Archive for the Behind the Book category.
Hello Everyone. I’m western historical romance author Julie Lence. This is my first time blogging on Petticoats and Pistols and I’d like to thank the Fillies for having me. When I asked Linda what I should write about, she suggested I write about something that was in one of my stories, such as a boardinghouse. That got me to thinking about many of the authentic things I have in my stories and how research has played an important role in this, so I decided to write about specific things I’ve researched for each of my books.
Luck of the Draw is my first published work. I began writing the story back in the early 90′s when I didn’t know a thing about writing. Through the years I added and deleted scenes and always wondered if what I was writing made sense and was true to the timeframe. I decided to have the book professionally edited and found someone to work with. She went page by page editing everything; spelling, punctuation, dialogue and plot. Finally, she asked me a question that pertained to the timeframe of the story: was chocolate readily available in the west in the 1860?
As an avid reader of western romance, I’d read about characters feasting on chocolate cake, so I’d always assumed chocolate was available back then. But I didn’t know for sure, so chocolate became my first research topic.
I didn’t have the internet at this time, so I relied on books from the library. I learned a lot about the cacao bean and how it made its way around the world, eventually landing in Europe where folks enjoyed a hot chocolaty drink that we know today as hot cocoa. Eventually, Europeans brought the cacao bean to the United States and powdered chocolate was sold in small tins in mercantiles. Americans enjoyed the hot chocolaty drink, too, and also used the powdered cocoa to make chocolate cake. Needless to say, I was happy about that.
My second work is Lady Luck. The bulk of the story takes place in a gaming hall on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. I wanted my story to be as true to that timeframe and location as possible, but again, I didn’t have the internet. Back to the library I went. My research led to a small cove along the water. Yerba Buena Cove and the ships that were permanently dry docked in the cove were being filled in with sand and businesses were being built on top of them. I thought this was a fascinating piece of history and included it in the story, but more fascinating were the ships themselves. I had to have one for my gaming hall, so I took liberty and moved my ship to the Barbary Coast, hoping the Barbary and Yerba Buena Cove were close in location to each other. Later, when the hubby had the internet connected to the home computer, I found some street maps of 1860 San Francisco and was happy to discover the liberties I took were true. The Barbary Coast and Yerba Buena Cove were not far from each, and they were on the same stretch of coastline.
Luck of the Draw and Lady Luck are part of a series about the Weston brothers, cowboys making a living raising beef and breaking horses on the family ranch. In the third story, No Luck At All, the hero is a cowboy at heart, but he’s also a doctor. I wanted Creel to attend medical school in Boston and to meet and marry a Boston socialite, because his mother was a Boston socialite and she played an important role in the first two books. I wrote the story, way back when and shelved it for when I could go back to it and make it better. When I did, that little research bug kicked in and I was back on the internet. I had to prove to myself and to my readers that it was indeed possible for Creel to attend college and medical school in Boston so he could meet and fall in love with his Boston socialite. The internet opened up a whole new world to me; histories of schools and colleges and discoveries made in the medical profession. Creel was able to obtain his education and medical degree at Massachusetts General, which was also connected to Harvard. Today the two schools are one. I also happened upon the discovery of ether and how to apply it to a patient. I’m not one for blood, guts and gore, but this was another fascinating piece of information I had to incorporate into the story, thus the scene where Bob is attacked by a mountain lion was born and Creel’s talent as a doctor shined.
My love for the old west doesn’t stop at cowboys. Outlaws played an important role back then and I had one from my first two books in desperate need of his own story. Buck is ornery and temperamental and had always escaped the law in his looting, raiding and shooting, until now. He was also in need of a good eye-opener as to why he should settle down with the woman he loves and what better reason could there be than having been sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit, with a sentence to be hung. I’d figured out his escape, but the prison itself kept bugging me. Or rather, what prison could I place him in. Since his story, Zanna’s Outlaw, takes place in Texas, I wanted him somewhere close to that state. My first thought was Yuma, but Yuma didn’t exist yet, so-you guessed it. Back to the internet I went, and found Huntsville State Penitentiary in Texas. There wasn’t a lot of information on the prison, at least not what I wanted to know and that was what did it actually look like on the inside? Again, I had to take liberty with some things, but the nickname for the prison, ‘The Walls’, and the bell tower and the fact the prisoners seeded cotton is true. The prison is still in existence, and if I ever get to Texas, I would love to take a tour.
Lydia’s Gunslinger is my current release. This book didn’t require much research, as it takes place in the same town as Zanna’s Outlaw. One establishment that is linked to both stories is Miller’s Saloon. The inside of Miller’s wasn’t important since there are numerous photos on the internet of old western saloons, but I wanted to know how easy it was for Miller to keep his saloon stocked, especially in a nowhere town such as Revolving Point. I researched the origins of beer and learned so much, from original breweries, to methods of transportation, to the birth of the beer glass, to brewery owners striking deals with saloon owners to only stock their beer that I couldn’t possibly mention everything. In the end, I decided to leave Miller and his saloon alone and garnered from my research that beer wagons went far and wide to keep saloons well-stocked.
