Ready To Rock

I may have been under the weather these last few weeks, but I have managed to stay busy. Here's what's going on:

Two of my books are up for Reader's Choice Awards through the website The Romance Reviews. Expressly Yours, Samantha is listed as a Western Romance, http://www.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=17155 and The Duplicitous Debutante is listed as a Historical Romance. http://www.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=14894
I need 50 votes for each title in order to continue to the next round. Simply click on the above links, hit the top button that says Nominate This Book, and you're done. Thank you so much for your help.


My little puppy-mill rescue dog, Mary, is a guest on USA Today's Happy Ever After Column.  Reminds me of the rock song about making it on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. You can see her here: http://wp.me/p5HLSC-1pb8

We had a serious nibble on the house, so my sister and I are spending the afternoon (along with the celebrity, Mary), doing drive-bys of the handful of houses we've narrowed our search to. For some reason, we want to be near water. So it's the Portage Lakes, or the canal, or any random lake or swimming pool. I think we have visions of pool parties in our future.

Hopefully, I'll have good news to report here soon. In the meantime, don't forget to vote!

Last Chance

When I was doing the research on the Pony Express for my latest novel, Expressly Yours, Samantha, I was appalled at how little value the horses had who were a part of this page in American history. They were literally ridden into the ground, as the riders attempted to meet the ten-day cross-country deadlines. Those horses who did survive were barely able to walk again, let alone be useful. I referred to the harsh treatment in the book in order to be historically accurate, not because I wanted to dwell on the practice. In fact, my dedication of the book is to those brave horses who were part of the Pony Express.

While writing the story, I thought I'd like to find a horse rescue operation to which I could donate a portion of my earnings from this book. It seemed the right thing to do. I investigated several operations in the west, but none of them felt right. Then, Grace Burrowes, a fellow historical romance author, posted on her Facebook page about a non-profit called the Last Chance Corral.


The Last Chance Corral opened my eyes to the present-day abuse of horses. Mares who are not thoroughbred material are impregnated in order to bring them into milk. The thoroughbred mares drop their foals, who are then carted off to these wet-nurses while the thoroughbred mare is once again immediately impregnated. The foals of the wet nurses are cast aside, of no further use to the breeder. Fortunately, some of them make it to the Last Chance Corral in Athens, OH, where they are adopted out. You can find out more about the operation here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Last-Chance-Corral/45502380989?ref=br_tf

This is a perfect charity for my donations, and the fact it's in Ohio is icing on the cake. I plan to give a portion of each royalty statement from the sales of Expressly Yours, Samantha, to this noble cause. If it saves only one foal, my money will have been well spent.

Here It Comes!

Expressly Yours, Samantha will be released tomorrow, March 16. It's been a long time in the making and I'm so excited to have it out there, finally. What do I mean? Don't I write two historicals a year in the Cotillion series? Why was this one so long in the making?

Because of my contract with Crimson, I had to write the synopsis for the last five books in the series long before I wrote them. That was a first for me, the proverbial pantser. But it worked, since it made me look further down the road than I had for the first few books. I was able to insert little nuggets into my stories which may have seemed like an aside at the time, but which were helping to set the stage for a later book. For instance, if you go back and look for it, you'll see Valerian had a love affair with horses for years before he got his own story. Dropping those little clues into a story makes the idea that all the youngest Fitzpatrick boy wanted to do was ride horses more believable. It is fortunate that his story unfolds when the Pony Express is starting up. Coincidence? That's for you, the reader, to decide.

In order to write this story, I had to do a great deal of research, including a cross-country trip. All I knew about the Pony Express was that it was a romantic page in American history, it got the mail from the east coast to the west coast, and it involved horses. I had no clue how it was put together, or why. On my trip, I stopped at every place where there was something to do with the Pony Express and picked up on some of the local flavor. I ended up with three great research books on the subject, rode through the countryside in the middle of winter, and took pictures. This is the first book in the series that can be classified as a western, and a horse on the cover makes sense. I couldn't be happier. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Selecting a Cover

One of the most rewarding–and most stressful–parts of having a book published is approving a cover design. Covers are one of the most important parts of any book, especially in this digital age. Your cover design is the size of a thumbnail, and it's all you have to make a reader stop, look, and read your most important element–the blurb. Then, and only then, will a person make the decision to buy your book. So while covers won't necessarily sell copies, it can make people stop and read about your book, and maybe buy it.

