Thanks for coming, Louise! We loved having you. Take care and stay cool this summer.
Now for the Drawing…………
One commenter will get a print copy of her newest book!
And the Winner is…………
KARIJEAN
Woo-Hoo!!! Congratulations, Karijean. Now watch for Miss Louise’s email and have your home address ready
Congratulations, MOLLY! You are the winner of my fun pepper giveaway.
Email me at: cathymcdavid@yahoo.com with your mailing address, and I’ll ship your cute prize!
Thank you for inviting me back to Petticoats and Pistols. I was here last January to promote my Love Inspired book Feuding with the Cowboy. Today, I want to introduce you to my brand new sequel, The Cowboy’s Last Rodeo. This story continues my series about the Mattson family of New Mexico cattle ranchers. As always with Love Inspired, my heroine and hero work through their unique conflicts and adversities on the way to earning their happily-ever-after.
Before I get into the specifics about the book, I want to jump on the bandwagon with other on P&P writers in celebrating the United States’ 250 anniversary. Quick question you don’t have to answer: How much did you have to practice to say “Semi-Quincentennial”? In May, I gave a patriotic talk to a ladies’ meeting, and I sure did have to pause and think each time I said the word. LOL! Also, to celebrate this remarkable anniversary, I brought a colorful ornament, some cute juice glasses, two tee shirts, a welcome mat, a yard flag, and a brand new Stars and Stripes flag to fly by our front porch. There was so much more I wanted to buy, but I had to stop someplace. BTW, I took all of these pictures with my iPhone, so they’re mine.
I’ve always been very patriotic. When I was in high school in 1962, I was honored to be chosen as the soloist when my choir introduced a new song titled “I’m just a flag-waving American.” Back then, everybody in this country would have made that same proclamation. If you click on the link, you won’t see me singing because, sad to say, my performance wasn’t recorded. Instead, you’ll hear a wonderful high school group singing the song in a 1976 celebration of our Bicentennial. Now, as we are about to celebrate the Semi-Quincentennial, it’s so inspiring to listen to the words of this song. Let me know what you think.
Thinking of patriotic people, I’m always impressed by the patriotism of the cowboy and rodeo community. These hardworking, down-to-earth folks get it. This is the greatest country in the world, and they are thankful to be here where we’re free to be whoever God wants us to be. Knowing The Cowboy’s Last Rodeo would be released in July, I made sure to include a scene in which my hero and heroine attend a community Independence Day celebration, complete with patriotic music, hot dogs, and fireworks. Rodeo cowboys and cowgirls are especially faith-filled and patriotic folks. You can always count on hearing an opening prayer and singing the National Anthem before every rodeo. And if the event happens on Sunday, they always attend Cowboy Church right there in the rodeo arena.
Here’s the story:
He’s risking it all for one last ride…After a near-fatal fall, former bull rider Raeder Westfall is determined to prove he’s no quitter, especially to his five-year-old son, Peanut. But rodeo queen June Mattson knows the price of chasing glory, and as Peanut’s Sunday school teacher, she worries Raeder is risking too much. Yet when the Riverton Stampede loses its star, June surprises them both by tossing Raeder’s name into the ring. As they work to save the town’s biggest event, friendship turns to something deeper. Can they overcome fear and pride to build the family they both long for?
So, what did you do to celebrate our Semi-Quincentennial? I’m partial to barbecue pork, baked beans, coleslaw, and corn on the cob for my July Fourth menu. Leave comments to enter my drawing for one print copy of The Cowboy’s Last Rodeo to a U. S. resident.
South Carolina author Louise M. Gouge writes contemporary and historical romance fiction, winning the prestigious IRCA in 2006 and placing as a finalist in 2011, 2015, 2016, and 2017. She was also a finalist in the American Christian Fiction Writers Carol Awards in 2005, 2007, and 2008, and placed in the Laurel Wreath contest in 2012. Most recently, she was a finalist in the 2023 and 2024 Selah Awards. A former college English and humanities professor, Louise is a 25 year member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Faith, Hope, and Love Christian Writers. Married for fifty-four happy years to her beloved husband, David, Louise is now widowed and spends her days researching and writing her next novel.
You can find her complete Booklist and more info about her writing at her website: https://louisemgougeauthor.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouiseMGougeAuthor
Follow me on BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/louise-m-gouge
I spent five days last week at a writers’ conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico and had a wonderful time. In addition to learning all kinds of new things and networking with other authors, I got to enjoy some of the local culinary delights. Let me tell you, in New Mexico, that means Hatch chiles in just about every dish. In fact, Hatch, New Mexico is considered the Chile Capital of the World, and they take their hatch chiles very seriously. Spending most of my life in Arizona, I’ve come to love spicy food, so for me this wasn’t a problem. I couldn’t say the same for a few of the conference attendees coming from back east ?
