Terry Irene Blain
About Terry Irene Blain
Since high school, history was my love.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a large, extended Midwest family with a rich oral tradition. Even after my parents moved to California, every summer, we drove cross-country to Illinois and had big family reunions where I remember sitting on the front porch or in the kitchen, listening to everyone tell stories, soaking up the details.
I ended up with a BA and MA and taught American History and Western Civilization at our local community college. While I was teaching, I had all this academic knowledge and everyone said, “You should write a book.” My excuse was that I wasn’t the best typist in the world. Then my husband bought a computer. I had no more excuses.
Because of all the stories I heard as a child, thus knowing our family history, my first book was Kentucky Green. Some of my ancestors lived in that area: one family story has a great-great-great however-many-great grandfather hunting with Daniel Boone. Also, the frontier appealed. In 1794 in Kentucky, it took a man and a woman working together to make a homestead. Romance in the making.
Between my sense of community and the history from the stories I heard my family tell, I have a sense of place, and a sense of what I want: To write historical romance, which gives me the opportunity pass on the stories of who we are and from where we come while exploring the relationships between men and women. Looking to the past, we’re seeing where we can go in the future. What could be more fun than that?