Honky Tonk Hearts Guests by Lauri Robinson

www.laurirobinson.blogspot.com

In May I introduced you to a couple of author’s from The Wild Rose Press and their Honky Tonk Hearts Series. The books in this series are centered around the Lonesome Steer Honky Tonk located near Amarillo, Texas ran by Gus Rankin, and come in all heat levels. Books released in the Honky TonkHearts Series so far include: 

Honky Tonk Man by Sylvie Kaye

Nothing but Trouble by Jannine Gallant

Sing to Me, Cowboy by Lauri Robinson

Those Violet Eyes by Vonnie Davis

The Morning After by Brenda Whiteside

Lauri: Today I welcome Stacy Dawn and Brenda Whiteside to Cowboy Kisses and there will be prizes, so be sure to leave a comment! Thanks for being here, Ladies. Let's start with you each sharing a bit about yourselves.

Stacy: I live out in the country in Southern Ontario Canada and can see Lake Ontario from my office window (very inspiring).  I’m excited to be currently writing the round up stories for the Honky Tonk Hearts series about the main characters of the Lonesome Steer Honky Tonk.  I’ve been writing for many years and have over twenty published stories in both short and full lengths including my Noelle series about the eccentrically hilarious Christmas town.  You can find out more about my stories at www.stacydawn.com and I love hearing from readers and writers at stacy@stacydawn.com

Lauri: Wow, your view sounds very inspiring, Stacy. I’ve been to Canada a few times, and know how beautiful the countryside is.  

Now, we’ll hear from Brenda.

Brenda: Thanks so much for having me today, Lauri. I love the name of your blog – Cowboy Kisses! I grew up in Arizona so there were plenty of cowboys and dreams of their kisses.  I intended on becoming an artist and never took my love of writing seriously. Then one day, sometime after college, after marriage and after I had my son, I found more satisfaction filling a blank page with words than an empty canvas with color. After publishing several short stories, I turned to writing novels. My husband and I recently moved to prairie country in Arizona and are enjoying the wide-open spaces while tending fruit trees and veggie gardens. When I’m not at my laptop writing, I enjoy hiking, motorcycle riding and the company of good friends.

Visit Brenda at www.brendawhiteside.com.

Or on FaceBook: www.facebook.com/BrendaWhitesideAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/brendawhitesid2

Group blogs on the 9^th and 24^th of every month at http://rosesofprose.blogspot.com

Personal blog http://brendawhiteside.blogspot.com/

Lauri: Thanks to you, Brenda, for joining us. I was in Arizona last summer. I left with a sunburn. :)  Let’s have both of you tell us about your books in the series, and your characters.

Stacy: My first story is currently in edits and involves Marshall Dekes, one of the bartenders at the Lonesome Steer.  The story is titled, Lonesome Cowboy: With a title under his belt, a purse in the bank and a ring in his pocket, Marshall Dekes returned for the woman he loved...only to find her at the alter saying 'I do' to another man.

Lauri: Oh, my. I’ll be downloading that one for sure!

Brenda, I know your story was just released, on the 4^th of July no less!

Brenda: Yes, it was. I had a big bang of my own with that release date! My novella is The Morning After. Abigail’s biological clock is ticking. Bobby Stockwood has been married a couple of times but never found true love. I think my blurb does a good job of summing up the story and the characters:

Can there really be love at first sight?

Abigail Martin doesn’t think so. Unless the sexy redheaded stranger she wakes up with the morning after her best friend’s wedding is telling the truth.

Bobby Stockwood fell cowboy-hat-over-boot-heels for the brown-haired beauty, and married her in an impromptu wedding ceremony.  Now he just has to convince his new bride that the morning after can be the first day of the rest of their lives.

But just when Abigail starts believing the fairy-tale is real, she finds out exactly who Bobby is, and the walls of make-believe start crumbling down.

Lauri:  There’s nothing like a good love at first sight story! I’m so anxious to find the time to read The Morning After!

Stacy and Brenda, tell us what you like best about your stories.

Stacy: I love that Lonesome Cowboy is a second chance story.  So many people have that love that they can’t forget or that goes wrong but never goes away.  This was my chance to give a happy ending to two of those people.

Brenda: The Morning After is fun! And full of misunderstandings, which is all part of the fun, for the reader anyway. Abigail doesn’t always see the humor.

Lauri: Second chances and misunderstandings, I’d say both stories have what readers look for. Give us some excerpts! (They can include a cowboy kiss if you’d like.)

