Welcome to the World of Carolyn Lampman

SHADOWS IN THE WIND BLOGS

This is where it all began, where I became a novelist. Many of my friends who are also authors, always knew they would be. In fact, my friend Deborah Bedford says that in her mother's attic there a box full of notebooks she filled as a kid. She even got in trouble in school for writing when she was supposed to be listening to the teacher.

I was not that way. Oh, I saw myself as a writer, but thought I would probably wind up doing short stories and magazine articles. I never imagined that I could write a whole book, much less one that was 600 pages long! Even now, nine books and somewhere around a million words later, I am amazed at the process that started on the spring evening clear back in 1987.

Even more amazing to me is how much of my own life I put in to my books. I was only marginally aware of it at the time, and have been astonished by what has surfaced as I write my BLOGS. Shadows In The Wind, more than any of the others, had it's seeds in my childhood on a working ranch in the wilds of Wyoming.

The first edition of Shadows In The Wind is probably available on Amazon as a used book, or you might find it in a used bookstore. You can follow most of the BLOGS with the first edition. However, the second edition, currently available from Whiskey Creek Press, was extensively rewritten from the original. Not only does it have material left out of the first edition,it is better written. (I have learned a thing or two in 20 years of writing!) It also has a far prettier cover, larger print, and isn't yellow with age:-)Whichever edition you use, sit back relax, and enjoy the ride!
Carolyn Lampman

Book II of the Cheyenne Trilogy

CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY OF SHADOWS IN THE WIND

Click here to read the prologue and first three chapters

BLOGS

PROLOGUE
August 1885
Wyoming Territitory

BLOG #1 The Plunge

I am not a sports fan. Oh, I enjoy a local football game or wrestling match when I know the players, but as for college and professional sports I’m pretty much a nonfan. So when I found myself trapped in a van for six straight hours while everyone else listened avidly to the basketball championships I was less than excited. In fact, I was downright bored, something for which I have zero tolerance. No one was allowed to talk, and it was too dark to read so I did the only thing I could, I started making up a story. I don’t really know where the germ of the idea came from, but by the time we reached home, I had created the first several chapters of Shadows in the Wind in my mind. I won’t pretend that it was the final polished piece you see before you now. In fact, it was probably three months before I even wrote it down. The idea wouldn’t go away, though, and eventually I was driven to put it on paper.

There are several hints in this issue about Stephanie that most readers probably miss and won’t even realize it. But then that’s the way prologues are, I think. In this one, it is the only time until nearly the end of the book when she knows who she is, where she is going and why she is going there. We are privy to her thoughts,of course, but she isn’t thinking about who she is or her past life. In fact, the only thing on her mind is escape from Orson. The reality is this is more natural than having a character sit down and think about their past as a way to fill in back story. People seldom do that in real life, and it rarely rings true when characters do it in books. It will be interesting to see what you pick up and remember now that you’ve been alerted to the idea that there is hidden information here. Anyway, we’re off and running.

CHAPTER 1

BLOG #2 Characters

Though some of you met Cole Cantrell in Murphy’s Rainbow, this scene is where he came to be. In my mind’s eye, I visualized Clint Walker who was the very first TV star I ever fell in love with. I think I was bout six. For those of you that may not recognize that name, he starred in a show called Cheyenne clear back when we got our first TV in 1960 or so. Of course my other heroes at that time were Rowdy Yeats from Rawhide (Clint Eastwood) and Clint the blacksmith on Gun Smoke (Burt Reynolds) so I knew how to pick my heroes even then. I also seem to have had a thing for the name Clint! With that mind set, it’s sort of surprising that Cole’s name wasn’t Clint.

At any rate, Clint Walker stood about 6’5” and was built to match, with broad shoulders, a muscular build, and a deep, deep voice. His hair was black with a touch of a wave, but I have no clue what color his eyes were; it was black and white TV, so I made them a beautiful sapphire blue. It wasn’t until I added the moustache that I realized there is a bit of Tom Selleck in him too.

Then there is Kate. In the original version, Kate was Mrs. Murphy, Cole’s housekeeper. It wasn’t until I wrote Murphy’s Rainbow that she became Cole’s stepmother and her name changed to plain Kate. I’ve gotten a lot of flack for Kate’s weight gain between Murphy’s Rainbow and Shadows. She had an hourglass figure in the first book, for heaven’s sake. It was one of the things that attracted Jonathan to her. One of the unfortunate facts of life is that hourglass figures tend to go to fat in middle age. Sorry, but it’s the truth. Besides, Jonathan Cantrell, the most gorgeous man alive, still loves her even though she has put on weight. Hey, it's my fantasy after all.

