Blog Archives
Our Place in the World
Being Laramie Buchanan follows a twenty-three-year-old woman navigating grief, first love, family secrets, and sudden danger. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The first chapter of all of my novels is the framework from which the writing emerges organically. Sometimes a song, an observation, a dream, or a personal experience inspires the setting. The setting of the first chapter of Being Laramie Buchanan is reminiscent of my own law school graduation ceremony that took place at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder. I recently saw a photo of me in a cap and gown at that ceremony, and as with all of my novels, I asked the question “what if”? For Laramie Buchanan, the question was “what if someone significant had been missing at the ceremony”? And from there, the story develops with answers provided in the backstory and its aftermath. I discovered that as I write, I am able to see the action develop in front of me – almost like watching a movie. As I sit at my keyboard, it often feels like the novel is writing itself and my fingers on the keyboard are just the tools needed to put it into words on a page.
Family secrets play a significant role in the narrative. Why do you think hidden family histories have such power over our sense of self?
I believe that our sense of self is silently built around us, almost like a hidden building structure, as we grow. It gives us a sense of security by knowing our place in the world, particularly in the closeness of the family environment. But hidden family secrets can shake that “structure”, sometimes almost like an earthquake, and force us to evaluate and repair the damage to make the “structure” safe and strong again. For Laramie Buchanan, the family secret wasn’t in itself “earth-shattering” but it added another layer of conflict and confusion to the complications she had begun to face in her early steps into adulthood.
Crescent Moon Ranch feels almost like a character itself. What inspired the ranch setting?
I was born and raised in Boulder County, Colorado, which is a mixture of mountains and plains. Having lived here my entire life, I’ve absorbed the essence of the exquisite area, and it has naturally emerged in the writing of each of my novels. I have also practiced yoga for several years. So I felt that Laramie needed a place of renewal and peace to allow herself to regain perspective and perhaps experience self-discovery. I have travelled up the mountain canyons many times and could visualize a place like the “Crescent Moon Ranch Yoga Retreat” tucked away on “Raspberry Road” and let my imagination run freely.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have begun writing the next novel, which will be a crossover of the literary/ contemporary women’s fiction/ romance genres with a slight fantasy element. This book may be available in late 2026 or early 2027. I also write illustrated picture books in rhyme for children, ages 2-6, one of which may be published within the next year, as well.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Laramie Buchanan is a likeable, relatable protagonist whose journey from emotional reflection to self-discovery is paved by seemingly insignificant moments that carry consequential impact.
Spirited Laramie Buchanan steps into her early twenties full of lifelong curiosity and enthusiasm. Living in a quiet unassuming family, Laramie had fueled her thirst for discovery at the library since age 6 – learning to prepare French cuisine, studying Greek and Roman art, developing a passion for yoga. But as a young adult, the smooth life shaped in Boulder, Colorado, is upended when painful life events rapidly converge. A first love, ghosted, a death in the family, heartbreak, missing pages in a journal, a crumbling shack, and unwitting perils leave her stunned and nearly broken.
Can she muster the strength and resilience to bear harsh realities on her own? Will she allow a silent handsome mystery man to enter her life at the same time?”Being Laramie Buchanan” is another book in the “Boulder Girl” series that began with the award-winning debut novel, “Boulder Girl, Remember Me When the Moon Hangs Low”. Like Clark’s previous novels, “Being Laramie Buchanan” is set in and around vibrant, scenic Boulder, Colorado and follows Laramie Buchanan’s first steps and missteps into early adulthood. This book, with its blend of romance and grief, will appeal to readers of contemporary romance, literary crossover fiction, book club readers, and fans of authors like Colleen Hoover, Taylor Jenkins Reid, and Nicholas Sparks.
Being Laramie Buchanan
Being Laramie Buchanan follows twenty-three-year-old Laramie as she tries to step into adulthood while grief, first love, family secrets, and sudden danger keep pulling the ground from under her boots. After her mother’s death and the bruising return of Vick, the man who ghosted her and then reappears engaged to someone else, Laramie’s life begins to widen through her work at an art gallery, the discovery of a half-brother, and her repeated visits to Crescent Moon Ranch, where the quiet, guarded Chance Griffin becomes both rescuer and possibility.
I was drawn most to the way the novel treats becoming yourself as a messy, nonlinear act. Laramie is curious, capable, romantic, and sometimes maddeningly vulnerable, which makes her feel less like a heroine being polished for display and more like a young woman still learning where tenderness ends, and self-erasure begins. The book gives real weight to the ordinary textures of her world, flowers, yoga mats, gallery binders, cowboy boots, family kitchens, and those details build a kind of domestic gravity around the larger emotional turns.
What surprised me was how much the story refuses to stay in one emotional lane. It begins like a grief-and-heartbreak novel, then folds in family revelations, ranch-life renewal, suspense, violence, and a second-chance romance that feels deliberately slower and earthier than Laramie’s dazzling first love. Vick is the glittering wound; Chance is the weathered shelter. That contrast gives the book its strongest pulse, especially as Laramie begins to understand that being wanted is not the same as being cherished.
Readers who enjoy women’s fiction, contemporary romance, coming-of-age fiction, family drama, Western romance, and romantic suspense will find plenty to hold onto here. The book may appeal to fans of Robyn Carr’s small-town emotional landscapes, though Cynthia L. Clark gives this story a more Boulder-and-ranch sensibility, with art galleries, mountain roads, and country songs humming in the background. Being Laramie Buchanan is a tender and eventful novel about grief, grit, and the strange mercy of beginning again.
Pages: 278 | ISBN : 978-1977290427
