Yes, it’s true: authors can have favorites among their own books. (Which I suppose is better than having favorites among your children, since a story’s feelings can’t be hurt.) Even though a little piece of me has gone into everything I’ve written, good, bad, or indifferent, there are certain books and stories that I’m especially fond of for one reason or another…or maybe for no definable reason at all. These are my personal favorites among my published stories right now:

• A Sidekick’s Tale. To this day, I can still pick up this book and open it, and start laughing. It makes me wonder sometimes, should I be writing humor more often? Or was this just an accidental one-hit wonder? Either way, I regard the adventures of Marty, Chance, Lem, Aunt Bertha, the Justice of the Peace and the rest of them as one of the best things I’ve ever done.

• Lost Lake House. It was an impulsively-concocted plot, set in a decade of history I’d never given much thought, and with a semi-imaginary setting of lake and villa that I could play around with and dress up in all kinds of delicious detail as I liked. Maybe all of that subconsciously told my brain to switch off the “work” setting and regard the writing process as play! The characters also seemed to spring straight to life, not really based upon or inspired by anything else as some characters are; and I’ve been immensely fond of them ever since.

• The Mountain of the Wolf. Somewhat like Lost Lake House, this was an idea that came quickly and clicked quickly and delighted me with the way the execution fitted the concept (Red Riding Hood retelling in the West). It’s more dramatic and intense than anything I’d written up till that point, and I think I kind of wanted to prove to myself that I could do that if I wanted to.

• The Silver Shawl. It was the first mystery I ever successfully completed and published; and I still think it has one of the trickiest plots in the series, to the point that it’s still somewhat of a mystery to me how I came up with it! My writing has probably gotten a little more polished since then, but I’ll always have a soft spot for my first adventure with Mrs. Meade & Co.

Short stories:

• “The Bird of Dawning.” I love Christmas stories; I always wanted to write a good Western Christmas story. The characters and themes of this story are close to my heart, and I absolutely loved writing the descriptions of winter weather.

• “The Rush at Mattie Arnold’s.” I think I wrote this in about two sittings. I figured out most of it while in the shower, and I think I pretty much had a grin on my face throughout the whole creative process. You need to write stories like that every once in a while.

These also are, probably not coincidentally, all among what I regard as my best stories in a technical sense. Although that could just be parental partiality.