All those geysers, hot springs, soaring mountains? How cool would that be?
So, sure, I’m doing it. I’ve got this hero western artist and a rough and tough cowgirl who thinks he’s an idiot, sweet though, and gorgeous and for some reason she keeps turning to him…
Anyway, so I’m in love with the idea and I set out to write the book, as I often do, and began researching as I went along.
Well, I read and read and wrote and wrote and about a week ago, when my book hit the halfway point, I finally found the definitive book on Yellowstone.
The Yellowstone Story: A History of our First National Park. Volumes One and Two.
Yes, volumes one and two.
It goes through alllllllllllllllllll the details.
What was really fascinating, beyond just the details was how precise it all was.
I mean this guy followed every thread, hunted through every old newspaper archive, like back to the Lewis and Clark expedition, very intensive, exacting work.

Some interesting things I found. Lewis and Clark didn’t go into Yellowstone, they missed it by about one hundred miles. But a member of their party, John Colter, who went back east as far as the Mandan Village in North Dakota, turned around with another group and went back west. He must have liked it in the wild.
In mid-August 1806, Colter was granted an early discharge from the Corps to become a fur trapper. Lewis and Clark agreed to let Colter leave the party as long as the other Corps members agreed to continue to St. Louis to be discharged. The men agreed, and Colter respectfully parted from the Corps.
Colter is credited with being the first white man to enter what is now Yellowstone National Park. In describing the geysers and other geothermal phenomena, it became known as “Colter’s Hell.” He eventually became a heroic figure among the trappers, traders, and mountain men who settled the American West.
And here’s what’s REALLY interesting about his tales of geysers and boiling mud and steaming hot springs…no one believed him. True. People considered Yellowstone to be a fable for decades.

Another early traveler to Yellowstone is Jim Bridger. Jim Bridger came out of his western wandering with stories of about the geysers. Unfortunately he also talked about a “peetrified forest” in which there were “peetrified birds” singing “peetrified songs” He was so famous for his tall tales that guess what? When he talked about a geyser that shot off every hour on the hour…no one believed him.
There were several more explorations planned but the Civil War came along and stopped it. Try to imagine this. Colter came out of that place around the turn of the century. 1809 or so. Now it’s almost sixty years later and still no one has managed to get into this place. It was cold, people joked that there was one month of summer. The passes snow shut. They still do, even with Caterpiller snow plows. Yellowstone is closed most of the year, though I found snow mobile trips you can take. But back then, to be trapped inside Yellowstone in the winter…was to die.
It snowed up there, often even in August and the nights got dangerously cold many times in the summer.
Finally, with the Civil War over, there was a very well organized expedition to Yellowstone in 1869 called the Folsom/Cook expedition. Once he returned from his journey, Folsom refused to relate the experiences publically because he thought nobody would believe him. That’s right, he talked of it privately but not publicly, for fear he’d be labeled a liar.
However, those who knew Folsom well, believed him and credited him with the inspiration needed to organize the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870.
And finally a group went in and came out with enough proof to be believed. They took a photographer and a painter along. An interesting side note, the photographer lived in Chicago and he went home to get his pictures in order…and they all burned up in the Chicago fire, with a very few exceptions. So the photographic evidence was lost.
So, here’s where my story gets tricky. It’s part of a series, which means I’m pretty well bound by the dates my story can happen. It has to be around 1880.

So I’m 50,000 words into my 100,000 word story when I realize that in 1880 the Northern Pacific Railroad built a depot near the entrance to Yellowstone Park and guess what? My remote, treacherous, beautiful park…had five thousand visitors…and a tent city right next to Old Faithful.
So, fine. Now I’ve got an artist…what? Just hangin’ around in the mountains? If I put him in Yellowstone, I’m going to have to rewrite the whole thing to account for the crowd. If I move him out of Yellowstone I can still use most of what I’ve written but why would he be hanging around the mountains? Why would she just happen upon him?

Don’t worry. I thought of a reason. Trust me. And after all this research they might just wander down to have a look around Yellowstone, too.

So has anyone been there? I haven’t, which made this all harder because I have zero personal information. What was it like?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S.