Research had never held much of an interest for me until I began writing. Now, I could spend all day on the internet chasing down the smallest detail. Life back in the 1800′s was hard, but it was also fascinating. And I enjoy proving what I think is true as much as I enjoy learning about new things, like Yerba Buena Cove in Lady Luck. And what color uniforms the police officers wore in 1860 San Francisco.
To read an excerpt from any of my books, please visit my website at: www.julielence.com. One lucky visitor to Petticoats and Pistols today will receive a free download of No Luck At All.
Have a great day everyone and thank you for reading. I always enjoy talking about the west!
This week my 34th book, JUST DOWN THE ROAD, will be coming out and as always people ask me about how I create a world. Right now I have two series going: One, Whispering Mountain Series set in Texas in the 1800′s and the other, Harmony Series set in a small town today’s world. JUST DOWN THE ROAD is the 4th of what will be at least seven books in the Harmony Series and WILD TEXAS ROSE coming out in August 2012, will be the 6th book in my historical series.
So, how do I create a world for readers to step into?
First, the setting is the dressing around the story. We may all love it, think it’s beautiful or exciting, or exotic but don’t mistake it for the story. The setting may hold the story together and offer interesting twists and challenges, but it is not the heartbeat of the story. If it were, travel books would fill the top 10 of the New York Times list.
The story, the core, is the people. I don’t even like to think of them as characters. They are my people, who live and breathe in the world I create. They drive the story. They’re what keep you up reading at night. For example, when you read a story about a tornado, it’s not the path or the tornado or the size or the wind speed that keeps you on the edge of your seat; it’s the lives that will be affected by the storm.
One thing I remember about writing about the West is people lived by seasons and not by the calendar.
That said, the writer must look at the setting to find and understand the people. Characters, like real people, are molded by their surroundings. The way they think is influenced by their past, not just yesterday or their childhood, but the lives of their ancestors. Since I live in the Panhandle of Texas I chose to set my imaginary town, Harmony, in Texas. Like people everywhere, we think a little different.
Example: Last week I walked out of the library and ran into a friend. We stood by our cars and talked for a while enjoying the sunny day. When I got in my car I heard on the radio that the wind was blowing 30 mph. Neither of us had noticed “the breeze.”
When I was in England speaking to the Romance Writers a few years ago, I thought them hard to get to know, hard to just start talking to. After my talk, I pulled out a stack of my business cards and said, “Where I’m from people say y’all come. If you make it to Texas, come see me, I’ll put you up and cook you a meal.”
Suddenly, the world shifted. Everyone was talking to me and giving me their address; for, you see, in England, if someone invites you the only polite thing to do is to invite them back. I had a great time visiting and having tea with the writers and readers “across the pond.”
Knowing the people, studying how they lived and what they thought makes characters come alive. It makes them breathe. It doesn’t matter if they lived a hundred years ago or today.
I’ve been very blessed that people step into the worlds I create and go with me on the adventures with my characters. They live for me and I hope they will for all of you.
Click HERE to watch a video about the writing of JUST DOWN THE ROAD.
I’d love to hear things you’ve noticed that are different about the people where you live. A different way of thinking or acting that makes them your hometown people. From your comments, I’ll pick a winner to receive one of the first copies of JUST DOWN THE ROAD.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Jodi Thomas
Jodi Thomas is the NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of 34 novels and 11 short story collections. In June 2011, WELCOME TO HARMONY won a RITA, the highest award for women’s fiction. Jodi currently serves as the Writer in Residence at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas.
Visit me at www.JodiThomas.com
On Facebook: www.facebook.com/JodiThomasAuthor
On Twitter: www.Twitter.com/jodithomas
These two talented successful ladies write western romance together. We wanted to know their secret. Here is what they said.
Linda: Every now and then, a project comes along and it’s like a gift. The characters speak to you, the words flow. This was one of those projects, for me. I can still hear the characters’ voices in my head, clear as day. And working with Lori was a huge plus!
Lori: That’s for sure. I’ve never been involved in a project with another author who was easier to work with. It helped that we were already friends (and we still are!). It was also a plus that we have the same working style. Pantsers all the way.
Linda: Hey, Lori! What side of town is the river on?
Lori: Can I plead the fifth? No? Okay, it’s on the left side.
Linda: Nope, that’s wrong. Riding into town from the north, the river is on the right/West side of town. Yep, we saw the town in a mirror image, and didn’t discover it until about midway through writing the series. We ended up taking out some specifics that made it OH so clear that we weren’t seeing the same thing.
Lori: But all in all, that was minor. Everything else we saw as one. Everyone else we heard as one. I’ve never written books where I could hear the characters speaking so clearly. But the really weird thing was that I could hear HER characters.
Linda: The strangest thing about this series, for me, is that Lori’s characters — especially the heroes — were as crystal clear to me as my own. And they were from the beginning. We could have dialogue with NO tags, and I could tell you who was speaking.
