Inez Kelley contacted me about doing a giveaway for her new series that's set in West Virginia. I reviewed Take Me Home in December, and am looking forward to the next few books, in part because of the setting, which is unique – and a place with which I'm pretty familiar.
After my review, a few other folks tried the book, including Tessa Dare, who said, “Never has maple syrup sex more honestly earned its place in a romance novel.”
Aw, yeah.
Kelley says that all the Country Roads series are homesick therapy for her – so she wants to give everyone a taste of West Virginia, her home state.
Ready for some fun?
Here's our prize:
- A quart bottle of maple syrup from Valley Farms Maple Syrup Company
- 1 ‘My <3 belongs to a lumberjack’ necklace
- 1 WV State park motif coffee mug
- 1 Bottle WV Ramp Dressing
- 1 WV made Cinnamon Bun scented candle
- Digi-copies of Take Me Home #1 and The Place I Belong #2 with a promised delivery of Should've Been Home Yesterday, #3 pre-release – in other words, the entire Country Roads series.
Says Inez: “The maple syrup was made in Preston County, WV, by Valley Farms Maple Syrup Company. My father in law's company — he made it. He is also in the timber industry, as is my husband. There is no web link yet but I *WILL* drag that man into the 21st century before long. They are the largest privately owned maple-syrup producer in WV, tapping over 700 acres. Last season, they harvested more than 55,000 gallons of sap to get over 1,100 refined gallons of organic syrup. This season looks to be even better.”
Second place winners will each get digital copies of Take Me Home (Country Roads 1) and The Place I Belong (Country Roads 2).
Ready to enter?
Just leave a comment, tell us what place is your home, where you're “from,” and what you love about it. It doesn't have to be the place where you were born or where you lived. Tell us about the place you think of as “home.”
Comments will close at noon Wednesday 29 January at noon eastern, and I'll select the winners at random that afternoon.
Standard disclaimers apply: void where prohibited. Open to international residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and fond of trees to enter. No computers were harmed during the creation of this entry, though several billion electrons were asked to dance in order to ensure its delivery to your marvelous screen. If you've enjoyed these disclaimers half as much as we've enjoyed making them, then we've enjoyed making them twice as much as you've enjoyed reading them.
I asked Inez about West Virginia and why she loves it, and she said,
Yes, WV born and bred. I didn't even leave my home state when it was time for college. Since then, I've lived elsewhere in the nation but always returned to WV, living in various parts of the state. She is my Mountain Mama. I don't care that there are taller peaks, sharper inclines, or higher altitudes, the mountain vistas of WV are special to me. They really do seem to wrap around me like a hug and make me feel at home, protected and safe.
Favorite place? The Potomac Highlands, which will mean nothing to anyone except those who live there. It is, to me, Almost Heaven. (Yes, I went there and embraced the cheesiness of that phrase)
As for me, I'm from Pittsburgh. I was born and raised there, and I didn't leave until I went to college. It wasn't until I traveled a lot and realized how distinct and unique various part of the US are from one another that I could identify what makes Pittsburgh so special.
But I completely understand Inez's feelings for West Virginia, since I worked for several years at a summer camp in Morgantown, in northern WV, and have such wonderful (and weird – it was camp, after all) memories there.
West Virginia's been in the news lately, though not as much as I would think, given that a chemical spill in the Elk River poisoned the drinking water for more than 300,000 people, closing businesses, schools, and leaving people trying to find water donation centers in rural areas. Yet another spill was revealed last week.
I went searching for opportunities to help, and there weren't many online donation centers. Inez directed me to the WV VOAD Disaster Relief Fund, ℅ the United Methodist Foundation in Charleston, WV. The concept of home is a lovely one, and I know West Virginia is hurting right now. So, separate from the giveaway, I'm also making a donation to the WV VOAD Relief Fund in honor of Inez Kelley and all of y'all.
I hope you'll share your favorite part of your home with us. Good luck!
Born and raised in Pgh!
One of my favorite things about Pgh – giving directions! 🙂 No one knows the names of streets but everything is near a landmark. And even if you say “it’s by the old Shop N Save” everyone knows where that is!
“Home” was always where my grandparents lived. I moved around a lot in Southeast Asia as a kid and left for university (in Far North Queensland) when I was 17 and my grandparents’ place in Nepal was the only constant through these years. It’s a lovely place—we can see the himalayas from the balcony. I like that.
Home is also wherever I happen to be living at the moment and, for the past ten years, that has been the USA. For the past 3 years, “home” is pretty close to West Virginia actually—near the Blue Ridge and I love it that I can wake up to a view of gorgeous mountains here too!
