Elizabeth Lane

I'm an internationally published romance author, coming up on 40 novels and novellas. Most of my stories have been Westerns for Harlequin Historicals, but I set stories in other times and places as well. I'll also be writing contemporary stories for Harlequin Desire, with the first release in January 2013. You can learn more on my web site.

Tumbling Through Time

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 A few months ago, after writing thirty-four historical novels and novellas, I finished my first book for Harlequin Desire.  I was sweating bullets all the way.  And my respect for authors who write contemporaries has grown by giant leaps.

            Let me explain.  Yes, historicals take a lot of research.  The Westerns I write are easier than most because the Wild West is bred into my bones.  The Mountain West is home to me.  I grew up on my grandparents’ stories of what it was like to be a pioneer, a settler, a cowboy.  I wouldn’t think of trying, say, a Regency, which involves a feel for England and enough historic minutiae to fill a shelf full of encyclopedias.  But the West just flows for me.  And when I get to a blank spot in my story, I can always throw in a gunfight, a prairie fire, an Indian attack or a rhapsodic description of a desert sunrise.

            A series contemporary, on the other hand…What can I say?  A story for a line like Harlequin Desire is bare bones plot—a hero, a heroine, a compelling situation and some (lots of) sizzle.  There may be a child, as there is in my story.  But there’s no arch-villain, no historic setting, no grave physical danger, no spilled blood, chases, races, or cliffhangers to keep a reader turning those pages.  Just the intense, evolving relationship between a man and a woman.  What a challenge. 

            But then, as I keep reminding myself, isn’t that what romance is all about?

            IN HIS BROTHER’S PLACE, the Desire I finished in March, is scheduled for release in January 2013.  And yes, it’s a Western.  Set in New Mexico, its hero, Jordan Cooper, is a rancher/ investment banker who discovers that his late brother’s fiancée has a son—a son she’s kept hidden from the wealthy family who despised her.

            I’m currently working on a second book for Desire.  Technically it’s not a western, but it does have a ranch and a heroine who’s terrified of horses after a tragic accident robbed her of the ability to bear children.  I confess to loving these shorter contemporary romances, where the focus is on the emotional conflict.   Writing them has helped me discover ways to intensify the conflict in my historicals.

 But I have no plans to hang up my boots and saddle.  There are two more historical westerns in the pipeline.  The first, THE BALLAD OF EMMA O’TOOLE (a title I’ll fight to keep) is finished and awaiting a release date.  The second, THE COUNTESS AND THE COWBOY, is on hold but will be finished later this year.  For that one, I came up with the title first, then had to think of a story to go with it.  Has anybody else out there done that?

            How about you?  Which kind of stories do you enjoy most, contemporary or historical?  Those of you who write, which do you most enjoy writing?  Why?

Western Weddings Winner

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Jackie W, you’ve won my drawing for WEDDINGS UNDER A WESTERN SKY.  Please send me your mailing address at elizlane123@msn.com  and I’ll get a copy to you.  I’ll be out of touch for a few days, so don’t worry if I don’t get right back to you.  Congratulations.  Hope you enjoy the book.

Win our Western Weddings Book!

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Wedding Season is upon us—time for a sneak peak at Harlequin’s new Spring Brides anthology.  WEDDINGS UNDER A WESTERN SKY, to be released later this month, combines three joyful novellas, written by Lisa Plumley, Kate Welsh and myself.  What a privilege to share a book with these two great authors!

Today I’ll be giving away a free copy.  But first let me introduce you to my story, “The Hand-Me-Down Bride.”  Boston belle Arabella Spencer has followed her dream all the way to Montana, where her childhood sweetheart, Charles, will be waiting to make her his bride.  But Arabella has a few surprises in store.  Here’s an excerpt.

Buffalo Bend, Montana

April 29, 1876

 Arabella Spencer huddled under the dripping eave of Brophy’s Feed and Mercantile where the stage had let her off with her trunk.  Rain had churned the deserted street into a quagmire of mud and manure.  The muck had ruined her new kidskin shoes and wasn’t doing much for her disposition.  After more than twenty minutes of waiting, she was wet, worried, and getting madder by the second.  Charles, her fiancé, had certainly known she was coming.  He’d mailed her the tickets three months ago, with a promise to meet the stage and drive her to his new ranch.  Only the thought of their wedding, and the fine home he’d refurbished especially for her, had sustained her on the grueling journey by train and stagecoach, all the way from Boston to Buffalo Bend.  Now she was here at last, bruised, chilled and bone-weary, with Grandma Peabody’s wedding dress packed into her trunk.   The bride had arrived.  So where was her groom?

