Winning Maura’s Heart

Where Do You Think Early Cars Got Gas?

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Surprisingly, if you said a pharmacy, you’d be right. Before gas stations, pharmacies sold gasoline.

It seems car inventors didn’t give much thought to where a person with a new auto would buy the very thing it took to make it run. He kinda put the cart before the horse so it seems the neighborhood pharmacy stepped in and sold fuel in addition to medicines, made soda pop, cut hair in some towns without a barbershop, performed surgeries, and pulled teeth.

The gasoline they sold was not pumped or put directly into a vehicle. The car owners brought cans into the pharmacies to be filled and they in turn, put it into their auto.

While there’s some disagreement about where the first drive-up service stations were, most think it was in downtown Pittsburg and the company was Gulf Refining in 1913. The cost was 27 cents per gallon. With the U.S. inflation rate, that would’ve been $8.60 in today’s prices.

Pretty crazy, huh?

I admit I never really gave it much thought but if I had, I would not have said a pharmacy. But, if you’d considered that pharmacies also sold kerosene for lamps, it would make sense. I have no idea how it was kept but seeing how strong gasoline and kerosene smelled, I only hope they kept it far away from the medicines they prepared or any surgeries they performed. Good heavens. I just can’t imagine. I wish I had a photo of this.

I love these little tidbits like this that I find on HistoryFacts.com. Some of this stuff is so amazing.

Today, it’s much the same. Electric cars came way before the charging stations. Thank goodness they’re not in pharmacies though! My car is one of the regular kind that takes gas but my niece and her husband have an electric car. They get stranded sometimes when their battery goes dead and forces them to to sit for two hours while the battery recharges. Not for me!

What is your opinion of electric cars? Do you want one? Or what do you think about buying fuel from a pharmacy? I’m giving away a copy (paperback or ebook) of LOVE’S FIRST LIGHT to one commenter.

This book came out in July and readers seem to like it. At least, we don’t have to go to a pharmacy to buy it! 

Here’s the blurb:

After suffering a devastating accident, Rachel Malloy wakens with a stranger. He bears no resemblance to her perception of God, nor does he have a halo so she must not be dead. Regardless, after taking her entire family and leaving her, she and God are not exactly on speaking terms.

Rancher Heath Lassiter has prayed fervently and long for a wife. Is she the one? The appearance of a rare white dove shortly afterward seems to be a sign.

Despite Heath’s unwavering faith and kindness, Rachel refuses to marry him. Dark secrets haunt, secrets that blacken her name, making marriage to anyone impossible. Though disappointed, Heath rebuilds her burned-out house. There, her world again shifts with the discovery of a newborn near her family’s graves and a white dove perching nearby.
Love grows as Heath becomes a constant in her life. Yet Rachel lives in fear of losing this baby. When the infant becomes very ill, she desperately promises God she’ll return to her forsaken faith if He’ll heal the child. But first light brings uncertainty. Will the dove return as a symbol of divine mercy, or will Rachel’s fragile faith be shattered once more?

This book is on sale for $3.99 and it’s also on Kindle Unlimited for free if you have a membership. CLICK HERE to buy.
I also have another book, WINNING MAURA’S HEART, on sale for $1.99 until the end of the month. This is a sweet romance about a woman who’s father is a hangman. The town shuns Maura and her sister and banishes them from their midst. They take the town’s orphans and go to an abandoned Spanish mission. CLICK HERE for more.

It’s Yee-Haw Day!

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Welcome to Yee-Haw Day, the once-a-month day we’ve reserved to share our news with you – all sorts of fun news!

So check out the post below to get the details on the kinds of things that make us go Yee-Haw!!

Sarah Lamb

I’m not sure how it happened, but I have TWO releases this month! I’m incredibly excited, and wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out of those!

 

 

Find out more by clicking right here.

 

 

Find out more by clicking right here.

Have a wonderful start to your September!

Jo-Ann Roberts

Today is Release Day for my contribution to the Sleigh Ride Series…Here’s “A Sleigh Ride For Claire”!

He was the most stubborn and prideful man she’d ever met!
She was a busybody who stuck her nose in his business at every turn!
With Christmas on the horizon, Claire McAllister has far too much to do to entertain dreams of a husband and family. Even if she feels inclined to help Lincoln Wyse outwit his three mischievous young daughters, it’s impossible to imagine the handsome widower seeing her as anything but a scolding schoolteacher.

Even though the pretty schoolteacher never turned a favorable eye to him, Linc Wyse’s heart skipped a beat whenever she pinned him with her mesmerizing green eyes. Beautiful or not, Claire McAllister was a meddling spinster who placed judgments on him and his family.
Yet, neither one can imagine how three little, mischievous matchmakers and a magical Christmas Eve sleigh ride will open their eyes to love…or how the Lord will awaken their faith and hope.