Stacy: A cowboy kiss…

“Then we wouldn't have known the truth; we would have continued to believe the untruths, the falsehoods.  You never would have come back…and I wouldn't have ever gotten another chance to do this.”

His hand wove beneath her hair at her nape, pulling her forward until his lips sealed his words.  It was if the earth dropped from beneath her feet, the memory of his lips so pure, so vivid, so all consuming he suspended her in time, as if she had been in a drought and he was the water of life. Two years closed together and she almost cried out for the need she had suppressed for so long. 

The warm lips, slow and sweet at first, became strong and demanding, as if he too needed her to survive.  The realization was empowering and she clasped his shirtfront, unwilling to let even a breath of air come between them.

 

Brenda: A cowboy kiss the night before resulted in the morning after:

A moan.

The man rolled to his back, kicking off covers.

Abigail gasped. Her gentleman visitor wore only a bow tie and black socks.

She crept to the edge of the bed. His face was turned away, further hidden by red curls hanging down the nape of his neck and onto his cheek. A visual sweep of the attractive body brought a smile to her face when she paused on his more than ample endowments. A true redhead. An encounter of this magnitude should be easy to remember.

Abigail smiled in spite of her throbbing temples. Inching closer, she nudged his boots aside with her foot and leaned over to see his face. Mmm. He smelled good, like rich leather and fresh cut wood. As she bent to get a closer look, Kirby, her sixteen-pound Siamese cat, entered her room and announced his hunger.

The visitor stirred, grasped her arm, drawing her down across his hips.

He rose up on his elbows and looked at her. “So, Abby, you’re a morning person, are you?”

Abigail launched off the bed, trying not to come into contact with anymore of the warm body than she already had. Tripping over the boots, she ended up sprawled on the floor. “Who…” She gulped. “Who the hell are you?”

Lauri: Fabulous excerpts!  Please tell what/where you’ll be next promoting your book or other books you have coming out.

Stacy: Next up to release before Lonesome Cowboy is One Starlit night coming out this September.  Another hot cowboy…this time with a guitar LOL.  Then after Marshall’s story comes out, I will be working on the closing story to the series involving the Rankins, owners of the Lonesome Steer Honky Tonk. 

Thanks so much for having us today!  Again, readers can find me at www.stacydawn.com and most of my stories at www.thewildrosepress.com

Brenda: I’ve had quite a few blog stops already. All the books in the Honky Tonk Heart series are great reads, and we’ve all been making the rounds. Tomorrow I’m at Katherine Grey’s blog which is http://katherinegrey.blogspot.com. I’ve got some time coming up at The Romance Review and will have an interview at Coffee Time Romance and More in August. You can check out all my books on my web site, www.brendawhiteside.com.

Lauri: Thanks Brenda and Stacy, so much for being here today, and congrats on the awesome additions to this series. I’ll be hosting more Honky Tonk Hearts authors at Cowboy Kisses next month as well, August 7^th we’ll hear from Vonnie Davis and Sherri Thomas, and August 28^th Donna Michaels will be here.

Be sure to leave a comment to win an envelope full of Honky Tonk Hearts prizes!

Utah's Infamous Emma Mine

This month I'm going to talk about mining in Utah. Rather than go into a lot of detail, though, I'll give you a little historical background, then focus on the Emma Silver Mine and one of the most notorious mining scams in the Old West.
<><> <><><>  <><>

The Emma Silver Mine

In the early days of Utah Territory, aka Deseret, mining was frowned upon by Brigham Young and the Mormon elders. They believed searching for gold and silver would distract their people from agricultural pursuits and the building of their promised land. The one exception was iron, which had practical uses and was expensive to ship into their mountain kingdom from the east. In the early 1850s Mormons followed Brigham Young's call for an "iron mission" in southern Utah (now Iron County). Unfortunately, their search for iron didn't pan out.

In October 1862, Colonel Patrick E. Connor led his California and Nevada Volunteers into the Salt Lake Valley, where he founded Camp Douglas overlooking Salt Lake City. Many of his soldiers were experienced prospectors and, with Connor's encouragement, they prospected for silver and gold in the nearby Wasatch and Oquirrh mountains. The first formal claims were established in 1863 in the Bingham Canyon area.

