For our last guest of the month, we have romance writer Kaylie Newell. Yippee! Get ready to talk about cowboys! She has an exciting new book plus a giveaway so leave a comment to enter the drawing. Please make her welcome!
Hello, everyone- It’s such a pleasure to be here at Petticoats & Pistols talking about my new release, Betting on the Bull Rider! This cowboy romance was so much fun to write, mostly because the characters took the reins (literally and figuratively!), and told me exactly where they wanted to go.
My hero, Jake Elliott, is a bull rider, so researching was especially fun. The Wild Rogue Pro-Rodeo is our local rodeo here in Southern Oregon, and my husband and I take our girls every year. Drawing on those experiences, as well as time spent with our ranching friends, helped me write this story, and give it what I hope is texture and life. There’s nothing like the sweet smell of a horse up close, or the feel of an old saddle creaking underneath you. But most importantly, there’s nothing like that feeling of loving someone who holds your heart in their hands.
I’d love to hear from you all about your own rodeo experiences. Do you go? What’s your favorite event? (Mine’s the cowboy watching, of course.) I’ll be giving away a signed paperback copy, so be sure to comment!
Thank you again for reading! Xo
Here’s an excerpt from Betting on the Bull Rider, which is the second book in my Elliotts of Montana series…..
Jake looked around. The stands were packed. The Copper Mountain Rodeo always brought in a good crowd, but today was especially perfect, with the sun coming out for the first time in days, and the temperature rising into the sixties—a rarity for this late in September.
The sharp smell of sawdust and animals filled his senses. The sound of the music, of the crowd cheering, of hooves thundering over the arena floor, made him anticipate what was coming. He’d drawn a bull named Tequila Sunrise, who was small and wiry, and who had a habit of spinning like an absolute thing of beauty. But it was his name that Jake kept coming back to. Even now as he stretched his arm over his chest and felt the muscles and tendons there pull with a distinct tightness.
Tequila… Tequila, or more specifically tequila shots, and the night at the Wolf Den kept trying to work their way past his frontal lobe. But out of a need for pure survival, Jake had pushed it to the furthest, darkest corners of his mind these last few weeks. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about Alice, to wonder what she was doing, or who she might be doing it with. And when he had gone there in a moment of weakness, he’d climbed onto his motorcycle and headed to the fairgrounds, a place where he’d always felt the most in control, to scrub his mind clean of her. So there were only thoughts of rodeo, of getting back into the game, and the money, where he belonged.
Still, his heart had a way of betraying him. At the weirdest times, when he should’ve been one hundred percent invested in climbing on the back of a bull and thinking only of staying the hell on. She always came back to him. Her face, her scent, the way she’d felt in his arms just that once. But it’d only taken one time to show him a glimpse of a life he didn’t feel like he deserved, or that he’d be any good at. What if he failed? What if he failed her? In the end, the night they’d slept together had been a fork in Jake’s country road—embark on a journey he wasn’t altogether sure he’d finish, or take the easy route, the route that was tried and true, and had never caused him any heartache. Not once.
So, here he was. A coward in the simplest terms. He pulled his Stetson low over his eyes and rolled his head from one shoulder to the other. It didn’t matter. He was back on the circuit. And hell, maybe it wouldn’t last much longer, but wasn’t that what he’d told himself he’d wanted? To rodeo until he couldn’t anymore? And he’d continue telling himself that, right along with the fact that he didn’t need Alice.
He didn’t need anyone…
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Kaylie writes romances, romantic suspense, and women’s fiction and won numerous awards along the way. She was a finalist in the Romance of America’s RITA contest for Christmas at the Graf.
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