I found out last week that my romantic comedy with cowboys, Calico Canyon is a finalist for a Christy Award, the premier (I promise that’s what they said) award for Christian Fiction. I’m pretty excited about it.

And, I’m going to be in Grand Rapids, Michigan doing a book signing at several area book stores. Details here. If you’re from the area come on by.

Click on the book cover to purchase

Mary Connealy

Quite a title, huh?  However, this is exactly what the oral history of Pocahontas’s tribe, the Powhatan, teach us.  In my last blog, I tried to give an overview and an idea of how Pocahontas came to be familiar with the colonists and how they were familiar with her.  If you would like, that post is still on the blog, the date of it is March 10th and is the beginning of this post on this subject.  In my last post, I left off with Pocahontas coming of age and promised to tell you about her marriage to Kocoum, as well as her abduction by a few of the colonists and her subsequent marriage to John Rolfe.  Let’s start there.

In the Powhatan society, a young girl and boy’s coming of age is celebrated, and it was no different for Pocahontas.  However, because there was a rumor of an abduction planned for Pocahontas, her celemony was limited to special friends and family only.  There is a special dance called the courtship dance during which male warriors searched the dancers for a mate.  This is probably where their courtship began.  After a time, they were married.  Kocoum was an elite warrior.  He was among 50 of the top warriors that guarded the capital of the Powhatan confederacy.  He was also the younger brother of Wahunsenaca’s (Pocahontas’s father) friends, Chief Japazaw.  Because the priests (called quiakros) feared that the colonists plotted to kidnap Pocahontas, the couple went to live in Kocoum’s home, which was isolated from the colonists and farther north.  She was, in fact, being hidden from the English.  Kocoum and Pocahontas had a child, little Kocoum, a boy.  It was Captain Samuel Argall, an English colonist, who accomplished the feat of kisnapping Pocahontas.

I have to pause here to tell you of a movie I once watched where it rendered that Pocahontas and her father had a falling out and that he had banished her from the tribe, thus she had taken up with the English.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Pocahontas was a princess, dearly loved by her father.  She was also married to Kocoum and had a child by him.  Never would she have been banished from the tribe.  That movie did nothing but further false data about this very brave woman.  But back to Captain Argall.  Why did he wish to capture Pocahontas?  Why did he take such extreme measures, for he certainly did.  Once he had learned of her hiding place, he had gathered together not only men, but weapons and arms to attempt her capture.  But why?

Remember that the English colonists were looting the Powhatan villages of their stores of food.  They were also raping their women and children and oftentimes stealing their women and children in order to make them servants for the English.  But there was more.  The Powhatan had many diverse and rich agricultural fields. There were no trees to cut, no land to clear.  All one had to do was go in and destroy the village and take over the land — which was considered easier than clearing the land oneself.  Because of this the colonists expected retribution at any time by the very powerful tribe.  It could have happened, also.  But remember that Wahunsenaca considered the English a branch of his tribe.  Though the abuses were numerous, he still sought other ways to deal with the problem, rather than killing them outright. 

Through trickery and deceit, Captain Argall managed to get Pocahontas onto his ship.  She was supposed to be returned.  She never was.  She was held for ransom.  What he demanded from her father in the ransom a) the return of English weapons that had been taken from Jamestown, b) the return of the English prisoners Washunsenaca held captive and c) a shipment of corn.  Washunsenaca at once paid the ransom.  In fact Argall’s writes of the transaction in his log in 1613, “This news much grieved this great king (Wahunsenaca), yet without delay he returned the messenger with this answer, that he desired me to use his daughter well, and bring my ship into his river (Pamunkey), and there he would give me my demands; which being performed, I should deliver him his daugher, and we should be friends.”  Although Wahunsenaca quickly carried out the ransom demands, Pocahontas was never released.  According to the book, THE TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS, by Dr. Linwood “little Bear” Custalow and Angela L. Daniel “Silver Star,” “…oral history states that abefore Argall took sail (back to Jamestown), several of Argall’s men returned to Pocahontas’s home and killed her huusband, Kocoum.”  It was tradition that he would have come for her and rescued her, something that Argall could not have.  Little Kocoum survived because upon Pocahontas’s capture, he was put into the care of several of the women of the tribe.  There are still many descendents of Kocoum who are alive and well to this day.  You may again wonder why the Powhatan didn’t retaliate.  Part of that is Pocahontas’s father’s fear for her life if he did so, the other is a tribe cultural foundation of appeasing evil.  If one could, one always sought a balance between submitting to evial demands and preventing the loss of life.  Even so, the quiakros  (priests) of the tribe advised a swift retaliation, but Wahunsenaca would not do it, fearing for his daughter’s life.

