Things you May Not Know About Me by Ginger Simpson

Please excuse my non-western post, but I'm on vacation, and doing the best I can while I'm gone.  This was scheduled in May, so I'm running out of recycled blogs that I've featured elsewhere.  :)

1. What’s the naughtiest thing you've ever done?  

If I tell you then I’d have to kill you.  I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that when I divorced at age fifty, after thirty-two years of marriage and never having lived on my own, I went through my second childhood and became the party animal I never was.  It was fun, but very tiring and overwhelming.  The rules of dating had seriously changed. 

2. What’s the worst job you've ever had? 

I worked for a small company run by the world’s angriest man.  I believe that business is where the saying “the s**t runs downhill” originated.  The owner took his frustrations out on the office manager, who then beat up the employees with his own.  I had a sprained ankle one day and walked from my desk to the copy machine in my stocking feet (about three feet away) and he yelled at me for being unprofessional.  It’s not like the office was open to the public.  It was just me and another girl.  She was hired one day and quit the same afternoon. Then he found something stapled crookedly and demanded to know who stapled it.  I didn’t last beyond his accusing me of knowingly not preparing minutes for a meeting.  Did he seriously think I wanted to be on the receiving end of his wrath? He was definitely not the kind of supervisor who made you want to put forward your best effort to make him look good.

3. Tell us three surprising things about yourself, one of which is a fib - and we'll try to guess the fib. 

1.    I parasailed at 700 feet while in Maui.

2.    I was diagnosed with Parvo Virus B-19 which lasted for an entire year.

3.    I got invited backstage at an Eagle’s concert and the lead singer, Don Henley, kissed me.

4. What’s on your bedside table/nightstand? 

A myriad of items… Since our bedroom is in the basement, I have a weather radio that alerts us to tornado warnings/watches, a lamp, a box of Kleenex, a jar of Vicks, a tiny travel alarm clock, my electric blanket control, and a white noise machine.  It sounds like a lot but it’s all very orderly.  Oh, I forgot my bottle of water.  I think that’s it. 

5. What your favorite sandwich, and where in the world is the best place to eat it? 

I grew up near Riverside, California, and there’s a place called Delia’s Grinders there.  I started having their sandwiches when I was in 7^th grade, and they are hands down, the absolute best.  Everyone I’ve introduced to Delia’s agrees with me.  I think the secret is their freshly made bread.  Yum…making my mouth water.  Delia's is always on my agenda when I travel to California...at So. Cal.

6. Which household chore would you happily give up for ever?

Oh dear, it’s a toss up between cleaning toilets and cooking.  I hate both.  I think it’s because I’m old and I’ve done both for so many years.  I’ve pretty much relinquished the cooking to my husband.  He’s much better than I, anyhow.  As for the toilets…they stay cleaned, but I don’t have to like it. 

7. What talent or skill would you love to have that you don’t have now?

I would love to be able to sing.  I suppose I can carry a tune, but I got a clue that I’m not all that stellar when I was singing in the car while my son was with me, and he asked, “Who sings this song, Mom?”  I told him who the artist was, and his reply was, “well please let her.”

8. What drives you seriously nuts? 

When God created me, he gave me too much of everything…except lips.  The older I get, the more I resemble a snake, but I explain that by saying I can’t hear well so I got in the hip line twice.  (laughing out loud)  But seriously, I can’t hear well because I have too much carotid artery on both sides of my head and I hear the rushing of blood to my brain 24/7.  During the day, I can tune it out with background noises, but trying to sleep at night is the pits.  The diagnosing doctor told me he would shoot himself if he had to listen to the noise, but that’s not a solution for me.  I continually remind myself that as long as I hear it, I’m still alive. 

9. You're given a time travel machine - where would you go, and why?

If you’re familiar with my work, then you know my favorite genre is western historical.   I would definitely travel back to the old west and personally research the era I love to write about.  I realize life would be much tougher than I have it here, so I’d make certain when things got too difficult, the time machine would whisk me away, but leave me the option of going back again and again.  Gotta love those cowboys and admire those pioneers.