Did you know that peppers made their way to the United States starting from South America around ten thousand years ago? Aztecs and Mayans grew dozens of varieties. The peppers traveled with Indigenous people north as they moved through what in present day Central America and then into Mexico. Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate is credited for bringing the first chile seeds from Mexico to New Mexico. The plants produced from these seeds loved the arid, high-desert climate and thrived, cross-pollinating with other pepper plants to become the different Hatch varieties we know and love today. It’s no surprise that cowboys and chuck wagon cooks used peppers to season their food as dried versions of the plant lasted for months on the trail and flavored staples like beans and stews.
I thought it might be fun to play a little matching game. On top are pictures of seven peppers commonly used in Southwest cooking. On the bottom are the names of the peppers. See if you can match the picture of the pepper to the name for all seven and put your answer in the comments. Everyone who participates will be entered into a random drawing for a “surprise” pepper giveaway. Doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, the fun is in the guessing.
Bonus question: What’s the difference between chile and chili? No Googling 🙂
Thanks so much for all the comments, everyone! What a day. So many comments.
The winner of my $10 Amazon gift card is……….
WINNIE THOMAS
Congratulations, Winnie. Watch for my email or you can email me at linda (at) lindabroday.com.
Mark your calendars for Louise M. Gouge’s visit on Friday, July 24, 2006!
She’ll talk about rodeos and patriotism and the 4th of July! This will definitely suit your fancy or my name’s not Felicia Filly!
Plus, she’s giving away one copy of her new book The Cowboy’s Last Rodeo!!
Only commenters will be entered in the drawing so leave a comment on her post Friday.
This looks like a humdinger of a story. I do love my rodeos! 🙂 Yee-Haw
I just returned from the Romance Writers of America conference, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During my first days there, I viewed the petroglyphs or rock carvings found in Boca Negra Canyon (Black Mouth Canyon). I found them fascinating—some looked like spacemen!—and would like to share some information about them with you.
Most of the petroglyphs were made by the ancestors of the modern Pueblo people. The petroglyphs are carved into basalt (lava) rocks. When the rock formed from volcanic fissures, it was light gray in color. As it aged, it developed a dark patina called desert varnish. The people would carve through this patina to the lighter gray rock below to make their patterns and symbols.
The ancestors of the Pueblo people lived in the Rio Grande Valley since 500 AD. A drought in 1300 AD caused many people to move closer to the river. Most of these petroglyphs are thought to be made between 1300 and 1700 in a style called the Rio Grande style. The early Pueblo people did not have a written language, so these symbols may have sacred meaning, mark trade routes, record an event or simply be a means of communication.
While the images are located in this area, the people did not live here, rather living in adobe buildings along the Rio Grande.
Many of the petroglyphs are on the sides of boulders facing south or southeast. One theory is that these were made in the winter when that side of the boulder was warmer and had less snow accumulation.
The images show patterns, animals and humans. Archeologists have found over 21,000 petroglyphs along 17 miles of escarpment. Some petroglyphs date from later ages, including some carved in the 1700s by early Spanish explorers.
Around the turn of the century, the wealthy folk here in America began having what they called “Poverty Parties.” They mostly provided entertainment for the snooty rich where they could poke fun of the poor and say that it was all in good fun. I seriously doubt the poor saw it that way.
One such party was at the home of D.W. Tripp in Athens, Pennsylvania. Guests were instructed to wear flour sack clothing, no jewelry, and speak in dialect.
Here’s a portion of Mr. Tripp’s invitation and it’s very difficult to read: “Every womin what kums must ware a Poverty dress and apern, er something ekelly erpropriate, an leave her poodle dog to hum.”
Fines were assessed for dressing too richly, such as having cigars in a man’s pocket, slicking his hair down, walking with a cane, etc. The party was a fundraiser and the money went toward building a new church. Not one cent to help the poor people they ridiculed.
The food consisted of corn meal mush served with an abundance of cream and sugar, brown and white bread sandwiches, apple and pumpkin pie, donuts and cookies. The table was bare of a cloth or napkins and the guests ate from tin plates and drank coffee from tin cups.
Such parties established even a greater divide between the classes. They parties came at a time of great inequality. Immigrants were suffering as well as black Americans. I’m sure they had a totally different view of these parties.
One snooty woman wrote an article in the 1905 copy of Bright Ideas for Entertaining that stressed that the tinware was always borrowed for the party. She wanted to make sure no one thought the entitled would actually “own” any.
