This weekend we’re back in DC while I attend a conference. We arrived Wednesday, and it has felt like a homecoming, y’all. I haven’t been back since an incredibly quick 12 hours in 2015 on my way to a study abroad in Brazil, and it’s a bit scary how much I settled back into knowing how to walk around and find things. We left in 2002 to move to Indiana, and I’ve always said this area is one of the few I would move back to, but I didn’t know if I would still feel that way now.

Surprisingly, I do.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Six of my last books have been set in the D.C. area plus the one I just finished editing and the one I’m currently writing. Add in a couple of novellas, and I’ve been writing little bits of love stories to this city since 2012. In fact, Dying for Love opens essentially with a murder scene in the building behind me in the picture below. At least that’s the chambers I was imagining as I wrote the scene — just don’t tell Judge Smith.

What’s this building? It’s the courthouse next to the White House, but more importantly to me, it’s where I clerked for a federal judge for a year after law school. It’s where I scrambled to get home from on 9/11…some of that emotion played into Savannah’s journey in Flight Risk. Speaking of Flight Risk, we flew into Reagan National airport which is the one that the plane takes off from and crashes into the 14th Street Bridge in Flight Risk. Because that crash is based on a real one, I always breath a bit easier in the winter when we are well above the city after takeoff.

Watching the planes come in over the Mall for their flight paths to Reagan National airport yesterday reminded me of Flight Risk, and the eeriest part of the skies post 9/11… how quiet they were. There were no planes in and out of DC for 23 days. Because of where we lived and worked, it felt silent and strange. Again you’ll feel some of that in Savannah’s story.

That has me wondering how much of those little details come out in my other books.

Here’s a fun family photo in front of one of my favorite statutes: Albert Einstein at the National Academy of Science. This has been a favorite of mine for awhile. There’s something about how it looks like Einstein is inviting you to join him for a look at the scientific paper and the way there’s room on the bench to join him. Science for all!

My friend Elizabeth Goddard has given me a copy of her latest Love Inspired Suspense novel to gift to a reader. To be part of the giveaway, just use the form below.

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