CLICK HERE

Karen Witemeyer

I’m thrilled to share the news that my Pink Pistol novella, In Her Sights, recently placed 2nd in the Golden Scrolls Novella of the Year Award.

Yee Haw!

Linda Broday 

I’m an award winner!

Oklahoma Romance Writers Guild awarded WINNING MAURA’S HEART

FIRST PLACE Historical!!! 

Plus…..I Have a Historical Fiction Up For Preorder!

Releases 10/8/24

Shanna Hatfield

I’m thrilled to share the news that two of my books were award winners in the Readers’ Favorite Awards!

Challenging the Chef won the gold medal in the Christian Romance Contemporary Category.

Love on Target took the gold in the Christian Romance Historical Category.

I am so incredibly honored to win these two awards, and so thankful to the readers who loved these stories! Thank you!

Periodicals in the 19th Century

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Early magazines in the 19th century had a tough go and it was due mainly to distribution difficulties. There was no easy way to get the periodicals into the hands of women. It often took weeks and months for mail to travel via stagecoach.  Another factor was the fact subscriptions were very expensive at $2 and $3 dollars a year, and few could afford that especially for non-essentials. In the larger cities, some magazines resorted to accepting pork, corn, cheese etc. in lieu of cash.

Nineteenth century women were often starved for something to engage their minds and relieve the tedium of their lives but before Godey’s Lady’s Book their choices were severely limited. Godey’s was the most widely circulated before the Civil War. The magazine was in circulation from 1830 to 1878. The magazine was owned by Louis Godey with Sarah Hale as the editor. Women loved reading articles they could relate to. While fashion plates were included in every issue, the magazine was geared toward the ordinary woman.

 

While Godey’s mostly appealed to women, Old Farmer’s Alamac was a staple in homes for men. They only sold for $.o4 a copy and was wildly popular. It began publishing in 1792 and still is today. Amazing. I enjoy reading it for for the interesting things it contains.

Ladies Home Journal began in 1883 and was in circulation for 131 years. Sadly, the July 2014 issue will be the last. It was the first magazine to attain one million subscribers and it was one of the first periodical to tackle some of the problems of the nineteen century such as suffrage, family planning, marriage advice, and child rearing.

Good Housekeeping came along in 1885. The thirty-two-page biweekly sold for $2.50 a year. It offered advice on home decorating, cooking and dressmaking but also carried puzzles and quizzes. It’s still in circulation today and publishes ten editions around the world. Their Seal of Approval has become a gold standard for quality in everything.

Cosmopolitan began in Rochester, New York in 1886 by Paul Schlicht who after sufffering financial difficulties due to the $4.oo a year subscription price sold the magazine to John Walker. To bolster interest in the periodical, Walker set out on a railroad tour of the New England states, giving the memoirs of either Ulysses S. Grant or General William T. Sherman to new subscribers. By 1896 the Cosmopolitan had secured its place as a leading periodical. The Hearst Corporation acquired the magazine in 1905.

Vogue was born in 1892, House Beautiful in 1896, National Geographic in 1888 and finally Scientific American in 1845.

There were others of course like the New England Kitchen Magazine in 1894 and the Delineator which included dress patterns in every issue, but the ones I’ve listed were the leading sellers. Although it was probably rare for any kind to find its way into a pioneer woman’s hands.

After the struggles of the first magazines, it seemed a periodical explosion took place.

I had no idea some of these went back so far. I’ll bet you didn’t either. If you had lived back then and had the money, which might you have subscribed to?

Cover Reveal and a Giveaway!

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“Stone Landry stared into the green depth of her eyes and brushed a knuckle across Emma’s soft cheek. “One day.” He dragged air into his lungs. “One day I intend to court you, lady. That’s a promise. Hangman’s daughter or not.”

Courting Miss Emma, Book 2 of the Hangman’s Daughters series, will soon come your way and I want to share this gorgeous cover. The colors and fonts are really nice. I wish her skirt was a bit slimmer but maybe the wind got under it and ballooned it out. After all, we have a LOT of wind in Texas! I also love Emma’s hair and think it’s perfect. With sixteen orphans to keep track of, she wouldn’t have had a lot of time for her hair.

As with her sister Maura in Book 1, she’s never been courted, kissed, or even come close. At 26 years old, she would’ve been considered an old maid back in 1868. But when Stone Landry bought the property next door, Emma began to see herself as a woman with something left to give.

Stone gets her dander up right away after one of the orphan boys wanders over onto his property. He brings the kid back—along with a sharp rebuke for Emma to watch the children better. She sees red of course.

