Guest - MK McClintock

Why I Write Historical Romantic Westerns

MK McClintock

It began with me romping around the pastures on all fours with the horses and playing cowboys and Indians with my siblings. I was eight years old and my family had a small ranch in Colorado, but for years before we moved to the Rockies, we had vacationed each summer to the mountains. I grew up with a deep appreciation for the majestic landscape of rolling hills and open meadows surrounded by the mighty Rocky Mountains. 

At a young age, I didn’t think that one day I would write novels. I wrote stories as children often do, but they were for school or pleasure, and because I had a vivid imagination that found a variety of ways to manifest itself. Writing longer works of fiction came about as a slow and natural progression, and when the early ideas forms, they were a combination of Victorian romance and western.

The idea for the first Gallagher book wouldn’t come about until many years after I moved to Montana. It was a surprise that the land I came to love figured so prominently in my books. Writing historical romantic westerns gives me the opportunity to combine three of my favorite things: history, romance, and the American West.

I want readers to see the land as I do, to smell the pine trees and watch eagles fly overhead, and to feel the crisp and clean autumn air as the weather turns and snow covers the peaks. The Gallagher family needed a home within Montana, and thus the Hawk’s Peak ranch was born. The more time I spent with the Gallaghers, their family, the ranch hands, and the delightful people in the fictional town of Briarwood, I knew something special had happened. I knew letting go wouldn’t be easy . . . so I didn’t.

Journey to Hawk’s Peak, book five in the Montana Gallagher series, is the latest adventure I’ve had the joy of taking with the Gallaghers and their friends. Their journey has been filled with surprises: heartache, new beginnings, second chances, and a deep love for both the land the people who have touched their lives.

I hope you’ll join me on a journey filled with the remarkable men and women of Hawk’s Peak and Briarwood.  

MK will give one person who comments a paperback book if in the U.S. and ebook if you live outside the U.S.  Be sure to leave your email so we can contact you.

Mystery Guest- Maia Chance and a Book Giveaway!

Thanks for having me back again, Paty!  I’ll be giving away two copies of Cinderella Six Feet Under to two people who post a comment.

CINDERELLA SIX FEET UNDER

This Cinderella goes from ashes to ashes in the new Victorian-era Fairy Tale Fatal Mystery by the author of Snow White Red-Handed . . .

Variety hall actress Ophelia Flax’s plan to reunite her friend Prue with her estranged—and allegedly wealthy—mother, Henrietta, is met with a grim surprise. Not only is the marquise’s Paris mansion a mouse-infested ruin, but Henrietta has inexplicably vanished, leaving behind an evasive husband, two sinister stepsisters, and a bullet-riddled corpse in the pumpkin patch decked out in a ball gown and one glass slipper—a corpse that also happens to be a dead ringer for Prue.

Strangely, no one at 15 rue Garenne seems concerned about who plugged this luckless Cinderella or why, so the investigation is left to Ophelia and Prue. It takes them through the labyrinthine maze of the Paris Opera, down the trail of a legendary fairy tale relic, into the confidence of a wily prince charmless, and makes them vulnerable to the secrets of a mysterious couturière with designs of her own on Prue’s ever-twisting family history.

Read on for an excerpt from Cinderella Six Feet Under. . . .

Ophelia stepped around some sort of half-rotten squash, and wedged the toe of her boot between two building stones.  She gripped the sill to pull herself up, and her waterlogged rump padding threatened to pull her backwards.  She squinted through the glass.  “Most peculiar,” she whispered.  “Looks like some sort of workshop.  Tables heaped with knick-knacks.”

            “A tinker’s shop?”  Prue clambered up.  “Oh.  Look at all them gears and cogs and things.”

            “Why would there be a tinker’s shop in this grand house?  Your Ma married a nobleman.  Yet it’s on the main floor of the house, not down where the servants’ workplaces must be.”  A fire burned in a carved fireplace, and piles of metal things glimmered.

            “Crackers,” Prue whispered.  “Someone’s in there.”

            Sure enough, a round, bald man was hunched over a table.  One of his hands held a cube-shaped box.  The other twisted a screwdriver.  Ophelia couldn’t see his face because he wore brass jeweler’s goggles.

