Hi everyone! I’m Cheryl Pierson (Cheryl #2 here at P&P)! This is my first “official” post as a new filly, and I’m very excited to be here at Petticoats & Pistols in such great company! I’ve done a couple of guest posts in the past, and from the moment I began to get to know my “fellow fillies,” I knew I wanted to be here amongst ya!
I won’t bore you with too many details–just want to tell you a little about me and I’d love to hear about you all, too. I was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, in 1957. I had two “way older” sisters (10 and 12 when I came along) and I was a Tomboy–with a capital “T” for sure! Although I loved Barbie, I’d much rather have been playing cowboys and Indians–probably why I chose to write western historicals.
I finally got to go to a rodeo when I was about 9 with my cousin, and Larry Mahan was there! I was in love. After that, I wanted to be a barrel racer, thinking that would be a great way to get those handsome cowboys to notice me when I was older…of course, that was a huge pipe dream since my family was NOT into rodeoing at all. But my first “serious” little story I wrote in elementary school had a guy in it named “Larry” and girl named “Cherry” (original, huh?)
My dad was an oilfield hand–a chemical engineer, on call 24/7 for as long as I can remember. Mom was the “June Cleaver” type, and both of them were appalled when I told them I wanted to write books for a living. As they predicted, that dream had to be placed on hold for many years–enough time for me to marry and raise my two kids–with a myriad of “real jobs” (as others called them) in between.
But I was writing all the time, every spare minute I got. I started out with an idea for a western romance, and the more I wrote, the bigger the story became, until I had a 1000 page manuscript! Of course, it’s still unsold (go figure!) but it’s the book of my heart–and I know each of you has written a book that holds that special place in your heart, as well. That was what I needed to “get me going.” Ideas flowed, and so did the words.
Although that first “tome” is still as yet unpublished, the third book I wrote, FIRE EYES, was published in May 2009, and went on to become an EPIC Award finalist. The Wild Rose Press also published two of my western short stories, and my first contemporary romantic suspense, SWEET DANGER, will be released on October 1.
The fourth book I wrote, TIME PLAINS DRIFTER, was published through another smaller press. After a few short months, we parted ways, and TIME PLAINS DRIFTER is homeless again. My daughter designed my cover for this book so it’s very special to me. It also garnered me the award of Honorable Mention for Best New Paranormal Author in PNR’s PEARL Awards this year.
Right now, I am waiting (on pins and needles) to hear back from Berkley about one of my manuscripts that’s under consideration with them. GABRIEL’S LAW was the third place recipient in this year’s historical category in the San Antonio Romance Authors’ Merritt Contest. The judge for that final round asked for the full manuscript. It’s been thirty-five days, six hours and fourteen minutes…but who’s counting?
I live in Oklahoma City with my “transplanted” (from West Virginia) husband, Gary, who plans to make good on his threat to retire this fall. My daughter, Jessica, is 23 and works at an actors’ casting agency here. My son, Casey, is 20 and a physics major in college (and believe me, those math and science genes did not come from me!) Along with my business partner, I teach writing classes for all ages, and have done lots of work with the Indian Education Program for one of the major school systems here in OK City. And I’m FINALLY getting to actually write! 
Thank you all so much for your warm welcome and your generous friendships. I am thrilled to be here–a “regular filly!”
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from one of my short stories, A NIGHT FOR MIRACLES.
When a wounded drifter and three children appear at her doorstep, widow Angela Bentley can’t turn them away. Nick Dalton has a dangerous reputation, but is it truly deserved, or is it just talk? Will love find two lonely people on this, A NIGHT FOR MIRACLES?
FROM “A NIGHT FOR MIRACLES”:
Angela placed the whiskey-damp cloth against the jagged wound. The man flinched, but held himself hard against the pain. Finally, he opened his eyes. She looked into his sun-bronzed face, his deep blue gaze burning with a startling, compelling intensity as he watched her. He moistened his lips, reminding Angela that she should give him a drink. She laid the cloth in a bowl and turned to pour the water into the cup she’d brought.
He spoke first. “What…what’s your name?” His voice was raspy with pain, but held an underlying tone of gentleness. As if he were apologizing for putting her to this trouble, she thought. The sound of it comforted her. She didn’t know why, and she didn’t want to think about it. He’d be leaving soon.
