what prompted me to write Montana Mist?

An interviewer recently asked me this question: What prompted/inspired you to write Montana Mist?
Montana Mist (Winter of there White Wolf) was inspired by a dream and by some of the writings of John Steinbeck, not really inspired by any of his books but more of the mood of his characters. I traveled to Montana and fell in love with the forests and the mountains. I got to see and feel wolves up close. I began to learn more about how we had eliminated wolves from the lower 48 states and had just recently re-introduced them. I love quirky odd characters and populated my book with them. I wanted to have secrets and mystery, adventure and romance, all in the same story to drive the conflict. All that conflict set in such a beautiful harsh wintry amazing place of mountain forests, ice and snow, moose and elk, wolverines, bears, and the wonderful secretive rare wolf pack, roaming our imaginations since the dawn of man. A man guarding secrets, a woman traveling, searching but not knowing what she seeks, a beautiful blind girl hidden away in her own secluded world, and the missing white wolf, Mist, out there somewhere in the shadows of the mountain forests, all form integral parts in the book.