictitious, tells more about what that place means to me as the author. The town of Edenville has its roots in the original settlement of Pine Way, which is a rural place fading into obscurity. Edenville's residents who remember growing up in Pine Way refuse to let the little town die. In trying to capture their love of that place, I needed to recognize my own love for rural spaces, pathways across fields, orchards with ripening fruit, creeks and woodlands to explore, friends and neighbors whose ancestors settled the area.

I love small towns and rural spaces, where the freeways and leaf blowers, too many dogs and cats, too many barbecues and people in a hurry are what fades away. Rural spaces, where one's ancestors and those of their neighbor's have left traces of their presence. A bucket by a faucet, a kerosene lantern on a nail, a child's treasure stowed away in the corner of a barn, are a few of the many things left behind by those who went before us.

But, there is another thing that was there and still is, waiting for someone to walk its pathways again. It is the quiet, the peaceful atmosphere of trees shedding leaves to blow upon the wind and gather by the trail and the inviting woods where a deer or fox might run toward. Seeing these things, smelling the richness of the green fields of spring and the creeks flowing along the edge of the forest, is a return to our origins, to our beginnings in natural places.

The ancestors call to us upon those autumn winds, sharing their wisdom, reminding us to value our history, our origins, our beginnings, for they contain the seeds by which to grow community and nurture connectionA Place Called The Way.