Look Mom, I Made A Town!

And it's called...

That's Coffee Creek, Montana, a location I selected because I liked the sound of the name and the images it evoked for me. So, since Montana is on the southern border of Alberta, where I live, I talked my partner Mike into taking a road trip with me. We headed south and eventually ended up here:

Getting close, I thought, all excited. Only. When we arrived at the handful of buildings that constituted Coffee Creek this was the highlight. Look closely. It's abandoned, I think:

My heart sank. Then rose again. After all, I'm a fiction writer. I could fix Coffee Creek! And that's what I did. I totally re-vamped it, and even moved it a little closer to the mountains and ranching country (because real-life Coffee Creek is actually in a farming area). Nothing against the real Coffee Creek, but my fictionalized Coffee Creek is awesome. It has a topaz-colored creek running through it (hence the name Coffee :)), a charming cafe called the Cinnamon Stick and a librarian and a postmaster who used to be married, but now have a schedule so they never run into one another. I even have a map, thanks to my friend Rolf Stengl who took my sketch and made this:

And now, after all that hard work of mine, I'd like to officially invite you to Coffee Creek, Montana, and to the first of my 4-book series: Remember Me, Cowboy.

To celebrate the launch, I'm giving away the entire six book Harts of The Rodeo series published in 2012. To enter, just go to my website and follow the easy instructions. Now I'm off to create another town... Cheers, CJ Carmichael