How a Tale Unwinds

River and Ranch started out so simple. Merely a tale of two Special Ops guys back from overseas missions that stumble into more of the same in a domestic setting.

And then.....

I continued enjoying serendipity. This led me to Nancy Hatch duPree. It led me to Buddhism. It led me to a Deseret newspaper article about a hidden meadow untouched by modern uses. And so much more.

All of which led to a larger story for the R and R world, backstories fleshed out and enlarged for other characters, and the gradual replacement of simple kinetic violence one would expect from Spec Ops guys with a more cerebral, religious, and historically aware pair of (still lethal) Spec Ops guys that see more than just dustups with the bad guys as they search for life's hidden meaning and acknowledge that there is likely far more they do not know, have never heard of, and will never understand.

gotta love long run-on sentences jacked up with dependent clauses, right?

For some reason, I wanted River and Ranch to end on a cliff hanger. Instead, what I now have is a series of books going backward and forward in time from the R and R setting, showing a much larger world with connections from the past explaining events and people in the present. Watching this spring forth from my keyboard is SO MUCH better than watching TV!