One of Pocahontas’s elder sisters, Mattachanna, and her husband, Uttamattamakin, who was also a priest, were allowed to visit Pocahontas during her captivity.  Oral tradition is very distinct on the fact that Pocahontas confided that she had been raped and that worse, she suspected she was pregnant.  Again, rape was unheard of in Powhatan society.  Shortly after this confession, Pocahontas was quickly converted to Christianity in order to rush her into marriage.  At this time, it would have been inconcieveable for a Christian man to marry anyone who was not Christian.  It is supposed that Sir Thomas Dale was actually the biological father of Pocahontas’s child, since, according to scholars William M.S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, it was Thomas Dale who was most closely linked to Pocahontas during her kidnapping.  Note also that her son’s name was not “John,” but rather “Thomas.”  It would also explain why Rolfe (who was secretary of the colony at the time) did not record the birth of Thomas.

Was the marriage one of love?  Oral history casts doubt on this.  She had just had a child, was rushed into marriage in order to make it appear that the birth had taken place after the marriage, plus she was not free to live her own life.  Did he love her?  In a letter to Dale, Rolfe refers to her as a “creature,” not a “woman.”  Regardless, they were married and Rolfe became the heir to the friendliness of the Powhatan people, which included their knowledge of the tobacco plant and how it was processed.  After all, if there weren’t gold in the New World, there had to some way to make the colony prosperous.  Rolfe had left England in 1609 with the goal of making a profit growing and processing tobacco.  He arrived in 1610 and for three years, he had been unsuccessful at both growing it and processing it.  Remember also that the year 1616 was the “deadline for the initial investments in the Virginia colony.” From the book THE TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS.  Time was running out.  The colony was failing.  And Rolfe’s crop was failing.

“According to …sacred oral history, the Native people of the New World possessed the knowledge of how to cuure and process tobacco successfully.  The Spanish gained this knowledge from the Native communities they had subdued.”  THE TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS.  Eventually, because of Rolfe’s marriage to Pocahontas, the prists of the tribe gave him their secret.  The result was that Rolfe’s tobacco — grown on Powhatan land and cultivated by the Powhatan priests — put the Spanish taste and flavor to shame.  He was a success.  Suddenly refinancing the Virgina Company became a reality and the financial worries were over.  However, oral history also points out that the efforts of the Powhatan priests had the opposite effect of what they had hoped.  Instead of the English embracing them as brothers, it appeared that they greed was unleashed.  Tobacco became the gold of the New World.  More Powhatan lands were trespassed, killing and enslaving more Powhatan people as they did so.

Captain Samuel Argall captained the ship taking Rolfe, Pocahontas, their son and members of the Powhatan tribe to England.  The trip had many reasons:  finances were needed to refinance Jamestown.  Approval from the public was needed.  Pocahontas provided a means to “show” the English people that the people of Jamestown and the natives were on friendly terms.  Again, Pocahontas’s sister, Mattachanna and her husband accompanied Pocahontas to England, as did several other Powhatan people.  It appeared that with so many of her own couuntrymen in tow that there was some safety.  Wisemen advised Wahunsenaca not to let her go, saying that she would never return.  But a rescue was considered too risky.

