This photo was provided courtesy of Miss Rachel Sides, head librarian of the Guymon Public Library on the Oklahoma Panhandle, a territory fondly referred to even by its residents as “No Man’s Land.” You might think I was in Guymon to research my second novel, The Stormchasers (and by total coincidence I did witness the 2007 Memorial Day “Green Tornado” just outside town). But my first visit to Guymon was at the behest of Miss Rachel, who invited me to speak at her library about Those Who Save Us. So this photograph, which Miss Rachel took in the smoking shack behind Caktus Jack’s bar while an incoming storm’s wind blew the beer signs off the walls, represents the bridging of my two novels: I now have friends in No Man’s Land I can chase storms with, but it was my German characters—and Miss Rachel, reader supreme—who brought me there.

And that, as you can see, makes me very happy.