Connor started a small newspaper, The Union Vedette, and promoted Utah’s mineral riches to the outside world. Prospectors and miners trickled in and with the blessing of their leaders, many Mormons joined in the search for mineral riches. Later, with the completion of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad, fortune seekers poured in by the thousands. Like a silver carrot dangled before them was the Emma, the most famous and infamous mine in the history of Utah.

<><> <><>

Little Cottonwood Canyon

The Emma was located in Little Cottonwood Canyon, above the mining camp of Alta, on the western face of the Wasatch Mountains. Discovered in 1868 by two men named Woodman and Chisholm, it was christened "Emma" after a woman one of the men had known in San Francisco. Having no capital to develop their claim, Woodman and Chisholm sold a one-third interest in the mine to a speculator named James E. Lyon. The miners sank a shaft and during 1868-69 some 100 tons of silver ore were extracted.

Senator W.M. Stewart

In 1870 a large body of ore opened in another diretion. Woodman and Chisholm then took on several other partners and attempted to oust Lyon from the company on the grounds that since the silver vein had changed direction, Lyon no longer had any claim upon it. Lyon filed a lawsuit, with W.M. Stewart, Senator from Nevada, serving as his lead attorney. A great deal of legal maneuvering followed which resulted in the investors being reorganized as the Emma Silver Mining Company of New York.

Around the autumn of 1871, the owners decided they would try to sell the mine in London, relying upon its production record to promote it. The number of miners, previously about 100, was reduced to 10 and a new superintendant appointed -- said to be the best man to "prepare" a mine for inspection by engineers prior to a sale. Guards prevented anyone from entering the mine without written permission. A British miner who worked in the Emma at that time later reported seeing silver ore "plastered or engrafted" onto the limestone rock. In other words, they salted the mine to make it look like there was still a rich vein of silver to be extracted when, in truth, it was nearly worked out.

Hyperbole flew like wildfire: “. . . after the discovery of the great Emma silver mine mass of ore, mining and prospecting in Utah took a sudden leap; prospectors spread out in all the mountains; and the result today is, that Utah gives promise of soon being as largely silver bearing and silver producing as Nevada. English and eastern capital is now freely flowing there, and the great yield of those rich mines will enable Utah to take high rank in the production of silver bullion.” ~~ from a Report by the United States General Land Office

British investors paid some $5,000,000 dollars for the Emma. A short time later the vein played out, and those investors furiously cried "Swindle!". Bitter accusations flew back and forth. Both the British and U.S. governments  became involved, nearly going to war before the brouhaha finally ended. After the Emma scandal, British investment in Utah mining virtually stopped. In fact, all investment in Utah mines dried up except for a few well known, trusted operations, crippling Utah mining pursuits for decades.



Eventually the industry did recover, thanks to local and American investors, and mining proved to be a vital part of the Utah economy. A report issued by the Salt Lake Mining Review stated total mining production between 1865 and 1917 came to over 800 million dollars. Not bad!

The Utah silver boom plays a crucial part in Darlin' Druid, book one in my Texas Druids series. I hope you'll give this award winning novel of the Old West a try.

http://www.amazon.com/Darlin-Druid-Texas-Druids-ebook/dp/B004ASNDES

Sources:



http://www.scribd.com/doc/6966696/The-True-History-of-the-Emma-Mine

http://www.miningutah.com/id66.html

http://www.miningswindles.com/html/emma_mine.html

The Sheepeater Indians of Yellowstone

By: Peggy L Henderson

I’ve just returned from an annual trip to Yellowstone National Park. The second night at the campground we stayed at, my husband pointed out that the evening campfire ranger program that evening might be something I would be interested in. The ranger’s talk was about the Sheepeater Indians. I thought, wow! I needed that a year ago when I was doing research on this tribe for my current book series. Finding information on this tribe hasn’t been easy, and now that the series is complete, I was very eager to see if I “got it right.” I came away from the program fairly satisfied that I hadn’t really learned anything new about this hardy sub-tribe of Shoshone Indians that time and history seems to have forgotten. The only interesting fact I did learn was that the last small group of Sheepeaters was removed from Yellowstone in 1890, their way of life and customs untouched or influenced by white men.

Bighorn Ram

The Sheepeater Indians, or Tukudika, which in their language means “eaters of meat”, a sub-group of the Shoshone, were the only native peoples to live in the Yellowstone region year round. Their primary source of food was the bighorn sheep that inhabited the high mountains of the park. They also lived on fish, nuts, berries, the root of the camas flower, bitterroot, and various other edible plants. Marmots (called whistle dogs) were considered a delicacy.