            “What in tarnation is he doing?”  Prue spoke too emphatically, and her bonnet brim hit the windowpane.

            The man glanced up.  His goggles lenses shone.

            Holy Moses.  He looked like something crawled out of a nightmare.

            The man stood so abruptly that his chair collapsed behind him.  He lurched towards them.

            Ophelia hopped down into the vegetable patch.

Prue recoiled.  For a few seconds she seemed suspended, twirling her arms in the air like a graceless hummingbird.  Then she pitched backwards and thumped into the garden, a few steps from Ophelia.

“Hurry!” Ophelia whispered.  “Get up!  He’s opening the window!”

            Prue didn’t get up.  She screamed.  The kind of long, shrill scream you’d use when, say, falling off a cliff.

            The man flung open the window.  He yelled down at them in French.

            “Get me off of it!” Prue yelled.  “Oh golly, get me off of it!”

            Ophelia crouched, hooked her hands under Prue’s arms, and dragged her to her feet.  They both stared, speechless, down into the dark vegetation.  Raindrops smacked Ophelia’s cheeks.  Prue panted and whimpered at the same time.

            Then—the man must’ve turned on a lamp—light flared up.

A gorgeous gown of ivory tulle and silk sprawled at Ophelia and Prue’s feet, embroidered with gold and silver thread that shone like spider’s webbing in the gaslight.

            A gown.  That was all.  That had to be all.

            But there was a foot—mercy, a foot—protruding from the hem of the gown.  Bare, white, slick with rainwater.  Toes bruised and blood-raw, the big toenail purple.

            Ophelia’s tongue went sour.

There was hair.  Long, wet, curled hair, tangled with a leaf and clotted with blood.  A face.  Eyes stretched open.  Dead as a doornail.

Ophelia stopped breathing.

            The thing was, the dead girl was the spitting image of . . . Prue.

Maia Chance writes historical mystery novels that are rife with absurd predicaments and romantic

adventure.  She is the author of the Fairy Tale Fatal and The Discreet Retrieval Agency series.  Her first mystery, Snow White Red-Handed, was a national bestseller.  Her latest releases are Cinderella Six Feet Under and Come Hell or Highball.

Visit Maia on the web at:

maiachance.com

https://www.facebook.com/MaiaChance?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8127322.Maia_Chance

https://twitter.com/maiachance

FIRST COWBOY KISS with Danita Cahill #giveaway

Paty – Please help me welcome award-winning author Danita Cahill to my blog today. Danita’s talking about her newest release, First Cowboy Kiss, the latest story in her Bellham Romance Series.

Danita – Hi everyone, and thanks for the warm welcome, Paty! I’m so glad to be here.

Paty – Glad to have you. So, tell us about the inspiration for First Cowboy Kiss.

Danita – It’s a funny story. Ideas for books often arrive for me via dreams. First Cowboy Kiss was no exception. I awakened with something a friend’s grandfather used to say resonating in my head: “Never trust a man with little ears” (My friend’s grandfather was a rather large-eared gentleman). The plot, and the heroine’s memories of her late grandfather, came together with that initial one-line, dream-induced prompt. I love it when that happens!

Paty – I love it when that happens, too, though I rarely remember a dream. Tell us about the town of Bellham. And where did you come up with that name?

Danita – The northwestern town was named Bell's Hamlet after Paul and Maude Bell, original 1840 pioneer settlers. The name was later shortened to Bellham.

It's a small, quaint, fictional ranching community in Oregon's fertile and scenic Willamette Valley. Like small towns everywhere, Bellham is filled with quirky characters – including the town mascot, a friendly stray duck named Harvey. There’s also a real feel of community in Bellham, and of the residents being in this life together, helping one another through the rough, bumpy patches. Of course there's plenty of love in each Bellham Romance Series book.

Paty – What made you decide to set your series in a small town?

Danita - I’m a small-town country girl. And I spent a couple of decades as a journalist, working for a dozen northwest newspapers, covering news and events in small towns and rural communities. I've taken that experience, and my love of all things rural, and rolled it all into little Bellham.

Blurb:

Nothing is Sweeter than Love’s First Kiss…

FIRST COWBOY KISS is a sweet, tender, “clean” novella of young love.