So, that’s how their relationship starts. They mix like oil and water. It isn’t that he doesn’t like kids, he was just never around any.

Add in a couple of adult camels and their baby and you get the idea. The kids weren’t going to stay on their side of the property line and that was that.

It’s a fun story with a group of unscrupulous bad guys trying to take both Emma’s and Stone’s land and shut down the orphanage. It leads to a land war with the couple fighting tooth and nail to stop them.

Wars have been fought over land since the beginning of time. Someone big and powerful always thinks they can take what they want and no one can stop them. It’s a familiar theme in westerns and it happens today all over the world. Sometimes the little guy wins.

This is a sweet romance with lots of action and a mix of humor thrown in. I think you’ll like this story that shows the depth of Emma’s and Stone’s hearts and their commitment to keeping Heaven’s Door open. No matter the cost.

Ever since I wrote Knight on the Texas Plains, I’ve always put children in my stories. They make the stories richer. Animals are another constant and I’ve had a variety—horses, dogs, cats, a monkey, a talking parrot, and now camels. You never know what’s coming next.

I’m giving away an ebook copy of the first book, Winning Maura’s Heart. To enter, tell me the one-word name of Maura’s love interest.

Waltzing Adds Zest to Life

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Spring is here and my heart is dancing along with my feet!

One of the things that always seems to wind up in my stories is dancing. My characters apparently love to dance. Everyone had to work so hard to carve out a life in the 1800s they had little free time. But on occasion, they had dances.

Up until 1814, dancing was confined to the quadrille, cotilion, baroque, and a few others. There was the barest of touching allowed. The fingertips and hand, but only brief touches at that. How in the world they managed to have children was a miracle. But I’m sure when they got in their carriages out of sight things were different. Oh yes, very different.

This was a time when the slightest glimpse of a lady’s ankle was titillating. Yet it’s strange to me that in a lot of pictures of the 1800s, women showed a lot of bosom. Far too much in fact. Kinda weird.

When the waltz came along in 1814, young people were more than ready for it. To dance so close in an “almost” embrace was quite scandalous! My, oh my. The waltz changed the landscape. At last couples could touch more than their hands and it really took off.

It’s a proven fact that I like to two-step and waltz. Sometimes I dance around my apartment just because it makes me feel good.

But back to the subject. In my recent release, Winning Maura’s Heart, I wrote a scene where Calhoun coaxes Maura into his arms. They have no music, only Calhoun humming. But Maura is swept away. Because she is the hangman’s daughter, she’s never been asked to a dance or courted, or even kissed. No man wanted the hangman to look his way.

Calhoun had no such reservations. He didn’t care who her father was. He liked Maura and nothing was going to make him stop. I loved that about him. He found a way to get what he wanted and wouldn’t let anything stop him.

I loved writing their short private dance. Here’s a little excerpt:

Holding her gaze, his dark eyes softening in the dim light, he silently took the pins from her hair. The mass of long tresses cascaded down her back, spilling over his hands like the whisper of a hope. She closed her eyes for a moment, as some strange desire surged through her veins, knocking her off kilter. Before she had time to adjust, he ran his hands through the long strands, murmuring low.

She raised her eyes and stared into his dark orbs that held so much emotion. “Calhoun.”

“Nothing can compare to your loveliness. I mean that. Nothing. You truly take my breath.” He bowed at the waist and extended his hand. “May I have this dance, Miss Maura?”

With his manners and handsome features, he could easily be a charming prince.

Maura’s heart fluttered. “Here? I’ve never danced in my life. Besides, we don’t have any music.”

“I’ll hum a song I know. The dance is simple. Just stand in one spot and sway.”

“Then I have to try.” She fitted her hand in his and placed the other on his shoulder. He didn’t know this fulfilled one of her secret fantasies.

Here with no one to see her make a fool of herself, she took a deep breath and relaxed. He hummed a song with a nice melody and the sound transported her to a ballroom in some castle. She was dancing with one of the most desirable men she’d ever seen.

In his arms, she felt safe and protected. A languid warmth spread through her and she leaned into the cocoon he’d created, resting her head on his shoulder. She swayed back and forth against him, imagining they were in some fancy place.

“See? I knew you could do it,” Calhoun murmured against her temple. “You’re doing fine.”

 

Do you like to dance? Or maybe you once did. Can you remember how it made you feel? Leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for two e-book copies of Winning Maura’s Heart.

It’s Yee-Haw Day!

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Welcome to Yee-Haw Day, the once-a-month day we’ve reserved to share our news with you – all sorts of fun news!

So check out the post below to get the details on the kinds of things that make us go Yee-Haw!!

Linda Broday

Tomorrow is release day!! 

WINNING MAURA’S HEART

Outcasts, Maura and her sister open an orphanage in an abandoned mission.

