I am Margaret Tanner, an award winning, bestselling, Australian author with nearly two hundred books published on Amazon. I now concentrate on writing sweet Western Historical Romance, although in the past I used to write Contemporary and Australian Historical Romance.
I like to think my stories will tug at your heartstrings and evoke strong emotions.
My heroes hide behind a rough exterior. They are tough men who are prepared to face danger and overwhelming odds for the women they love. My heroines are brave, resourceful women willing to endure hardship and danger in an untamed land, if it means they can win their heart’s desire.
I have had many jobs over the years including being an Army Reservist, an Army Major’s secretary and a Medical Audio typist. My most memorable job, for all the wrong reasons, was as a postal delivery person. Surprisingly, I am scared of dogs, and I have to say I was accosted many times by dogs who were/or were not, intent on doing me harm.
I sadly lost my husband at the end of Covid. I have three grown-up sons, and two lovely granddaughters.
Outside of my family and friends, writing is my passion.
FRONTIER LIFE – AMERICA AND AUSTRALIA
Life on the American and Australian frontiers have a strikingly similar history, so it was fairly easy for me to make the transition from writing Australian to American western historical stories.
For example, take the Australian Act of Selection.
America: The original Homestead Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20th, 1862. It gave applicants freehold title to up to 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River. The law required only three steps from the applicant – filing an application, improving the land, then filing for a deed of title.
Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, including freed slaves, could file a claim on the provisions that they were over the age of twenty-one and had lived on the land for five years.
The Homestead Act’s lenient terms proved to be ill-fated for many settlers. Claimants didn’t have to own farming implements or even to have had any farming experience. The allocated tracts of land may have been adequate in humid regions but were not large enough to support plains settlers where lack of water reduced yields.
Speculators often gained control of homestead land by hiring phony claimants or buying up abandoned farms.
Homesteaders could often build a log cabin in a matter of days, using only an axe and auger. No nails were required for the task.
The first step in construction was to build a stone or rock foundation, to keep the logs off the ground and prevent rot. Once the foundation was laid, settlers would cut down trees and square off the logs. These logs were then “notched” in the top and bottom of each end then stacked to form walls. The notched logs fitted snugly together at the corners of the cabin and held the walls in place. After the logs were stacked, gaps remained in the walls. Settlers had to jam sticks and wood chips into the gaps, then they filled in the remaining gaps with cement made from earth, sand, and water.
Fireplaces were built of stone and often had stick-and-mud chimneys.
Most cabins had dirt or gravel floors, which had to be raked daily to preserve their evenness.
Australia: The 1860 Land Act allowed free selection of crown land. This included land already occupied by the squatters, (wealthy landowners) who had managed to circumvent the law for years and keep land that they did not legally own.
The Act allowed selectors access to the squatters’ land, and they could purchase between 40 and 320 acres of crown land, but after that, the authorities left them to fend for themselves. Not an easy task against the wealthy, often ruthless squatters who were incensed at what they thought was theft of their land.
The Act of Selection was intended to encourage closer settlement, based on intensive agriculture. Selectors often came into conflict with squatters, who already occupied land and were prepared to fight to keep it.
The bitterness ran deep for many years, sometimes erupting into violence.
The first permanent homesteads on the Australian frontier were constructed using posts and split timber slabs. The posts were set into the ground, about three feet apart, according to the desired layout. Slabs of timber were then dropped into the slots. A sapling or similar, straight piece of timber ran across the top of the posts, which allowed them to be tied together so they could support the roof.
Clay was often plugged in between the joins and splits of the cladding to stop droughts. The internal walls were sometimes plastered with clay and straw, lined with hessian/calico, whitewashed or simply left as split timber.
Roofs were pitched using saplings straight from the bush and often clad with bark. Early settlers learnt from the aborigines that large sheets of bark could be cut and peeled off a variety of trees and used as sheets to clad the roof.
