How are your different Montana series connected? What makes Montana such a rich setting for your different series set there?
Oh, I’m glad you asked! I love created connected worlds where my characters from different series meet up or know each other from their overlapping worlds. For example, in the Montana Fire series, I brought in CJ St. John, a character who was a child in my Noble Legacy series ten years ago. In the Montana Fire series, he’s a young smokejumper.
On that same team was a character Conner who was in the Team Hope series. In the Christiansen family series, book one featured a forest fire that the smokejumper team helped fight so it was easy to connect the team with the Christiansen family series, and other Deep Haven characters.
On the Montana Fire team was also smokejumper named Pete Brooks. Pete eventually moved home to Mercy Falls, MT, where he joined the PEAK Rescue team and became a hallmark character in the Montana Rescue series.
I used Pete to hook up with the larger SAR world and during a catastrophe I introduced him to Hamilton Jones, who is the main character of my new Revell series, which comes out in January 2020. The Montana Fire series also featured Reuben Marshall, the oldest brother of the Montana Marshall family, the series coming out in 2019. They key is to create people who move beyond their current world into the larger world and make believable connections with other characters in different worlds.
I love setting books in Montana because the state is very diverse in its landscape: mountains, rivers, prairies, deep forests. And, the personalities are diverse, also. Cowboys, hikers, park rangers, skiers, hunters, mountain bikers, white-water enthusiasts, climbers and lots of medical personnel! A great place to cause trouble and bring in heroes and heroines to save the day!
Although this new series is “The Montana Marshalls,” you’ve said as the series progresses the story will expand beyond those borders. What can readers expect in future books in the series?
I love bringing readers to new locations and showing them a bigger world. And, for a long time I’ve wanted to return overseas to Germany, Czech Republic, Ukraine and Russia (and more!)
I still have characters in Russia who are waiting to be activated back into the universe, and readers will meet old friends from my Mission: Russia series, as well new friends. The series is global, with the home base in Montana.
And each book is deeply connected to the next more like a mini-series. This is why I pushed to put all five books out in one year.
I felt like my readers would be frustrated waiting too long to read the next installment, so I worked hard to get all five books finished. Each book picks up almost immediately after the previous one ends.
The stories get bigger, more intense, and the romances are woven throughout the entire series. However, there are no cliffhangers in the immediate story plot, just the series plot. I wanted readers to feel like they’d finished one immediate adventure before they started the next.
I am binge reader, a binge TV-watcher, and these stories were made for people like me who like to dive in and enjoy the ride. It’s a little bit cowboy and country music, a little Jason Bourne, a touch of Seal Team, and a lot big family saga. I think (hope!) my readers will love it!
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Knox
Montana Marshalls #1
Susan May Warren
Stonewater Books
The Explosive Beginning to the Montana Marshalls Series
Montana rancher Knox Marshall’s danger years are behind him. A former bull-rider, he now runs the Marshall family ranch, raising champion bucking bulls for the National Professional Bullrider’s Expo (NBR-X). Wealth and success are his, but life is stable, expected, and—ordinary. He can’t help but wonder if his best years are behind him.
Kelsey Jones just wants a safe life, a family, a home. Onstage, the beautiful rising star of the Yankee Belles becomes the person she longs to be — vivacious and confident — burying the brokenness she carries from a violent assault. Becoming NBR-X’s next country act is key to outrunning her past and achieving the success and security she craves.
Knox and Kelsey’s paths collide when an explosion at an NBR-X event traps them in the rubble and leaves them reeling. Kelsey’s crippling nightmares return, but for Knox, an obsession to find the bomber is ignited.
When Kelsey’s past threatens Knox’s family, he’ll have to choose between saving the Marshall legacy or becoming the protector he’s always longed to be.