As for Charlie, this is where he first appeared. Of course it’s where all the rest of them first appeared, but Charlie is different. Though I didn't realize it at the time, he's modeled after my paternal grandfather. He moves, thinks, looks and acts very much like Rush Lampman. Grandpa was a huge part of my childhood and it's not surprising he was the first member of my family to show up in one of my books.

Grandpa was a tall, lanky, cowboy who took everything in stride. His favorite says was:
It’s easy enough to be pleasant when life goes along like a song. But a man worthwhile is a man with a smile when everything goes wrong. You can’t imagine how irritating it is to have someone recite that to you when you’re lying in the middle of a pile of cow manure after being bucked off a horse or when you've been run over by calf you are supposed to be wrangling into a chute. I never saw him lose his temper, though my mother said she had once and it wasn’t pretty. He spoke Wyoming twang, of course, but the poor grammar isn’t real. Grandpa was married to a schoolteacher, after all.

They say every person has at least one book in them, the story of their own life. More than any of the others, Shadows in the Wind is mine. It is set in the shadow of the Big Horn Mountains on the ranch where I grew up. I suppose that's why Charlie showed up in the book right at the beginning. Grandpa was born on the ranch in 1891 and spent his entire life there. It's impossible to imagine the ranch without Grandpa.

Blog # 3 Plotters and Flying-By-the-Seat- of-Your-Pants

Most books, websites and classes on “How to Write a Novel” will tell the beginning writer that outlining your novel is a must! I don’t remember reading any how-to books, and I know my one and only creative writing class didn’t cover novels. We dealt entirely with short stories and essays. Still, somewhere along the line I got the idea that I needed to write down the story line before I actually started writing, and that’s exactly what I did. BIG MISTAKE!

I bogged down almost immediately. To my utter surprise all of my excitement seem to be ebbing away. Not only was it no fun to write, it was down right tedious. I don’t do tedious well; never have. Determined to get my story on paper, though, I kept plugging away until I had some where around three chapters worth of story. If I had continued on, I suspect my writing career would have ended right there.

The only thing that kept me going was a piece of the story that kept playing through my head. That scene was driving me crazy! Finally, in a fit of defiance, I decided to just write the darn thing down the way it was going to be. I knew it was wrong, but I was afraid of losing the thought if I didn’t. I slipped a new sheet of paper in the typewriter and began to put words to paper. Suddenly, the writing was flowing just as I’d imagined it would. I wrote that scene and the next, and then the next. Before I knew it, I was having fun again.

No two writers have the same creative process; each must find his/her own individual style. However, it turns out there are two general types, plotters and seat-of-the-pants writers. Plotters usually have the bare bones of the entire book before they start writing the actual manuscript. They sometimes deviate from their carefully constructed plan, but as a general rule, the story goes pretty much the way they intend it to. I know one romance writer whose prewriting is almost half as long as her finished book. Once she completes the outline, though, she can write the whole book in the matter of a few weeks. Seat-of-the-pants writers, on the other hand, just jump in and start writing, sometimes without even a very clear idea of where they are going. I happen to be the latter. Who knew?

When I start a book, I have a general idea of the two main characters and the general theme. I know the beginning, one or two scenes from the middle and the end. I usually do character charts on my hero and heroine, find pictures of them for my bulletin board, clean my office (well at least my desk) then sit down at the computer and start typing. It’s a wild ride with new characters and plot twists popping up in the most unexpected places. I rarely know what’s going to happen until a scene starts to take form on the page. It’s a blast!I gather few writers do it my way; I suspect most are plotters, at least the ones who write the how-to books and teach the classes. But then, I never have been one to fit the mold, and really shouldn’t have been surprised to find my writing style was unusual.

I eventually went back and wrote the chapters I had outlined, but it was hard. The magic seemed to have evaporated from that part of it. Oddly enough, every time I’ve rewritten Shadows, and I’ve done it about fifteen times, I get bogged down here and have to force myself to keep going until I get to the spot where I started writing spontaneously, and I start having fun again. Odd though it is I have to say, I’m glad my muse works the way it does!

CHAPTER 2

BLOG # 4 Writing For the Market (NOT)

Amnesia. I’ve never actually known anyone with it, or even anyone who knew anybody with it. I suspect it’s rather rare, at least the kind that lasts awhile like Stephanie’s. There is however, one place it was rather common at one time, and that is within the pages of romance novels. In the sixties and seventies it was as common as vampire heroes and erotic love scenes are now. In fact, it was so popular that it be came cliché. Unfortunately, a cliché is a no-no in the writing world. No editor worth her salt would allow a cliché in one of her books, and so amnesia went the way of the dinosaur.