This time, my historic romance takes place not in New York, but in the wild country west of the Mississippi in 1860. So, I got to include something I haven't been able to before–a horse!

I was so excited about the opportunity, I've been gathering pictures of wild horses for months now. The story, Expressly Yours, Samantha, is about two people involved in the new Pony Express, which began in April, 1860.

But a horse is not enough to stop a reader in her tracks and read the book blurb. I needed something more. My publisher wanted it to evoke the idea of romance, since that's what I write, but I had a problem with all the lovely women who were nuzzling horses. They were too pretty.

What, you say? How can someone be too pretty? Isn't the idea of a cover to make a person stop and look? And wouldn't they be drawn to a pretty face, rather than a not-so-pretty one?

I get where the designers were coming from. But the heroine is passing herself off as a boy at the start  of the book, on the run from an abusive uncle. So a beautiful ingenue with a wide smile just didn't work. I wanted a haunted face, one that could realistically be mistaken for a boy, with the right haircut. And I wanted her standing against a horse.

I have to admit, the designers did it. I can't show the cover off yet, but it works. I'm glad they took the time to make it right. Will I miss a few readers because there's not a pretty face on the cover? Possibly. But if they take a moment to look into the haunted eyes of my heroine, they'll hopefully be intrigued enough to read the blurb. And maybe buy the book.

Expressly Yours, Samantha, will be released March 16. Stay tuned.

The Pony Express

I just turned in Book 7 in the Cotillion Ball Series. This one takes place in 1860, and is not situated in civilized New York City, but rather, St. Joseph, MO and beyond. It has nothing to do with the cultured confines of a ballroom or a Cotillion Ball, except for the time frame.

One of my favorite parts of writing American historicals is uncovering bits of history about which I know very little and doing research on them, and how they affected everyday citizens. The Pony Express is no exception. This time, I learned a lot about a little known slice of Americana.

I'll be writing about The Pony Express in detail over the coming months, as part of the buildup to the release of Expressly Yours, Samantha. There is so much to talk about, but today, I wanted to share with you the one thing that really jumped out at me, and how something like The Pony Express would never be possible today.

This route of nearly 2,000 miles was cobbled together by William Russell in only 67 days. Every ten to fifteen miles, a relay station was established, where riders could change horses. At about every eighty miles, a home station was set up, where a change of rider would occur along with a fresh mount. Wherever possible, existing structures were used, but in many cases, a relay station had to be thrown up using whatever materials were available. The route followed the Pioneer Trail, which in the summer was clogged with wagon trains heading west, and spanned the states or territories of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California. And it wasn't just the route that needed to come together. There were horses to be purchased–500 to start with in each of the seven different divisions, and riders–80 to 100 for each division.

Can you imagine something of this magnitude, and spanning so many states, being put together today in a matter of months? It would never happen. There would be legislation developed, people to be bought off, lively debates would take place on the floors of the various state houses, and ultimately, nothing would be accomplished.

As quickly as it came into being, The Pony Express died out only eighteen months after it became an American icon. As soon as the telegraph line extended from coast to coast, the ponies and their riders were no longer an efficient resource for disseminating information, and the doors to The Pony Express were closed. It existed only 18 months, but its colorful legend is part of our American history. Some of the men who rode for the Express went on to fame and fortune in the Wild West shows, but most of them faded into oblivion. Samantha, and Valerian, are two of those who were part of The Pony Express for a time. I hope you'll enjoy their story, which will be released in March, 2015.

Here's a bit about the story: Samantha Hughes needs to get away from her wicked uncle, and, following her aunt’s death, she has one day to escape. A sign in the post office offers an avenue out. She can cut her hair, pose as a man, and become Sam Hughes, a Pony Express rider.

