All the Chicks are posting Christmas stories this week and it's my turn today. It'll only take a couple mins to read and it's called, 'The Shepherd'. 
Ouch! Temp was -35C/-31F this morning but it felt like -47C/-52F with the windchill. I needed to travel 1.5 hrs south today to bring the boys to a Kid's Christmas party for hubby's work. It's a free 2 hr swim plus games, food, Santa and a $25 gift. The boys look forward to this party so off we went. Although it was cold, the sun was glistening off the snow. 
Book 1 – The Redemption – Lady Charlisse Bristol is on a personal mission to find the father who abandoned her as a child. She finds herself dependent on Edmund Merrick, a pirate leader. Running on an unlimited supply of faith, Charlisse struggles with her attraction to Edmund. The pirate leader is torn between his baser instincts and his respect for the beautiful Charlisse who seems to call upon God to do her bidding at will. But who will be the man beside her when she realizes her father is the most terrible pirate of the time.
Book 2 – The Reliance – I was very skeptical of this book because it contains the same main characters as Book 1. I mean I read their story of finding love and faith—what more could there be in a romance? But at that point, I hadn’t realized what a master storyteller MaryLu is. In this book, she didn’t just bring back Charlisse and Edmund, she also brought back the villain who’s extra angry at being bested in Book 1. So, he creates an incident where he’s able to steal a pregnant Charlisse away but leave Edmund thinking she and their unborn child is dead. So here you have a pirate with a shaky newfound faith drowing in misery. What does he do? What do you think he does? He certainly didn’t do what I thought would be printed in a Christian book, that’s for sure. Yet it could have happened so easily in real life.
Book 3 – The Restitution – Now this book was a stunner! Again, the characters are familiar because the hero is none other than the villain in the first 2 books and the heroine is the woman he ravishes in Book 2. This book starts with Lady Isabel Ashton and her 7 month old son who is the result of that fateful day on board Captain Kent Carlton’s pirate ship. As an unwed mother, Isabel’s life is a daily struggle of humiliation but she won’t give up her son for anything. When he’s kidnapped, she does the unthinkable and enlists the help of the baby’s father and his ship to search the Caribbean for him. Can Kent put aside his own agenda of becoming the new pirate king to become the man Isabel and their baby needs?
Over at Prairie Chicks Write Romance today, inspirational romance author Loree Lough is guest blogging about Book Signings.
ot telling you here... you'll have to go to Prairie Chicks and find out for yourself. 
NaNoWriMo or even NaNo.
Here's a blurb on Alaskan Renegade: When the Skagway town nurse, Victoria Windhaven, sets off on a dangerous medical journey across the Alaskan wilderness, she’s forced to ride with a man from her past - bodyguard Brant MacQuaid. Five years ago in St. Louis, Brant left her sister standing at the altar and Victoria has never forgiven him. They’re accompanied on the trip by a young medical student who has a crush on Victoria, which further complicates the arrangements.
Anyway, anyone who comments on my rock/travel post over at the Inkwell blog until midnight Oct 22nd will get their name in my hat for a free Janet Dean Love Inspired Historical, Courting Miss Adelaide, as well as a small piece of petrified wood and a small agate. 
o move my cave into the renovated garage we've christened the rec centre. Here's a photo of my new cave in the back corner behind the furnace (on the right) but it's only temporary until we can get the carpet down. Then I'll move to the other side of the room and set up shop. I shut the furnace off at night and put it back on the next day. Because it's all one big room, it heats up in about 15 mins flat. But that's with the temps hovering around freezing. I suppose it'll take longer as the temp drops.
Now, it doesn't look like much, right? But my fingers started tingling. I got back on the road and headed north, up past the hoodoos, turned around and parked close to them. Here's a closer look:
Isn't it amazing what a bit of wind erosion and the right soil/limestone can do, eh?
And in case you don't live near the 49th parallel and have wondered what the Can/US border really looks like, here it is:.jpg)
A typical sight in Wyoming are these piles of boulders just lying there in the middle of a field. It always makes me wonder what formation they were before they fell.
The Big Horn Mountains are on your left as you travel north from Casper
Many of the roads and highways in Wyoming are made from the abundance of red dirt.
These topless hoodoos remind me of Mount Rushmore.
As I crossed the state line into Montana, the land became fit for farming again but always in the background were the mountains.
This tree was stark white and dead when I saw it just before sundown. I guess it hid in the shadows by the time I got my camera out:
Well, that's it for this day. Tomorrow I'll make my way across Montana, hopefully arriving home before nightfall.
It reminded me of a film set. The rules at the start had said only foot traffic could leave the designated paths. I had feet . . . so I stepped off the path and saw this:
I stared for a long time. All I had to do was take a step forward and I'd be in the middle between the ruts left from countless wagon wheels. I took that step and without conscious thought, closed my eyes. The feeling of being there was so intense I started to cry. I looked up the hill to the north and saw this:
And that's it for the Wheatland to Casper run. Tomorrow I hope to start Emma's journey which is why I'm sitting in Casper tonight.
