Sally Crosiar (rhymes with ‘closure’) likes to read and write novels that delve into the messy, hopeful mix of inevitable conflicts that happen in every human relationship. People - what will they do? Sally's second novel, HOME PLACE, is a contemporary romance set in the very house where Sally spent her first fourteen years and that she still calls her Home Place after all this time. People develop relationships with places too. "I certainly did with my Home Place! It's a grand old house built by my great-grands in the mid-1800s - a drafty barn of a place with touches of elegance and a whole boatload of sentiment," says Sally. In the story, Kat Patterson tries to save her ancestral home from her brother's greed. "I wanted to see if Kat could stop her home from becoming a golf course as my family could not." Will she manage it? Sally's not telling. Sally relies on her rural and small-town background in HOME PLACE and in her debut novel COME BACK. "I set COME BACK in a town I grew up near in Illinois - but moved it one state west to protect the innocent," says Sally. "I saw my characters on Main Street, at the Community Center, and the old Flat Iron building where I had my very first dentist appointment." "I need stories to be well-grounded in place," Sally says. "But characters fascinate me too - especially when I can crawl inside their messy heads! That's why I write from multiple points of view. I need to figure out why my characters do and say the outrageous things they do as they push through tough challenges." In addition to fiction, Sally published FIND THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE to share how she and her late husband Dave found each other. “We’d both been hurt, and were nearly ready to give up on love. And then we both gave it one more shot. Lucky, lucky us!” That last shot at love involved a strategy Sally had never tried before. “I stopped looking for the perfect guy – and instead got really clear about what I wanted in a relationship. I set a goal for that amazing relationship – and 3 weeks later, I met Dave. He came with lots of complications, including being blind. But in my goal, I never said my partner had to be able to see! My goal kept me honest and gave me the guts to give love with Dave a try. Thank all the stars I did!” Writing about Dave and the love story he and Sally created helped her heal after his death. “We held workshops and started the book before Dave died,” says Sally. “Writing Find the Love of Your Life helped keep Dave with me – and eventually helped me see that I’d learned too much about loving from him not to use what I learned. So I re-assessed my goal and only made one tweak that I knew Dave would want for me too. I asked for my partner to be healthy next time.” It took a little longer than three weeks the second time. “I started looking before I was really ready, is what I think,” Sally says. “But after so much grief, I did need to have fun again. I never expected dating to be fun – but it was! Maybe I just wasn’t old enough before.” Several years after Dave died, Sally met Ray. “Our relationship is different than what I had with Dave. We’re both different people. But the essential components – what I really need – those are present in my relationship with Ray. I’d say lucky, lucky us – but it took and continues to take a lot of work to be so lucky!” In between times, Sally wrote another book that honors Dave. “I think of My Uncle Dave as a children’s book with an adult message,” says Sally. “It’s an almost true story about when Dave, the blind guy falls into the swimming pool and taught us both an important life lesson." She has also co-authored LOVE BUILDERS: TOOLS TO BUILD ANY RELATIONSHIP with her friend and mentor Dr. Sidney Simon and numerous curricula used with children in out-of-school-time settings.