10. What’s the best review you've ever had?

I’ve been fortunate to have really great reviews, and I consider anything where the reviewer indicates my writing put them in the main characters shoes and let them experience the story to be the greatest compliment.  If an author can make the reader smell the smells, feel the breeze, cry during the sad times, and rejoice at the good, then I’ve down what I need to do to create a compelling read.  I just wish I knew how to convince folks they need to read my stories.  :)

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Did you guess the fib?  I've never been in a room with Don Henley, but I would imagine being kissed by him would beat the heck out of having Parvo.  I thought only dogs got that.  *lol*  If a kid with Fifth's Disease comes near you...run like the wind.  Don't know what that disease is?  Google it, and you'll learn just like I did.

The Setting For A Western

Where can you set your Western Historical Romance? The quick and most logical answer is that it can be set in any state west of the Mississippi River. But…and that is a big but, you book may or may not start in the west, but it does end up there. Since I am familiar with my own, I will show examples of this from my published books.

                                                                            

The mail-order-bride book is an example of the life of the heroine beginning in the east and her accepting the hand of a man located in the west. In DRINA’S CHOICE, Drina Hamilton lives with an abusive father and knows she needs to get away from him. She accepts the proposal of a rancher in Arizona and moves there. After her trek west, the rest of the story takes place in Arizona.

                                                                                  

Another type book is when the entire family moves west for another reason such as wanting to start a new life, hoping to strike gold or any other reason you can come up with. In OPAL’S FAITH, Opal Barnett’s father lost his job because he tried to report his unsavory banking boss. It is long until the family has lost everything they have in Memphis, Tennessee. The father inherits his brother’s ranch in Arizona, and moves his wife and four daughters there, though none have any experience in ranching.

The third is when an easterner goes west for some other reason. In XENIA’S RENEGADE, Xenia Poindexter and he sister are lured from their home in Virginia by a vicious lie that their uncle is in trouble. They go to Arizona to help. On the way, Xenia’s sister rescues an orphaned baby who happens to be a half-breed. Faced with prejudice they are forced to accept help from two cousins who also happen to be half Indian. They are accepted in the area because they happen to be the richest ranchers in the area.

Some books begin in the west and stay in the west. AMELIA’S MARRIAGE, the first in the Settler’s Ridge series, is an example of this. Amelia Donahue was born and raised on the huge Double D ranch in Wyoming. She is kind of a rebel and her father thinks the only way he can settle her down is to force her to marry his foreman, a horrible man who has the elder Donahue fooled. Amelia goes into town and hires a bounty hunter to marry her for six months so she won’t have to marry her father’s foreman.

Occasionally you will come across a book that takes place in different places. BELINDA’S YANKEE, is one of these. Shortly after Belinda Babcock sees her father murdered and their home in Alabama burned by Yankee troops, she finds a wounded Union Yankee officer and nurses him back to health. In turn he helps her get to her relatives in Louisiana. He goes home to New York to resume his life and finds his life there is not what he expects it to be. He decides to find Belinda again, but she and her relatives have moved to Colorado.

Occasionally you’ll find a western book set in the east. HANNAH’S WISHES is an example. Most of the book takes place in Savannah, GA. Hannah Hamilton, confined to a wheelchair because of a birth defect, has been raised by an aunt that has her own sinister reasons for letting the girl live with her. Because her sister in Arizona is concerned she sends a detective to Savannah to check up on Hannah. In the last chapter, Hannah does move to Arizona to be near her sister.

Then there is the different western such as RENA’S COWBOY. Rena Dumont is a present day, widowed, Atlanta, GA police officer. Caught in a cave-in in the west, when she comes to she finds herself on a ranch in the year 1876.

As you can see, you can use the setting of your novel to your advantage. You are the author and you have the power to set it anywhere you want to. But there are a couple of things you must remember. First be sure to know the state you’re using in your novel. If you don’t live there or have traveled there in person, make sure to look it up on the internet. Most states and cities have great websites. They also have lots of information in historical writings and photos. There is no excuse to set you novel in North Dakota when you have it located near the Grand Canyon. Set your story in Arizona. And if you mention the Rio Grande River, be sure you’re using Texas as a setting, not Kansas.