Lori: We should try that as a parlor game. I felt the same way. I’ve had readers ask me if I wrote all the books because they couldn’t believe that two different authors could write such consistent characters across six books. But, no, Linda wrote hers; I wrote mine. We did read each others’ books and offer suggestions, though I don’t really remember suggesting much if anything.
Linda: Whenever you’re writing a series with someone else, time and other existing contracts are always issues. I actually wrote Sullivan, book 2, and sent the rough draft to Lori before she wrote Reese, book 1. We continued that way throughout, with me writing the last book before she wrote Nate. I always saw her rough draft before I finished my books, so I could add in details I didn’t know when I wrote that first draft.
Lori: This worked out for the best since I knew where I was headed before I started the book. I’d already been there while reading Linda’s book. A happy accident that turned into the best way of doing things. If we ever write more Rock Creek books, I’d want to do them exactly the same way.
Linda: I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally have all six books available for purchase again! Love these guys, all six of them. 
Lori: Me too. They’re like family.
We miss westerns. Do you? Are there any other kinds of romance novels you can’t get enough of? Or that there don’t seem to be enough of? Like Pirates! We miss Pirates.
We’re giving away one copy of each of these newly released e-books. Leave a comment to get your name in the ten gallon hat.
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You can find more about Linda Devlin at: www.lindawinsteadjones.com
And Lori Handeland at: www.lorihandeland.com
Our generation has lost so many important talents and skills. Technology
makes it easier for us, but in some ways, it takes away our independence. Maybe that’s one reason we love to read (and write!) historical romance. We can go back in time vicariously without having to live through all the hardships and trials of everyday life, experiencing only the top layer of what must have been difficult, by our standards, every moment.
Does anyone know how to cut up a chicken anymore? My mother did. I remember her getting out the wickedest looking knife I’d ever seen every Sunday and cutting up a chicken to fry. They had started to sell cut-up chickens in the store, but they were more expensive. Mom wouldn’t have dreamed of paying extra for that. By the time I began to cook for my family, I didn’t mind paying that extra money—I couldn’t bear to think of cutting a chicken up and then frying it.
It’s all relative. My mom, born in 1922, grew up in a time when the chickens had to be beheaded, then plucked, then cut up—so skipping those first two steps seemed like a luxury, I’m sure. I wouldn’t know how to begin to cut up a chicken. I never learned how.
Hog killing day was another festive occasion. Because my husband was raised on a farm, he and my mother had a lot of similar experiences to compare (this endeared him to her in later years.) Neighbors and family would gather early in the day. The hog would be butchered, and the rest of the day would be spent cutting and packing the meat. When my husband used to talk about the “wonderful sausage” his mother made, I was quite content to say, “Good for her. I’m glad you got to eat that when you were young.” (There’s no way I would ever make sausage.)
Medical issues? I was the world’s most nervous mother when I had my daughter. But being the youngest in the family, I had a world of experience to draw on. I also had a telephone and I knew how to use it! I called my mom or one of my sisters about the smallest thing. I can’t imagine living in one of the historical scenarios that, as writers, we create with those issues. The uncertainty of having a sick child and being unable to do anything to help cure him/her would have made me lose it. I know this happened so often and was just accepted as part of life, but to me, that would have been the very worst part of living in a historical time. I had a great aunt who lost all three of her children within one week to the flu. She lost her mind and had to be institutionalized off and on the rest of her life.
My mother was the eldest of eleven children. She often said with great pride that her mother had had eleven children and none of them had died in childhood. I didn’t realize, when I was younger, how important and odd that really was for those times. My father’s mother had five children, two of whom died as children, and two more that almost died, my father being one of them.
It was a case of my grandmother thinking he was with my granddad, and him thinking three-year-old Freddie was with her. By the time they realized he was missing, the worst had happened. He had wandered to the pond and fallen in. It was a cold early spring day. Granddad had planted the fields already, between the pond and the house. A little knit cap that belonged to little Freddie was the only evidence of where he’d gone. It was floating on top of the water. By some miracle, my granddad found him and pulled him up out of the water. He was not breathing. Granddad ran with him back to the house, jumping the rows of vegetables he’d planted. The doctor later told him that was probably what saved Dad’s life—a very crude form of CPR.
Could you have survived in the old west? What do you think would have been your greatest worry? What would you hate to give up the most from our modern way of life? I’m curious to know, what skills or talents to you think we have lost generationally over the last 100 years? I’ve written two time travel stories where the heroine found herself living in the old west, 1800s Indian Territory. They both faced issues that were daunting, simply because of the time period…would they stay if given a choice, or go back to their present-day living? Does love REALLY ‘conquer all’? In my time travel novel, TIME PLAINS DRIFTER, the heroine must go back in time, but in the sequel, I’m turning the tables. The hero of that book is going to go forward. Once he gets there, will he ever want to go BACK to his time?
I’m not sure I would have lived very long, or very pleasantly. I know one thing—my family would never have eaten sausage, unless they had breakfast at the neighbor’s house.
Here’s the blurb and an excerpt from my time travel short story, MEANT TO
BE, available in the 2011 Christmas Collection from Victory Tales Press.