  True, the stage had been delayed two hours by a broken wheel.  But that was no excuse for him not to be here – especially given that she had no place to get out of the rain.  Brophy’s Feed and Mercantile, which appeared to be the only store in this ramshackle excuse for a town, had long since closed for the night.  There wasn’t a hotel in sight, or even a restaurant; and the church at the street’s far end looked as dark as a tomb.

            Only the saloon across the street showed any sign of life.  Lamplight filtered through gray sheets of rain.  Occasional bursts of laughter and the wheeze of a concertina drifted over the drone of the storm. 

            Arabella shivered beneath her damp woolen traveling cloak.  The thought of shelter was tempting.  But she’d have to leave her precious trunk behind and wade through ankle-deep mud to cross the street.  In any case, well-bred young ladies simply did not venture into saloons – not even in a deluge fit to float Noah’s ark.

            A flicker of movement across the street caught her eye.  Someone had just come out of the saloon.  Was it Charles?  Had he been waiting for her in that disreputable place?  But the man who stepped into the street was too tall and too broad-shouldered to be her fiancé.  Charles was of average stature.  The figure striding toward her, wearing a bulky sheepskin coat, loomed like a giant against the roiling sky.  Arabella shrank into the doorway.  If the man meant her harm, she’d have no place to run.  But she could kick and bite and scream for all she was worth.  If it came to that, she vowed, she wouldn’t go down without a fight.

            He stopped a pace away from her.  Close up, he wasn’t as huge as she’d first thought.  But he was big enough – six-foot four, by her reckoning.  His face was obscured by rain streaming off the broad brim of his hat.

            “Miss Arabella Spencer?”  His voice was like the rumble of an iron wheel over a graveled road.  “I was told to look for a redhead, so I’m guessing you’re the one.”

            Staring up at him, she nodded.

            “McIntyre’s the name.  I’ve come to fetch you to the ranch.  Wait here, and I’ll bring the buckboard around.”

            He thrust something toward her.  Realizing it was an oilskin, Arabella seized it eagerly and wrapped it over her damp cloak.  Before she could utter a proper thank you, the man had melted into the rain.

            Moments later he reappeared from behind the store, driving an open rig behind a team of sturdy bays.  The back was filled with some kind of bulky cargo covered by a canvas tarpaulin.  There was one bench seat in front, with nothing to shelter its occupants from the rain.

            For heaven’s sake, if Charles couldn’t come himself, why couldn’t he at least have sent a covered buggy?

            McIntyre halted the horses, climbed to the ground and came around the rig – a buckboard, he’d called it, though it was more like a wagon, drawn by two horses instead of one.  Hefting Arabella’s trunk as if it weighed nothing, he slid it under the canvas in back.  

            “Where’s my fiancé, Charles Middleton?” Arabella demanded.  “Is he all right?”

            “Far as I know, he’s fine.”  McIntyre’s big hands caught her waist and boosted her onto the bench as if she were no bigger than a child.

            “Then why didn’t he come to meet me?” 

            “Spring’s a busy time for ranchers.  I had to drive to town for feed and salt, so he asked me to pick you up.”  He climbed onto the bench beside her.  “It’s a long ride.  Too bad I hadn’t counted on the rain, or on the stage being late.”

            As if that had been her fault!  “Well, at least you got to spend a couple of hours in the saloon,” she sniffed.

            “Uh-huh.  Had a drink and won fifty dollars in a game of five-card stud.”  His hands flicked the reins.  The wagon ploughed forward through the sticky mud.

            Struck by a sudden realization, she stared at him.  “Wait – you were in the saloon when the stage arrived.  You must’ve heard it stop, and you knew I’d be getting off.  Why on earth did you leave me standing outside in the rain?”

            He shrugged.  “I was holding a royal flush.”

            Is there an upcoming wedding in your family?  What’s your idea of the perfect wedding?  Readers who comment will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of WEDDINGS UNDER A WESTERN SKY.

 

Old but New–Pueblo Storytellers

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In the late 1950’s, Helen Cordero was 45 years old, and the mother of six children.  She and her cousin’s wife, Juanita, had been doing bead and leather work to sell to the tourists who came to Cochiti Pueblo, south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Both women were skilled artisans, but the leather and beads were so costly that there was little profit to be gained from selling their handiwork.

“Why don’t you make pottery?” their grandmother suggested.  “You don’t have to buy anything.  Mother Earth gives it all to you.”

Juanita was already an accomplished potter.  But Helen had to learn, and it was a struggle.  After six months of practice, her pots still didn’t look right.  That was when Juanita suggested she try making figures.