It was in England that Pocahontas’s eyes were opened to the truth.  It was here that she met again and learned that John Smith was not dead.  Moreover that he had utterly betrayed her father and her people.  He had taken a solemn oath to her people to represent them to the English, and that he would bring the English under the power of the Powhatan.  She learned he had never intended to honor his word.  Pocahonta let out her rage toward Smith at their meeting.  She was not angry because of any lost love or any young girl crush on the man.  Rather she was enraged that he could so easily betray her father and her people.  It is known that with horror, Pocahontas became aware of the Englishman’s true intention toward her people: to take their lives, their lands and everything they held dear.  She longed to go home and inform her father of all she had learned.  She intended to do exactly that.

They set sail back to England in the spring of 1617 with Samuel Argall again as the captain of the ship.  That evening Pocahontas, Rolfe and Argall dined in the captain’s chamber.  “Pocahontas quickly became ill.  She returned to her quarter by herself, sick to her stomach, and vomited.  She told Mattachanna that the English must have put something in her food.  Mattachana and Uttamattamakin tried to care for Pocahontas in her sudden illness.  As Pocahontas began to convulse, Mattachanna went to get Rolfe.  When they returned, Pocahontas had died.”  — THE TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS.  They hadn’t even attained open sea yet.  They were still in the river.  Rolfe immediately asked to be taken to Gravesend, where he buried Pocahontas and left Thomas there for his English relatives to take.  Rolfe never saw him again.

Upon returning to the New World, Mattachanna and her husband, the high priest, Uttamattamakin, reported to Chief Powhatan Wahunsenaca the events in England, including the murder of his daughter.  It is from this account that the oral history has been passed down from generation to generation.  But who killed her and why?  Again, from the book, THE TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS, “Rolfe and the Virginia Company associates ascertained that Pocahontas knew that Smith had lied to her father and that some English businessmen were behind a scheme to remove her father from his throne and take the land from the Powhatan people.  This justified the decision by the English colonists not to take Pocahontas back to her homeland…Certain people believed that Pocahontas would endanger the English settlement, especially because she had new insights into the political strategy of the English colonists to break down the Powhatan structure, so they plotted to murder her.” 

Again, from the book, THE TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS, “…Dale, Rolfe, and Whitaker had close ties to each other.  All three had major roles in what happened in Pocahontas’s life after she was abducted.  Dale eventually took custody of Pocahontas after Argall took her to Jamestown.  Whitaker maintained Pocahontas’s house arrest and surveillance.  All three sought to convert Pocahontas to Christianity.  Rolfe married Pocahontas. Dale provided a large tract of land for Rolfe to grow tobacco.  A Dale-Rolfe-Whitaker trio comprising agreements and pacts is not out of the realm of possibility, but … sacred oral history does not reveal who or how many persons were behind her murder.  We believe it is most likely that more than one person was involved.”

So ends my story of the abduction and murder of a true heroine.  A heroine because she tried to unite two different peoples.  A heroine because she endured much, all to help her people.  She did it with little complaint, though it goes without saying that she yearned for the company of her own people, her own little son and the husband of her heart, Kocoum.  It’s not exactly the Disney or fairytale story that we’ve all been spoon-fed.  However, it shows the courage and persistence of a young woman who did all she could to help her father and her people.  She is a true American heroine.

Well, there you have it.  What do you think?  It’s doubtful Hollywood would make a movie of this story, though I wish that they would.  But this is the story that has been passed down from generation to generation amongst the Powhatan people and their various tribes, specifically the Mattaponi.  For further information, I would highly recommend the book, THE TRUE STORY OF POCAHONTAS by Dr. Linwood “Little Bear” Custalow and Angela L. Daniel “Silver Star.”  Read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions.  It is a story or oral tradition.  It is not a made-up story. 

So come on in and let me know what you think of this.  Leave a comment, if you please.

Talent equals talent, great art equals great art, whether done by a male or female, right?  But that wasn’t always the case.  As late as 1905,  an art dealer refused to believe the work of art in front of him was painted by a woman.   That woman was Eliza Barchus and below you’ll see some of her brilliant paintings.   A widow and a mother with young children, she supported her family by painting and teaching.

She is known in the art world now as the “The Oregon Artist” for her depictions of  the territory. By the turn of the century Eliza Barchus was the best known painter in the Northwest; she had won many awards and had exhibited at the National Academy in New York. Theodore Roosevelt placed one of her paintings in the White House, and Woodrow Wilson bought another. Eliza Barchus lived to be one hundred and two years old and passed away in 1959.

