Congratulations to Pamela S.Thibodeaux  for winning my contest.  Pamela, if you’ll send your mailing address to elizlane123@msn.com, I’ll get a copy of ON THE WINGS OF LOVE in the mail to you.  Thanks again to all you wonderful ladies who posted.

Elizabeth

Darlings, very soon author Joyce Henderson will arrive on our doorstep. All of us fillies are on our best behavior. . .well, most of us anyhow. I’m still trying to whip a few into shape. Seems some of the girls have gotten into the eggnog. But I’ve given them a talkin’ to and they should be fine. Drop by Saturday and show Miz Henderson some real down home hospitality.

Find out tomorrow what Ben Affleck and I  have in common!!  

Stories have lives of their own.  Some spring into being and race to completion.  Others follow their authors around for years, demanding to be told.  My January Harlequin Historical, ON THE WINGS OF LOVE, is the second kind of story.  Even though it isn’t a Western, I’d like to share it with you here.            

          For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by flight—especially the men and women who first ventured into the sky.  About fifteen years ago I came up with an idea for a story with a hero and heroine, Rafe and Alexandra, who are drawn together by their passion for flying.  I loved it.  From the very beginning I knew it was the book of my heart.             

           I wrote a proposal and sent it out.  It came back again and again and again for two reasons.  First, nobody wanted a story set in the early 20^th Century.  Second, nobody was neutral about Alex, my reckless, strong-willed heroine.  Some editors hated her.  A few loved her. After I started writing for Harlequin I tried the story again.  The senior editor almost bought it but changed her mind at the last minute.  “I loved the chemistry between Rafe and Alex,” she said, “but the time period is too modern for our historical line.”              Years passed, editorial policies changed.  I sent the story to my new editor.  “Interesting time period,” she said.  “But I can’t stand your heroine.”              More time passed.  I had another new editor, and suddenly Harlequin Historicals was looking for new settings.  I sent my story in again.  Finally… it sold!             

       Even then the saga wasn’t over.  I’d conceived the book as an epic, covering the early days of flight through World War I.  To fit the Harlequin format, I had to cut, and cut, and cut.  Every lost word was painful.  But I got to keep Alex with all her faults.  The final result was a thrilling love story that I’m still proud to call the book of my heart.             

       At last it was done and I sent an ARC out for an early review.  “Interesting time period,” the reviewer said in essence.  “And it’s a nice story.  But I didn’t like the heroine!”            

        And so, dear readers and fellow fillies, I leave it in your hands.  Alex is a rich man’s daughter, desperate to escape her restricted life.  She is passionate and courageous, but determined to do things her way.  She makes terrible mistakes, including one that almost costs her marriage, her life and something even more precious. Will you love her or hate her?  If you happen to read my book next month, I’d like to know.                          Meanwhile, let’s discuss heroines in general.  What qualities do you like or dislike in a heroine?  Do you have a favorite heroine?   Why did she touch you?   I’d love to hear. I will put the names of readers who post in a drawing.  The winner will receive a copy of ON THE WINGS OF LOVE.   I’ll do my best to get it to her before it hits the shelves in January.  Good luck to all of you.

Wearin’ a Dress

   Fred Astaire is one of the most acclaimed dancers in American history. Ginger Rogers, too, but she never earned the fame Astaire did. I heard Ginger Rogers said, “I did everything Fred did, only I had to do it backward, in high heels, wearing a dress.

           And yet Astaire was the big star. 

           And that brings me to Sacajawea. Yes, there is going to be something about the west in this, it’s NOT about ballroom dancing.

This teenager, age estimated at 17-years-old, accompanied this group of rugged soldiers all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Saved their lives more than once, probably had to do all the cooking (oh, maybe not) and she did it with a baby strapped on her back wearin’ a dress.

            But do they call it the Sacajawea Expedition? No-o-o-o-o-o!

            I couldn’t even find for sure how to spell her name because Lewis and Clark kept journals and spelled it differently, phonetically I suppose. Sacajawea didn’t speak English. How could she tell them how to spell her own name? She wouldn’t have known where to begin spelling it.

           I read the book Sacajawea by Anna L. Waldo years ago and I just loved that story of the young woman, sold into slavery, one of two wives to this…by most accounts, abusive drunken French fur trader, Charbonneau, leading Lewis and Clark through the Rocky Mountains.

           Man, I think I’ve got it hard when my car’s air conditioning goes on the fritz.

           The Lewis and Clark expedition recruited Sacagawea’s husband, to accompany them westward, expecting to make use of Sacagawea’s ability to speak to the Shoshone. The expedition expected that they would need to trade with the Shoshone for horses. Sacagawea spoke no English, but she could translate to Hidatsa to Charbonneau, who could translate to French for Francois Labiche, a member of the expedition, who could translate into English for Lewis and Clark. It had to be like a multi-cultural game of Telephone, passing the words back and forth through those translations.