 

www.agnesalexander.com

Fenn’s Folly

In 1988, millionaire art and artifact collector and dealer, Forrest Fenn, of New Mexico,  was diagnosed with cancer and told he hadn’t long to live.  Feeling that he would like to make his mark on the world, Fenn decided to go bury treasure, publicize it, and leave a lasting legacy, one that would keep his name in the limelight for years to come.  He sure as heck has done that—and lived to tell the tale.

Happily for Fenn, his cancer went into remission and he went on to his write his autobiography, The Thrill of the Hunt, in 2010, and a subsequent book, Too Far to Walk.  The books, which contain clues to the whereabouts of the buried treasure, brought the mystery to the attention of a wider audience, especially as the story has been picked up by newspapers and television.  What’s in the treasure chest?  For a photo of it, head on over to http://www.npr.org/2016/03/13/469852983/seeking-adventure-and-gold-crack-this-poem-and-head-outdoors , which also has a copy of the map Fenn subsequently provided.  Apparently, the box contains a jar of Alaskan gold dust, a Chinese jade figurine, and other antique coins and relics, all worth over a million dollars.  Fenn, now in his late ‘80s, is not believed to be a prankster; he truly means the treasure trove to be found. He apparently claims his reason for giving this away, aside from the legacy, is to get overweight America off the couch.

But if Fenn’s intentions seem to be good, the story isn’t a completely happy one.  Fenn’s Santa Fe mansion contains a wealth of Native American artifacts, as well as Aztec relics, that might be better served returned to the nations concerned or, at the very least, going to a museum.  In the 1990s, he excavated a Pueblo Indian site he bought, and took away Aztec relics—something that does not sit well with archaeologists nor Native Americans. 

Furthermore, the clues that Fenn has provided have led to a host of problems and disasters.  Many treasure hunters believe the box is hidden in Yellowstone—which covers more than 3400 square miles—due to Fenn’s childhood association with the place.  They have purchased metal detectors along with shovels for their hunt, despite the fact National Parks do not permit either.  Such use impacts the environment, and several people have been arrested and/or banned from the park.  Search and Rescue has been called out at least five times in four years when people seeking the gold have got lost; one man has died in his efforts.

And things have not always gone well for Fenn, either.  Apparently, he has had to call out 911 on several occasions when people have appeared on his doorstep and threatened him for the location of the chest.  Others have threatened to dig up his father’s grave.  He gets over forty emails a day asking for more clues.  For the former fighter pilot, who was shot down twice over Vietnam, life is not exactly quiet at home.

Meantime, for some, the search has become an obsession.  I read about one man who has gone out more than thirty-seven times looking, and a woman who has hunted more than sixty.  There are others who come close to those numbers, and still others who, according to Fenn, have come close to the treasure—he says within two hundred feet.  But from what I can see, with a so-called ‘Fennboree’ for the searchers to all come together, Trekkies have nothing on these folks. And, as with the original ‘49ers, the real winners are those who sell to them; metal detector and shovel sales have boomed in Montana near the Yellowstone entrance, and one woman has set up a site selling promotional products for the Fennboree.

So where is the treasure?  Fenn has divulged several clues:  it is somewhere between Santa Fe and the Canadian border; it is hidden at over 5,000 ft. but not in Idaho or Utah; it is not in any structure, graveyard, nor any mine; and apparently it is above ground—so why the digging and shovels, I have no idea.  Most of the clues are in a poem found in his book.  Me, I won’t be joining in the hunt despite living part of the year within an hour’s drive of Yellowstone.

I’ll leave y’all to that pleasure.

http://andreadowning.com

Writing a Christmas Book in August #ASMSG

Writing a Christmas Book in August

Many readers ask how we write our holiday books in the middle of the summer. I admit it is a bit of a challenge. Im at my desk in shorts and a tank top with the air conditioning blasting. I use Pandora for my music and I found many Christmas albums to play and it was strange but fun. I hadn't heard the old favorite songs in a long while but while that put me in a sort of holiday mood, something was missing. The spirit of Christmas just wasn't there. I tired to remember past Christmas. I got a warm and fuzzy feeling but it just didn't capture the spirit of Christmas. I finally remembered the wide eyed look of wonder of my son and my granddaughter and it hit. The wonder of Christmas through a child's eyes is the greatest part of the holidays. The magic of Christmas, the miracles that happen- that's what I wanted to capture.

