The Wyoming Sunrise series kicks off in February with Forged in Love
TI was inspired to write The Wyoming Sunrise Series when I found out Wyoming was the first state (then a territory) in the Union to give women the right to vote.
Wyoming.
Doesn’t that seem odd?
Then I found out it wasn’t just the right to vote…all sorts of other rights were given to women by women’s suffrage. The right of women to run for elected office. Or be appointed to office. The right to serve on a jury. (They took that away after two years, trails were just too awful for sweet little women to watch!) And I found the first woman justice of the peace in America was from Wyoming. Esther Hobart Morris.
This inspired me to have one of my heroines be the second justice of the peace in the United States.
As I researched this book, reading about all that went on in Wyoming was fascinating. They became a territory in 1868…with women voting. I read somewhere that initially they didn’t have enough people in this large state unless they included women in their citizen count. Not sure if that’s accurate based on other things I read. It sounds like men genuinely (but not unanimously) supported the right to vote for woman.
Because of this suffrage nonsense (insert sarcasm) they weren’t allowed statehood for 30 years. Why? When other states were getting granted statehood in only a few years? Because the United States refused to let them in unless they took the vote away from women.
And Wyoming adamantly refused to strip that vote from women. I also read that Utah gave women the right to vote but, when they applied for statehood, they were told, not if women can vote. So Utah stripped women of the right to votes.
So, year after year Wyoming was denied statehood. When they finally got it, the women maintained their right to vote because Wyoming just would not budge. The whole history of it was great reading.
But the part I loved was, when the word was out that THIS YEAR it was going to pass there was a riot in Washington D.C. PROTESTS against. One representative from Wyoming kept shouting the words from a telegram he’d received from the Wyoming legislature: “We will stay out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without our women.”
Whoever it was who was shouting it, ended up having to climb a wall somewhere to escape the mob but even as he climbed he kept yelling, over and over again, “We will stay out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without our women.”
That story makes me smile.
Anyway, fun research for this new series. I’m hoping to get it all into the pages of the new books.
When sparks begin to fly, can a friendship cast in iron be shaped into something more?
Forged in Love
coming February 2023
Mariah Stover is left for dead and with no memory when the Deadeye Gang robs the stagecoach she’s riding in, killing both her father and brother. As she takes over her father’s blacksmith shop and tries to move forward, she soon finds herself in jeopardy and wondering–does someone know she witnessed the robbery and is still alive?
Handsome and polished Clint Roberts escaped to western Wyoming, leaving his painful memories behind. Hoping for a fresh start, he opens a diner where he creates fine dishes, but is met with harsh resistance from the townsfolk, who prefer to stick to their old ways.
Clint and Mariah are drawn together by the trials they face in town, and Clint is determined to protect Mariah at all costs when danger descends upon her home. As threats pursue them from every side, will they survive to build a life forged in love?
The Laws of Attraction
Coming June 2023
If widowed town seamstress Nell Armstrong has to make one more pair of boring chaps for the cowboys in her tiny Wyoming town, she might lose her mind. So meeting Brand Nolte, a widower father struggling to raise three girls, seems like her dream come true. Brand has no idea how to dress the girls, and Nell finally has a chance to both create beautiful dresses and teach the girls to sew.
But Nell is much more than a seamstress, and the unique legal and investigative skills and knowledge she picked up alongside her late lawman husband soon become critical when a wounded stagecoach-robbery survivor is brought to town. As danger closes in from all sides, Nell and Brand must discover why there seems to be a bull’s-eye on their backs.
And because it’s Christmas time I’m including a recipe. This is a Connealy family FAVORITE.
It’s like scalloped corn combined with Mac & Cheese.
Because my sister-in-law Mardelle brought it every year to every holiday, we’ve named it Mardelle Corn
Mardelle Corn
1 can whole corn-drained
1 can creamed corn
1 cup salad macaroni (the type isn’t important)
1 cup cubed Velveeta
1 stick butter cut up
Mix together, pour into 8 x 8 buttered casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour, stirring halfway through.
I actually self-published a book of Family Favorite Recipes.
Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a signed copy of Faster than Fast Food.
And Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m the morale officer at work, and this year we’re showing the Bill Murray movie, and serving pulled pork sandwiches. (Ground hog, get it?) I tried to get the chef to wear a top hat and jacket like the gentlemen in Gobbler’s Knob, but that idea kind of got shot down. 