“It was like a flower blooming,” Helen was to say later.  Small frogs, birds, animals and eventually little people came to life.  The first time she showed them at a festival a collector bought them all and ordered more, including a 250-piece Nativity set.

In 1964, Helen was asked to make a larger figure with children.  Some potters were making mother and child figures, but Helen wanted something different.  She thought of her grandfather, one of the great Pueblo storytellers and preservers of tradition.  She remembered his voice and made her first storyteller figure a portrait of him, with his five grandchildren.  One of those grandchildren is Helen.

Helen Cordero, honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure, passed away in 1994.  Today more than three hundred potters in thirteen pueblos have created storytellers—men, women, animals, birds and mythical figures.

 

I saw my first storyteller at Acoma Pueblo in the early 1990’s.  I loved it so much that I bought it from the potter, a wonderful artist named Peggy Garcia.  My little storyteller is a woman with five children, beautifully fashioned and painted.  I gave it to my mother, whose 45 years of teaching elementary school made her a true storyteller.  Now that she’s gone I have it back.  It sits on my shelf, carefully anchored, as I write this.  I wish I had a photo to show you.  Here’s a similar example of Peggy’s work.

(For the information about Helen Cordero, I credit an article by Pamela Michaelis.)

Who are the storytellers in your family?  Maybe you’re one of them.

A Lawman and His Vow

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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.

Lawman’s Vow and Chocolate winner.

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The winner of THE LAWMAN’S VOW and some Ghirdelli chocolate is … Virginia C.

Virginia, you can contact me with your snail mail at elizlane123@msn.com.  Please let me know what kind of chocolate you’d like.  The choices are:  (1) Solid dark chocolate bar  (2) Dark Chocolate with mint  (3) Milk chocolate with caramel or (4) Milk chocolate with raspberry cream.

Thanks to all of you for your fun posts today.

Win some San Francisco Chocolate–and THE LAWMAN’s VOW

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Tomorrow will be Valentine’s Day.  For many folks that means roses and heart-shaped cards inscribed with sweet sentiments.  Not me.  I go for the good stuff…chocolate!

Humankind’s love affair with chocolate goes way back.  In the early 1500’s, the first Spanish conquistadores to arrive in Mexico discovered the Aztecs enjoying chocolate as a beverage.  They called it the drink of the gods—they had the right idea.  But today I want to tell you about the chocolate that became part of Western history.

Domenico Ghirardelli was born in Italy in 1817.  His merchant father apprenticed his son to a confectioner and spice importer.  At the age of 20, Domenico moved to South America, changed his name to Domingo and went into business for himself.  In Peru he opened a chocolate shop next door to an American piano maker named James Lick.  Lick decided to leave Peru for California, arriving in San Francisco on January 11, 1848, just 13 days before gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill.

Lick had brought with him 600 pounds of Ghirardelli’s chocolate.  Soon he wrote Ghirardelli that he’d sold all the chocolate and there was a big demand for more.  Ghirardelli packed up and followed his friend to San Francisco.

Arriving in 1849, he prospected a while, then owned a general store.  In 1852 he opened his confectionery now known as the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company.  Early business was up and down, but by 1885 the company was importing 450,000 pounds of cocoa beans a year, as well as grinding spices and selling coffee, wine and liquor.

Chocolate was the mainstay of the business.  The equipment to process the cocoa beans took up so much space that the business needed bigger quarters.  After Ghirardelli retired in 1892, his sons purchased the square block in San Francisco presently known as Ghirardelli Square.  Luckily it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire.  It remains a major tourist attraction today, even though the chocolates are now made at a modern factory in San Leandro.

There’s no reference to chocolate in my March 2012 historical, THE LAWMAN’S VOW.  But it does take place in northern California at the time Mr. Ghirardelli was starting up his business.  Another connection—I fuel my writing brain by nibbling Ghirardelli’s bittersweet chocolate chips, so there’s a bit of Ghirardelli chocolate in every line of the book.

Here’s a blurb for you.

A MAN WITH A MISSION…

San Francisco Lawman Flynn O’Rourke swore he’d bring his sister’s killer to justice.  So when suspect Aaron Cragun is identified, Flynn will do anything, even rent a boat and sail to Cragun’s remote home to find him.  But Flynn doesn’t anticipate the storm that wrecks his boat, the injury that erases his memory…or the beautiful woman who rescues him.

Sweet Sylvie is loving and kind—and Aaron Cragun’s daughter.  As Flynn’s memory returns, will the lawman keep his vow or allow himself to fall for the one woman forbidden to him?   

What’s your favorite kind of chocolate?  Today’s posts will be entered in a drawing for an autographed copy of THE LAWMAN’S VOW, and a special treat from Mr. Ghirardelli’s establishment.

