Where I was then--memories of a book

I am rereading an old favorite, Anne Stuart's Cinderman. 

I remember the first time I read it. It came out in 1994 but I bought it used a year or so later. My twins were born in August of 1994, and soon after that we moved to Wichita from a tiny Kansas town. I was ready for the change--I was lonely, home all day alone with my older daughter, who was twenty two months when the twins arrived.

We moved(a horror I can't really remember--my memories of those first few months after the twins were born are sketchy) right into a neighborhood in the middle of town. I could walk my double stroller--twins together in the larger back seat, oldest in the front-- to Wal Mart or to an early morning yard sale in our neighborhood by the Arkansas River. I could get to a branch library just a few blocks away or to the big library downtown.

I loved to read, a lifelong bookworm from a family of bookworms. At that time, hubby and I were stuck in a strict fundamentalist church that frowned on romance novels and fiction in general, though mysteries were maybe ok... Movies were always okay.  I never figured that out, but it was probably because High Mucky Muck Rev So-n-So liked movies. (Do I sound cynical?) Anyway, I tried to comply by reading mysteries, when what I really liked were romances--historicals, gothics, Harlequins. And the budget was tight, so I wasn't buying books.

Then I found a used book store, Book-a-Holic. What a delight! I decided to heck with the ban on romance books and bought dozens, which I read in the privacy of my own home and I never once was tempted to go cheat on my husband! Hundreds of romance novels later, I still haven't stepped out with a fancy man.

Cinderman was part of my freedom to read Romance Fiction decision.

Funny how this book stuck in my memory--I remembered the names of the characters. It was so different from other Harlequins, much closer to scifi. A few years ago I bought a bundle of Anne Stuart's older books as ebooks. I was delighted to have Cinderman in e!