I have new book out. It's called Poor Boy's Christmas plus I added in another Christmas book I had written called The Greatest Gift. I hope you pick the book up. It's on Amazon and is part of the Kindle Unlimited Program.

Poor Boy's Christmas

It’s Christmas in Asherville, Texas and Poor Boy finally comes home. He’s no longer the waif we grew to love; he is very much a man now. As the stage coach approaches his beloved town he spots Sheriff Shane O’Conner riding off after a pair of bank robbers. Poor Boy, the new deputy quickly finds a horse and races after them. One of the robbers is killed and to his surprise the other outlaw is a beautiful young woman.  

Molly McDonagh is heartbroken, the last of her family is dead. Now she’s in jail waiting to hang. Bounty hunters soon come to see if she is another wanted female outlaw and Shane decides Poor Boy needs to take his prisoner to a ranch where they can hide out as brother and sister.

How can something as sweet and wonderful as love be so very painful? Loving someone you know is going to swing from a rope is agony. Poor Boy knows Christmas is a time for miracles but he’s never experienced one before. Can he truly give away his heart to someone who has no future? Can living for the moment be uplifting or is it sheer heartbreak? 

The Greatest Gift

Upon hearing screams, handsome rancher, Foster O’Donnell races to his barn and finds a stranger giving birth. When he tells her his name, she screams he can’t be Foster O’Donnell. Foster O’Donnell is the father of her baby. Can Christmas change their mutual distrust? Will Foster and Ginger find The Greatest Gift?

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Love is Not for Sale

Love is not for sale! Taken away from all he’s ever known, all that he has ever loved, Destiny Gray has a decision to make. Fight or die in the heat of the South Texas sun. Born into a family filled with love, tolerance, and cooperation, the institute of slavery is a strange one to him. When an opportunity is presented for Destiny to not only escape, but to have his own land, build his own home, all he can think of is the family he has left behind.

During slavery times in the United States, there were many misunderstandings that still exist today. There were times when those with power tried to make it seem that those without were mistaken about their place in the world. Often, those in power made it seem that having the basic necessities like food, shelter, were more than enough compensation for their freedom. Sometimes, they even claimed to be one happy family working together for the good of all.

In some cases, this was true. Once the truth came out about the institution of slavery, the depravity of it all, the separation of families, the inhumane treatment, some began to believe that all slave owners treated their slaves like chattel, animals to be herded, fed, and warehoused. The sentiment turned so quickly, that those on the outside came to believe that there was no way anyone who owned another man could be moral.

As in all areas of life, even today, it is rarely black and white. In truth, there were some plantations and farms that were able to form respectful family units. In this story, you are introduced to one such family. Destiny’s father, Clements, a partial landowner in his brother’s plantation, falls for their mother, Kileen, a slave woman brought to the plantation with her small son. Though their love is forbidden, they are able to carve themselves a home and build a family with a mixed race son and daughter born of love, as well as the son Kileen brought into the union.

The Destiny Series follows the storyline of this awesome family. Though they are separated by circumstances, they always seem to find a way back to each other. After the close of the transatlantic slave trade, people became desperate to have fresh slaves for the market, labor that was no longer available from overseas. With the increase in profits, struggling farms and plantations began to look within their own houses for just such talent. Any infraction could be the difference between staying with your family, and being sold.

Destiny’s father, having done the best he could to keep all the slaves on his piece of land together, felt the pressure of new restrictions imposed by his brother. A man of his stature showing too much kindness to the help often came under question. When a few of the children born to Killeen begin to resemble Clements, it’s only a matter of time before he is questioned and rebuked. Unfairly sold into slavery by his uncle, Destiny fears he will never see his family again.  

A perfect storm of circumstances find Destiny at the edge of the Texas Mexico border, where he has been sold to dig his life away in a canal. During this time, Mexico is feeling a lot of pressure from her people to protect their borders. Plagued by renegade Natives as well as the encroaching ranchers from the Americas, looking to carve out more of their countryside for Texas, Mexican citizens have no desire to occupy the border lands.

