Write what you know by Jan Scarbrough

My parents were married for fifty-three years. I wasn’t so lucky. I spent many years as a “single mother.” Of course, that experience found its way in many of my books.

The Bluegrass Reunion series has several things in common: Kentucky setting, horses, reunions, and single moms. It wasn’t until twenty years after my divorce that I wrote about a divorced single mom in Kentucky Rain. Kate Lawrence’s rose-colored glasses are rudely yanked off when her divorce leaves her without her home, her friends, and her identity as the perfect stay-at-home wife and mother.

In other series books, my single moms were without the fathers of their children for various reasons. In Kentucky Woman, ex-jockey Alexis Marsden is raising her son by herself until her son’s older brother intervenes by offering her a marriage of convenience.

 Life isn’t easy for the widowed Carrie Mercer in Kentucky Groom. Jay Preston has always wanted to be loved for himself, not his millions, but when the shy widow and her little daughter need him, he offers a marriage of convenience.

Horse trainer Melody O’Shea in Kentucky Flame has given up her daughter for adoption. Ten years later she returns to the Kentucky horse farm where her secret daughter lives, and so does the unsuspecting father. 

Veterinarian Mandy Sullivan doesn’t have room in her life for dangerous risk-takers. She’s too busy being both mother and father to the daughter her sister abandoned in Kentucky Cowboy. When professional bull rider Judd Romeo returns home, Mandy’s perfect and safe life is disrupted big time.

Darby, in the Ghost Mountain Ranch series, is the widowed mother of two adult children, Slade and Kelsey. They both have a story in the series.

The same goes for Liz in the Dawsons of Montana. When a handsome stranger arrives at the ranch, Liz—divorced and widowed—fears her daughter-in-law is playing matchmaker. Her children, Brody and Mercer, are also featured in the series. (This series is on Kindle Unlimited.)

Novelists are always instructed to “write what you know.” I haven’t lived in Medieval England, but I’ve set a story there (after doing tons of research). I once heard an argument by a woman who said she was psychic. She claimed unless you were psychic you couldn’t write about one. But I have. I do suppose putting your experiences into books is only natural. That doesn’t mean I can’t write about a bull rider or a horse trainer if I haven’t been one.

But I have been a single mother.

My mother and I were at odds for many years. I was an only child, and of course, much loved. But I had my growing pains as we all do during our teenage years. By the time my mother died, we were friends. I miss her every day and often want to tell her things that have happened in my life. Most of all, I’d love to share my grandchildren with her. I can hope she's watching from heaven and knows about them, and about how much I still love her.