Twelve years ago, I moved from a small Central California beach town to a small Arizona cowboy town. “Culture shock” doesn’t even touch the transition. My first summer in Arizona, I was working as a reporter for the daily paper here, and my editors sent me to the annual rodeo to write a feature story about the Rodeo Queens. It was July 4th weekend and I fell in love.
Not with the rodeo queens, and not even with the rodeo. But with the cowboys in Wranglers. For the next several years, my friends and I would attend the annual rodeo dance and hit up the western bar downtown, every July 4 weekend. We hung out downtown on the shady square and hiked up mountains to enjoy the views.
And I fell in love with Arizona.
Small-town Arizona is so romantic. The rich, watercolor sunsets, the festive weekend crowds, the cowboys. It’s picturesque. The beautiful historic courthouse, the downtown plaza, the Wranglers.
So when I wrote my first book, “The Dating Intervention,” I set it in my new hometown.
As I prepare to release the book August 1, I thought it would be fun to do a photo tour to count down the final 10 days before launch. Each photo is a real-life scene that inspired something in the book.
I’ve made a few special trips downtown during recent weeks to collect imagery of the town I love, and I wanted to give my blog readers a sneak peek of the photo tour countdown. It begins July 22. Stay tuned for more photos!