Betsy Dornbusch-About Colorado

The first time I stepped in Boulder, I realized it was Home. Ditto: Grand Lake, our other town so I had to put a lot of thought into what I would say. I’ve lived in Colorado for eighteen years and we are firmly entrenched…while we may someday have an apartment elsewhere (Paris, anyone?) I can say with all the certainty of the young and innocent, of which I’m neither, we will always maintain a home in Colorado.

But for this post I had to ask myself why?

There’s an attitude here of Friendly Independence. Boulder in particular reveres the weird and the original in people. We love our artists and street buskers. As a longtime weirdo SF geek, this attitude is something I really appreciate. This is not to say Colorado is a bastion of civil rights like gay marriage or some utopia of honesty (a police chief was recently jailed for doing drug deals…in the jail that bears his name). But an abundance of happy things in Colorado help with that attitude: wildlife, mountains to keep things in perspective, beautiful weather, and an appreciation for people who live well and exactly they way they want to.

Boulder is fairly wealthy suburbia, connected to Denver and the rest of the State by major highways. The schools are excellent and I can drive about one song length to a major mall or grocery.  The shopping and entertainment are top notch along the Front Range and the highways system is pretty sound, if a little crowded. My neighborhood and friends are extremely social, whether we’re meeting at the pool or for a house party. The “Flatirons” loom over the town, Colorado University, and Pearl Street Mall.

 

In summer, Grand Lake is a family resort town, with three lakes, the beach, the boardwalk shops, and the renowned Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater. The big bare mountain over the lake is nicknamed “Mt. Baldy.”  The Fourth of July fireworks over the lake and the all day beach party are perennial favorites. But well-connected, the town is not. For six or seven months of the year, Grand Lake (pop. 400 or so) is the end of the road. Located on the south end of Rocky Mountain National Park, the main highway leading to it closes on the north end of town along about October and reopens in May or so. The pass south of town closed three times last winter, long enough to unexpectedly lengthen our weekends.

Grand Lake is featured in every book of my latest series, Sentinel. The main characters, the twins, needed somewhere secluded to grow up and it serves them well. Writing fiction encompasses my love for the town but it doesn’t mean I don’t periodically destroy parts of it with fire, earthquakes, high winds, and floods. Mwahaha.

Betsy Dornbusch’s most recent book is Lost Prince, Book One of the Salt Road Saga, an erotic space opera. Sentinel: Archive Of Fire, the first book of her urban fantasy series featuring demons rebelling against Asmodai, King of Hell, released in January 2012. The short fiction of Betsy Dornbusch has appeared in print and online venues, including the anthology Deadly by the Dozen. She's an editor with the ezine Electric Spec and is the sole proprietor of Sex Scenes at Starbucks available at Betsy’s website where you can believe most of what she writes. In her free time, she snowboards and air jams at punk rock concerts.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10533683-deadly-by-the-dozen 

http://electricspec.com/

http://betsydornbusch.com

photos provided by author