“Angela.” She lifted his head and gently pressed the metal cup to his lips. “Angela Bentley.”
He took two deep swallows of the water. “Angel,” he said, as she drew the cup away and set it on the nightstand. “It fits.”
She looked down, unsure of the compliment and suddenly nervous. She walked to the low oak chest to retrieve the bandaging and dishpan. “And you are…”
“Nick Dalton, ma’am.” His eyes slid shut as she whirled to face him. A cynical smile touched his lips. “I see…you’ve heard of me.”
A killer. A gunfighter. A ruthless mercenary. What was he doing with these children? She’d heard of him, all right, bits and pieces, whispers at the back fence. Gossip, mainly. And the stories consisted of such variation there was no telling what was true and what wasn’t.
She’d heard. She just hadn’t expected him to be so handsome. Hadn’t expected to see kindness in his eyes. Hadn’t expected to have him show up on her doorstep carrying a piece of lead in him, and with three children in tow. She forced herself to respond through stiff lips. “Heard of you? Who hasn’t?”
He met her challenging stare. “I mean you no harm.”
She remained silent, and he closed his eyes once more. His hands rested on the edge of the sheet, and Angela noticed the traces of blood on his left thumb and index finger. He’d tried to stem the blood flow from his right side as he rode. “I’m only human, it seems, after all,” he muttered huskily. “Not a legend tonight. Just a man.”
He was too badly injured to be a threat, and somehow, looking into his face, she found herself trusting him despite his fearsome reputation. She kept her expression blank and approached the bed with the dishpan and the bandaging tucked beneath her arm. She fought off the wave of compassion that threatened to engulf her. It was too dangerous. When she spoke, her tone was curt. “A soldier of fortune, from what I hear.”
He gave a faint smile. “Things aren’t always what they seem, Miss Bentley.”
I’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.
He’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.)
y invested in large herds that grazed freely on the open tracts of government land.
rge 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.
The first piece of sage advice my mentor gave me when I took my first writing class … write what you know. That has proven to be so true; however, you don’t have to be a down and out, dirty gunslinger or cussed outlaw to write a scene about robbing a bank and high-tailing it off to parts unknown with your gang.
My second riding experience was on an ol’ work pony named “Blackie.” I have no idea how wide he was, but I had to stand on the tail of a pickup to get on him and my feet never touched either stirrup. I looked like a cheerleader doing the splits on the back of a horse. I slipped right off, more like a boulder crashing down a gully, and never tried riding again. Of course, everything I write has to have horses. Duh, how could those good looking hunks of horseflesh, excuse the pun, get around? But, I had to research and talk to experts, in order to make my readers believe that I really can recognize the south end of a north bound gelding.
My story in the new anthology is called “One Woman, One Ranger” and is set in Old Tascosa, the second town settled in the Panhandle, although I had to change the name somewhat to fit my story. Several kernels of history from actual accounts of Old Tascosa, germinated into a story about how the highfalutin’ folks of Upper Tascosa wanted to make sure the rowdy, detestable citizens kept their distance in Hogtown, or Lower Tascosa. They would have never associated with people named Rockin’ Chair Emma, Boxcar Jane, Slippery Sue, and Gizzard Lips. Thus, for my story, Old Tascosa became Buffalo Springs along with its seedy residents restricted to a part of the town across the creek known as Buffalo Wallow.
Mobeetie, originally named Hidetown and still referred to today as “Mother City of the Panhandle”, evolved from buffalo hunters’ camps and from the nearby Army post, Fort Elliott. In the beginning (1875), it was the legal, business, and social center for this part of Texas. The town faded when the railroad bypassed it two years later; and in 1890 when the Army abandoned nearby Fort Elliott (the only military post ever established in the Panhandle), the town withered further. What remained was totally destroyed by a cyclone…today I think it’d just be called a regular ol’ tornado.
