Some days, I feel as though I’ll never grow up. A modern day Peter Pan. I blame my students—they keep me young. When a person spends eight hours a day with teenagers, it tends to keep her young at heart.
Things changed last summer when my thirty-year high school reunion stared me in the eye. How could it have been thirty years since I walked across the gymnasium floor to have someone hand me a diploma? Maybe it seems so close because I stand in a gym every May and hand out diplomas to students who choose me as their presenter, giving them all hugs and telling them how proud I am of them. Every graduation of a new class of students keeps my own fresh in my mind. 
As the reunion date grew closer, I found myself in touch with many of my former classmates through Facebook. (An enthusiastic wave to Terre Haute South Vigo class of 1981!) How great to reconnect and learn all about their lives while we reminisced about the “good old days.” With each new discussion, I learned something about their present lives, but I also discovered things about their pasts I hadn’t known in high school. The writer in me flared to life.
What if someone went back to a high school reunion only to have every skeleton she’d shoved in her closet come tumbling out? Maddie Sawyer was born that day, and I started writing the story of her finding a new love as she exhumes the life she thought she’d buried so long ago.
Have any of you been to a class reunion? Did you go hoping an old boyfriend had lost all his hair? Or did you just want to reconnect with old friends? Did you wish that the girl who picked on you had a butt the size of Florida, or was the reunion nothing more than a chance to raise a glass to your glory days? Please leave me a comment for a chance to win a copy of Rules of the Game! (I’ll draw a winner at random on Friday, April 6th.)
I have to wonder if the age of social media will blunt the excitement of reunions. Now that we’re all connected in so many different ways, the world seems so much smaller, and distance seldom keeps us far apart. Maybe one day, reunions will be passé. But for now, just like Maddie, we all make those trips back to our hometowns to see people who helped make us who we are.
Rules of the Game is on sale now!
Blurb: Kathryn West has it all. She’s a confident, bestselling author living it up in New York City. Too bad she doesn’t actually exist, and is only timid Maddie Sawyer’s pseudonym. Determined to attend her high school reunion with a man right out of one of her racy romance novels, she plots to find a sexy bad boy who’s up to Kathryn’s standards.
She finds Mr. Perfect shooting pool in a biker bar. He’s a blue-collar hunk who just happens to look great in leather. But the mysterious Scott Brady has some rules of his own: he won’t agree to her deal unless she poses as his girlfriend in front of his family and friends first.
As the reunion nears, Maddie tries to maintain her carefree façade, knowing she’ll soon face some old ghosts. She’s torn between her growing attraction to Scott and the nagging feeling that he’s hiding something important. Will she still want him when she finds out his secret? What about when he discovers hers?
Sandy James lives in a quiet suburb of Indianapolis with her husband of thirty years. She’s a high school social studies teacher who especially loves psychology and United States history. Since she and her husband own a small stable of harness racehorses, they often spend time together at the two Indiana racetracks.
You can find Sandy on her website, on Facebook or on Twitter.
Rules of the Game on sale at:
What is it about a shy guy that’s so appealing? Maybe we empathize. Who among us hasn’t felt awkward, afraid, even terrified, in the presence of someone we’d like to impress? Maybe when we encounter shy guys, with their hemming and hawing and shuffling feet, the sweet way their eyes skitter across our face, it brings out our inner nurturer. Or perhaps we sense that shy souls are more interesting than their more gregarious counterparts.
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A couple days ago, I redesigned my banner for my website and sent it to my son who deals with my website. I loved what I did but knew he’d find fault. After all, he’s a programmer, which makes pleasing his sensibilities with my creativity nearly impossible. And <sigh>, I was right. He vetoed most of what I did which set me to wondering what happened to that creative little boy who along with his younger sister were responsible for me discovering my own writing talent.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s and had already sold my first book that I discovered that my daydreaming was actually storytelling! All the elements we writers require for our books were in my dream worlds. I had the good guys, the bad guys, the conflict, the black moment and the happy-ever-after. Does all this sound like a writer? Yep.
