American the Beautiful

By Jannine Gallant

One of our April topics is Keep America Beautiful. I feel blessed to live in an incredibly beautiful place – Lake Tahoe. I can walk out my door and hike for miles in the pristine wilderness. The lake is a few minutes walk from my house. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Of course there are drawbacks. When I’m fighting with a four foot high berm left by the snowplow, trying to clear my driveway in a raging blizzard, I tend to forget what a joy it is living in Tahoe. No place is perfect! But after the storm passes, the glistening snow covered world is magical.

When it comes to my writing, I’ve capitalized on the Beautiful America theme. Two of my books are set partially in Tahoe. Maybe This Time features Emerald Bay on the cover, something I specifically asked for from the cover artist.

The balance of the story takes place on the California coast. Our shoreline is truly spectacular, but then I’m a teensy bit biased being a California girl born and bred.

Not one of those SoCal beach babes, mind you. I grew up at the very top of the state in the Redwood Forest. You can’t really do justice to the sheer power of a redwood tree in a photograph. You have to stand beneath one, with your head tilted so far back your neck aches, to appreciate the grandeur of the world’s tallest tree. The thick redwood forest, shrouded in fog, has an eerie feel to it that called to me as a writer.

So I wrote A Deadly Love about a serial killer loose in these woods. This book will be released in August.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos of my beautiful corner of America. For more information on my books, please visit my website and blog.