Please welcome with me our Guest Author — Tesa Devlyn
Set in Hope, Idaho in 1888, Dangerous Disguise took several years to write. Not because I had to rewrite the existing story over years, but because from the early conception of the story, it took on different themes and faces.
Even though I’d been writing for several years, this book was the one I wanted to pour the work into and sell. Some stories can take many directions, while others stay on track and have to be told in one particular way. With Dangerous Disguise, none of the previous themes seemed right.
For example, one version involved time travel, where Kate disappeared from modern day and landed in the 1880’s, in a bordello no less. By the way, local historical accounts mention a bordello on one of the islands in Lake Pend Oreille. The beginning was fun and exciting to create, but the story fizzled out, and something told me to go straight historical.
One historical theme used the mail order bride device, where Kate, instead of Mary Catherine, responded to Ethan’s newspaper advertisement for a wife and traveled to Idaho territory to fall in love with him.
Somewhere in that scene of discovery, Kate and I both discovered Ethan wasn’t the right man for her.
Now you’re thinking, that woman really lives in her own world far too much, but it’s true. Kate and I realized she needed someone else, someone less tamed than Ethan Howland, someone rougher around the edges. I went back to the beginning and discovered former Texas Ranger, Seth Morgan, the perfect man for Kate.
When writing a book, it sometimes doesn’t all come together in a close version to the original plan. Writer’s can discard thousands of words, searching for that perfect story line, that perfect character, for that time and that story. Sometimes it’s sad to discard a scene, or cut a character, but strengthening the story has to remain at the forefront.
Bio: Influenced by her great-grandmother, who wrote several books of poems and philosophy and her immediate family of avid readers, Tesa began 
devouring books the moment she learned to read Dick and Jane escapades. Reading became her favorite pastime and soon, she realized she too, could create stories and characters and often used them in the “show and tell” segment of her grade school classes. Her classmates were impressed, believing she had participated in all of those exciting episodes.
As an adult, Tesa began to pen romances, her favorite genre, but after several discouraging rejections, turned her full attention back to her marriage, children and homemaking with part time jobs sprinkled in. But she never gave up on the goal to someday write something others would enjoy reading.
With children grown, and grandchildren the joy of her life, Tesa decided life is too short not to pursue her dreams, and around a full time job has prioritized her writing. With education and the fabulous support of her Romance Writer’s Of America Chapter, she has learned leaps and bounds about writing in general and putting together novels.
With a published short story in an anthology to her credit, and a flattering review from Romantic Times, Tesa is determined to entertain and touch every person who takes a chance on her stories. She currently has completed one historical novel, which is in submission, has two contemporaries roughed in and two other’s in various stages of revision with her sometimes writing partner, working under the name of Amy Andrews.
Married for 38 years to the man she patterns all her heros after, Tesa loves to travel, spend time with family, and work on their home and ten acres.
Leanne Tyler 