RaeAnne Thayne is a #1 Publishers Weekly, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains where she lives with her family. Her books have won numerous honors. RaeAnne was recently featured in the September issue of Welcome Home and graciously answered a few questions!

1. Why did you become a writer?

I was always a voracious reader and fell in love with romance novels when I was still in junior high school. I never had dreams of being a writer until high school, when my mom encouraged me to take a journalism class. I fell in love with the power of story and knew I wanted to some day write a romance novel. I didn’t start writing fiction until after I graduated from college in journalism, married my sweetheart and started work at a daily paper. When I was home on maternity leave with our oldest daughter, now 30, I decided I had to start pursuing this dream I had cherished for so long. I sold my first book five years later and feel so incredibly blessed to have found a vocation where I get to make people happy every day.

2. What inspired your current book?

My amazing husband of 34 years was adopted at birth in a closed adoption. He had wonderful, loving parents and was never interested in finding his birth family until he took a DNA test out of curiosity regarding his ethnicity and cultural heritage. On Ancestry.com, he was linked to several people who were close relatives because of the amount of shared DNA. Through a remarkable series of events, he found his birth family, including three half-brothers he has become very close to. It turns out we were living only a few blocks away from his birth uncle and had known him for years. I developed a fascination with DNA tests as a way to find parentage answers. In THE SEA GLASS COTTAGE, a teenage girl whose mother died with her secrets wants to find the identity of father and thinks a DNA test might be the way to uncover those answers. The DNA angle is a subplot to the larger story but you can be sure my husband’s experience was very fresh in my mind as I was writing!

3. What is next for you?

My next release, CHRISTMAS AT HOLIDAY HOUSE, is a standalone book set in the charming Colorado ski town of Silver Bells. It is overflowing with festive spirit! I’m currently working on my next hardcover, THE PATH TO SUNSHINE COVE, out in April 2021.