Often called Mountain Shoshone, they may have lived in the Yellowstone area for 10,000 years, although another version of their ancient history has them arriving less than 1,000 years ago. They were considered by other bands of Shoshone Indians as great medicine men, and highly spiritual, because they chose to live in mountainous areas often at 7500 feet or higher. These were areas the Shoshone believed were home to a higher order of spirits called Sky People.

The Sheep Eaters, though, gained an undeserved reputation, through written accounts by Lewis and Clark, and other explorers, as having been destitute, feeble-minded, and almost subhuman. Not all white men shared this view, and mountain man Osborne Russell wrote in his book, Journal of a Trapper, about their friendly nature and the fine quality of their hides.

Due to the remote and harsh areas where they lived, the Sheepeaters were not influenced by the arrival of whites. They didn’t have rifles, and no horses. They continued to travel on foot in the traditional way, utilizing dogs to help carry their supplies and in their hunts for bighorn sheep. They kept to the high remote areas, escaping the European influence more than other tribes. They remained deeply immersed in their landscape and ways, and no doubt the beauty and unspoiled wilderness of Yellowstone inspired their beliefs, worldview and spirituality.

flattened sheep horn, sinew, glue to make a hornbow

The Sheep Eater culture distinguishes itself from other tribes in various ways. They lived in small family groups in huts made from skins and branches (aspen and willow in summer, heavier materials in winter), called wickiups. Their hide tanning methods were of high quality and trade value. Their bows earned a near mythical reputation. They were made from the horns of Bighorn Sheep or elk antlers, which they heated at Yellowstone’s geysers and hot pools and then molded into hunting weapons. It was said that the force of their bows could drive an obsidian-tipped arrow clear through a buffalo.

remnants of a Sheepeater Wickiup

“Like many other hunters and gatherers, the Sheep Eaters did not make a distinction between the natural and supernatural worlds. At the apex were the “Sky People,” below them were the “Ground People,” and still lower were the “Water People.” Physical phenomena were also hierarchically ordered, with the sun and lightning at the pinnacle and rattlesnakes occupying the bottom rung of the cosmos.” (from Mountain Spirit – The Sheepeater Indians of Yellowstone)

In the 1870’s, superintendent of Yellowstone, Philleus Norris, decided to eradicate all Indians from the park. The Sheepeaters were driven from their homelands, and taken to reservations at Wind River in Wyoming, and Fort Hall in Idaho. Several small groups did escape this eradication, however, and the last group still survived in the remote mountains of Yellowstone, living as their ancestors had for thousands of years, until 1890.

When I chose to include the Sheepeaters into my writing of my books in the Yellowstone Romance Series, I decided to use their spiritual beliefs as my vessel for the time travel elements in several of the books. The Sky People (although the Sheepeaters referred to the animals in the sky as “the sky people”, in my books I implied for them to be actual spiritual men) became the perfect source of the origin of the time travel device for the books.

Here is a short excerpt from Yellowstone Heart Song, Book 1 in the Yellowstone Romance Series:

Daniel nodded. He knew his mother had died in childbirth in the midst of a winter blizzard here in the mountains. His father had been unable to go for help from the nearby Tukudeka clan. How often had he heard his father blame himself over the years for his wife’s death, for taking her away from the safety of New Orleans and bringing her to the mountains?

“What I didn’t tell you before,” his father cleared his throat again, each word seemed to cause him pain to bring forth, “is that we had a visitor that night.”

“A visitor?” Daniel echoed.

“He was old. A Tukudeka elder. He got caught in the snowstorm and found the cabin. He was nearly frozen to death when he managed to pound on the cabin door.”

“Continue,” he said slowly, when his father paused again.

“I tended to both your mother and the old man throughout the night. She was getting worse, and he was starting to thaw out. That’s when he offered me the chance to save your life.”

“My life?” Daniel’s eyes narrowed.

“He handed me this.” His father reached into the pouch around his neck and produced a shriveled up, dried snakehead with eerily unnatural gleaming red eyes. Daniel stared at the object, then back at his father.

 “He told me a story of how his grandfather received this snake from some ancient people who came from the sky.”

“The Tukudeka legends are full of stories of the Sky People,” he nodded.

Happy Fourth of July!