By 1890 there were over 1,100 woman artists and art teachers in the West.  Whether inborn talent or applying techniques of formal art training, women didn’t have an easy road.  Their work wasn’t appreciated in the art world.   Many pioneer women nurtured their talent even after a hard day of household chores, others braved the frontier on their own and some ventured into subzero temperatures to gain inspiration.   These female  artists needed plenty of courage and determination to create and compete in a field so dominated by men.  Yet, I find their paintings inspiring and honest. 

Helen Tanner Brodt was the first white woman to climb Mount Lassen in 1864.   Lake Helen in the Mount Lassen area is named after her.  She trained in New City City at the National Academy of Design then moved to Red Bluff in 1863.   In Red Bluff she painted landscapes, portraits, china, and ranch scenes, and also at the public school. She taught art in Oakland in 1867  and later exhibited her art at the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893. Two of Mrs. Brodt’s pastels of Mount Shasta are in the collection of the Bancroft library at the University of California at Berkeley. 

Helen Tanner Brodt (1838-1908) – Mount Shasta Viewed through Trees
 

Grace Carpenter Hudson was born in Potter Valley near Ukiah, in California in 1865. She showed great art skill at an early age and enrolled in a local school of design. She married Dr. John Hudson in 1890 and their home on South Main, now the Grace Carpenter Hudson Museum is marked with a totem pole and is known as the “Sun House.”  She felt a kinship and great compassion for the Pomo Indians and was known by them as “Painter Lady.”  Her painting of Little Mendocino (the unhappy papoose) caused a great sensation at the 1893 World’s Fair and she focused her attention on painting the Pomos, capturing their pride and culture.  As you can see most of her subjects were babies and children.  She spent some time later in life to paint Native children in Hawaii and when she returned she earned a commission to paint the Pawnee in 1904.

I’ve always loved  VanGoghs, but until now, I’d never realized how truly talented women artists were.   I think I love the Grace Carpenter Hudson’s depictions the best so far. They show the humanity and innocence of the Pomo children. There were so many other female artists I’d learned about while doing this research that it would be impossible to post it all. Maybe  next time.   Do you have a favorite artist?  How about a favorite artist of the west?  Any other women artists that you’d care to share?  What do you think of these incredible paintings?

Yippee!

 The hats are all in the air and we have two winners…..

Anon1001 — winner of Cowboy Commando

Patricia Barraclough — winner of Miracle at Colts Run Cross

Congratulations ladies! If you’ll email me at lindabroday@live.com and send your mailing address, Joanna Wayne will get these books to you.

Thank you all for coming by to hang out with Joanna this weekend. Looks like everyone enjoyed herself. The Fillies appreciate your loyalty to P&P! We couldn’t do this without you.

            Some might think that the idyllic life of a cowboy on the range doesn’t lend itself to suspenseful mysteries. I beg to differ and so would many of the writers of Harlequin Intrigues. The truth is the cowboy is one of the tried and true heroes that women readers of the genre can’t get enough of.

            I’ve had cowboy heroes almost as long as I’ve been writing Intrigues, and that is fifteen years and forty books ago. My first westerns were the four books in the popular Family Ties series. Since then I’ve written many stand-alone novels staring the alpha cowboy and several multi-book series.

            There are several reasons why I think cowboys are naturals as suspense heroes. They tend to be independent thinkers who follow their own instincts. They don’t necessarily follow anyone else’s rules, but they have a strong value system. They are never afraid to buck the system since they’re not really part of the system. They are very protective of their lands and the people they love. They’ll stand up for what’s right no matter the cost. And, of course, they are incredibly sexy in those jeans, boots and Stetsons.

             I used all of those qualities in the heroes for my recent series, The Four Brothers of Colts Run Cross.  The series was originally intended to be only four books, then expanded to five. Now, due to popular request, there will be a sixth.