KarenF – I collect Fenton Glass long-tail Birds of Happiness. I got my first one at age 5 and it remains on of my prize possessions. I have about 30 now. I was so heartbroken when I found out they stopped making those fabulous designs. And yes, we sing ‘Country Roads’ every single time we cross back into the state. My kids learned that song along with the ABCs.
While John Denver is the original creator (My husband saw him sing this for the first time at the opening of the then “NEW” Mountaineer stadium). I like this version by Hermes House Band. It is more upbeat and lively.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmMtCGs5wAc
Sarah Title – so scary and sad and FRUSTRATING! The national coverage of this incident has been pitiful. We all need to know who wore what at the Grammy awards but ignore TOXIC DRINKING WATER FOR 300,000 people!
Peggy O. I *HAD* to include “West ‘By God’ Virginia” in this series (its in book3)
Okay, some how I screwed up that code. Youtube it. It is lovely!
Random Michelle K. My kids were all born in Morgantown at WVU’s Ruby Memorial. (I had a preemie daughter and then preemie twin boys)
Home to me is the Midwest. I’m actually from north eastern Indiana and recently bought a house about a half a mile from my old high school. What I love about the Midwest is the variety. It’s about 2 degrees right now and we’ve had almost 30 inches of snow in the last few weeks. We have gorgeous National Parks like Shades and Turkey Run, ski hills, tons of lakes, etc. I love driving up to Michigan and playing on a beach at Lake Michigan, or dunes, excellent skiing, hiking, etc. I prefer a place with four seasons for sure. As a side note, my husband, brother, and I stopped in W Virginia on the way home from North Carolina after visiting family. We stopped at the most scenic rest stop ever and I bought a cinnamon roll candle that was packaged like a real cinnamon roll, and some vanilla latte wax tarts shaped and packaged like cookies. They were awesome. Making candles that look like pastries must be popular there!
Home for me is a little bit south of Seattle, Washington. I’ve lived there basically my entire life. When I went away to college in upstate New York, I miss the ocean, the mountains, and the rain like you would not believe. And the people. Western Washingtons are a unique bunch, let me tell you.
Home for me is upstate New York. The Berkshires, mountain lakes, I love them all.
I lived in 7 states before buying a little house, sight unseen (via fax), half-way across the country. I was in my early 30s. Arriving after dark, without electricity or furniture, we slept on the grotty orange shag carpet. When I walked out of the front door and down the street the next morning I experienced a sense of belonging in that little SD town that was so strong and unexpected it discomposed me. I was only able to live there for a couple of years, but I learned what ‘home’ feels like.
I currently live in Phoenix, AZ, which I love, but this is home #30 (yes, I counted). I grew up in the Central Valley of California and the landscape nearby (think rolling hills of yellow grass and oak trees that are evergreens) say “home” to me. When I first drove over the hill leaving the Autostrada at Firenze Cento, south into rural Tuscany, I was astounded to find that the landscape there screamed “HOME”. And I’m not even Italian.
Man, my theme song is Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam.” Born in Oregon, grew up in northern Mexico, lived in a converted school bus while my parents dragged me and my siblings all over the damn continent. Finally settled back down in Oregon, but can’t pick a city to stay in.
This is quite foreign to my husband, who lived in the same city for the first 30 years of his life. I don’t think he ever would have left if we hadn’t gotten married. Apparently, I don’t do “roots.” 2-3 years is about my limit for staying in one area, then I get the urge to move on. Right now, I’m seriously tempted to move to Austin, TX, but my Viking husband doesn’t tolerate the sun very well, so we’ll probably just move to Portland instead.
Modesto, CA is where I call home even though I no longer live there. Most of my family still lives there, I grew up there, I still have many, many friends there and so it’s where I go for holidays, relaxing, etc.
Any metro area that has a well-developed public transit system feels like home to me. My “home” should technically be suburbia, but everything is too far apart when car transportation is required. I would rather be able to walk everywhere.
Home for me is a small town in rural Manitoba Canada. My parents still live there, and I live about an hour away in Winnipeg (a bigger city of 700,000 people).
I grew up in a small town in southern Indiana. So when you say “home”, my mind goes there first. But my real home is the library, and books are my best friends.
Growing up, I loved spending time in the children’s room, getting to know Encyclopedia Brown. I was thrilled to graduate to the Young Adults’ section, those pitiful few spinning racks of Sci-Fi paperbacks where I read Earthsea and Dragondrums.
When I went away to university, I was entranced by the size and scope of the library system. I spent a great deal of time wandering through the dusty stacks, looking for nothing in particular.
The library gave me a place to be wherever I was, a place to be happy in. Starting out in married life, the library was a luxury that I didn’t have to buy. Then, it became the place I took my children, loaded them into the stroller and hauled them down for reading time.
Now that they are older, I tend to go to the library on the weekends with them to scout the much-improved YA section. And I sneak back on my own during the week, while they are in school.