 Valerian Fitzpatrick has defied his parents and stayed in St. Louis for the past year. He doesn't want the weight of responsibility his brothers have in the family business. All he wants to do is ride horses, and, fortunately, the Pony Express is starting up and looking for wiry young fellows. When Sam Hughes helps Valerian control a runaway horse, Joseph, Valerian’s brother-in-law, tells him their meeting was destiny. 

Over the weeks and months that follow, Sam and Val work side by side on the exciting Pony Express. Val assumes Sam is on the run from the law, and helps shield his buddy from the Pinkerton agents. He thinks this must be the destiny Joseph talked about. Although Samantha harbors feelings for Val, he has no idea she’s a woman. Until she suffers a stray gunshot wound and he has to undress her to staunch the wound. 

Friendship turns into attraction and maybe even love. When her uncle tracks her down, she is forced to run yet again. She realizes the danger she’s put Valerian into, having him try to shield her from her uncle, and leaves him behind with a note to not track her down. Will he be able to find her again, or is he relieved to not have any responsibility again? 

Our Private Worlds

I'll admit it–I caught the genealogy bug years ago. I methodically traced my family tree back to the Revolutionary War and to Europe. One of the things I kept noticing was the way the last names of various family members kept intersecting. I realized travel was hard, and there wasn't a large gene pool to draw from, so I kept track as cousins married first and second cousins. As more and more branches on the tree interconnected, it became a family joke that the inbreeding explained the occasional lunatic in the family–those who lived in their own private worlds.

Today, as I write this, I've just finished the seventh book in my American historical series. It takes place in 1860 and the story line is woven around the Pony Express. I've spent the last few months studying the movement of horses, and learning more about this portion of American history than I ever thought possible. I told a friend the other day that, after a morning of working on this novel, I was surprised to see cars driving by my door instead of horses. My private world has consisted of dirt roads, wide open prairie land and wild mustangs. Am I this generation's occasional lunatic? Or am I merely an author?

The book, Expressly Yours, Samantha, is about ready to be shipped out to my publisher. Normally, I take a break from my historicals, and intersperse a contemporary, just to lighten things up and to keep me grounded in reality. But, for some reason, the 1860s keep calling me. I'm thinking of taking a leaf from the old family tree and write about my great-great-grandmother, who had to maintain a homestead in the hills of southern Ohio and keep four children alive while her husband fought in the Civil War. Obviously, the woman could have used a strong man during these years. Who better to camp out in her woods than a half-breed Ojibwa Indian? So, I'm headed back into the 1860s, where I'll roam the hills and woods of southern Ohio with Susannah and Raoul. I'm headed back into my own private world again.

Here's the cover blurb for Expressly Yours, Samantha, set to release in March, 2015.

Samantha Hughes needs to get away from her wicked uncle, and, following her aunt’s death, she has one day to escape. A sign in the post office offers an avenue out. She can cut her hair, pose as a man, and become Sam Hughes, a Pony Express rider.

Valerian Fitzpatrick has defied his parents and stayed in St. Louis for the past year. He doesn't want the weight of responsibility his brothers have in the family business. All he wants to do is ride horses, and, fortunately, the Pony Express is starting up and looking for wiry young fellows.

When Sam Hughes helps Valerian control a runaway horse, Joseph, Valerian’s brother-in-law, tells him their meeting was destiny. Over the weeks and months that follow, Sam and Val work side by side on the exciting Pony Express. Val assumes Sam is on the run from the law, and helps shield his buddy from the Pinkerton agents. He thinks this must be the destiny Joseph talked about. Although Samantha harbors feelings for Val, he has no idea she’s a woman. Until she suffers a stray gunshot wound and he has to undress her to staunch the wound.

Friendship turns into attraction and maybe even love. When her uncle tracks her down, she is forced to run yet again. She realizes the danger she’s put Valerian into, having him try to shield her from her uncle, and leaves him behind with a note to not track her down. Will he be able to find her again, or is he relieved to not have any responsibility again?