            The series is about a close-knit and very wealthy Texas family that not only owned one of largest ranches in Texas,  but owned an oil company as well. I thought of it as similar to the Ewings on the old TV show Dallas, except with scruples. Each brother has his own story, but there is also a mystery running through the first four books. I’ve found that Intrigue readers in general not only like large families but enjoy the idea of returning to the family setting, in this case Jack’s Bluff Ranch, in succeeding books. And each book involved the family in ways that were integral to the story.  The fifth book was about the daughter who was estranged from her husband, a star player for the Dallas Cowboys.  Their two sons are abducted a few days before Christmas so it’s a very emotional story that definitely affects the whole family. Yet, amazingly, there is also humor, thanks to the Home Alone style antics of the boys.

            And finally there is the current series, Special Ops, Texas. This is the most exciting series I’ve worked on in ages. The heroes are all former Navy SEALs, guys who have left the service for one reason or another and are having difficulty adjusting to life not on the edge.

            In Cowboy Commando, the first that is just out, Cutter Martin returns to the family ranch but doesn’t think ranching will cut it for him in his restless state. But when an old lover drops into his life with a wild story about her best friend being killed by a cop and her fear for the friend’s young daughter, he finds he has plenty of danger in store. The book is hot! So is the cover! Well, you can see that for yourself. Hmm. Maybe that’s another reason cowboys make such great heroes.

            If you  have any questions about writing contemporary western series or writing for Harlequin Intrigue, I’ll do my best to answer them. Or if you have any comments about cowboys as heroes, we can chat about that, too.   I’ll be giving away a copy of COWBOY COMMANDO & MIRACLE AT COLTS RUN CROSS this weekend!

            One of my favorite comments was overheard at a beauty shop the other day. “Cowboys are for women what blondes are for men. When you see one, you just have to take a second look.”

            Care to second that?

To learn more about Joanne and her books, visit her website:

www.joannawayne.com

   << Click to Order from Amazon

A cattle brand is much like a rancher’s coat of arms, a symbol of pride and ownership. Quite often a rancher named his ranch after his brand–the Flying M, Double D, Lazy K.

Brands combine letters, numerals and symbols and are read just like a book, from top to bottom, left to right. It has a been said that cowhands who could neither read nor write were fluent in the Branding Alphabet–after all, misreading a brand in the old west could end with a short drop from a tall tree. 

The practice of branding livestock has been around for thousands of years, dating back to 2,000 BC. In the days of the great cattle drives and open ranging, cattle brands were serious business, their use and mis-use resulting in great profits, losses and untimely deaths. Registering brands started in Texas in 1832, the first belonging to Richard Chisholm. Recording brands with the county clerk became standard practice and by the cattle boom of the 1870′s a brand had to be registered to prove ownership—by law any unregistered brands couldn’t hold claim to livestock.  I read somewhere that if the constitution were written in cattle brands, every cowboy could recite it line for line

Below are some samples of registered brands to give examples of the top-to-bottom, left-to-right reading.

Rustlers sometimes used what was called a running brand, that would slightly alter a brand already singed into an animal’s hide–perhaps changing the Rocking R to a Circle R by completing the circle.

I started researching cattle brands for my upcoming book MOUNTAIN WILD.  My heroine embroiders the hero’s brand onto a dish towel, which is an L hanging  a lazy J (J on it’s side) for the Lazy J Ranch. In this book, Garret Daines is having a devil of a time with rustlers, and when one of his branding irons is stolen after an attack, he doesn’t take the theft lightly.  Setting up another rancher as a rustler by the ill-use of his brand was another practice used by those badmen of the old west.

And speaking of brands, the cover for MOUNTAIN WILD has arrived! (posted below)  As you can see, my brand is still those hunky cowboys.

If you’ve wondered about the science of branding our romance novels,  Harlequin Art Director, Alana Ruoso, was interviewed this month at Cover Cafe.  They’ve posted a fantastic article, which includes a behind the scenes look at the cover photo shoot for MAVERICK WILD–my first hunky cowboy cover.  Check it out at: http://www.covercafe.com/BTSCBHq-2.shtml .  The article gave me a whole new appreciation for the work that goes into creating a cover.

 Click on a cover to pre-order my upcoming releases.