Bellham Romances all interconnect through characters and location, but each can easily be read as a stand-alone book, too. 

Meet the Cowboy…

Mia Donovan is lonely. So, her best friend sets her up to meet a cowboy at the local Rodeo. But Mia is shy, and it takes all her courage to approach a good-looking cowboy that may, or may not, be the right one.

Watch the Cowboy Ride…

Bareback bronc rider, Tanner Michaels, is definitely interested in Mia. But first he has a bucking horse to ride. He can’t afford to let thoughts of Mia fill his head until those eight seconds are over.  

Mia watches Tanner ride. Her nerves twist in knots when he’s bucked off. How badly is he hurt?

Get Rescued by the Cowboy…

Later that day, it’s Tanner’s turn to worry when Mia, who can’t swim, is knocked into the deep end of a pool. Tanner jumps in and rescues her. But why isn’t she coming to? 

Excerpt:

Chapter One 

Never trust a man with little ears.

That idiosyncratic bit of advice was one of many that Mia’s late grandfather left her with when he passed away eleven months ago. Like this one, most of Papa Pete’s sayings were endearing, if somewhat ridiculous. Funny one of his “wisdoms” should pop into Mia’s head during Bellham, Oregon’s, Valley River Rodeo. At this very moment, too – the exact moment she spotted the cowboy.

He was the cowboy her best friend, Skye had told her about. Wasn’t he? Tall. Muscular build. Red shirt.

It had to be him!

Didn’t it?

His forearms were propped on the metal rail of a horse pen, one boot firmly planted behind him in the dust, the leg nearest the rail bent and relaxed.

Papa Pete’s advice might seem silly, but as Mia moved closer to the cowboy she couldn’t stop her gaze from sliding along his firm backside, gliding over the powerful round of his shoulder and up the side of his thick neck to land on his lobe – the only part of his ear she could see. His white straw cowboy hat covered the rest.

Good guys wear white hats. 

His earlobe was decidedly full and thick. Mia let out a small sigh of relief and forced her new boots to approach the rail and stand nearby. Bright August heat radiated off the metal stock panels. She leaned her arms on one of the rails anyway and fought the urge to jerk back from the scorch of hot steel against her bare skin.

The dense, sweet scent of horse sweat permeated the air, blending agreeably with the coconut-pineapple-scented sunscreen she’d slathered on that morning. Mia’s arms absorbed, and adjusted, to the heat from the rail.

Always let the man speak first.

As antiquated as that piece of Papa-Pete advice was, Mia took it anyway. She remained silent and assessed the eleven broncs mulling about, scuffling and stirring up dust inside the pen. Some were sleek, regal creatures, with the appearance of tame, honest saddle horses – like Lady, the gentle palomino from her childhood. Others had scarred, rough coats, and a rogue glint in their eyes, as though they’d just as soon throw and stomp a rider as look at him.

If the cowboy leaning on the rail beside her was a horse, Mia wondered which sort he’d be. Judging from the shaggy, longish hair poking out from under his hat, the scuffed boots, yet neatly ironed shirt, he’d be a mixture of both.

FIRST COWBOY KISS is available at Amazon as a Kindle Countdown Deal – only $0.99 January 3-9! Or enjoy it for free through Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Owners Lending Library.

http://www.amazon.com/FIRST-COWBOY-KISS-Bellham-Romance-ebook/dp/B00P8A1XT4/

Scroll down for link to enter a Kindle Fire 6" HD giveaway.  

About the Author

Danita Cahill is an award-winning writer and photographer. She lives in the Pacific NW on a small Oregon farm with her husband, sons and their animals, including a horse and a herd of 10 alpacas. Besides running children to and fro and caring for her gardens, critters and family, Danita stays busy working on magazine assignments and dreaming up love stories for her next books.

Visit Danita’s author page: http://www.amazon.com/Danita-Cahill/e/B009NF74I4/

Find Danita on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DanitaCahill?ref=stream

Follow Danita on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanitaCahill

Danita is sponsoring a Kindle Fire 6" HD giveaway January 1-7, 2015. Click here: https://www.thekindlebookreview.net/new-year-kindle-fire-giveaway/ and enter for a chance to win.

Good luck!