I always am amazed by people who can’t recognize portraits of recent presidents like Richard Nixon, much less answer questions about American history. Many people ought to know why we celebrate the 4^th of July. On that day in 1776, that members of the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to adopt and sign the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. Some famous words from it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

 John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, saying, "I believe that (the 4^th) will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other..."

The following year in 1777, Philadelphia remembered the day by ringing bells, firing guns, lighting candles and setting off firecrackers. However, the War of Independence continued until Oct. 19, 1781 when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. Most Fourth of July celebrations were modest, since American farmers suffered hardships until after the Americans again defeated the British in the War of 1812.

And then came the Civil War. Brother against brother, North against South. The Fourth of July figured big too – Robert E. Lee took his army into Pennsylvania in late June of 1863, hoping to wake up the North to the sufferings of his Southern people where most of the battles took place.  Within a few days they met Union forces near Gettysburg. Three days of intensive fighting, and the bloodiest battle ever fought in America – but on July 4^th, Lee was forced to retreat.

But don’t forget the “west” – Vicksburg, Mississippi. Admiral David Farragut’s fleet fought to free the Mississippi for the Union from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico. Vicksburg held out, due to the high bluffs that protected the city. But General Ulysses S. Grant’s siege from May 19^th bombarded the city from all sides. People escaped to caves, but the city was forced to surrender on the 4^th of July, 1863. Vicksburg citizens banned celebrating the holiday for years.

In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, she recalled political officials who read the entire Declaration of Independence. This happened in cities and small towns across America, because many people had a rudimentary education, if any. By 1940, only half of the U.S. population had completed an eighth grade education. HALF – only up to the 8^th grade! Consider the immigrants, the blacks who were discouraged from getting an education, and the rural areas with one-room schools and farming needs for family labor. Things have certainly improved in the last 70 years!

The Declaration of Independence is still read in cities and towns today. Speeches, military events, parades, and fireworks make the day special. The government was rather late in declaring it a federal holiday – Congress finally passed the bill in 1941. 

Since then, summer fun on the Fourth of July includes fireworks displays, parades and historical pageants, baseball, sun-bathing on the beach and swimming. The Boston Pops Orchestra always holds a concert on the Charles River bank, with John Philip Sousa marches and music by other American composers before ending with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture that includes cannons and fireworks. Many locals watch on television, because the traffic is horrendous! The Lititz, Pennsylvania, candle festival, the longest continuous celebration of July 4th since 1813, has hundreds of candles floating in water and a contest to choose a "Queen of Candles.” Annapolis, Maryland, shuts down the streets after 3 p.m. for walkers, with fireworks at dusk over the U.S. Naval Academy, and restaurants staying open late.

Out west, an American Indian rodeo and three-day pow-wow used to take place in Flagstaff, Arizona, for fifty years until 1981. Nowadays, several groups hold pow-wows around July 4th in Massachusetts, New York, Missouri and Oklahoma.In Texas, according to one friend, unlicensed fireworks end up with a trip to the emergency room. It happens in Michigan, too, and across the country. Fireworks are best left to the professionals. But people across the country head to the nearest park, lake or beach to watch fireworks.

I’d be amiss not to mention Detroit’s late June “International Freedom Festival” in conjunction with Canada. They celebrate the July 1^st date when their provinces joined together in 1867 under the British Empire. Three barges shoot fireworks on the Detroit River near the Renaissance Center, and people pack Belle Isle and the downtown streets of Detroit and Windsor to watch.

The 4th is always a great picnic day. The usual foods are burgers and dogs, chicken and ribs on the grill, cole slaw grilled or boiled corn on the cob, tossed salad, fruit salad, baked beans and potato salad, deviled eggs, apple pie, watermelon, strawberry shortcake and ice cream.

But don't forget the regional flavors that grilling can make adventurous!

Clambakes with clams, mussels, Maryland blue crabs, lobsters, oysters and smelt on the east coast… Grilled kielbasa, Italian sausage, bratwurst and S’Mores in the Midwest… Fried chicken, boiled crawfish, pulled pork, fry pies in the South…Pit-roasted pig, Jamaican ribs, tamales and grilled gator in Florida… 

Grilled gator?? Yep!

Bacon-wrapped jalapenos (ratas) or cream-cheese stuffed green chiles, smoked brisket, pork loin or turkey, buffalo burgers in the west… Sushi or grilled salmon on the Pacific coast…  It all adds up to YUM!