Yet, later on into the 1920s, one brave woman wrote that Poverty Parties should be used to shine a light on the less fortunate instead of making fun of them and that the guests should do some real service to help the poor. Southern fraternities and sororities carried over this form of entertainment well into the 1950s. When they tired of that, they added unemployment parties where they stood in a bread line to get coffee and donuts.
Give me a break!
My parents were very poor with little to their name. They married in 1934, my dad in coveralls and mom in a borrowed dress. A government migrant camp was their home. They crisscrossed these United States following the crops. They saw little to laugh about in their situation. And when I came along, fourth in the lineup of five kids, our family lived in a tent that a kind farmer let them stretch on his land and pick cotton for him. So poverty parties? No thank you. Each day was a reminder of how little they had.
I had never heard of these Poverty Parties until I ran across an article about them. Have you? What do you think about this? Leave a comment to enter a drawing for a $10.00 Amazon gift card.
I have a promotion going on called Heartfelt and Wholesome with my two Hangman’s Daughters books. Winning Maura’s Heart is a mere $.99! Courting Miss Emma is $2.99! However, there are tons more from other authors and rest assured all are sweet romance. Maybe you’ll find some new reads that will suit your fancy. To check them out, click on the graphic.
Plus, all three of my McIntyre series books are marked down for a limited time. Only $.99 for Cade’s Quest, Summer’s Heart is $1.99, and Jess’s Reckoning is $3.99. If you missed any of these, snatch them up now at these low, rock-bottom prices.
Ladies, thank you all for coming by the blog today and taking part in our discussion on details about characters! I love a great discussion like this and you all are the heart of our group with your participation and love of reading!
I chose two winners today, and they are….RACHEL and DENISE! If you two will email me at fabkat_edit@yahoo.com and let me know which book you’d like to receive, I’ll get it off to you ASAP! Be sure to include the email address you’d like me to have KINDLE deliver the book to and put WINNER in the subject line so I can find you quickly!
Thanks again so much for such a fun day today at the blog–I thoroughly enjoyed it!
~Cheryl
Are you the kind of reader who likes to have a detailed description of the hero or heroine in romance books? What about other secondary characters? And do you feel the same way about characters in books of genres other than western historical romance, or romance in general?
To me, there is a big difference in how much character description is needed in romance novels versus other genres, and here’s why.
When we read romance, we put ourselves in the story, empathizing with both the heroine and the hero. Of course, we need enough description to let us be familiar with them both, but this might be a case of “less” being “more.”
In our personal lives, we have preferences in how our romantic “leading men” look, speak, behave, and so on. If our preferences are toward the tall, dark, and handsome hero, it will be hard for us to be vested in a story with a hero who perhaps doesn’t have those traits. Or one who has habits we personally don’t find attractive. (Just as an aside, I notice from watching the original Perry Mason reruns that EVERYONE has a cigarette in their hand–everyone except Della Street, that is. Seeing this series that was shot during those years soon after the stories were written, you realize what a different time that was in our society.)
But back to our character descriptions in the books we read. I knew a woman who didn’t like blond heroes. If he had blond hair on the cover, she’d color it brown or black with a marker. In the book, if “blond” was mentioned, she’d mark through it and write whatever color of hair she’d decided he needed. I asked her about the heroines. “They’re all me,” she answered. “I don’t pay attention to their descriptions.” It made me wonder how many other readers felt this way. By the way, I used this cover pictured below, GOLDEN NIGHTS by Christine Monson, to illustrate the blond hero–those are sometimes hard to find. This story was a fabulous study in character development and how it all contributes to the entire workings of the plot from start to finish. IT’S NOT A SWEET STORY–much grittier, but the writing, descriptions, and plot were unbelievably detailed and worked perfectly to create a very interesting love story.
Stephen King had mentioned at one time in his book ON WRITING that “description begins in the writer’s imagination, but
should finish in the reader’s.”
And in genres other than romance, character description is different–and maybe more important–because the reader doesn’t have any preconceived expectations of the story, such as romance readers do.
When I taught creative writing classes, this description of King’s was one I used to illustrate how so much could be packed in to a short amount of words without being an info dump.
AMAZON LINK FOR ON WRITING BY STEPHEN KING
This is the beginning of St. Agnes’ Stand, by Thomas Eidson, who also wrote The Missing, which was a very successful movie. Take a look:
He was hurt and riding cautiously. Thoughts not quite grasped made him uneasy, and he listened for an errant sound in the hot wind. His eyes were narrowed—searching for a broken leaf, a freshly turned rock, anything from which he could make some sense ofhis vague uneasiness. Nothing. The desert seemed right, but wasn’t somehow. He turned in the saddle and looked behind him. A tumbleweed was bouncing in front of the wild assaults from the wind. But the trail was empty. He turned back and sat, listening.
