How the West Was Wed–Giveaway

by

It’s PUB week for my book How the West Was Wed

and I’m giving away an eBook copy.

The only thing threatening their success is love.

After finding herself a widow at the age of twenty-six, JOSIE JOHNSON moves back home to Two-Time, Texas and takes over the town’s only newspaper, the Gazette.  Everything works as planned until the very charming, very handsome BRANDON WADE moves to town to start his own newspaper. At first Josie welcomes the competition, but soon learns that readers prefer Wade’s bold hyperbole to her more serious type of journalism.

Brandon never meant to put the pretty publisher out of business and suggests a solution.  Nothing sells newspapers like a good juicy scandal, but lacking that, the next best thing is a good old-fashioned print war between two battling editors.  Brandon even writes up an article disparaging himself and his paper to demonstrate. Josie refuses to stoop to such tactics.  She’ll gain her readers back on her own terms—or not at all!  But when her paper accidentally publishers Wade’s article, the print wars are on.

The rivalry between Josie and Brandon meets with immediate success and both newspapers fly off the racks. The editorial warfare is the talk of the town and readers can’t seem to get enough. While the ink wars rage on, Josie and Brandon find themselves fighting yet another battle—a mutual attraction that could put everything they worked for at risk.

Before the Civil War, people were content to receive news weeks and even months after an event, if at all.  The war changed that. Suddenly, people were demanding to know what was going on, and newspapers became an important part of life.  President Lincoln recognized that newspapers could be used to sway public opinion and he used them to good advantage, much as politicians do today.  

Here’s my question: What’s your favorite way of getting the news?

 

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45 thoughts on “How the West Was Wed–Giveaway”

  1. News is hard to find among all the slanted yellow journalism of today. Too many are quick to believe anything they hear nowadays. Credible news has to be looked for. I seem to give Fox News most credit. Although they go off the Trail for sales as well.

    • Hi Jerri, it’s really a shame that we have to look for credible news. It seems like the more news outlets there are, the less “real” news we get.
      Thank you for stopping by.

  2. Good morning. Your book sounds great.
    I watch Fox News, don’t trust any of the others, will not even turn them on. But like Jerri said, it’s really hard to get true & correct news these days and FB is not the place to believe everything you read. Newspapers are not reliable where I live, really far away from anywhere. So I guess it’s just not the Same as in the good old days when you could read something and believe it. Sad sad.

    • Hi Tonya, I agree; it is sad. When I took journalism in school, we had to report the facts, nothing but the facts. I would never have gotten away with “alternative facts.”

  3. This sounds like a fun read! I would love the opportunity to read it! Reading is my life and definitely my adventures! I’m home 24/7/365 for the most part because I’m disabled with MS. I have only read your writings in Anthologies so far so I do know I like your work!

    I miss the days of news being news. I’m from Texas and since there are so many towns and so many newspapers a lot of the smaller towns have gone down to 1-3 papers per week or have shut down. I wonder how long it will be before there isn’t any print newspapers at all and news will be all digital. I can’t imagine the times of when news was received weeks after or even days after it happened. With on line breaking news pages on social media, notifications to our smart phones from news stations and such, we now get news minutes if not seconds after it happens. Thank you for the opportunity to win your book!

    • Hi Stephanie, thank you for sharing. Reading certainly does offer adventures!

      It is hard to imagine a time when news was hard to come by. I bet people were happier back then not to know all the bad things happening in the world, and less stressed. Just to put our lives in balance, we’re practicing “no news” day. It really helps restore serenity.

  4. Sounds like you have written a delightful book. One I will put on my to be read list.
    I still love to read a newspaper but they certainly aren’t the newspaper of my younger years

    • Hi Glenda, thank you!

      What you said is so true. Years ago, our local newspaper employed real journalists. Not all it does it reprint AP news. I get more local news from my hairdresser.

  7. I still subscribe to a daily newspaper. Also get some news from the internet. There is so much false news these days it is hard to figure out what is true and what is not.

  9. I usually just watch my local news… Now days you just can’t trust what you hear and read, about world news. Is it true or embellished .. Sad if you ask me….

  10. Honestly, I still enjoy reading our local town paper the most. I don’t like online news at all and try to stay away from it. I will read blogs or an article if I search on a certain topic. We don’t have tv channels so nothing to watch, thank goodness.

  11. I don’t really get the newspaper sometime I will look at it on line. Mostly I just take thing one day at a time and hope for the best.