ENJOY your Fourth of July, whatever you have grilling on the "barbie" (heh heh, a touch of Aussie there), and remember to stay safe when handling fireworks of any kind. Even sparklers can cause serious burns.

If you drink, please use a designated driver.

However you celebrate, Happy Independence Day! And remember – America is worth celebrating!!

From Outhouse to Hopper Toilets

Oh yeah, I'm definitely going there - bathrooms old style. Too fun. A question on facebook has prompted this post. The author asked if anyone had any good sights with information on what the toilets might look like on an old train. I just happened to have a photo I'd taken at a train museum in Galveston. For those of you in Texas, this is a wonderplace to get visuals for your train scenes.

Anyway, I thought about it more and did my own bit of research. As I thought, the toilets in early trains were often nothing more than holes in the floor of a closet. And yes, the contents dumped directly onto the tracks while the train was in motion. Later, seats were constructed but waste was still dumped directly onto the tracks. These were called hopper toilets. I think this second image is from a train dated 1882.

Being from a Girl Scout background, we spent campouts at a place that had old fashioned latrines. My favorite was a three-holer. There was a post to set our lanterns on while we did out business. Before entering a latrine, you always kicked the sides to make sure nothing wild and living had made its home underneath. I'll never forget the time 2 of my friends and I were at the three holer. Friend A and I finished first but Friend B was still in the middle stall when we happened to look up and see a snake curled on a shelf right above her head. I'm sure I screaming woke the dead and bless her heart, I've never seen anyone finish their business so quickly. He turned out to be a harmless hognose but still when you're seven, a snake's a snake and something to avoid.

Those of us who write historical westerns, love indulging the reader in a realistic setting, but oft times we have to sugarcoat or brush over the more unpleasant aespects of being a pioneer. Even so, I think we can all imagine how cowboys on the trail or pioneers in covered wagons had to deal with bodily functions. I can just imagine a woman squatting over a self-dug hole only to have a grasshopper climb up her skirts in mid-process. I know what my reaction would be? Do you know how you'd react?

And of course, let's not forget those chamber pots. I'd like to share a scene from Eliza's Copper Penny in which Eliza is forced to care for a patient who suffered buckshot wounds to his backside. It was a difficult scene in that I knew I couldn't go into great detail or we'd have the famous "ewww" factor but I wanted to show the man's vulnerability. He's a ranger, a hard man not used to accepting help. She's a school marm not used to a man's course ways.

He blinked. “You drugged me.”

“Mr. Nolan gave you a little laudanum to help you sleep.”

“I couldn’t make my body move right.” A chagrined expression hinted at a vulnerability she would have never associated with her first image of him.

She set the lantern on the bedside table and studied him closer, puzzled by his comment. Was he trying to escape? In his condition? Escape from what? What was so important it lured him from bed and onto the floor? “You needed the rest. Perhaps I should help you back into bed. Are you in much pain? I can give you more medicine. It’s been several hours since your last dose.”

“Hell, no!”

She stamped her foot. “There’ll be no more of your profanity in this house, and you needn’t yell.”

“I don’t need your infernal drug. I need my guns. Where have you put my things?”

“In your condition, you have no need of anything but rest.”

“Woman, don’t play with me. I have a job to do.”

“A dangerous job, I’d say.”

“Damn it, I don’t need some schoolmarm acting as my conscience.”

His outburst seemed uncharacteristic for the man she’d met earlier, brought on by something more than his desire for his guns. Perhaps fever held him in its grip and he hallucinated. She touched his brow and discovered over-warm skin.

He pulled away from her touch. “Go back to bed and leave me the hell alone. I don’t want any more of your help.”

She reared back. “I expected you to be a difficult patient. Proud men always are. I even expected some childish behavior, but I’m not sure I understand the depth of your anger. Everyone has bent over backwards to help you.”

“Some things you can’t help me with.”

Her gaze swept the room for clues to his surly behavior and discovered the source of the crash. At the foot of the bed, the enamel chamber pot rested on its side, the lid a few feet away. Oh dear. No wonder he was cranky and irritable. She had pulled the container from its chair and set it in the open so he would see it when he felt the need. In his drugged state, he must have tipped it over trying to reach it. The laudanum combined with the wounds and fever made him too weak to walk across the room. He’d crawled from the bed only to collapse on the floor.

