Hi everyone. It’s me again.
Our world is filled with a multitude of color. Various hues are all around us and writers use a lot of color in telling a story. We visualize the characters knowing the color of their eyes, hair, and clothes. Animals are a certain color as well as the landscape. It’s impossible to write a story without using color. Color speaks to us and makes us feel happy, sad, calm, inspired, bold…so many things. We’d live in a bland world if everything was all one color.
Color influences our thinking, inspires decision-making, and our moods. Red draws our attention more than any other color and I’ve often used it. I was born with red hair and it’s always drawn attention to me whether wanted or unwanted. I used to never go anywhere without someone commenting on my hair or gravitating to me. I’ve had some crazy experiences and unwanted attention.
There’s a reason why hospitals use a lot of blue, churches employ white. Kings, Queens and other royal members wear purple.
Here’s a little of what I discovered:
WHITE – purity, innocence, and wisdom. i.e. angels
BLACK – negativity and judgment
RED – energy, vigor, power, strength, danger
PINK – love and compassion
PURPLE – royalty, blending of mind and spirit, uplifts
BLUE – prime healing color, relaxation, sleep, peace
BROWN – the earth, commitment
GREEN – balance and harmony, sensitivity, abundance
YELLOW – Emotional, cleansing, creativity
ORANGE – cheerful and uplifting, warmth
Gray – the color of compromise and control, incredibly stable
TURQUOISE – brotherhood, friendly, the color of the freed soul
To describe eyes, I’ve used a lot of brown, turquoise (green/blue), green, gray, and black. Hair color can be yellow, red, black, brown, gray, white and all colors in between.
In one book I wrote, The Mail Order Bride’s Secret, Tait Trinity describes the heroine’s eyes as the color of ancient stones. His were an icy gray, the color of quicksilver. A lot of my characters have had red hair and that’s because I was born with red hair and kept it until it turned gray. Sometimes I’ve given characters sun-streaked brown, a lot of gold and yellow, a lot of brown. Brown is an earthy color and I just love it. Sometimes I’ve compared brown eyes to the color of saddle leather and freshly turned earth.
Color says a lot about characters—and people.
Have you ever studied the sky at various times during the day? Sunsets are my favorite and I use colors like tangerine, melon, peach, purples, blues, crimson, orange, and pomegranate.
Animals are all different colors, but I don’t think I’ve written a white horse. Maybe it’s time.
My favorite color is purple and I really love the darker shades. It brings such peace when I wear it. Maybe I was supposed to be a queen. LOL My sister’s favorite color is blue to match her eyes. My mom was partial to pink and wore a lot of it. It really complimented her dark brown hair well.
I’ve never liked orange and I don’t know why. In any event, I’ve always turned away from things that are orange. And I think it’s amazing that turquoise is the color of the freed soul. Interesting. Native Americans have always surrounded themselves with a lot of turquoise.
What does color say to you? How does it affect your life or influence the way you feel? Do you have a favorite and why?
I have a free short story called Life Lessons if you’d like to read it. CLICK HERE
Can a near-tragedy help two best friends realize they’re meant to be so much more?
I am generally loath to crow about my own books, which is sorta silly when you think about it. I mean, who else is going to crow about my books if not me? I’m not good at look at me, though, and if it were possible in this day and age to simply write a book, hand it to my publisher, and then crawl back into my writing cave and start a new one, without ever having to think about said book again, I would do it that way. But publishing doesn’t work like that these days. Maybe it never did.
All that said, I’m here today to be Nan Reinhardt author (<– over there) promoting a brand-new release — out today, as a matter of fact. If you love romance and Montana and spunky heroines and handsome cowboys with big hearts, Help Wanted, Cowboy might just be the book for you. Rory and Millie’s story is book 3 in my Juniper Falls Ranch series, so if you’ve read books 1 and 2, you’ll recognize Beth and Del Foster, who own Juniper Falls Ranch, Gus, their grizzled ranch hand, Bo Kennedy, the former rodeo cowboy turned ranch foreman, and others, as well as the little Montana town of Marietta. Sage’s Chocolate Shop, the Graff Hotel, Copper Mountain—all the places in Marietta that you already know and love are part of the story, too, as Rory and Millie feel their way to their own happily-ever-after. Because of course, there’s always an HEA in a Nan Reinhardt novel.
A Montana bull rider temporarily working as a ranch hand. An OB nurse who wants “a favor.” Two opposites thrown together. A treasure hunt adds to autumn magic. 
Oh, oh, P.S.: If you haven’t been to Juniper Falls Ranch yet, here’s a great opportunity for a first visit–
I was on a writer retreat with my bestie, Liz Flaherty a couple of weeks ago. It was fabulous. We wrote, we drank wine, we ate chocolate, we talked, we processed her book and mine. Our retreats are always as Liz puts it,
We talked about the little pieces of ideas that wander through our writer minds—snippets of conversations, words, things we notice that perhaps no one else notices. We share ideas about settings, even as minute as the furnishings in a specific house in a setting. That got me thinking about where my random ideas rest in my imagination—on a chintz chair, I think. Faded old flowered fabric on a huge overstuffed chair sitting in a sunny spot under the eaves. Maybe there’s an ottoman, but it doesn’t have to match because honestly, my decorating style, like my writing style, is as random as my ideas. So why would I imagine something that matches?
Everyone has word pictures in their minds—and often it takes just seeing a pair of fancy cowboy boots in a store in West Yellowstone, Montana, or a rusty pump on a ranch in Virginia City for a story to start to happen.
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!”.
