Cathie Linz writes about Mountain People and Ocean People

Jayne, here, to introduce one of my very good friends and favorite romance writers, Cathie Linz. If you’re looking for wonderfully warm, funny, heartwarming romance, Cathie is your writer. The first two books in her new series ( GOOD GIRLS DO and BAD GIRLS DON’T) are perfect for the season. Trust me, you’re going to love them.

Cathie Linz

There are two types of people – mountain people and ocean people. You’ll notice that I put mountain people first. That’s not just because of my inner librarian needing to alphabetize life. It’s because I definitely am in the mountain people camp.

I come from a long line of mountain people. My grandmother and grandfather frequently skied in the Alps. My mother has a great story about a ski trip during her boarding school days in Bavaria and how she lost her ski poles and couldn’t stop. She ended up throwing herself forward which resulted in the snow being scooped up via the waistband of her ski pants and filling them with snow.

Maybe that trauma was the reason she ended up in the Chicago area – geographically as flat as a pancake. And maybe that was also the reason she never let her kids ski. But the love of the mountains….ah, that came through to me loud and clear. I can still remember the first time I saw the Alps. I felt connected. Like a battery plugged into a power source.

Since then I’ve also visited the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, the Rockies in Colorado, the Sierras in California and the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. I visited Aspen before it became the jetsetter’s fave locale. But the Alps remained my favorites. The Austrian Alps in particular.

Then I visited the Canadian Rockies. Wow! (I’m a writer. I’ve got a way with words describing mountains. Can you tell? )

Okay, so the Canadian Rockies do not have those little chalets with the flower boxes on the balconies. And no, you can’t get a fantastic cup of hot cocoa “mit schlagg” (with whipped cream) around every corner. Plus there are no conditerei with fantastic cakes like Linzertorte (not named after me although it should have been) and Florentine cookies. And I haven’t even talked about the Swiss chocolate…

But I digress. The Canadian Rockies don’t have all that unless you stop at Chalet Lake Louise or the Banff Springs Hotel, which are world-class resorts and places I frankly can’t afford to visit. What the Canadian Rockies do have are breath-taking views and glacial lakes that glow and that make you think someone dyed them that color. Here in Chicago we do dye the Chicago River green for St. Patrick’s Day. But in Canada those colors are real.

Moraine Lake is my favorite lake in the world. It has ten peaks surrounding it – all of which are over ten thousand feet high. You are so close, it feels like you could just reach out and touch them.

It’s not like I haven’t visited beaches and seen the oceans. I was just at Daytona Beach a few months ago.

I like beaches. Bermuda is wonderful (yes, the sand really is pink). St. Martin is pretty. The Oregon coast is really spectacular.

It’s just that I LOVE mountains. And I always have photos I’ve taken of them on my website cathielinz.com.

My characters share my love of travel. In my current romantic comedy BAD GIRLS DON’T the heroine Skye grew up traveling with her mom and sister up and down the west coast – from Alaska to California. I know I said that there are two kinds of people but Skye refuses to be categorized. She’s both a mountain and an ocean person. Frankly, Skye just likes being different and doing her own thing. I’d never written about someone like her before. She really doesn’t care what other people think about her. As long as the people she loves know who she is, she’s fine. But bad girls don’t fall for uptight lawmen like Studly Do-Right Nathan Thornton. Nathan always follows the rules. Skye always breaks them.

In the end Skye isn’t as tough as she makes out and Nathan isn’t as indifferent as he’d like. I was thrilled that the Chicago Tribune described BAD GIRLS DON’T as “irresistible” while Booklist gave it a starred review and said it’s “exceptional.”

I’m not sure if Skye and Nathan can agree on a winter getaway – the mountains or the ocean. They might want the best of both worlds.

What about you? What would your idea of an ideal winter getaway be? Are you drawn to the sound of the ocean or the majesty of the mountains? Are you into pina coladas? Or hot chocolate? Or both?

As for me, I’m already sipping my hot cocoa…and nibbling on Lindt truffles. All magically calorie-free, of course.

-- Cathie Linz