About the same time, westerns, that bastion of early TV and movies, were also on the way out. Much as I would like to be an author who can change along with the market, I seem to have little control over what the story will be. Shadows in the Wind insisted on being a western, and my heroine had to have amnesia. Everybody said it wouldn’t sell, and I knew they were right. That’s why I didn’t make much of an attempt to sell it at first. Once the book was finished, I went on to Willow Creek, which was also a western. I did submit it several places and got rejections. Unable to think of a contemporary story, and still in the grip of my Cantrell characters I continued writing my books, even though there was a limited market for them.

Fast forward to 1992. The western craze was on! Line dancing and cowboy hats were taking New York by storm and “city slickers” couldn’t get enough. By then a new generation had taken over the entry level editing jobs, a generation that had never seen a western on TV and didn’t know they were cliché. The New York editor that first bought the Cheyenne trilogy, requested the three books precisely because they were westerns, and by then it had been so long since anyone had written an amnesia story-line that it was new and fresh! She bought it because it was so “different.” This is one crazy business.

BLOG #5 The Ring

There are a great many things that are added and subtracted from a story in the editing process. Some of the changes occur to me without any input, others come at the suggestion of someone else. The ring was one of the latter. My first editor pointed out there was little reason for Kate to think Stephanie was married. Since the entire conflict of the book is based on this premise it was a pretty important detail. She threw out several ideas, none of which really resonated with me. Then, almost as an after thought, she said “Maybe she has a wedding ring for some reason.” The minute I heard the word ring the image of one popped into my head. It was my paternal grandmother’s wedding ring.

I had always loved that ring because it was so unusual with its intertwining vines and flowers. The detail was quite exquisite and showed little of the wear usually associated with family heirloom wedding rings. I’ve never known why exactly but my grandmother hadn’t worn it much. Perhaps she wasn’t a ring person. She also owned a gorgeous diamond engagement ring that my grandfather had purchased from Tiffany’s. (I can’t even imagine how a cowboy in the wilds of Wyoming came to buy a ring from a prestigious New York jewelry store in the early 1920’s.)

I was five my Grandma Lampman died. Not long after, my grandfather enlisted my mother’s help in the heartbreaking task of clearing out her things. At some point in the process he remembered the rings. According to my mother, they literally tore the house apart looking for those rings, but they were nowhere to be found. A couple of weeks later, my mother was cleaning the kitchen cupboards when she came across a small jar filled with an odd gray powder. She was about to toss it in the trash when something prompted her to dump it out on the counter instead. There in the bottom of the jar she found the rings. To this day we have no idea what the powder was or why Grandma had put her rings there. Perhaps to keep them safe, who knows. Grandpa gave them to my mother to keep for me when I was old enough. Grandma’s rings spent the next twenty-two years in my mother’s jewelry box waiting for me to grow up. I visited them often, trying them on every chance I got. Not surprisingly I fell madly in love with them at an early age.

Unlike my grandmother, I adore rings. I have inherited several rather nice ones from various relatives, but none I love so much as my grandmother’s. When I finally got around to getting married, at twenty-seven, it seemed only natural to have my grandmother’s diamond reset into my own wedding ring. It has graced my left hand ever since and probably always will. The golden wedding ring, unfortunately, disappeared shortly after I wrote this scene, stolen, I suspect, by someone I mistakenly trusted. All I have left of it is the memory and the description I wrote for Shadows. It is a loss that I deeply mourn. Perhaps one day I too will find it in a jar of strange gray powder. I can only hope.

CHAPTER 3

BLOG # 6 Missing Characters

This chapter is mostly back-story. What has come before is an important part of any book. It usually plays a major role in the plot and it makes your characters who they are. Authors often know a great deal about what happened in the past. They have to so they can write the story. The tough part is figuring out how much the reader needs to know and how to give them the necessary information without bogging down the story.

When I originally wrote Shadows in the Wind I only needed to explain who Maggie was and how Cole wound up a widower. Having Kate reveal it through conversation seemed the best bet, and it worked rather well.

It’s a known fact that writers can’t judge their own books. It’s kind of like judging your own children. You love them so much you can’t always see their faults. After I finished writing Shadows I decided to find out if it was any good, though I probably just wanted to share the wonderful thing I had done. I sent it to a friend of mine who never learned the art of polite lying. I knew she would give me the truth even if I didn’t want to hear it.

I waited on pins and needles for several days then Val called. She said “It’s rough yet but I think you have something here. The only real problem I see is that your main characters are too much friends. There needs to be more conflict. Maybe you need another man in the picture.”

