I thought it would be fun to talk a little about the setting of my different books, and we’ll start with the Ignite Series. In 2018, my son and I did a cross country trip, taking four weeks to drive from Albany, NY to LA and back. We hit some fantastic sights along the way, like Badlands NP, Yellowstone NP, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and more. It was an absolutely fantastic trip, and we made memories that will last a lifetime.

I’d already bought the cover for the first Ignite book. I’d seen this as a premade (that means it’s a cover a designer already made that you can buy, as opposed to asking a designer to design a cover specifically for you). I was just SO in love with it… So on this trip, I started brainstorming a little with my son (who was 10 at the time) about what a book with that cover could be about.

We brainstormed ideas about fires or volcanoes, considering the cover. He was the one who came up with the idea for an alien landing, so we talked about why aliens would want to come to Earth. In the book, the aliens come from a planet named Zagor, and he actually came up with that name.

South Dakota was awe-inspiring, and we both loved Badlands NP. We also drove through the Black Mountains and made a stop at the Walmart in Rapid City—the same one that played a role in the series.

On our way to Yellowstone, we drove through Wyoming, where we were both struck by the sight of oil pumps. I’d never expected them there, not knowing Wyoming had oil, and while I was driving, my son did some googling on his iPad and discovered that there’s a large oil field there but it’s one that’s hard to access. I mentally filed that away. The vastness and emptiness of Wyoming hit us both, miles and miles of nothing but prairieland and very few towns. The pics in this post are from Wyoming and are ones I took on that trip!

Then we reached Yellowstone, where my son informed me that Yellowstone is actually one big super volcano, which I didn’t know. Not the most reassuring thought, to be honest, because he cheerfully told me that if it ever blew, it would take most of North America with it. You can see one of the many geysers in the pic below.

And that’s when it all came together, the whole core concept of the Ignite Series. Every detail was inspired by something we’d seen, heard, or learned on that trip. Most locations in the book are places we went to—with the exception of where the book ends (I don’t want to give that away for the people who haven’t read it yet). That was a place I visited in 2019 without my son.

The Ignite Series was also inspired by the political situation at that time, with an increasing number of attacks on queer and transgender rights, as well as those of women…and things haven’t gotten better since. My fear was that if the extremists got their way, being queer would become illegal…and that’s what you see reflected in that series.

Anyway, if you haven’t read it, you really should give it a try. It’s a little oddball series, very different from most of what I write, but it’s still very much a Nora series with an MMM romance between amazing, real characters, a swoony romance, all the feels, a super happily ever after, and more. And I promise no harm comes to the good guys!