Hello Darlings,

The weekend is almost here and we have another wonderful guest.

Miss Joanna Wayne has aimed her wagon toward Wildflower Junction and will chat with all of us on Saturday. Miss Joanna has in mind to tell us why cowboys make natural suspense heroes. Shoot, ah think cowboys make good everything! They just have a natural ability that gets me all bothered just thinking about them. Hee-hee!

And just get a gander at her book covers. Oh my Lord! Ah’ve died and gone to heaven.

Miss Joanna isn’t coming empty handed either. The sweet lady is toting two prizes to give away to a couple of lucky winners. To get your name in the hat, all you have to do is leave a comment. Pure and simple.

So hitch up your buggy and climb aboard.

We’ll be pleased as heck to see you!

Any writer can tell you that the most frequently asked question they hear is, “Where do you get your ideas?” Writers get their ideas the same as everyone else does. Ideas just come to us. The difference is that writers learn to brainstorm and embellish on the original idea until it’s a plausible idea for a book.

I used to reply with a quip, such as one of these:

“I subscribe to Idea Monthly.”
“I close myself in a dark closet, chant a mantra, and don’t come out until a complete story has come to me.”
“I remember everything everyone tells me and I use it.”
“Little green men come to me and night and whisper plots in my ear.”

“There’s a warehouse on the outskirts of Tulsa….”

The problem with answering like that is that—people take me seriously!
 
Many of my ideas come from hearing a song, watching a movie, reading a book, or from my research. Something will catch my attention, and I’ll think “what if”? Then I play with the notion until I turn it into a story.

From the original concept, I develop the characters first. Exactly what kind of person will fit this role or this scene or this setting? Then I create the other lead character with built in conflict and an opposing goal. I start a binder. The members of my RWA chapter who saw my binder at our retreat have started calling it The Binder of Wonder. Okay, I confess to being a tad obsessive about things now and then.

Photos:

Top one is the binder at the beginning of the process—one page of notes only

Second one is my current binder on my desk

Third one is my desk with the story in progress spread all over – can you find Hugh?

Each book gets its own three-ring binder. Into the binder goes a character grid I’ve created by combining other charts into one that works for me, and a character fact sheet, which isn’t about physical appearance at all, but lists of words that describe them and mostly information about their past. Then as I go along I add dividers to separate the material I collect: Research on their occupation or a locale, names I will use, a map, society and etiquette, a brainstormed list of 25 Things That Could Happen, photos of people who resemble my characters. My current hero is Hugh Jackman, but his photo isn’t inside the binder; it’s over my desk. Duh.

I accumulate historical facts, dates in history, weather, a calendar of the year, on which I record my events as they take place, photos of places, houses, scenery, and a style sheet, which records all the characters and place names I use in the book.

The original idea, that little glimmer of a spark, is most often one thought I write down on one sheet of paper – and then tweak and tweak and tweak. Starting with my first book, here are a few:

– Heaven Can Wait originated as taking a girl who knew nothing of the outside world from a sequestered environment and flinging her into a completely alien culture. That theme still fascinates me, and I have more ideas for others.

– Rain Shadow developed from the desire to do a sequel to Heaven Can Wait, using the previous hero’s brother as the hero, and needing an exact opposite to pair him with. Thus the gun-toting Wild West character of Rain Shadow developed.

– Land of Dreams came from my fascination with and empathy for the children who rode the orphan trains, and, as a result of the many diaries I’d read. So many of the children suffered in their new environments nearly as much as they had on the streets of New York, often being sexually abused or used as servants, and many thinking they’d been adopted into families, only to find out years later that they hadn’t. I wanted to give some of those kids a good home. And Too Tall Thea was a character burning for a story and someone to love her.

– Saint or Sinner sprang from my passion for watching late night westerns. There’s an old black and white flick with Joanne Woodward where this guy comes back from the war and builds a church. She’s just a kid he tries to reform, but I thought…what if this fellow had a life after death experience and came back a changed man…and there was a woman who didn’t believe he’d changed?