Library will always be home to me.
Home is where I keep my stuff. I don’t really get attached to places as I’ve never really started putting down roots.
I was born in a nondescript small town but I haven’t been back there since our family moved away when I was 9. My teen years were spent in a characterless and ugly small commuter town. I don’t miss that place at all but my parents still live there so I go back often. Iäd never want to live ther. I do miss the city where I went to university, but there’s no jobs there and most of my friends have moved on so it’s not really home anymore. I’ve lived in six towns as an adult, my latest move was just this last fall to another characterless commuter town. We’ll see how long it takes for me to get restless.
I grew up on Long Island (until I was 13) and Massachusetts (until I was 18), and I now live in Philly.
They’re all home in different ways. Philly is where I’ve put roots down for the past 8 or 9 years. Massachusetts feels like home because my family’s there, and I’m probably more New England in temperament than anywhere else. New York is my roots, since all of my family, mom and dad’s sides, came through Ellis Island from Italy in the early 1900s.
So that’s home for me.
I grew up in a small village in Western Finland, and the forest started just a few steps from our back door. We played a lot in that forest, built a tree house and picked berries. During winter it was excellent to do cross country skiing trips in, and still, every time I go home to visit my parents I do a walk with the dog in that forest. I miss it so much, living in the city. Yes, where I live now is home, but there still is a part of me that misses that forest.
Home…
Now that I think about it, I don’t have a place that means home to me—I left the place I was born before I turned 21. In the 27 years since, I have lived in three other countries, none of which feels truly like “home.”
However, whenever I’ve been able to travel back and visit my family, the occasions where a few dozen of us are together, making noise and remembering events thirty or forty years past, that’s when I feel home.
I live in Tel Aviv, I grew up in California, and I have an inexplicable connection to Connemara, Ireland where I’ve lived for a while and visited many many times. So – it’s complicated? 🙂
I live outside Washington, D.C. I love that there is so much do and so much is free. I am from Indiana and often miss it.
I was born in Devon, UK, but have lived in Canada most of my life. Home is Calgary, the best city in the world. If the sun is shining, and we have the most sunny days in Canada, everyone in town is out on the riverside paths or heading for the Rockies, 1 hour west, We hike, snowshoe, ski, and last weekend I went heli-snowboarding. We are home to the ‘Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth’, the Calgary Stampede. Coming off the flooding in Calgary last summer, I couldn’t be prouder to be a member of the ‘Hell or High Water’ club, even if it did take a week to get my power back on – at least the water stopped a block away!
I am from Chicago, and given that actual air temperature right now is -1 it is admittedly hard to find many good things to say about it, but if I stretch back in my memory from 6 months ago…
I love the energy of the city. It’s vibrant and diverse and busy, but not quite as overwhelming as NYC or the other east coast cities. I find it a great balance—friendly but not too friendly; lots of culture (restaurants, theater, music, etc) but not snotty or pretentious; big but not too big to explore. And a summer night in Chicago is truly a thing of beauty, though it’s hard to remember that at this moment. 🙂
I am a Mississippi girl and I think of Oxford as home. It has a sweet southern style but you will meet some of the most amazing people from all over the world…it has a great art community with in the city. I just love Oxford and want to move back there some day but right now I am in another town in Mississippi…not too happy about this place.
WV IS a gorgeous state. At least, it looks pretty good from over here in KY, LOL.
I think one cool thing about Kentucky is that it’s got so many different landscapes and regions. We’ve got our mountainy parts and our horsey parts, and lakes and caves out the wazoo. Love it!
Home is Wisconsin. I was born in Madison and I’ve lived within an hour of here for 28 of my 30 years. My dad’s dad was from Hawkins, so I have roots up towards the woods, too. I like knowing everyone: everywhere I go, I went to high school or college with someone, or I TAed for them while they were in college, or they were a regular customer at one of the shops where I worked, or they go to church with my parents. I haven’t always been the best person (who is?) and sometimes that comes back to bite me, but I can’t imagine trying to leave that behind. I’d get lonely for my sins.
Home is whenever I cross the border into Virginia. I wasn’t born there, but it’s where I spent most of my life, including my college years, and it’s where my parents live now.
Now I have “The Log Driver’s Waltz” in my head—and I always love your disclaimers, Sarah.
Home has moved around a lot because I’ve lived all over the world thanks to work, but in my heart it’s always going to be on a horse farm surrounded by woods because that’s where I was raised. Montreal and Toronto are always going to be familiar and friendly, Whitehorse has captured my imagination and DEFINITELY put the Spell of the Yukon on me, and while Paris is lovely Lille is much more my kind of city. I’m probably going to wind up in San Fran in the next few years due to work and every time I move to a bigger city I feel like I move that much further away from home… and even home is gone, buried by sprawling cities and shopping centers and housing developments, instead of family farms and horses.
