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Hunting for A Hero in Wyoming . . . I Found Him And He Has A British Accent

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victoria_bylin_bannerI’m still in the thick of revisions for The Outlaw’s Return (LIH, February 2011),  but the end is in sight. That means I’m thinking about the characters for my next book.  The heroine’s easy.  This is Book #4 in a four-book series, so Caroline already has a personality and a problem. She was widowed shortly after the War between the States, and she’s wanted a family of her own for years.

So who do I set her up with? Right off the bat, I’m ruling out a preacher, a lawman or an outlaw.  Those are the heroes in the first three “Swan’s Nest” books.  So what’s left?Cowboy painint
A doctor?   I did a lady doctor in Kansas Courtship, plus I want to get Caroline off to an isolated ranch. A newspaperman or a lawyer? Same problem as the doctor. A rancher is an obvious choice, but he has  to be unique in some way.  

 I went through all sorts of possibilities before I settled on a character I’ve never once considered. Dear sweet Caroline is about to meet a retired British officer.  It just so happens he’s settled in Wyoming with this two children and he needs a nanny for them.  He also needs a nurse because he’s ill. And he’s not easy to get along with. The man is bossy. Wyoming Cowboy silhouetteHe’s exasperating. He’s accustomed to being obeyed, and he’s terrified he’ll leave this earth without providing a mother for his two not-so-adorable children.  (Change that: the kids will be a little adorable…maybe “a lot” adorable by the time I’m done.)

So how does my British Army officer end up on a ranch in Wyoming in 1876?   History led me right into the perfect set-up for this story.  The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed settlers to claim 160 acres as their own.  The Powder River basin was rich with grass, largely untouched and just waiting for vast herds of cattle. Word traveled to the eastern United States and then across the Atlantic to Great Britain. Wealthy Englishmen began arriving with big ideas. TheWyoming Heroy invested in large herds that grazed freely on the open tracts of government land.

The first Englishman to run a big herd of cattle was Moreton Frewan in 1879. My book is set in 1876, but the conditions are workable for fiction.  I’m going to be doing a lot of research on Moreton Frewan. He came to Wyoming at the age of 25 and immediately made himself known. He built a two-story house near Kaycee that cowboys called Frewan’s Castle, and he had a knack for convincing his wealthy friends to invest in his cattle business.

Here’s a fun bit of trivia.  Frewan married a New York socialite named Clara Jerome. One of Clara’s sisters,  Jennie Jerome, became the mother of Winston Churchill.

This was quite a time in Wyoming. During the 1870s and into the 1880s, this rough-and-tumble landscape was a playground for visiting Englishmen and their families.  Big game hunts, fancy balls and lively parties were common.

As with all periods of history, events conspired to bring about change. More homesteaders arrived, claiming land and fencing it, so that the vast acreage was parceled out. With such laWyoming landscaperge herds, the pasturage was overgrazed. Investors wanted a better return, and the beef prices didn’t cooperate.  The biggest blow came with the winter of 1886-87.  It was disastrous. Ranchers lost up to 80% of their stock in the worst winter Wyoming had ever experienced.  By the 1890s, the British were pretty much gone from Wyoming.

I can hardly wait to get started on this book. My mind’s spinning ideas for scenes–a ball where my heroine feels insecure, a hunting trip gone awry–but first I’ve got to finish those pesky revisions. It’s frustrating, but I don’t really mind . . . Sometimes ideas are like spaghetti sauce. The longer they cook, they better they are.

Janet Gover: INTO THE OUTBACK

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JanetGoverG’day. Thanks, Sheilas, for having me at your place. (Sheila, by the way, is Aussie for a young, attractive woman. That’s us, isn’t it?)

 I’m Australian and you might be wondering what someone from Down Under is doing here. It’s about as far from Texas as you can get… isn’t it? You’d be surprised… there’s a town called Texas near where I grew up in the Australian bush. Far from making us strangers, in many ways, the places we live make us cousins. Here’s why – its part of The Man From Snowy River, a poem by Australia’s great bush poet Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson.OldBushSongs

So Clancy rode to wheel them — he was racing on the wing
Where the best and boldest riders take their place,
And he raced his stock-horse past them, and he made the ranges ring
With the stockwhip, as he met them face to face. Recognise Clancy?

He might be a legendary Australian stockman, but he’d be equally at home riding the range in Texas. Your Texas.

The story of the Australian outback is very similar to that of the American west. It is a vast and rugged land – as dangerous as it is beautiful. The European settlers who came looking for a new life or looking for gold fought their way into the outback with bullock drays. They lived isolated from the world battling droughts and storms, dealing with lethal snakes, shocking heat and freezing cold.

That’s the history we share – and the heroes we share…

Which brings me back to Clancy. He wasn’t always chasing brumbies (the Aussie version of wild mustangs) – he was a drover too, guiding his cattle across the vast plains.

