GUEST AUTHOR CHRISTINA LORENZEN TAKES A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

Christina Lorenzen is the author of six sweet, small town romances. When she's not writing she can be found herding her cats or reading on her backyard swing. Learn more about Christina and her books at her website.

Taking a Sweet Trip Down Memory Lane

As a child, my favorite story was Rapunzel. To this day, whenever I see anything to do with Rapunzel, a doll or DVD, I can’t help but think about my grandmother.

My father’s mother lived with us for as long as I can remember. When we lived in the city, we lived in one of four apartments in a huge house along with two aunts, two uncles and their children, my cousins. When we moved to the suburbs, my grandmother came with us and lived in the apartment downstairs. Though I have so many wonderful memories of her, my fondest are the times she would babysit my brother and me. I waited until it was time for bed because I knew she would ask “What story would you like me to tell you tonight?” My poor brother. I never did give him a chance to chime in. I always asked for the same story – Rapunzel.  And my grandmother, storyteller that she was, loved to tell it to me again and again. I must have heard that story a hundred times.

  

Fast-forward almost fifty years and I can still hear my grandmother’s voice telling that story. So it’s no surprise that when my publisher announced she would be publishing a collection of fairy tales, I jumped in and asked to write one. You guessed it. Rapunzel. All these years later I would revisit my beloved fairy tale and what better way than to put a modern spin on it?

I went from a tower to a lighthouse and Georgie Daniels, my very own Rapunzel, was born.  After losing her father, and her fiancé walking out on her, Georgie chooses to spend all her time within the safety of the lighthouse cottage, despite the fact that her father is no longer the lighthouse keeper. Even her occupation, writing e-greeting cards, makes it easy for her to cut the world out of her life. Until retired Navy commander Colby Ford moves into the Moore cottage and insists on being neighborly.

Georgie and Colby came alive on the pages as I wrote this story. Writing this story allowed me to relive one of the sweetest times of my childhood. My grandmother and I were very close. I spent hours with her after school, playing cards, helping with her plants and watching television. We remained close until her passing at age eighty-four. 

When I began writing this story, as it unfolded, I felt as if she were there, peering over my shoulder, reading along as I wrote it. If I got stuck in a certain part of the story, I would put it away and go outside in the yard. Besides being a storyteller, my grandmother loved her garden. After watching the birds and checking on the vegetable garden, a part of the story would come to me. And I would return to the keyboard and get those words down before they escaped me. I like to think that writing Rapunzel’s Lighthouse was my chance to share a modern spin on the classic tale she so loved telling me. I think she would be pleased.

Rapunzel’s Lighthouse

Georgie Daniels is self imprisoned in the cottage of the lighthouse that her father was keeper of before his death two years ago. She's hanging on to her home, despite the fact that the town has sent her a letter about unpaid taxes and the state of its disrepair.  She rarely leaves the cottage except for trips into town for groceries. After losing her father and her fiance leaving her with a ring on her finger, the long haired woman prefers the company of her two cats, Keats and Kipling. Until retired Navy commander Colby Ford takes up residence in the Moore Cottage. The Moore cottage of all places, the very house the fiance who ran off and left her used to live. Just as she begins to 'let down her hair' with Colby, she finds out something that makes her determined to keep the cottage and lighthouse - no matter what the price is.

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