BLURB:
Robin Mallory is facing another Christmas all alone when she decides to surprise her aunt and uncle several hours away. She becomes stranded near a desolate section of interstate. With a snowstorm on the way, Robin has no choice but to walk, looking for a house to provide shelter.
Jake Devlin is shocked when the “spy” he jumps turns out to be a girl. She’s dressed oddly, and talks like a Yank. Where did she come from, and what is he going to do with her?
The set up: Jake, a Confederate soldier, has been seriously wounded by a Cheyenne arrow as he tries to protect Robin from the attack. His only hope is for her to be able to go back through the “portal” in the woods to her old truck, parked along the interstate, and get the medicine from another time that he so badly needs. With Cheyenne in the woods along with a platoon of Yankee soldiers, what chance will she have of survival? Can she even find the rift in time again…twice?
EXCERPT:
Robin turned her back on the pickup and started down the gravel road. Doubt assailed her. Was she crazy to go back to a time she didn’t belong in?
But she did belong. She’d been…alive. More so in that time than here, in her own. And could she possibly hope for a future with Jake? It was too soon for commitments…but wasn’t she making the biggest one of all?
Her steps slowed. If she took the medicine back to him, what guarantee was there that, should she want to come back to her time, she’d be able? She may be stuck in Indian Territory of 1864 with no way back, ever.
She couldn’t let Jake die. How could she live with herself in either time if that happened?
What if she was misreading his intentions? He seemed—interested—in her. Her heart shrank at the thought of another rejection. She wouldn’t be able to handle that. But…that fear might also be keeping her from letting herself fall in love with the kindest, most decent man she’d ever met—in any time. Trusting was so hard.
Yet, he’d trusted her, hadn’t he, with much more to lose than she had. He could very well die if she didn’t take the antibiotics back to him.
And…another thought, too awful to bear, rose up, refusing to be ignored. What if he died in spite of the antibiotics? She might be trapped in a time that wasn’t hers, without the man she’d fallen in love with.
Oh, dear God. She stopped walking as the reality hit her full force. She was in love with Jake already. How could this have happened? The damn magical doorway through time had to have some other influence. There was no other explanation. But…it felt real. And if she lost Jake, the heartache would be very real, she already knew. She’d sworn, after her last romantic fiasco, that she wouldn’t jump into anything again. Yet, here she was, in love with Jake Devlin after only twenty-four hours. And worried sick. She began to run. What if she couldn’t get back through the portal? What if the medicine doesn’t work?
What if Jake doesn’t love me? Her mind seized on the question, mocking her, taunting her, throwing it back to her again and again.
He loves me, her heart answered, remembering the way he’d reached to pull the blanket over her, and the gentle touch of his hand on her cheek in the night when he thought she was asleep.
Remember, her heart reminded her, as she thought of the way he’d put himself between her and their attackers. He would have died for her. He still might.
She stopped running, trying to catch her breath. Her side hurt, and she noticed the sky seemed to be darkening more than normal, which probably meant they were in for more snow.
Nothing else had changed, though. Panic gripped her. The road remained graveled and wide, never narrowing in the least as it had before. The trees weren’t nearly as thick as they had been a scant half-hour earlier when she’d come this way.
With her heart pounding from fear as much as exertion, Robin looked behind her. She could still barely see the top of the rise that hid her truck. Maybe she hadn’t come quite far enough! She couldn’t remember. It had all been so gradual before. But now, everything looked the same, unchanged. She held her breath listening for the far-away sounds of the interstate traffic. She couldn’t hear anything, but maybe it was just because there weren’t many cars. It was Christmas Eve. Everyone would most likely be at their destinations by now, so late in the afternoon, the day before Christmas.
“Oh, please,” she whispered, starting down the road again. “Please.”
The wind whipped up, and the first flakes of snow began to fall. She was so close—so close to getting the medicine back to Jake—how could everything go so completely wrong? She fought back angry tears of frustration, her throat raw from the cold. It would never do for her to really get sick now—now that Jake was in such need of her medication.
She lifted her chin determinedly. She was going to get it to him. Somehow, someway. And she prayed it would be strong enough to heal him. Christmas was a time for miracles. She needed one right now.
The 2011 Christmas Collection anthology containing MEANT TO BE, my novel TIME PLAINS DRIFTER, and all my other work can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/author/cherylpierson or at Barnes and Noble.
Good Morning (or afternoon or evening)!
Well, it’s time for me to give away a book, so come on in and leave a comment and you’ll be entered into the book-getting contest.
With the release of GRAY HAWK’S LADY (in just a few days), here’s a link to find out more: http://store.samhainpublishing.com/karen-kay-pa-1676.html?PHPSESSID=e42437db2cd57ca12b4eda0212e79f5d – I thought I might again give a bit of the story behind the story. In my last blog, I told how the characters took on a life of their own that was inspired by my own love life at the time (I met and married my husband while I was writing this book.) But there was more behind the story — thus, I thought I’d give a little more background.
