Category: ThrowbackThursday

I have been able to visit Mexico many many times and have used it as a setting for a number of novels. There were also some aspects of Aztec and Mayan culture that fascinated me and I used them to create some of the traits of the Sin Hunters in The Lost.

Since it’s Cinco de Mayo today, I’m sharing some photos from one of my trips to Mexico. During this trip, I was able to visit the Anthropological Museum and got to see so many inspiring relics from the past!

My grandfather would have turned 125 today! What a momentous birthday it would have been. His name was Antonio Gonzalez and he was born in a small village in Spain. His family had some land, but my grandfather wanted to be more than a farmer. It was what led him to go to Cuba and build what he thought would be a better life for his family. He was a kind and gentle soul who loved kids and had a terrible sweet tooth. He was also the handiest man alive. He could fix anything and he was very organized. I remember how he would keep assorted screws, nails, and other things in baby food jars in the garage. He came from a generation where nothing was ever wasted.

My grandfather would do anything for his family and as I mentioned before, my grandmother and he were the ones who took care of my sister and me when my parents were forced to leave Cuba. There’s a scene in The Family She Never Met where it’s mentioned that the grandfather lied about his age in order to get a job to help support the family. My grandfather did just that, making himself a decade younger so that he could get a job with a maintenance company at LaGuardia Airport. I fondly remember going to pick him up at the airport when he was done working his shift.

I was lucky to have such a wonderful grandfather. This is a picture of him taken in Cuba. How about you share something about your grandfather? Maybe even share a picture!

In The Family She Never Met there’s a scene where Jessica’s grandmother remembers taking her girls to see The Sound of Music in their Easter finest. Much like the girls in that scene, my mom and grandmother would dress us up for Easter and we would sometimes go into Manhattan for the Easter Parade. On one very special visit we did go to see The Sound of Music in Radio City Music Hall and that inspired the scene in the book. This is a photo of my grandmother, me, my sister, and my mother (left to right) on one of those Easter days.

Order

Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3tPQ7Xx
Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/3bonSZN
Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-family-she-never-met/id1568775092
BN Nook: http://bit.ly/BarnesandNobleFamily
BN Paperback: http://bit.ly/BarnesandNovelPaperback
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-family-she-never-met
Additional Retailers: https://books2read.com/FamilySheNeverMet

We’re a family of baseball fans and try to get to baseball games when we can whether it’s a Major League game or one of the local Minor League teams. We love the strategy of the game and rooting for a favorite team which you might be able to guess is the Mets from this photo with Mr. Met. We’re such big fans that hubby and I plan on visiting every Major League ballpark in the country now that I’m retired from my full-time job.

I even wrote two baseball romances: ROOKIE OF THE YEAR and WINNING SEASON. You can read the first three chapters of WINNING SEASON for free on Kindle Vella at https://amzn.to/3v5nVEl.

I retired at the end of 2019 and hubby thought it would be fun to show how the years at my old job had been hard on me! LOL! Obviously, this is my daughter visiting with me. If I had to work on a Saturday, it wasn’t unusual for me to take my daughter to the office. She would sit and color or play with toys for a few hours and after, we would have an adventure in the city. Many years later, when my daughter started working in NYC as well, we would also get together after work to do something fun.