She swallowed hard and bit her lower lip. How was she going to deal with this new problem? He’d roar louder if he knew she’d discovered his predicament. He wouldn’t thank her, but he needed help.

www.ciaragold.com

Hay Is for Horses

 As soon as I decided to write this post on another horsey subject, the title phrase started echoing in my head, and I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it or what it meant at the time. At last! As I type, it comes to me that my grandmother used to say that whenever my sister or I had the temerity to use, “Hey,” in her presence. Today it may be a common form of address, but not that long ago, it was slang and unacceptable in nice young ladies.

My actual subject here is misconceptions about hay vs. straw in western romances I’ve read recently. I know several others on the CK schedule come from farming and ranching backgrounds and know the difference, but evidently research doesn’t make it clear to some.

Hay is an actual crop and is raised to feed horses and other livestock. Grasses or legumes are cut at a time to ensure maximum nutrition and palatability. Good hay, even decent hay, retains a green color.

Straw is a by-product of a grain crop such as wheat or oats. After threshing to remove the desired grain, empty, mature stems are used for bedding and other absorbing purposes. Straw is golden. Yes, a bored horse with nothing else to do will eat straw, even though there’s little to no nutrition in it, and it can cause digestive problems. Nowadays, a horse that eats straw gets something else for bedding.

So our intrepid heroine should not be spreading hay knee deep as bedding in a stall for the hero’s great black stallion (or any other more realistic creature). Maybe if she’s supposed to be some dummy from the East, but in the 1800s I’d think you’d have to have lived your life in a New York tenement not to know the difference.

I know that for many romances are escapism, and each of us has to decide where to draw the line between romance and reality, but in case you fall on the reality side....

I’m not going to confess my age, but the man who taught me to ride was with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show as a boy. When the show went to Europe, his parents (who had probably emigrated from there not that long ago) refused to sign permission for him to go, and so he went on to other things, work as a mounted policeman among them. In other words, he was an experienced horseman who knew and liked horses.

The stable that Mr. Landi owned and operated in the mid-Twentieth Century featured, if I remember correctly, twenty-two stalls total. More than half were what we called straight stalls. A straight stall is a three-sided slot six feet wide. A horse is led in and tied there, and that’s where he spends his non-working time. Other barns where I boarded my horse after Mr. Landi’s death had all box stalls for boarding horses, but their livery horses were kept in straight stalls.

I think I’ve mentioned that my mother was Canadian. We used to visit her relatives every summer. When I was very small, they still worked the farm with draft horses and kept eight of them. When kept up for work, they stood in straight stalls. The advantages of the straight stall are use of space (half as much as a box) and labor. In a straight stall, horse manure is all right there in a heap behind the horse. In a box stall it’s spread wherever it falls and wherever it gets kicked as the horse moves around.

Those draft horses never met bedding. The horses in straight stalls in Mr. Landi’s barn got a little straw laid down in the back half of the stall at night that was carefully picked through and put to one side during the day.

What I’m getting at here is that if you’re going to have a scenario where your intrepid heroine is spreading that straw in a nice box stall, and if you want to be realistic, you need to set it up carefully. In those times, your average working stiff horse never saw a box stall and never experienced bedding.

ROMANCE'S EVOLVING HEROES AND HEROINES

By Caroline Clemmons

How long have you been reading romance novels? If it’s more than ten or fifteen years, you’ve seen heroines change from the damsel who has to be rescued, to the spunky heroine who works with the hero to help save herself, and sometimes to the kick-ass heroine who rescues the hero.

"Hello? Killer
is that you
I heard?"

Romance heroines are evolving. No longer will readers tolerate the TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine who goes out late at night, wearing only her nightgown carrying a candle, to investigate a strange noise when she knows there’s a killer in the area. Nope, if she is in peril, it can’t be due to our modern heroine’s stupidity.

Readers require heroines to be strong and admirable, just as the heroes are. We don’t like whiners, brutality, or stupid characters in either gender. Even if our hero and heroine are a bit over the top, we want to believe they are people we would like to know in person.

I live a few miles from a small Texas town. This is why I write characters who live in or near small Texas towns. Whether historical or contemporary, the characters who reside in my head are people I would enjoy knowing in real life...except the criminals, but I dispose of them one way or another. Even the secondary characters are people I would enjoy finding on the next acreage.

BE MY GUEST has characters that I admire and with whom I enjoy spending time...once again, except the criminals. ☺ This was my first published novel and released in 1998. I’ve updated it a bit and added back some cut scenes, but the hero and heroine remain the same. I hope you’ll enjoy spending time with Aurora O’Shaughnessy and Will Harrison and their friends and relatives. I certainly have.