Because this story is about a lady who captures an Indian (in order to study his language — and help her father, of course), I wanted to pick a character from a tribe of Indians who at that time was known as the “Tigers of the Plains.” The tribe was the Blackfeet, who were so ferocious at the time, and were such good fighters, they kept their homeland pristine pure for quite a while. White men thought twice before they ventured into Blackfeet territory.
But I knew so very little about Montana, and I was determined to get to know much about it so that I could write realistically about it. The picture to the right is of myself and my brother-in-law — deep in Montana territory — the Plains (note the mountain etched in the background).
My husband is from Montana and I was so very, very interested in Montana, that we honeymooned not only in Montana, but on the Blackfeet reservation. It was the first time I had stepped foot in Montana in this life.
Here’s a picture of my husband on our honeymoon, there in Montana — very close to the Blackfeet reservation — and over to the right is a picture of me at the same time — same mountain range.
As I’m sure you can probably guess, I fell in love with Montana, and in truth, if we could possible do so, we would live there. Now, of course, I have gone to Montana numerous times — usually every couple of years, I journey to Montana and to the Blackfeet reservation — if only to keep in touch with friends.
There is a beauty to the landscape, a feeling of freedom of spirit that is hard to capture when one lives in a city. I once read a book by James Willard Schultz who wrote about the open country, the open prairie, while always there were the mountains in the distance. I know now what he meant. I’ve toured in Montana (the entire State). I’ve helped on the Blackfeet reservation with literacy, have gone back time and time again because the truth it, I’ve fallen in love with Montana. I’m going to close this post with several pictures from different times when I’ve been in Montana either visiting family — my husband is from Montana — or visiting the Blackfeet.
The pictures are of myself, my husband and Toni Running Fisher, a good friend of ours. The picture above is me at a stream. The ones on the left and below are of my husband, also at a stream and on the Plains of Montana.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little picture tour of a country I love very much. And please while you’re at it, please don’t forget I have 5 books for sale right now — all ebooks: LAKOTA SURRENDER – LAKOTA PRINCESS – PROUD WOLF’S WOMAN – GRAY HAWK’S LADY – WHITE EAGLE’S TOUCH. You can get them for almost a song here: http://store.samhainpublishing.com/karen-kay-pa-1676.html?PHPSESSID=e42437db2cd57ca12b4eda0212e79f5d
Come on in and leave a comment, okay? 
This weekend we welcome Chuck Tyrell. He’s an international award-winning western writer who knows a thing or two about how to spin a good tale. Chuck grew up only nineteen miles from the legendary Fort Apache in Arizona.
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Good morning Petticoats and Pistols. Thank you for the invite. Now, let’s see if I can say anything of import, or at least slightly entertaining.
In considering how to run off at the keyboard, I thought of Laurel Baker. She’s the woman whose story, or at least one part of her story, is in my Black Horse Western short novel called Hell Fire in Paradise.
BHW books have a word-count limit of 45,000. But that doesn’t mean you can sit down at the word processor and knock out that many words by the word counter at the bottom of the page. It means counting as if every page were full of words, chuckablock, as my dear departed mother used to say. So if you aim for 40,000 and don’t go over by more than a thousand or so, you’ve got a Black Horse Western.
Now, about Laurel.
I met Laurel when she and her husband were prospecting for gold in the hill country north of Dos Cabezas, which is 20 miles east of Wilcox and seven miles or so from Bowie. Arizona, that is. Not far from infamous Apache Pass, actually.
She and hubby Jack found a small gold deposit, just enough for them to buy the land they wanted on Paradise Creek in Arizona’s White Mountain country. While in the wilderness north of Dos Cabezas, they met and befriended White Mountain Apaches (the only Apaches never to fight the white man).
Fast forward.
Night falls on Paradise and Laurel puts her two boys to bed in the loft. Jack went to Ponderosa, the closest town, for supplies that morning. He hadn’t returned. After putting the boys to bed, Laurel saddled her horse and went out on the mail road to see if Jack needed help. She went all the way to the lip of Paradise Gorge. No Jack. She waited a while, then decided to go home. As she neared, she could see the house was on fire, boys inside. Laurel’s Black Horse Western story begins here. And it’s a long journey to the other side of grief. I don’t know what it is about the name Laurel, or in the case of Return to Silver Creek, Laura. Maybe it’s the connotation of winning that the name carries.
Just a word about Return to Silver Creek, which just came out from Solstice Westerns.
When I wrote the book, it was 80,000 words long. But it was the sequel to Vulture Gold, and BHW wanted to publish it. How to chop a story in half?
You eliminate a character. Well, not eliminate, but take out major portions written from that character’s POV. So the BHW Revenge at Wolf Mountain focuses on Laura’s husband and his search for the perp who raped and beat and cut Laura.
Now the whole story is out, and we can read Laura’s grief and shame and indecision and near inability to deal with the child her traumatic experience left her with.
Where do I stop? With Blessing?