Cornered, the government extends an unofficial offer to the blacks working the plantation lands in Texas. There is no slavery in Mexico. Therefore, if they are willing to slip across the border, develope the government owned land grants they are lent, and stave off renegade attacks, they will be considered Mexican citizens. Though they offer the protection of the military patrols monitoring the borders, they are warned that patrols can only cover so much territory at a time. If attacked, the colonies would have to hold their own.

Destiny, offered this deal by one of the Mexican workers at the canal camp, decides it is time to take his chance to gain his freedom. Choosing a group of men who stand by him in the trenches, they come up with a plan to escape. They are soon to discover that escaping is the easy part. The land is rough, untamed, but working together, they are able to build homes, invite those brave enough to join them to construct their colony. Returning home via back roads and often under cover of darkness, Destiny is only able to rescue a small part of his family.

As the colonies grow, word begins to spread about the success there. Word reaches more than just the ears of the slaves looking to find their way to freedom. Bounty Hunters, desperate for new blacks to sell at market, hear about the colonies, the unattached freed slaves living in towns just across the border. Arriving in groups, the bounty hunters are able to press their advantage in the beginning. Burning any homes they come across after capturing slaves, the bounty hunters attempt to ensure that their prey have no ground to return to.

What the bounty hunters do not count on is the buoyancy of the human spirit. After years of being told how they should live, who they should love, who their families should be, what their priorities ought to be, the escapees decide not to go quietly into the night. Acquiring the tools to make weapons, textiles, printing presses, the colonies go to work, advertising to the slaves, why go north to freedom when the south’s so much closer. Arming themselves and any new comers who join them, advocates boldly proclaim that they are finished being sold away from their homes, away from their families. They declare in one voice their love is no longer for sale. This is a volatile hidden history, finally brought to light in my three book series, The Destiny Series.

Cite:

An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas 1821-1865, Campbell, Randolph B.Copyright by Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

The Destiny Series by Letisha Stanton is available on Amazon or at http://www.desertbreezepublishing.com/destiny-by-letisha-stanton/

All American Pastime

So, baseball season is over. I’m writing this the afternoon of Game 5 of the World Series and even though it has not been settled yet, I’m pretty sure the team I have cheered for all my life is not going to win. I mean, come on! This is the team my dad used to joke about and say that any team could have a bad century and the team that was famous for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; the team that resisted putting in lights at their ballpark until 1988 and that was only because MLB threatened to force them to play elsewhere if they made it to the playoffs; the team that once lost 101 games in one season (still the worst season on record) and the team that has been cursed by a freakin’ goat of all things. Yeah, I am a die-hard, unapologetic Cubs fan.

Not my Cubbies. This team was the NY Knickerbockers. 

Anyway, talking about baseball with another romance writer brought out the tidbit of information from my Swiss-cheese brain (bonus points if you get the reference) that baseball has been played since before the American Civil War, but it was during this bloodiest conflict in our nation’s history that baseball became an “American pastime.”

A lot of the men going off to fight in the Civil War took their own baseball equipment with them. When these men didn’t have equipment, they made do—with fence posts, barrel staves, and even tree branches. A walnut wrapped in old cloth often served as the baseball.

Both Union and Confederate officers saw playing baseball as a way to boost morale and continue both physical and mental conditioning. On the diamond, officers and enlisted men played side-by-side and men were selected for the teams based solely on their athletic ability, not by rank or social standing. The benefits of playing while at war extended well beyond the need of troops to be physically fit because the camaraderie displayed on the baseball diamond very often translated into a teamwork mentality on the battlefield. In perhaps one of the earliest forms of sports journalism soldiers would write of these games in the letters sent to friends and loved ones. Recounting baseball games for the family back home had to be a lot more pleasant to recall than the hardship of battle.

After the Civil War, baseball went west—with settlers and with the troops. It is truly a uniquely American game, well suited to our national psyche. It ain’t over until it’s over, and every man taking the field can be a hero, if the baseball gods smile upon him.