Laura Haley-McNeil

9/23/18, The Penthouse

Hello, Everyone!

I hope you had a good week, even better, a great week! Fall has officially started. I love this time of year when the leaves change to their brilliant colors. The best view of the fall colors is from a high rise. You can look down at the changing trees and it looks like a flower garden. What better place to view the colors than from a penthouse!

When I was writing Imagine the Kiss, I had to imagine where my characters lived. I love that part of writing. The internet makes it so easy. I would type in penthouse and voilà! images of the most beautiful penthouses imaginable would fill my screen. I needed a penthouse because that’s where my character, Teagan Whitloch Munroe, lives at the beginning of the story. She and her husband bought the penthouse in the old downtown department store that was converted into condominiums.

The department store was part of a chain that was built at the turn of the last century. Whenever the owner would visit the Denver department store, he would stay in the penthouse built specifically for him. The lower levels of the building were designed for the various departments of the store, with the other floors designed for offices and the upper floors designed for apartments. After the department store chain closed, the building was sold to a developer, who hired an architectural firm to convert the entire building into condominiums.

Teagan and her husband love living in downtown Denver. As the concertmaster for the Denver Orchestra, she’s within walking distance of the concert hall. She can walk to afternoon rehearsal and in the evening she can walk to the performance. She’s familiar with the trendy restaurants where she meets friends for a latte or dinner. Her husband is a plastic surgeon and is within walking distance of the downtown hospital. Both are busy and have little time to cook so they usually have meals delivered. There’s nothing Teagan loves more than to sit on the balcony in the morning with a cup of tea and look over the city with its beautiful changing colors.

As a condominium building, the structure has changed considerably, but when the building was designed, the architect created a few secrets which Teagan discovers when she finds her entire world falling apart. Her marriage isn’t as it seems and she discovers the building where she lives isn’t as it seems either.

If you live in my part of the world, I hope you’re enjoying fall and the beautiful colors it shares before the roar of winter comes blasting through.

And I hope you have a great week ahead filled with lots of happy moments.

Love,

Laura