When I started writing A Man Called Breed, Wolf Wilder was running through the Mojave Desert with four men on his back trail. They wanted to kill him for something he did in Ehrenburg. The novel opens at Adam’s Well. There’s a girl there in the company of two other people. When she opens her mouth to speak to Wolf, she says her name is Blessing. I didn’t know what her name was until she told Wolf. But that happens a lot in my stories. Often characters have to tell me what their names are. Isn’t that strange?
Blessing ends up one Wolf Wilder’s homestead in Lone Pine Canyon. I’ll not be giving away the story if I just tell you what she does in Wolf’s words.
“If that’s all . . .” The major turned toward the troopers.
“It’s not all,” Blessing said. She marched over to Reed Fowley, the tail of my shirt flapping in the slight breeze, and me standing there in my union suit. Reed just looked at her, a smirk on his face. Blessing stepped closer. She barely came up to his shoulder.
“After what you done,” she said, “I oughta kill you. But dying’s too good for your kind.” She reached up with her left hand and grabbed his nose. At the same time, her right hand brought my kukri swinging out and around, and she sliced through Reed’s nose just behind her fingers.
The blade cut flesh and cartilage like it was cutting cake, and Blessing stepped back with the end of Reed Fowley’s nose in her hand. For a split second, Reed didn’t know what had happened. By reflex, his hand jumped up to cover his nose. Blood dribbled down his chin, but the severed stump bled little, considering. Reed screamed. No one moved.
Blessing held up the end of Reed’s nose. “Now people will see you for the man you are,” she said. She wiped the kukri on my shirt and handed it to me. She turned to Major Simmons. “That’s all,” she said.
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Women in the west were tough. At least those who show up in my westerns are. In a couple of months, BHW will issue my short western Road to Rimrock. One of the women in the book takes a liking to the MC, Matt Stryker. Her name is Catherine de Merode.
The name de Merode, in actuality, is Belgian royalty, as is Catherine. Be that as it may, she is well schooled in Savate, a French martial art that has its roots in the waterfront of Marseille and might be equated to Tae Kwan Do of Korea. So naturally there’s a fight scene. While maintaining her very prim character, she thoroughly trounces a major antagonist and threatens her with death if anything untoward ever happens to Matt Stryker.
Road to Rimrock is a strange western because it doesn’t have a single face-off shoot’em-out scene. It’s all about a man keeping a promise made to the town drunk.
So, I’ve rambled on about the women in my westerns, and several of them are dedicated to women. Return to Silver Creek, for example, is dedicated to Yukiko, Emma, Tina, Eve, Nanna, Maggie, Jessica, Ashley, Annie, Nanase, Lan, and Hana – the women in my life: wife, daughters, and granddaughters.
Good day. Been nice talking with you.
Charles T. Whipple Aka Chuck Tyrell
NB Black Horse Westerns are probably best purchased from The Book Depository UK, which sends the books anywhere in the world free of charge. Click HERE for the link. A search for Chuck Tyrell will tell you where else to find my westerns, Amazon, Nook, Smashwords, Createspace, whatever. As Charles T. Whipple, I write non-fiction about Japan, and have a new series of fantasy novellas on the way (one out) from Publishing by Rebecca Vickery.
Visit me at www.chucktyrell.com for more about me and my books.
What always strikes me most about stories of the old West are the poor down-trodden men and women who struck out across this vast country with little more than the clothes on their back. Nothing but big dreams and a promise for a better tomorrow provided the strength to weather the tough times. With grit and determination most carved out a good life for themselves.
These types of people are lots more interesting than the ones who have lots of money and little hardship. I guess I like the struggle and the making of something from nothing. And maybe it’s the fact that I, too, came from such humble beginnings.
While I’ve written stories about both rich and poor, my heart has always been with the less fortunate.
One of my very favorite characters was Glory Day in THE COWBOY WHO CAME CALLING that’s just been re-released as an e-book. Glory shoulders the responsibility of providing for her mother and two sisters after her father was wrongly convicted of murder and sent to prison. In addition to managing their small farm, she does the hunting and seeing that they don’t go hungry. But then one day she begins to have problems with her eyesight and the confidence that she’s capable of doing whatever needs done is severely shaken. If she can’t see, she can’t kill meat for the table. Panic sets in.
Then a cowboy with a heart of gold enters her life after she accidentally shoots him.
Luke McClain seems the answer to a prayer. He wastes no time in taking up the slack. In fact a little too well and has Glory seeing red. She doesn’t want him taking completely over and making her feel like she’s an invalid. Sparks fly and when the dust settles she finds out she’s attracted to the man who can fix anything. But of course, as all good heroines do, she doesn’t let him know. It would simply go to his head and that was too swelled to start with.
I had so much fun writing this story. It originally came out in 2003 by Dorchester Publishing and won the National Readers’ Choice Award.
EXCERPT:
For an instant Glory seemed about to hand him his head on a platter. Then almost shyly, she accepted his grip and dismounted.
“Pure luck, McClain.”
He suspicioned she tucked that shyness behind the gruff exterior because it was easier than dealing with other emotions. Ones that scared the living daylights out of her. And him, too.