I thought about it for a while and created a brother, Levi. His first appearance comes somewhat later (and those of you who have read Murphy’s Rainbow will recognize the connection between the two books) but I had to set the stage for his appearance. This chapter seemed the perfect place, so I added the story of his mysterious disappearance.

When I originally wrote Shadows in the Wind Cole’s father was only mentioned in passing. I don’t think he even had a name, but he was most certainly dead. Kate, on the other hand, was originally the housekeeper. With the publication of Murphy’s Rainbow that all changed. Jonathan and Kate had become very important characters. They even had fans! Obviously I needed to change Shadows in the Wind to reflect that.

Interestingly enough it didn’t take much tweaking to change Kate from a housekeeper to a step-mother. I suspect that is partially because I used the housekeeper story in Murphy’s Rainbow. Jonathan, however, was another matter all together. To put him in the book I would have to change the whole story.

The only option I could see was to kill him off. It wasn’t easy but I did it. There was a terrible fire, you see. Jonathan lost his life saving Kate. She had terrible scars from it, and was still mourning him. Ah, it was a tear-jerker. I bawled like a baby the whole time I was writing it. So did my editor, who immediately called me and said “You can’t kill him off. Your readers will come after you! Worse yet, they won’t ever read your books again.” I knew she was right. I myself have dropped several authors who killed off characters I had grown to love. The problem was, how to put him back in without redoing the whole book. Once again my editor came to my rescue. She suggested I have him gone for an extended trip, so I sent him to England with his cousin Daniel. Murphy’s Rainbow already hinted at an English connection so I just gave them an English uncle and named him after my father. Voila, problem solved for the first half of the book! Those of you who know and love Jonathan, will be glad to know that he does put in an appearance in this book, but that’s for later. Until next week….

CHAPTER 4

BLOG #7 Stephanie's Hair

From the beginning of humankind, women have been very conscious of what men find attractive and have done their best to accentuate those features. In the nineteenth century, before the wide spread use of cosmetics, a women’s hair was considered a major point of beauty. Many women never cut it their whole lives. As girls they usually wore it in braids or ringlets along with calf-length skirts and pinafores. At the age of sixteen, all girls put their hair up and their skirts down. It signaled that they had reached adulthood and were ready for marriage. Their hair, usually pinned up in some way, was rarely ever seen down again, except by their husbands. It was the core of their feminine beauty. I’m not really sure why I gave Stephanie such beautiful hair, but I do know where it came from.

The most beautiful head of hair I ever saw was on a complete stranger. Oddly enough it belonged to a man. He was a member of a band that played at a bar I was at with my friends one night. I have no idea how he wore it day-to-day but that night it was hanging loose all the way to his butt. It was absolutely gorgeous! If the truth be known, I think it’s that hair I had in mind when I created Stephanie’s.

The color belonged to a woman I worked with when I was in college. The closest I can come to describing her hair is a kind of cinnamon brunette. It was a dark brown with beautiful shimmery, red highlights. In the sunlight it almost looked red, kind of a dark auburn. I’ve discovered there is no name for that. The closest I ever found was a hair rinse called cinnamon brown. In retrospect I wonder if that wasn’t where my friend got her hair color.

Stephanie’s hair is even more beautiful than most and she was obviously fond of it. She glories in its silken richness as she combs it. Even with amnesia she remembers that it’s like her mother’s. So why does she automatically hide it in a braided cornet? It’s one of the many mysteries about her that are slowly revealed as the story unfolds. One final note: If you think I’m obsessed with Stephanie’s hair wait until Cole sees it for the first time several chapters from now!

CHAPTER 5

BLOG #8 The Bob Cat

The bobcat story is one of my favorites. Not because of the scene in the book, but because of it’s origins. You see, this is one I didn’t make up. In fact, it’s one that came from my great-grandfather’s autobiography, As did many of the more bizarre scenes you’ll find in my books. Murphy’s Rainbow had a wagonload of them (check out the Book Blogs here on my site) .

My great-grandfather and his brother Albert brought a covered wagon out to Wyoming Territory in 1887 and settled near what is now Shell. My great-grandmother and their three-year-old daughter followed on the train in 1888. That in itself is a story, much of which I used in The Jinx and the Pinkerton. But I digress. For the first few years they were here, there was no church and they had to make do with the occasional roaming missionaries. Sometime in the ‘90’s Basin, which is thirty miles away, got a preacher. Rev. Mecum was willing to visit the outlying communities like Shell and his visits became much anticipated events in the small community. My great-grandfather described him as “a fine man with a wife and two children. The wife was much accomplished in voice and piano."