But before its demise, Old Mobeetie was a favorite “recreational town” for itinerant adventurers, cowboys, buffalo hunters, and freight haulers. There were gambling houses and dance halls, each with lots of female employees who arrived by freight wagons from Dodge City, Kansas City, and St. Louis. At one time, the tiny town sported over a dozen saloons. One old-timer said that some of the inhabitants “thought about seeing how tough a place could be and still be called a town.” Soldiers from Fort Elliott lookin’ for a good time contributed to its rowdiness, as did hundreds of cowboys hitting town on payday.
“Captain” John Hance was reputedly the Canyon’s first non-Native American resident. He built a cabin east of Grandview Point at the trailhead of an ancient Native American trail he improved to allow access to his asbestos mining claim in the Canyon. He started giving tours of the canyon after his attempts at mining asbestos failed, largely due to the expense of removing the asbestos from the canyon. 
experience back country hiker said that even having been over the trail before, the time he took the trail with it in mind to report on it, he got lost five different times-by lost I mean he realized he’d gotten off the trail and had to backtrack to find it. There are miles with no discernable trail. I also, just because research is maddening, found this account of the Hance Trail.
different than the other report. So what is the truth? Ah, research! Such fun.
Some of us probably got bookstore or amazon gift certificates for Christmas, didn’t we? How many new books have you purchased so far this year? I’m guessing you already had books on your wish list and that you were waiting for them to be released. But sometimes those books just leap off the shelf at us. When I saw the cover for Her Montana Man for the first time, I was ecstatic. I didn’t think my good cover fortune could get any better. And then I saw the cover for Her Colorado Man. I experienced a moment of pure cover elation. Cover love. Cover adoration. I love that cover.
When I fill out my cover suggestions for the art department and marketing team, I select two or three key scenes from the book and describe the characters’ clothing and the weather and the time of day. And then I hold my breath. Sometimes the resulting image is nothing like I imagined, and other times it’s even better. This romantic depiction is from a scene during the Denver exhibition when Wes and Mariah dance under the stars, away from public view. You can even see the decorative lanterns in the background.
What was it that caught your eye? Something about that cover made you reach for the book. Maybe something about the back cover lured you in. Maybe you didn’t even look at the price
I think most of us have auto-buy authors – an author you buy simply because you know they’re going to deliver a story you will enjoy, no matter the subject or the cover. For me there are several of those: Sharon Sala, Anne Frasier, Janet Evanovich, Robyn Carr just to name a few.
If I had to say where most of my book buying was done over the past couple of years, I’d confess it wasn’t done in stores, but online. Convenience is the reason – and because –sadly — the chain stores carry less and less of the mid-list books. At least one huge chain store near me (Target) no longer carries Harlequin or Silhouette lines!
But there’s something about looking at those covers…something about picking up that book, seeing it in person…up close and personal, covers are enticing. For me — If it has a western or an Americana look, I’m a sucker. There was a day when many readers would buy any book with Fabio or John DeSalvo on the cover. I’m probably in the minority of romance readers who aren’t impressed by cover models. In fact, if I recognize the guy on the front, it’s a complete turnoff for me. He has become a model in my eyes, not the fantasy hero I want to meet for the first time and fall in love with. I guess that’s it–a recognizable face spoils the fantasy.
And FYI: Desceptive cover, Catherine Anderson’s newest book Early Dawn is a western!
I grew up in West Texas, in Mitchell County. So far, I’ve used my hometown of Colorado City as the actual setting for only one of my books. But all of my westerns, whether historical or contemporary, are set in fictional towns in that part of the country. Its wonderful history fuels this writer’s heart and imagination.
My parents moved to the ranch in 1945, a year after they were married. Soon Daddy became the ranch foreman, a position he held until his death over fifty years later. The ranch had six thousand acres which my dad, my brother, and one or two hired hands worked—raising around three hundred head of Hereford cattle and farming cotton.
Isaac turned over the running of the ranch to William L. and went back to Illinois to tend to the wire business and harvest at his farm. William L. began searching for a herd. He found it two hundred miles away in the Texas Panhandle. He purchased 800 head of cattle from J. F. “Spade” Evans and acquired the brand which is shaped like a short-handled spade. Thus the ranch became Renderbrook Spade, generally known as Spade Ranch.
My thanks to Cheryl St.John and the ladies of Petticoats and Pistols for asking me to be a guest blogger.