She finds a dying stranger cloaked in mystery. Who is this man known only as Calhoun?

 

A Sweet Historical Romance

Order Link

Pam Crooks

BookBub Deal!

Her Texas Cowboy – 99 cents

Book 2 Blackstone Ranch Trilogy by Tule Publishing

Limited Time Only

Brock Paxton’s love life is suffering, but there’s no woman around who can cure him—until the raven-haired beauty in stilettos drives into town to help at his family’s vacation resort. Just his luck she doesn’t plan to stay, and though his gut tells him there’s more to her than she reveals, it doesn’t keep him from wanting her more than he should.

Lucienne Dunn is in big trouble, and she has only one hope left to save herself. To please her father and set-up the scheme to buy precious land on the Blackstone Ranch, including the Paxtons’ prized resort, even if it means clashing with an ex-military cowboy…

Except the Paxtons refuse to sell, and there’s danger on the ranch. How would it all end—and how would she live without Brock when it did?

 

“. . . “this contemporary western should please Crooks’s existing fans and earn her new ones.”

       — Publishers Weekly

BUY on Amazon for only 99 cents!

 

Books 1 and 3

Blackstone Ranch Trilogy

Get the full set at the Tule Bookstore HERE

Cathy McDavid

I have a cover for my October 2023 release MOUNTAIN STORM SURVIVAL. Whee, hee! I also have a back cover blurb:

A brutal storm. Relentless pursuers. And more than their lives are on the line…

Helping with youth wrangler camp is how Kate Spencer is atoning for her past. But now she and ranch manager Rand Walkins are trapped in the Superstition Mountains with two girls as illegal miners hunt them down. Rand has every reason not to trust Kate, much less forgive her. But working together is the only way they’ll escape from the danger that threatens them all…

And the book is available for preorder:  Mountain Storm Survival Buy Link

What could be better 🙂


Karen Witemeyer

In Her Sights is officially available for preorder! Hooray! You can preorder the ebook version now, but for those of you who prefer print, there will be a print version coming on release day. It will be a slim volume since it is just a novella, but I’m having it sized to match my other books. So if you have a collection on your keeper shelf, this new book should fit right in!
Preorder Here

Mary Connealy

 

Winning Maura’s Heart and a Giveaway!

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“I lie awake and wonder what it might be like to kiss a man, to feel his arms holding me.”

At almost thirty, Maura Taggart had never been courted, been to a dance, or known a kiss. She’s lived the life of an outcast with her sister Emma due to their father’s profession as a hangman.

After tending the sick during a yellow fever epidemic, townsfolk run them out of town again but not before cutting Emma’s hair. Also unwanted are the orphans left behind when their parents died. Determined to make something worthwhile of their lives, to matter to someone, they take the orphans with them and open an orphanage in an abandoned Spanish mission.

The children name it Heaven’s Door because they believe there is a doorway from the orphanage to heaven and their parents watch over them.

Maura discovers a man near death and they take him in, unsure if he’s an outlaw or lawman. When the mysterious stranger can speak, he says his name is Calhoun, refusing to give more.

The time spent tending him draws Maura closer to him. The soft-spoken man has kind ways and loves the little orphans.

With a gentle finger, Calhoun lifted a strand of hair from her eyes. “Try to find someone else. There are hundreds of men better than me. I’m no good for you. Don’t you see? It’s better this way.”

Who is Calhoun? Who shot him? Maura tries to figure it out while keeping her heart locked. She has to keep the children safe and she knows he’s brought trouble to their door.

While writing this story, I did a lot of research and I found that not only were old West hangmen unwelcome once their job was done, but also their families. No one wanted them to live amongst them. Folks were quick to call for the hangman but once he’d dispensed of an outlaw, they wanted him gone.

In the old movies, he’s always alone. Rides in, doesn’t speak to anyone much, does his job and he rides away. I always wondered about their families. In the movies, they were never mentioned.

Even today, there is a certain distaste and even hate for those who carry out capital punishment. For that reason, the executioner is always hidden. We don’t have a name or anything.

I wrote Winning Maura’s Heart in the vein of the story Sommersby where the mystery of Richard Gere’s character is kept hidden. In my story, the identity of Calhoun isn’t revealed until the end but it draws speculation throughout the story.

Is he an outlaw or lawman?

This is a sweet romance and releases on March 7th. Click HERE for an excerpt!

Do you like stories where things aren’t straightforward? Or where certain characters’ true identities aren’t revealed until the very last? I’m giving away an autographed hardback to one person who comments.

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Also, I have a Goodreads Giveaway going on with 50 copies of the book up for grabs! Click HERE to Enter!

 

Thank you for coming.