As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover’s life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

JanetGover-stockwoman

I know exactly what he means – that’s me in stockwoman mode in the photograph.

I write contemporary fiction, but time hasn’t changed the outback. Nor the people in it. A car doesn’t really make it easier to fall in love with the boy next door, when properties (we don’t call them ranches) are measured in hundreds of square miles.

In my first noTheFarmerNeedsAWifevel, The Farmer Needs A wife – I wanted to do a contemporary take on mail order brides. My bride might arrive in the outback in a plane, not a coach, but when that plane leaves, there’s still no going back.

Another possibility for finding true love in the outback is the Bachelor and Spinster Ball. All the singles from hundreds of kilometres around get dressed in their finest clothes and come to the ball hoping to meet prospective husbands and wives. I guess that sounds familiar to you too. The modern B&S BallsTheBachelorandSpinsterBall often also bring in young folk from the big smoke, who are there for the country music and the partying… but anything can still happen at a black tie ball under the stars.

In both books, I tried to capture the essence of Australia – the remarkable landscape, the strength of the people who live in the outback, and the feeling of community that develops in small towns.

I felt it as I was growing up – and even when I’m on the far side of the planet… I still feel it. I’m never all that far from Clancy.

He sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond’rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I guess you know what I’m talking about too, don’t y’all.

Links:
www.janetgover.com
www.bookdepository.co.uk/  (free shipment to the US if you want to buy one of my books)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjo_Paterson  More on Australia’s great bush poet.

 

Janet will be giving away a copy of The Farmer Needs A Wife and The Bachelor and Spinster Ball – one each to two lucky indiviuals who stop by to leave a comment today.

Elaine Levine: The Best of Both Worlds

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elaine_levineWhat I love best about writing historical westerns is that I get to research the world of the west as it existed at the time of my stories. . . and then make up my own reality–using the truth and a bit of fiction.  My Men of Defiance series takes place in a make-believe town somewhere in the Laramie River Valley area of what is now Wyoming.  It’s an imaginary place inspired by my favorite Wyoming things and places–Vedauwoo, Laramie, Centennial, South Pass City, sun, wind and space. 

And now I have a new piece to add to the tapestry of Defiance: Ten Sleep, Wyoming. OutsideofTenSleep

Ten Sleep is a magical place that I had wanted to visit for quite a while.  Last summer, I talked my husband into a road trip.  After five hours of driving north over endlessly rolling, summer-brown prairie, we turned west and drove up (and up and up) into the Big Horn Mountains through beautiful alpine forests that were cool in late August, hinting of the winter to come.  It seemed that we no sooner crested the peak of a mountain than we were thrust down into an enormous canyon with hair-pin turns–such a shock after the hours of unchanging landscape on the highway.

The town was lush and green–a true oasis in the late summer dryness of Wyoming.  It was founded in 1882, but had long been the midpoint point between Indian camps–ten sleeps in either direction.  SouthPassCity1_smThere’s plenty to see and do in the area–a mammoth dig, petroglyphs, badlands, the Washakie Museum, shops, parks, camping, fishing and golf. 

But what was most interesting to me in Ten Sleep was the history behind the Spring Creek Raid that occurred in the area in 1909–the last major confrontation between cattlemen and sheep ranchers fighting for grazing rights in Wyoming’s opeDefiance14_Smn range. 

In that raid, seven masked men–all respected local cattlemen and ranch hands –attacked Joe Allemand’s sheep camp, burning their two sheep wagons, and killing Allemand, his partner, his nephew, hundreds of sheep and a few sheep dogs.   Public outrage at the event caused it to be the beginning of the end of the decades of violence between the two types of ranchers.

The hero of AUDREY AND THE MAVERICK, Julian McCaid, owns a sheep ranch outside of Defiance–smack, dab in the middle of prime cow country.  The tensions between the two types of ranchers is something the sheriff of Defiance uses to stir up trouble for McCaid, hoping the troubles that plague our hero’s ranch will cause him to fold his operation and head back east.  But McCaid has rediscovered Audrey . . . and he’s just not ready to leave yet! 

I hope you’ll like this next installment in my Men of Defiance series.  I had loads of fun writing it.  Sager and Rachel make an appearance, as do the lead characters from my next story, LEAH AND THE AVENGER–Leah and Jace.

audreyAndMaveriI’ll be giving away a copy of AUDREY AND THE MAVERICK to a lucky commenter today.  And please stop by my new website, http://www.romconinc.com/, to learn about the new romance reader convention I’m organizing with the help of my partners, Tiffany James and Michele Chambers.  It’s going to be held in Denver, Colorado, on July 9-11.  I’d love to see you there!

Warmest wishes–

Elaine Levine

http://www.elainelevine.com/

http://www.romconinc.com/