Glory untied the legs of two large gobblers and let them fall to the ground.
“Nice shot,” Luke said, examining them. “Punkin might have a point after all when she claimed you could shoot whatever you aimed for. Now, I’m not sure filling my leg full of lead was all that accidental. Could be-”
“Could be you talk too much.” She probably meant the flippant tone as a warning. “As you said, you can’t believe everything that bratty sister of mine says.”
Luke should’ve let sleeping dogs lie, but he couldn’t help stirring the boiling pot. Even if he got scalded. Manure for brains his father had said many a time.
“Like the part about you never having a beau? Or never lettin’ a gentleman call on you? Or is it the part about never been kissed that’s bunched your tail feathers in a wad?”
A shocked gasp filled the space. “Mr. McClain. That’s my business. What right….?”
Before he realized his intentions, he slid his hand beneath her hair. With a tug on the back of her neck, he pulled her against him. Glory trembled under his touch, a fragile leaf in a storm’s path.
* * * *
This e-book as well as my other release REDEMPTION is available for $2.99. Click HERE to buy.
Which types of stories bring you more satisfaction…the ones that feature the poor and downtrodden or ones where the characters have everything their hearts desire? I’m giving away one copy of this today in e-form to two people who leave a comment.
We all make vows and promises. Many are swiftly broken. But some vows are as binding as chains of iron. THE LAWMAN’S VOW, available now, is the story of one such promise.
When his sister is found strangled in an alley, San Francisco lawman Flynn O’Rourke promises to find the man seen pocketing her jewels and bring him to justice at the end of a rope.
Flynn’s journey will test that vow to its limits. Deprived of his memory and cast up in a lonely, almost mystical place, he falls under the spell of an innocent beauty. Will he keep his vow – even though it means betraying the woman he loves?
Untouched by sensual love, Sylvie awakens to desire in the arms of a stranger with no name. Little does she suspect that the man she calls Ishmael harbors a dangerous secret – one that threatens to tear her fragile world apart.
In this excerpt, Flynn has just awakened on the beach with Sylvie bending over him.
He was dead, that had to be it. And those silver eyes looking down at him, set in a porcelain face and haloed by a nimbus of spun gold hair, belonged to an angel. Or maybe to a beautiful demoness.
He felt like bloody hell, which argued for the demoness theory. His head ached. His eyes burned. Every bone and muscle felt as if it had been pounded like cheap beefsteak. The few words he’d spoken had been ripped from the raw depths of his throat.
Worst of all, he had no idea what had happened to him.
“Don’t try to talk.” One cool hand eased his head upward. He felt the metal mouth of a canteen against his chapped lips. “Just a sip for now. Too much might make you sick.”
Coming more awake now, he could hear the lap of the tide and the sharp mewl of sea birds. His skin, hair and clothes were gritty with sand. Had he been shipwrecked? It seemed likely enough, but he had no memory of being on a boat. The blankness was unsettling. But no doubt everything would come back once his head cleared.
Pouring water into her hand she splashed the worst of the grit from his face. The palm that grazed his skin was lightly callused. His mysterious rescuer was no lady of leisure. But there was an ethereal quality about her, like a fairytale princess dressed in faded calico. Nothing about her made sense…
With a grunt, he heaved to a sitting position. The dizziness that swept over him blurred his sight for a moment. As it cleared he saw that he was in a sheltered cove, ringed by jagged rocks and pine crested cliffs. Beyond the entrance, sunlight glittered on the open sea. Nearby, on the sand, lay the wrecked hull of a boat.
The beauty who’d awakened him knelt at his side, one hand resting on a club-shaped chunk of driftwood. Peeking around her shoulder with wide brown eyes was a small, black-haired boy…
“Are you a prince, Mister?” the boy demanded.
He managed to find his voice. “A prince?” he rasped. “Do I look like a prince to you?”
“Maybe a little.” The boy frowned, then brightened. “If you aren’t a prince, where did you get that ring on your finger?”…
“Where are your manners, Daniel? The gentleman’s our guest, not our prisoner.” She turned, her expression still guarded. “I’m Sylvie Cragun,” she said. “This is my brother Daniel. And who might you be, Sir?”
His gaze flickered to the driftwood club. Her manner was friendly enough but something told him that, at his first suspicious move, she’d crack it against his skull.
Her silvery eyes narrowed. “Your name, Sir, if you’d be so kind. And it would be a courtesy to tell us where you’ve come from.”
“My name is…” He hesitated, groping for an answer to the question. But nothing came to mind – not his name, not his family or his occupation, not his home or his reason for being here. Nothing.
From a great 4.5 star review on Cataromance: “Pick up The Lawman’s Vow by Elizabeth Lane and experience the wonder and the delight of true love as well as the pain and the joy it can bring. You will find all this in one delightful story.”
You can read more about THE LAWMAN’S VOW and find purchase links on my web site, www.elizabethlaneauthor.com.
I’m so excited to be back at Petticoats and Pistols with all these gals. I had a blast last time! Today I’ll be giving away an e-copy of HER HEART FOR THE ASKING, book #1 in my Texas Hearts series, to one lucky commenter.
