Kissing in the Dark

The Series

• Book One: When I Fall in Love
• Book Two: Shades of Honor
• Book Three: The Longing
• Book Four: Lips That Touch Mine
• Book Five: Kissing in the Dark
• Book Six: Sleigh of Hope
• Book Seven: Leave It for the Rain
• Book Eight: The Promise in Your Eyes
• Book Nine: Captured by the Captain
• The Deluxe Grayson Brothers 8-Book Boxed Set
• The Grayson Brothers Boxed Set (4 Books)

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Author's Note

Fredonia residents drilled the nation’s first natural gas well in 1821, and laid pipes to convey the gas to an old hotel and several stores in the tiny New York State village near the shores of Lake Erie.

In 1871 Alva Colburn drilled a gas well on Mill Street (now Norton Place) with the hope of running his first grist mill machinery by gas, but the gas was insufficient. Mr. Colburn built a raceway (a channeled watercourse) from the dam, which was one of the largest along the Canadaway Creek, to his mill. The amount of water in the raceway (referred to as a pond in this story) was controlled by a head gate, allowing Colburn to use a large water wheel as power for grinding grain. Later on a boiler room was added and steam power was used. Mr. Colburn’s sons eventually took over the mill, and a few years later, two of them moved to McPherson, Kansas, to build a flour mill.

To serve my story, I sent all four Colburn brothers to Kansas in 1879, and brought Faith Wilkins to town as the new owner of Colburn’s Grist Mill property, which she promptly turned into a greenhouse.

For the sake of accuracy, Fredonia is a village in the town of Pomfret located in Chautauqua County. The county sheriff in 1879 was Leander S. Phelps, but I invented the details of how a sheriff did his job. Everything about Syracuse, except the name of the city, is fiction.

Japan was a reclusive nation until 1853 when Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy sailed gunships into Tokyo harbor. Japan opened itself up to trade with the U.S., and in 1869, settlers with the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony were among the first to arrive from Japan. The 1880 Census shows a total of 148 Japanese in the United States. The Japanese geisha I smuggled aboard the Commodore’s ship is a product of my imagination.

The song “Kissing in the Dark” was written by George Cooper (lyrics) and Steven Foster (music) in 1863. Damon’s Band was from Dunkirk, but, I don’t know if the band was a string quartet (as depicted in this story).

Thank you for indulging the small liberties I’ve taken with the setting and history of Fredonia—a wonderfully romantic place for Faith and Duke Grayson to fall in love and live happily ever after.