Love Those Longhorns

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Not being from Texas, I was hesitant to tackle this topic.  But I’ve always been a fan of  those tough, rangy cattle with their amazing horns, stretching as long as seven feet from tip to tip.  Longhorns are, and always will be, a symbol of the American West.

Their ancestry dates back to cattle brought to Mexico by the Spanish.  Some of these cattle went wild.  Over time they developed the resilience and survival skills that make Longhorns what they are today.  Early Texas settlers mixed the blood of these feral Mexican cattle with their own eastern cattle.  The result was a rugged, long-legged animal with spectacular horns and a coat that could be blue, yellow, brown, black, red or white, plain or speckled.   

But Longhorns are more than looks.  They have strong survival instincts and can find food and shelter in rough weather.  Longhorns can breed well into their teens or longer, and they’re known for easy calving.  A Longhorn cow will often go off on her own to have the calf in a safe place.  The calves can stand up sooner after birth than other breeds.

With their long legs and hard hoofs, Longhorns made ideal trail cattle.  After the civil war millions were driven to market.  They also stocked most of the new ranches on the Great Plains.    But times changed for the breed.  The “Big Die-up in the winter of 1886-87 and the spread of barbed wire fences brought an end to the open range.  Breeds like the white-faced Herefords put on weight faster and had fattier meat, providing needed tallow.  Ranchers crossed these breeds with Longhorns to produce hardier stock.  By the 1920s,  only a few small herds of Longhorns remained.

In 1927, Longhorns were saved from near extinction by the U.S. Forest service, who collected a small herd to breed in Oklahoma.  Other groups in Texas gathered small herds to keep in parks.  They were regarded as curiosities, but the stock’s longevity, disease resistance and low-fat, low-cholesterol meat revived the breed as beef stock—although many ranchers keep them purely as a link to Texas history.

Does anybody out there have experience with these amazing animals?  Any good stories?

There are no Longhorns in my March Western, THE LAWMAN’S VOW.  But you can get a sneak peek and an excerpt on my web site: http://www.elizabethlaneauthor.com. 

Watch for a giveaway next month.

The Friendly Beasts

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The Bible doesn’t mention the animals that were in the manger on that first Christmas Eve.  But surely they were there, silent witnesses to the miracle.  What would they say if they could talk?

“The Friendly Beasts” is a song about the gifts the animals gave to the baby Jesus.  The melody comes from a Latin song first sung in 12th Century France to give thanks for the donkey that carried the Holy Family into Egypt.  The current English words were written by Robert Davis (1881-1950) in the 1920s.  Since then it’s been recorded by artists as varied as Burl Ives, Johnny Cash, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Garth Brooks.

Jesus our brother, kind and good
Was humbly born in a stable rude
And the friendly beasts around Him stood,
Jesus our brother, kind and good.

“I,” said the donkey, shaggy and brown,
“I carried His mother up hill and down;
I carried her safely to Bethlehem town.”
“I,” said the donkey, shaggy and brown.

“I,” said the cow all white and red
“I gave Him my manger for His bed;
I gave him my hay to pillow his head.”
“I,” said the cow all white and red.

“I,” said the sheep with curly horn,
“I gave Him my wool for His blanket warm;
He wore my coat on Christmas morn.”
“I,” said the sheep with curly horn.

“I,” said the dove from the rafters high,
“I cooed Him to sleep so He would not cry;
We cooed him to sleep, my mate and I.”
“I,” said the dove from the rafters high.

Thus every beast by some good spell,
In the stable dark was glad to tell
Of the gift he gave Immanuel,
The gift he gave Immanuel.

This simple song has always been a favorite of mine.  When my children were young, our family spent 6 months on a remote volunteer site in Guatemala.  Missing music, I bought a cheap guitar in the local market and taught myself a few simple chords.  This song is one I sang to my children at Christmas (I sing to kids and cats, no one else).

I try to remember animals at Christmastime.  My daughter, who died in an accident in 1985, loved animals.  Every Christmas I remember her with a gift to Best Friends, a wonderful no-kill animal sanctuary in Southern Utah.  My sister and I, who need nothing, give each other charitable gifts.  For her, I donate to Heifer International, an organization that provides livestock to needy families in many parts of the world.

Do you include animals in your Christmas celebration?  Tell us how.

Here’s a link to a cute version of the song:

Christmas Moon winner

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Vickie Couturier, you are the winner of our drawing.  Please send your snail mail address to me at: elizlane123@msn.com, and I’ll get the book right to you.

Thanks to all of you who entered.  Wish I had enough copies for everyone.

Elizabeth

Petticoats & Pistols