I canoe around James’ Bay every few summers and ride in the Yukon every few falls, and those two are the closest I come to home these days—sunlight filtered through the twisted trees growing from sheer cliffs, outcroppings of granite, and a silence that is deafening and filling and freeing. No cars, no planes, no electricity, just you and the smell of leaves and dirt and water (well and horse), and your own cooking, which tastes amazing at the end of the day but absolutely disgusting trying to re-create it at home over a stove.
I have no idea how I wound up a computer geek in an office. Clearly I should drop everything and become a lumberjack.
Oregon is always home. Moved here when I was 10, got out for college, but never really wanted to move anywhere else.
I was raised in upstate NY and though I have lived in southern Calif for most of my life, I still consider NY my home. MY favorite part of NY…the St. Lawrence Seaway…
I’ve lived in quite a few places, so no one spot is home for me. I mostly grew up in Michigan and it holds a special place in my heart, but I also lived in West Virginia for several years when I was young and I’ll always love it too. It’s really a beautiful place and I’m happy to see it get some “book love.”
I was born and raised on an island in Alaska. I left for a while when first my mom, and then I went to college in the lower 48. When I graduated I thought I’d come back for a year and then go on to see more of the world but I’ve never left. Mostly it’s my family since I have close extended family here, but I also love the sense of community in such a small town. And the scenery is amazing. We’re all tucked up with mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. There are still times I look out at the ocean and think how lucky I am to live somewhere so beautiful.
Home is the beach.
Home is Florida, and I’m from Indiana. What I love about Florida is the distinct lack of snow.
Home is New England—Connecticut specifically, even though I’ve never actually lived there. That’s where my parents are from and most of the extended Italian (and newly discovered Lithuanian) relatives still are. I was born in upstate NY but I’ve lived in Virginia for most of my life and still consider myself a New Englander.
I hate to admit it but I still have trouble sometimes understanding the different thicker southern accents.
I live in a small town halfway between Seattle and Portland. I grew up here moved back after I had kids. I love that I can drive to town and pass my parents on the road. Home is where my family is and we all live here.
I’m from Camas, Washington and now reside in Portland, Oregon. The Columbia River Gorge is a place my family went to frequently for fishing, hiking and occasional camping. Something about it makes me feel so alive and free. It will always be home Home.
But when I was 18, I moved to Droop Mountain in Pocahontas County, West Virginia to be with a man I was desperately in love with. It was a culture shock to be sure, but I learned so much: how to raise rabbits and quail and baby deer, stack firewood, build a woodshed, hunt and skin a squirrel, shoot a rifle. We gathered all kinds of herbs in those wild areas. I still dream of bloodroot, wild ginger, endangered ladyslippers, jack-in-the-pulpit, bees humming around the monarda.
The land was very haunted; there are so many abandoned houses and barns in that area. Almost everywhere we went in West Virginia, truth be told. The sense of being watched in the woods was almost palpable. It wasn’t hostile, just…observing. Present. Spiritus loci.
The romance was doomed and I lost a pregnancy. There was as much loneliness and sorrow there as wonder and joy. The place it has made in my mind is a temple where I go for inspiration, mystery, magic. It is a deep and important part of the landscape of my mind. So in a sense, it is also home. My mind feels at home there.
Anyway, yeah, I miss West Virginia. Wild, wonderful, indeed. Country Roads take me home.
Home for me is Traverse City, Michigan. To me it is the most beautiful place to live. We have all four seasons (even though winter tries to hog the year). It has always been home and it is where everyone I love is.
Kara – yes! The WV forests and mountains have a ‘presence’. It never felt ominous to me, more like ancient eyes watching with care.
Louise H.- Alaska is on my MUST GO TO list. We actually looked at moving there once but the cost of living scared us. It seems so beautiful in pictures and from stories I hear others tell.
Lori K. – What is it about Michigan and WV swapping residents? I’ve met several and am one myself.
Teri Anne Stanley – It is beautiful! And Hiya, state-neighbor!
Lindsay Beeson – Those scented things were really big a while ago. I had an awesome smelling blackberry pie shaped candle and a glazed pecan roll. Actually, I’d like to have those scents again, even without the pastry shapes. They were wonderful.
Alberta is where I am from.
Though far away now I can not help but feel an connection to all the cowboy/ ranch hand novels (some set in Alberta!). But what I miss most is not the amazing scenery of wide open skies and fantastical mountains but the people.
Born and bred in London, England but home for me is always somewhere where I’m close to the sea, lived in the Bay Area in California for 15 years and now I’m in Hawaii, which is right in the middle of the sea, so I’m pretty happy here!
And this is a great book, btw. 🙂