In two months, my third book in the Filthy Rich series, Serving Sin, will be out in the world.

One of the things I’ve loved about the series is taking readers to places and settings I adore: the mountains and villages of Northern Spain, downtown San Francisco, small towns in the Midwest.

In Serving Sin, I get to show readers the beautiful city of Guanajuato, Mexico.

Guanajuato is the home of Cenobia Trujillo, a Mexican-heiress who is now the CEO of her family’s automotive manufacturing conglomerate. Cenobia asks reluctant prince Roman Sheppard, head of a top security firm, to come to Guanajuato to protect her from growing threats while she prepares for the launch of her company’s first designed-and-made-in-Mexico eco-car.

Roman rescued her from her kidnappers when she was eighteen, and although they haven’t seen each other since, there’s still a connection.

Readers get to explore the beautiful canyon city of Guanajuato along with Roman and Cenobia. My family and I got to explore Guanajuato in 2019.

Guanajuato is five hours north of Mexico City in an area called the Bajío, an area in the central plains of Mexico known for its quality of life, agriculture, and colonial architecture. The Bajío was also where the spark of the Mexican Revolution began. And the state of Guanajuato was where my father’s family immigrated from in the early 1900s to work on the railroad in Kansas.

Driving into Guanajuato is truly shocking. It’s built in a canyon – you can’t even see the city without driving through tunnels. American tourists will head straight to San Miguel de Allende from the León airport without even knowing what they’re missing! Roads are practically non-existent in the interior of Guanajuato – or at least, roads you can see. Spaniards re-routed the river that flowed through the bottom of the canyon because of persistent flooding. Now, those old river shafts through the limestone are the roads.

Once through the tunnels, you’re instantly greeted with the shock of candy-colored homes climbing the canyon walls, and Baroque churches, hotels, and museums in the central plaza paid for by its wealthy silver-mining past.

Many of the homes up the canyon walls are only accessible by the narrow winding alleys and stairwells called callejones. As we walked up (and up and up and up) to get to the top of a canyon, we realized why all the Guanajuatans were in great shape!

The indigenous people were a group of tribes known collectively as Chichimecans. They were nomads described as barbarians by the Spaniards. Well, these “barbarians” gave the Spaniards the longest war and the only war they never won during their Mexican conquest!

The University of Guanajuato gives the city a college-town feel, and the Cervantes Festival brings people from all over the world to Guanajuato every October to celebrate the writer. They actually began painting their homes the bright colors to beautify them for the Cervantes Festival! We didn’t see many European or American tourists while we were there, but there were many Mexican tourists visiting the beautiful city.