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In Honey From the Lion, when Laurie Quinn goes back into the past, he leaves behind him his two good friends, Zach and Maxton. These secondary characters in Honey From the Lion demanded their own stories, so it was up to me to write them, and so I wrote Wild as the West Texas Wind.
The story is about Zach, Laurie Quinn’s best friend since forever. Zach is the temperamental and opinionated, blond-haired trouble maker.
Zach needed a love interest worthy of his passionate nature, so I gave him the calm and laconic Layton Blue.
Much to my surprise, along came Tam, Layton’s horse, who just about stole the show.
The idea for the story itself was that Zach would be worked up enough about Laurie going missing to believe, in his heart, that Laurie was still alive. I loved the idea in Back to the Future III that the past and the present are very much connected. In that movie, Marty receives a letter from Doc Brown – a letter that was delivered by Western Union, who’d kept it since September 1, 1885.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to get a letter from your best friend Laurie, but that the date would be over 100 years in the past. What would you do about it? Would you believe it? Or would you think it was a prank? If you’re Zach, you would drive to the location where the letter supposedly came from so you could find out. That’s who Zach is.
What I loved about writing this book was finding out that the two characters were each other’s missing piece. Layton found the home he was looking for, and Zach found someone who could see inside of him, see the real Zach.
The title of the song comes from the country/western song called El Paso by Marty Robbins. I have loved this song since I was a small, small child. I think it was the refrain that goes, One night a wild young cowboy came in wild as the West Texas wind. The music wails and moans around these words, and I would get a chill thinking of that wind rolling across the prairies bringing a young cowboy with it, almost against his will.