             They really wanted Sacagawea, even more than Charbonneau, yet he got hired, and you know he got the money.

             Accompanied by her infant son, Sacagawea set out with the expedition for the west.

             This reminds me of an episode of Walker Texas Ranger.

              Have you ever noticed that when someone is insanely tough, the writers have to weaken him before they bring the enemy in. Superman and Kryptonite? John Wayne with a bullet lodged in his spine. Walker and oh, say, an army with automatic weapons.

Her memory of Shoshone trails proved valuable, according to some sources; according to others, she did not serve as a guide to the trails so much as to find useful foods and medicines along the way. Her presence as an Indian woman with a baby helped to convince Indians that this party of whites was friendly. And her translation skills, however indirect from Shoshone to English, were also invaluable at several key points.

The only woman on the trip, she also cooked, foraged for food, and sewed, mended and cleaned the clothes of the men. Yes, the expedition members hunted for food, too. But that means mainly they shot deer. Once they were crossing the Rockies in treacherous winter weather, her knowledge of edible plants saved the day. To their credit, Lewis and Clark treated Sacagawea as a valuable member of the party, even giving her and York, Clark’s enslaved black servant, a full vote in deciding where to spend the winter of 1805-6. It would be more than a century later when women were given the right to vote. 

So she fed them, sheltered them from hostile Indians and led them through the

In recent years more has been written about Sacagawea and the dollar coin honoring her helped everyone see her contribution.

I’ve thought it would be an interesting series of books to write about the women who were standing right beside the men making history.

           Daniel Boone was married, Davy Crocket, too, and Kit Carson. Who were these women? What were their lives like? Often they got left behind, but even so, many were left in unsettled places. They seem like fertile ground for novels and a part of the largely untold story of taming the west, wearin’ a dress.

              What historical western women, real or fictional, most interest you? Who would make a good character in a novel? How can we get their stories told?

My stars! Wildflower Junction’s welcome mat is getting more workout than a beehive in pollinating time. We no sooner get it taken up before we have to roll it out again. But we fillies just love to have company and that’s no joke. Nothing gives us greater  pleasure than entertaining a lovely author. This week Miz Joyce Henderson has put pen to paper and written one of those blogs. She’ll be talking about her humdinger of a book, To The Edge of the Stars. Sounds so romantic I do declare. I just love those books about handsome cowboys. Meet us right here on Saturday for a rip-roaring good time.

Good morning to you all!

 I was going to write to you today about Christmas — which is coming up much too soon — and what it means to me — when I realized that right now what Christmas means to me is shopping, and as fast as possible…

It always seems that I’m so behind at this time of year.  How about you?  Do you have your shopping done way ahead of time, or are you like me and put it off until almost the last moment?

Well, if you don’t mind, let’s take a moment to look at shopping.  Whether you love it or not, we all seem to have to do it from time to time, and it appears that much of our civilization depends on thee and me out there doing our share of shopping.  In the old days, there was trading.  From the Native American standpoint, shopping consisted of get togethers at the end of the summer and seeing old friends and relatives.  Here was probably the mainstay of what has become the modern Pow-wow.  Of course, there was the Trading Post as a center of shopping, but that’s long after the trade routes were already well established. 

Here is a picture of my hubby and me at Fort Union in North Dakota — an old trading post. 

 In the old West the general store was the place where most people went to stock up on the goods they needed.  Before the white man had taken stock of the Wild West, there were trading centers where even enemies went to trade with one another.  One of these places was the Mandan village, which was located on the Missouri River — in what is now North Dakota.  Tribes from all over the West would come to the Mandan village where trading would go on night and day.  There was much talk, much getting to know each other and lots of enjoyment day in and day out. 

Much of civilization seems to center around trade and trade routes and for want of a better term, shopping.  The Old Santa Fe Trail was made famous due to the trade and the commerce between one civilization and another.   But I digress…

I would love to hear your opinions on this subject.  For myself, I love to shop, but I have friends that dread it every year.  So I understand if you are not one of those people who looks forward to getting out in those crowds.  I must admit that as a youngster I hated shopping, couldn’t wait until it was done, but as I grew older and had more appreciation for clothes and shoes and items like this in general, I grew to love it.

So come on in and tell me.   Do you enjoy shopping, or absolutely dread it?  Whether we like it or not, however, it seems that shopping is as old as the human race, itself.

I’m done!  Five minutes ago, Sunday, December 9 at 2:03 marked one of those big moments in every writer’s life.  I finished a book.  WHOO HOO!!!