Over six feet and carrying two hundred pounds, Nat Swanson didn’t disturb easy, but this morning he was edgy. His hat brim was pulled low, casting his face in shadow. The intense heat and the wind were playing with the air, making it warp and shimmer over the land. He forced himself to peer through it, knowing he wouldn’t get a second chance if he missed a sheen off sweating skin or the straight line of a gun barrel among branches.
And then this, a couple of paragraphs down:
He had been running for a week, and he was light on sleep and heavy on dust and too ready for trouble. He’d killed a man in a West Texas town he’d forgotten the name of—over a woman whose name he’d never known. He hadn’t wanted the woman or the killing. Nor had he wanted the hole in his thigh. What he did want was to get to California, and that’s where he was headed. Buttoned in his shirt pocket was a deed for a Santa Barbara ranch. Perhaps a younger man would have run longer and harder before turning to fight and maybe die; but Nat Swanson was thirty-five years that summer, old for the trail, and he had run as far as he was going to run.
I absolutely love this. Can you feel that you’re right there with Nat Swanson as he’s riding? There are no wasted words, and this is just such an eloquent, masterful description of not only Nat, but the situation and the physical place he’s in as well as the dilemma he’s faced with.
AMAZON LINK FOR ST. AGNES’ STAND BY TOM EIDSON
Another excellent way of describing a character and setting the scene at the same time is from another character’s POV. This passage is from Jack Schaefer’s iconic classic, Shane—from the eyes of Bobby Starrett—when Shane first rides into his life.
This is just the very beginning of the book—there is more physical description of Shane a few paragraphs later, but I chose this passage because it lets us know what’s going on in a few short sentences—and that is real talent.
He rode into our valley in the summer of ’89. I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father’s old chuck-wagon. I was on the upper rail of our small corral, soaking in the late afternoon sun, when I saw him far down the road where it swung into the valley from the open plain beyond.
In that clear Wyoming air I could see him plainly, though he was still several miles away. There seemed nothing remarkable about him, just another stray horseman riding up the road toward the cluster of frame buildings that was our town. Then I saw a pair of cowhands, loping past him, stop and stare after him with a curious intentness.
He came steadily on, straight through the town without slackening pace, until he reached the fork a half-mile below our place. One branch turned left across the river ford and on to Luke Fletcher’s big spread. The other bore ahead along the right bank where we homesteaders had pegged our claims in a row up the valley. He hesitated briefly, studying the choice, and moved again steadily on our side.
This is tough, because we’re seeing it through two “lenses”—Bobby is nine years old, and this is what he sees, but it’s filtered by the adult Bobby who’s now telling the story of what happened all those years ago.
In writing the story this way, the reader gets the full impact of experiencing the fears, the situation brings, the joy of having Shane there, and the anguish of his leaving all through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy, with the adult overview that lets us know that Shane was not a hero—but he was to Bobby and those small time settlers who needed one so desperately. Yet, leaving was the only thing he could have done and kept Bobby’s view of him untarnished and intact.
Because we don’t know how the story will end, and we don’t know what to expect, we are learning about Shane’s character right along with Bobby so we are actively looking for details and descriptors the author might give us along the way—it will affect our opinion of Shane and let us know if Bobby is a reliable narrator, and it affects the outcome of the story.
I bring this up because in romance, seldom does the description have such a direct effect on the story itself, unless our main characters have scars, afflictions, or disabilities that might have some direct bearing on the story and its outcome.
AMAZON LINK FOR SHANE BY JACK SCHAEFER
My burning question for today is, what do YOU think? Do you like a lot of description and detail about the WHR heroes and heroines you read about, or would you rather “fill in the blanks” for yourself? Who are some of your favorite characters in books you’ve read–any genre! Be sure to leave a comment–I’m giving away a digital copy of any one of my stories! If you live in the USA and love to read, this just might be your lucky day!
As far as heroines go, most people I’ve talked to are not as concerned with her physical description (maybe because each person sees herself in the heroine?) but are more concerned with her personality traits—is she likable? Is she determined?
If she is not a fierce match for the hero, the story line is doomed.
And what about our hero? Though he can get away with more “questionable” traits, he has to be endowed with almost superhuman strength to overcome everything that’s thrown his way, and that is description that must be thoroughly detailed—not left to the reader’s interpretation.
Thanks so much for stopping by today!