I’m really excited about the e-release of my Texas Hearts series, which was originally published in hardcover by Avalon Books. Texas Hearts includes HER HEART FOR THE ASKING, HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING and THE MORE I SEE.
All three of these titles have something about them that I absolutely love and that resonated with me while I was writing the stories. HER HEART FOR THE ASKING is the book that was never going to be a book! That’s right. This story started out as a quick little blurb in an article I was writing over 12 years ago on how to pitch your story to an editor.
I’ll admit I was a bit shy about using one of the pitches I’d used in actual editor appointments at conferences. Why I don’t know. I’d always received good feedback on those pitches which resulted in a request from an editor. So in writing the article, I just wrote up a quick pitch about a Philadelphia girl who needs to learn how to run her uncle’s Texas ranch from the rodeo cowboy who’d broken her heart years ago.
Simple right? Hmm, wait a minute. I think I threw in a twist and a secret and a promise from the past, too. I don’t recall exactly. But the response I got from that article surprised me. Readers emailed me asking when the book was going to be published.
I scratched my head. I hadn’t even planned on writing it! But since people were so interested in the story, I decided to give it ago. HER HEART FOR THE ASKING sold during a face-to-face editor appointment with an Avalon editor. I can’t even tell you how exciting it was to get a contract offer this way.
Here is the blurb and excerpt from HER HEART FOR THE ASKING:
Mandy Morgan swore she’d never step foot in Texas again after Beau Gentry left her for life on the rodeo circuit eight years before. But now her uncle’s heart is failing and she has to convince him that surgery will save his life. She never dreamed the first thing she’d see when she stepped off the plane would be her biggest nightmare…the one man she’d never stopped loving.
Beau Gentry had the fever for two things: the rodeo and Mandy Morgan. But for Beau, loving Mandy was complicated by his father’s vendetta against her uncle. This led him to make the hardest decision of his life, and he can still see the bitterness and hurt on Mandy’s face. All these years it has killed him to think Mandy had forgotten him and moved as far away as possible from him. But now they’re back in Texas, and he’s going to do all he can to win back her love.
Excerpt:
“What are you doing here?” Mandy Morgan asked, dropping her too-heavy overnight case on the sun-roasted tarmac. After a grueling forty-eight hour work stint and a five-hour flight from Philadelphia, she stood wilting under the brutal Texas sun, facing her biggest nightmare.
Beau Gentry.
She groaned inwardly, drinking Beau in with her eyes as if she hadn’t had a drop of water in months. Eight years was more like it. If she were eight years smarter, she would be moving her aching feet as fast as she could in the opposite direction. But all she could do was stare at eyes so bright they rivaled the blazing sun. At lips so kissable she’d spent the better part of her adult life trying to wipe the memory clean from her mind.
She had expected Beau would have aged some. When she allowed herself to think about him at all, she reminded herself. The faint lines etched in the corners of his sleepy gray-blue eyes gave a hint of maturity, but most probably caused by long days in the cruel sun.
She fought the urge to take a closer look at his ruggedly handsome features, but failed. How could he have gotten better looking after being abused by every bronc-busting horse on the rodeo circuit? His angular jaw, strong and determined, was shaded with beard growth that was probably a day old, maybe more. Mandy suspected if Beau grew a full beard, it would grow in thick and be the smooth texture of his almost black head of hair. She forced aside past memories that gave her such knowledge with renewed irritation.
The man didn’t even have the decency to have a crooked nose. What should have been bent and awkward from being broken a few too many times was instead long and straight, shaped perfectly between high cheek bones most women would swoon over, or kill to have themselves. But on Beau Gentry, it was just one thousand percent robust cowboy.
Damn him.
“I’m your ride out to the Double T,” Beau said, gripping the edge of his white straw cowboy hat and tipping it in a cordial gesture.
She ground the heels of her low pumps into the soft tar to contain her growing irritation. Did he think she was an idiot? “No way.”
“‘Fraid so,” he said, his expression slightly askew.
“Hank didn’t mention anything about you coming to get me when I spoke to him on the phone.”
“I suspect he thought you would have found some excuse not to come if you knew I was picking you up.”
“He would have been right. Why didn’t one of the hands come get me?”
Settling his hand at the base of his neck, Beau replied, “You’re looking at him. As of three weeks ago I am one of the ranch hands at the Double T.”
* * * * * *
Texas Hearts series includes:
HER HEART FOR THE ASKING
HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING
THE MORE I SEE
These are available as Kindle, Nook and Smashwords.
You can visit Lisa at http://www.lisamondello.blogspot.com/
Hello Everyone. I’m western historical romance author Julie Lence. This is my first time blogging on Petticoats and Pistols and I’d like to thank the Fillies for having me. When I asked Linda what I should write about, she suggested I write about something that was in one of my stories, such as a boardinghouse. That got me to thinking about many of the authentic things I have in my stories and how research has played an important role in this, so I decided to write about specific things I’ve researched for each of my books.