– Badlands Bride actually started out as merely a title I’d saved for years. I needed a story to go with that great title. The idea of having an unprepared reporter go west disguised as a mail-order bride popped into my head, and I decided to send her to the badlands and use that title. I love the underdog characters, you may have noticed. She’s desperate for her father’s approval.

– A Husband By Any Other Name came from the Bible story of the prodigal son. One son runs away, squanders his inheritance and comes back to his father’s welcoming arms. The brother who stayed home and worked doesn’t think that’s too fair, even though he surely loved his brother. Seeing the father plan a feast and roast the fatted calf irks him. I further complicated that story by having the brother who stays home marry the fiancée of the brother who went away. Did I mention he pretends to be the brother who went away?

– The Truth About Toby: I’ve always been a bit fascinated with dream interpretations, I guess. I had originally titled the book Dream A Little Dream For Me, because the hero is helping the heroine with precognitive dreams. Austin came to me first, a reclusive, tortured hero who simply wants to forget the horrors of his past. And for him I created Shaine, the woman he can’t resist, who needs him to remember it all. And then the eds told me that dream title would never fly. A month after my book came SEP’s masterpiece.

– The Mistaken Widow is a historical version of the movie, “Mrs. Winterbourne, where Ricky Lake pretends to be Brenden Frasier’s sister-in-law. As soon as I saw the film, I started picturing it in a historical scenario. My story has a bit more twists and turns, however.

– The Doctor’s Wife came from watching a talk show where the female guest told her story. She came from the “trash family” in a little town. I felt so sorry for her and her story was so sad that I sat and cried. Often when I’m moved by someone’s real life story, I want to write one that turns out better. It’s like I can fix the world one book at a time or something. The real person in this case was ridiculed and teased by the other children. Her family was so poor that she wore her brother’s underwear. Her mother gave birth to more than one baby and made the daughter go bury them. One particular time, she secretly gave the baby away. This was one of those reunion shows, and they brought out the sister whose life she saved so many years ago and they were reunited with hugs and tears. Bizarre story, eh? Once again truth is stranger than fiction. Well I changed all that and had the baby be my heroine’s and had her hide it to keep it safe. But that’s where the idea was conceived.

and on and on…..up to the book I’m working on now:

– Her Make-Believe Husband started out as one little thought. I wanted a child to get letters from a made-up father. And then the made-up father to show up. It took me months of hashing out the idea and coming up with things and then having to chuck them because they wouldn’t work and then setting it aside time after time. Finally one time when I went back to it, something clicked and the idea all fell together. I am loving this story so much — and who wouldn’t with Hugh Jackman as the hero, eh?

So anyway, ideas come from anywhere and everywhere: TV shows, the newspaper, songs, other books. I’ve never found that warehouse outside Tulsa, dag-nabbit, so I do most of the dirty work on my own. Actually, the ideas are the fun part, the part that never runs out. Carrying out the work is the hard part. There are a lot of people who call themselves writers and who come up with ideas, but there are far fewer who actually do the work and get it all in publishable story form on paper!

Ask another writer and she will most likely have a completely different explanation of where stories come from – but I’ll bet she won’t know about the warehouse outside Tulsa.

It was such an honor having Sadie with us today! Does she know cowboys or what? We’re so glad y’all came and made her feel welcome.

And now, after using my nifty Random Number Generator, here’s Sadies’ winners:

Colleen

Karen Witemeyer

Yee-Haw!  Ladies, email me your snail mail addresses at pacrooks@radiks.net and I’ll forward your info to Sadie so she can send you your books!

In a slight bend of the scheduling, I’m giving up my blog day to Jeffery McClanahan, whose schedule was better suited to blog for us during the week rather than the weekend.

If you’ve been reading western romances for awhile, you’ll know Jeffery better as Anna Jeffrey, and even though, sadly, Anna Jeffrey is no more, Jeffery has been busy writing her books under not one but two pseudonyms–Sadie Callahan and Dixie Cash!

Sadie Callahan’s first book, LONE STAR WOMAN, was released in January. 

 Jeffery also teams up with her sister as Dixie Cash to write cowboy comedies set in West Texas, and well, keep reading to learn more!