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?