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I’m so proud of my Gun For Hire book – Dustin.
Please visit the series page HERE.
My latest release was on the 2nd of April – Callum’s Bride.
Blurb:
Sebastian thought he was irredeemable. Will Carly’s love set him free?
Bounty hunter Sebastian Callum is ambushed and seriously wounded by the McSweeney gang.
He finds his way to Carly’s house and she and her young son give him sanctuary. But danger is an ever-present threat. And why does the littler boy think Sebastian is Jesus?
While nursing him back to health, Carly gives Sebastian her heart, even though he thinks he is an unworthy recipient. Will he accept this special gift from her?
If so, how far will a woman from his past go to keep them apart?
Readers can contact me via my FB author group. I would love to see you there. Or private message me on FB.
To find out more about my books please check out my Amazon link.
GIVEAWAY
One reader who leaves a comment, will win a $5 Amazon Gift Card. Have you ever been inside a log cabin?
What do you think would be the biggest challenge of making a home on the frontier?
Throughout most of Christian Europe, the pagan symbols of the spring hare, the egg, and chick were quickly adopted as symbols for the Christian Easter. The colorful ritual of decorating eggs also has an intriguing origin. As part of the Lenten season leading up to Easter, early Christians abstained from eating food from animals as the Lenten fast. Yet chickens continued to lay eggs, so eggs were hard-boiled, then decorated to celebrate the Easter season but were not eaten until Easter. 
Given the egg’s symbolic significance representing the rock before the tomb, egg rolling became a popular children’s Easter activity in America in the 1800s, recreating the rolling away of the rock in front of Christ’s tomb. According to the White House Historical Association, some historians credit First Lady Dolley Madison (yes, her name is spelled correctly!)with first proposing the idea of a public egg roll around 1810. There are also accounts of informal egg rolls staged by the children of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson on the White House lawn. The 1878 event hosted by President Rutherford B. Hayes on the South Lawn, however, stands as the first official White House Easter Egg Roll.
Easter bread comes in dozens of different shapes, types, and sizes – some sweet, some salty, some large, and others – bite-sized.
An outlaw looking for a fresh start.
As the sun dips behind the rugged peaks of the Rocky Mountains, my mind wanders, as it often does, back in time, envisioning a world where adventurers, seekers, and settlers roamed the vast landscapes and frontier towns bustled with life.
“Miss?” He leaned over, touching her shoulder. “Miss?”
These books were usually around a hundred pages long and had bright, colorful covers. The ones set in the West quickly became some of the most popular, but mysteries, military feats, explorers and adventurers, and romances had their niche. As you might guess, not all these writers were men. It’s estimated that from twenty-five to thirty percent were women. You might recognize some of the names among the dime novelists: Horatio Alger, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Bret Harte, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, and Louisa May Alcott. Some used their real names, and some used pen names when writing dime novels. Often, this was how they got their start. Prentiss Ingraham, who made Buffalo Bill even more famous, completed more than 6oo novels.
The invention of the first practical typewriter in 1868 made it easier to write these short novels. An author could make up to $1,000 per book, which was a lot of money in the 1800s. One thousand dollars in 1870 would equal almost $25,000 today, and most writers could write a book a month. These books normally had a single plot and targeted the “common” class.
That’s what happened to my hero in The Writer’s Rescue. A debilitating accident on the ranch leads Wade Easton to become a wealthy Western dime novelist, but also a recluse. When he loses yet another housekeeper, he has no other option but to accept a woman he feels is too young for the job. However, she starts changing him without even trying. Can his own story perhaps be written with a different ending than he thought?
One of my favorite childhood memories was heading over to my Aunt Donna’s house to spend the night. Often, we’d watch a favorite movie–the Apple Dumplin’ Gang was one of our top choices. It’s a movie hubby and I have shared with our kiddos to much laughter and shouts of “Mr. Donovan, I gotta go!”.