That's model Jimmy Thomas standing in front
of my photo of Texas wildflowers

Here’s a blurb:

Aurora Kathleen O’Shaughnessy comes by her flaming auburn hair naturally, and this independent city woman has an inner fire to match. Nothing stops Aurora--that is, nothing short of a Texas flash flood. This super-organized businesswoman might be running from the past, but she’s using this journey to stop and smell the roses-- or rather the spring flowers in bloom across the Texas prairie. But beautiful Aurora has attracted the attention of two unsavory characters stalking her.

Rancher Will Harrison rescues her from the raging waters and she’s his guest for the next thirty-six hours. That’s long enough for Will to fall head over heels in major attraction, and he has a hunch she might feel the same. He has a plan to keep her around until he convinces her to move out of the fast land and in to his life forever. But two predators have other plans for Aurora. Can Will save her in time? Can Aurora save herself?

And here’s an excerpt after Aurora’s car is washed away by floodwater. When Will rescued her from a cottonwood tree, she was a bit banged up. As the above blurb indicated, the high water has marooned her at Will’s ranch house:

    Will let his eyes memorize every detail of her face before, with resignation, he sat up and picked up the phone again to dial his mother's phone number. Kelly answered the phone and he told her briefly about his houseguest. Once again he laughed and winked at Aurora as he answered Kelly's questions. Finally, he told her they would discuss the situation further when she got home.

Aurora

    Aurora loved the way his voice changed tones as he talked to his daughter. He’d sounded friendly and polite when talking to her father, and professional while he talked to the deputy at the sheriff's office. His tone with his daughter was entirely different--patient and loving. His pride and love for his little girl showed in every word he said.
    While Will talked on the phone, Aurora absentmindedly organized the medical supplies on the bedside table into a neat little group on one corner of the tabletop. She realized what she’d done and found he watched with an amused expression. She blushed and put her hands in her lap. Why, why did she have to be such an organization nut?
When Will finished his call to Kelly and his mother, Aurora crossed her arms and accused,  "That's the second time you've done that."
    "What?" Will frowned. “What did I do?”
    "You know, laughed while you answered questions over the phone. What did you say about me?"
    "You heard what I said." Will grinned innocently.
  His stone gray eyes came to life when he smiled, and each time it made her even more aware of her attraction to this man.
She tried to fight the spell he cast over her, to concentrate on her goals. "You know very well what I mean. For instance, what did my father ask that you found so amusing, anyway?"
    Will's smile became mysterious. "That's my secret for now. Let's just say we had a meeting of the minds. I'm sure I'm going to like him."
    Aurora scowled at him, but ignored the implication. "What did your daughter ask that was so funny?"
    "She wanted to know if I still wore my wedding ring--that's been such an unbelievably big deal to her lately. Most kids don't want a stepmother, but she's determined to get one. I think it's because the father of her friend Marcie remarried last year, and Marcie has been lording it over her with tales of how great it is to have a stepmother. When I admitted I removed the ring, she wanted to know if it was because of you."

Will Harrison

    Will shrugged. "I never lie to her, so I had to tell her yes. Then, she wanted to know if I plan to keep you here. That's when I said I certainly intend to try."
    Aurora relaxed her arms and folded her hands primly together in her lap. "Oh, you know very well that I'm on my way to Colorado."
    "I know what you told me." Will said as he took her hand. For a moment he sat examining her hand. When he again met her gaze there was a new intensity there. "Yesterday I let you walk out of the restaurant and hated myself for letting you get away without my even knowing how to contact you. It may sound foolish but I determined to find you again if I had to go to Durango to do so." He traced his finger across her palm. "I promise you it won't be so easy to get away from me next time."
    He had revealed far more of himself than he had intended at this point. He determined to find out if his attraction to her was because of his three years of celibacy or because she was as special as he suspected. Careful not to scare her off, he had to know the answer. To accomplish that, he had to keep her nearby.
    He flashed her a wicked grin, "Although I like my pajama top on you, I suppose you'll be more comfortable in your own things--and definitely a lot safer."

BE MY GUEST is available for only 99 cents from these sources:
Smashwords
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36811?ref=CarolineClemmons

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/BE-MY-GUEST-ebook/dp/B004M8T1EC/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340584165&sr=1-3&keywords=caroline+clemmons

Thanks for stopping by!