  12. Good morning Margaret,
    My day job is in newspapers and I still like to get news that way, but am aware that those days are numbered. I had a pretty good run. Love the importance print journalism had in earlier eras, the “Extra, extra, read all about it” factor. News PAPERS may go out of style, but the need for thoughtful, factual journalism remains.
    I still think there’s a place for newspapers, even print, in smaller communities. If your kid makes the honor roll, you have to have something for Gramma to put on the refrigerator.
    Kathy Bailey

  13. Hi Kathy,
    I laughed at your comment about having something to put on the ‘fridge. I remember when my daughter won a full scholarship. She got a full column in the local newspaper with her photograph. I brought every newspaper I could find and practically plastered the house with them.

  14. I would have to confess that Facebook is probably how I get most of my news. We do not have cable or any TV channels, I am not a huge newspaper fan (I like to look at local ones, but that is about it, and I seldom listen to news on the radio. I am fairly content to live in my rural little bubble. Most news is all owned by 8 corporations and very skewed anyway. I tend to look and research more organic news and natural information that the mainstream media does not want the public to know.

  16. I have a variety of ways to get news–TV from the regular networks, email updates from the local and a major city newspaper (we also receive the paper daily), and a few online sites.

    • Hi Wendy, as I’m sure you know, the challenge is knowing what to believe. When checking historical facts, I always consult three resources. I don’t know if that would work for the news.

  20. I enjoyed the excerpt Margaret. Look forward to reading about their war with words. I get my town news and then I get email new. I scan it but that’s about it. Major events I can tread about in my town paper.

  21. The key to getting the news is looking at competing sources so one can make up one’s own mind from all what’s out there. I never ever rely on just one source, TV or newspaper. I read one or two newspapers (subscription and non-fee based) and two television outlets (one cable, one broadcast) online at least once a day, often twice. Further, IMO…

    1. Relying on one story is relying on just one person’s viewpoint from just one outlet/source that may or may not have a horse in the race, i.e. a definite, persistent bias.

    2. As for Fox News, anyone who knows anything about journalism knows the goal of its parent company News Corporation and its owner Rupert Murdoch is that which is best for him, his company, and the very wealthy. I didn’t figure I needed to say that is is far right since that’s obvious to everyone by now, I think. Relying solely on Fox News is people talking to themselves, who are not truly looking for differing, opposing or balanced perspectives. I worked a lifetime career in editorial/journalism (for News Corp, as well, for some time), and if you don’t believe me, go find some college journalism professors for other opinions.

    3. Based on recent hacking reports, social media sites are unreliable for sourced news. Go to reputable news organizations of various types, especially ones that print retractions when they themselves get something wrong. That’s a key point for an organization with any integrity.

    • P.S. There may have been “balanced” news sources but there never has been a Golden Age of Journalism. It has always depended on who owns the source and their goals and ideologies. When I was researching family genealogy, the old local newspapers I read still had ‘who visited whom’ type stuff, etc., along with national news from a single national source–and I studied my family’s history in about 15 US states as well as here and England back to 1500. We have new devices to get news from but the responsibility still lies with each individual reader.

      Here’s an article to consider:
      “Carl Bernstein: The “Golden Age” of Investigative Journalism Never Existed”
      http://bigthink.com/the-voice-of-big-think/carl-bernstein-the-golden-age-of-investigative-journalism-never-existed

      Besides reporters not being good listeners, as Bernstein says, I don’t think readers are either.

      • Eliza, I agree, there has never been a Golden Age of Journalism. I’ve read many newspapers published in the 1800s and some of what passed as news back then made me shake my head.

        Sounds like you had an interesting career. My husband used to work at ABC news, but that was back in the old days before news went 24/7 and all that air time had to be filled.

  22. It may sound a bit silly, but I love getting the news from my 12-year-old. He’s in 6 grade now and gets up before me each day (lets the dogs out, checks the weather, and makes sure I get up on time). He turns on the TV to check the forecast and comes and tells me any top stories that catch his attention. It makes for really good conversations and it’s nice to see him maturing. (I catch up on the local news online later in the day, but his news updates are my highlights.)

  23. I must confess that I love newspapers in print but I no longer subscribe because they have become so expensive in the past few years. I get most of my news from newscasts on TV and I know that they have to be taken with a grain of salt!
    Congratulations on your new book.
    Blessings!

  24. I still like getting a daily newspaper and rely on that for most of the news. I always enjoy reading your books. This looks like another fun one.

  25. I actually read most news online from several sources including the UK, Australia among others. I do ignore Fox News. I love your books! Keep writing for us and thank you!

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