I save the two magic words for the moment that the final polishing is done and I‘m ready to send the manuscript to my editor.  That’s when I write The End, and it’s one of the most thrilling, satisfying, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious moments a girl gets in this career. 

I just did it.  Wrote The End on my twenty-first manuscript.  Please excuse me if this blog is a little giddy.  I’m actually coming in six days ahead of deadline.   

And, dang it, I’m out of olives for my martini.  Guess I’ll tough it out anyway…

The manuscript I finished is ALWAYS LOOK TWICE, the third book in my contemporary romantic suspense series for NAL.  It’s Mark Callahan’s story and will be in bookstores in late August.  Whew. 

Now comes the nerve-wracking part of being a writer–waiting for the editor to read it and tell you she loves it…or not.  Some writers love what they write.  Not me.  By the time I’m writing the final chapters of a book, I always think my stuff is awful, that the characters are flat, that my plot is stupid, that I really would be doing trees a service if I quit pretending to be a writer. 

I’m not exactly rational by the time I finish a book.  (Unless, my stuff really is awful, the characters are flat, the plot stupid, and I should give it up…) 

I know there are parts of any story I write that are really good.  In this book for instance, readers are going to love the wedding scene at the end.  They’re going to enjoy some of the bantering between the brothers.  They’re going to be as surprised as my poor tortured Mark is about a secret from his past.  They’re going to enjoy my heroine, Annabelle, who is the most kick-butt heroine I’ve ever written. 

What I never feel confident about is the work in its entirety.  Will readers love this story?  Have I pulled off the suspense?  The romance?  Is this book as good as I want to think it is?  I dunno…  I always have to hear my editor’s reaction to really believe.  Only then will I start to think, okay, yeah…this works.  This doesn’t stink.  You won’t have to go work at the cosmetic counter at Walgreens because you’ll never be able to sell another book.

So, here’s my question to my fellow Fillies and P&P readers who also write.  How confident are you in your own work?  At what point do you become confident?  When do you…

Oh, wait.  Gotta go now.  My own real life Texan hero just came home with a present for me. 

 It’s time to celebrate!

Bobbi was a wonderful weekend guest, wasn’t she?  Don’t be a stranger around Wildflower Junction, now, Bobbi.  Ya’ll come back and jaw with us whenever you can!

And now two winners have been drawn from all the comments Saturday and Sunday, and these two lucky gals are each getting an autographed copy of Lawless, Texas!

And the winners are………. Kimmy L and Stephanie D

Ladies, please send your address to me at SaintJohn@aol.com, and Bobbi will get those books out to you asap.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Hi Everybody! 

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be ‘blogging’ with you.  I am honored to be here and look forward to a fun weekend.

This year marks my 25^th year as a published author.  So much has changed since 1982 when I sold my first book Rapture’s Rage to Zebra.  Back in those days, manuscripts were 550-600 pages long - typed on a manual typewriter and using a lot of white out, and everybody was reading.  As a romance fan myself, I used to go to three or four different stores every month just to make sure I saw all the titles that were available. 

And cover art!  What about the changes we’ve seen there?  The Flame And The Flower was the first ‘romance’ I ever bought, and I remember being a little embarrassed to check it out because there was a couple embracing on the cover.  (Granted they were only about 2 inches tall and very modest, but that was back in the mid to late 70s and Fabio hadn’t shown up yet.) 

Do you remember the Fabio cover in the 80s - I think it was a Johanna Lindsey - where he was naked with the girl pressed against him?  My Kmart store went around and put stickers over his rear so no one would be offended.  I was very blessed to have David Alan Johnson on the cover of my book Heaven.  He was the first hunk winner from RT, and we got to tour together.  He’s a real gentleman and a lot of fun.

My covers from Leisure have been awesome.  Lately, they’ve gone to the ‘guy only’ look, and I think they’re terrific.  Take a look at the cover art for ‘Wanted! The Half-Breed’ my June ’08 release from Leisure.  It’s gorgeous!

Speaking of Wanted! The Half-Breed, Walker Stevenson is our hero.  He’s framed for murder and sent to the penitentiary.  While he’s working on a chain gang, he manages to escape and returns home to track down the real killer with the help of our heroine Roni.  Roni is a doctor, and it was fun doing the research of women doctors back then.  There was a lot of prejudice against them, that’s for sure.  The story is set in Texas and hopefully a page-turner for everybody!

Thanks to Cheryl St.John and the rest of the ladies for inviting me on!  Feel free to ask me anything!  We’re going to have a fun weekend!

 ANNOUNCEMENT!

Bobbi will be sending two autographed copies of her newest book to two lucky winners, drawn from the names of those who post comments on her blog.  Good luck, ladies!