The good reverend brought his family along on his trips and they stayed with various families when they came. One night the Mecums and their two children stayed with my great-grandparents. The talk turned to a bobcats and… well it’s my great-grandfather’s story, so I’ll let him tell you himself. The following piece is an excerpt from Charles Lampman’s auto-biography:

We had been having some trouble with bobcats, and had been telling, much of the evening, about them. In fact, but a few mornings before on my way down to Austin’s afoot, my dog had jumped one and treed it on a fence post. I found a club, but as I went to strike, the bob cat jumped off. The dog grabbed it, but got the worst of the fight and the cat broke away. I followed and near the creek the cat stopped in a opening . When I came up the dog was circling and barking, preferring that method rather than attacking. The cat kept facing the dog as he made each circle. When the dog came by after I got up close, the cat saw me. I struck as he sprang at me. I don’t think it was a crippling blow but it was enough to discourage him and he ran off into the brush.

This story along with several others had properly prepared the Mecums for what followed. We had given them our bed room for the night. One of the windows had a pane of glass missing but it was summer and the cool breeze was an added bit of comfort. Mrs. Mecum and the two babies had undressed and were in bed. The reverend was only partially disrobed. She was a very large woman and he was a bit under-average-size of man.

Mrs. Lampman had not retired yet when we heard our dogs chasing something and heading for the house. Then all bedlam broke loose in the bed room. If Mrs. Mecum could sing the highest scales, she could yell even louder. Mrs. Lampman went to the door and found the whole Mecum family standing on the bed yelling their best. As each screech faded for more breath and a better try, Mr. Mecum would yell, “We must keep on the bed! Keep on the bed!” Mrs. Lampman looked under the bed and there was our half-grown yellow pup scared to death. She had quite some time getting the Mecums to hear what she was trying to tell them.

The poor pup had gotten in bad with the other dogs and in the emergency was looking for “any port in a storm”. Mecums, just fresh from an eastern city, classed bob cats with lions. I had particularly just described their color and appearance and the pup made a splendid substitute!

As you can see, my fictionalized version didn’t even come close to the humor of the original. I have to admit though, every time I read that piece I picture the large Mrs. Mecum standing on the bed with her opera voice screeching like a banshee with her diminutive husband yelling for them all to stay on the bed. Yes indeed, truth is often better than fiction.

CHAPTER 6

BLOG # 9

Sally Langton was my first antagonist, or as my fourth graders say, my first bad guy. In retrospect, I think she was a bit one-dimensional. That’s probably because I have never known anyone even remotely like her and at that point didn’t have any experience with characterization. In every rewrite I have given her a bit more depth. Still, it wasn’t until I came back to Shadows in the Wind after writing Murphy’s Rainbow that Sally became three-dimensional. And all because I gave her dead husband life. Though the reader never sees them together, Clay Langton added more to Sally’s character than everything else put together.

In the original, I only mentioned Clay in passing when Cole wonders if the “elderly Mr. Langton had died of exhaustion.” He didn’t even have a name. Murphy’s Rainbow changed all that. I devoted most of one book blog to him if you care to look. (Blog 12). Though he started out as a means to an end, he became a very important character, mostly because he courted Kate, and even asked her to marry him. That’s also part of why Sally and Kate dislike each other so much. The other reason, of course, is that Sally went after Jonathan which given his spectacular good looks and her personality was inevitable.

When Clay proposed to Kate in Murphy’s Rainbow it wasn’t because he loved her, but because he thought they could be comfortable together. Her advice, as she gently turned him down, was “not to settle for comfortable but to fall in love. To find someone who made him dizzy with lust and be happy.” It was the perfect set up for Sally to waltz right into. Apparently Clay took Kate’s advice and fell in love with the much younger Sally. Even Kate grudgingly admits Sally made Clay happy. Though Sally was not at all what Kate had in mind, she actually fits the description rather well, for she is exactly the type to make a man “dizzy with lust.” Foreshadowing is sooo much easier when you already know what happens.

CHAPTER 7

BLOG # 10

This chapter is all about foreshadowing, which is perhaps one of the writer’s most useful tools. Foreshadowing amounts to clues the author drops in the story that gives the reader a hint of what’s going to happen. It’s necessary to make the story believable. Most readers love to be surprised, but if there is no build up to an event, it seems contrived. There is often a is a feeling of disconnection with the story and the trust between author and reader disintegrates. Foreshadowing is one of my personal favorites, though it is often more “after-shadowing” in my case because I will go back in the story and drop in bits and pieces that foreshadow something that happens in a later chapter

Foreshadowing is the key to any successful mystery, and I almost always have a mystery somewhere in my books. I am a dyed-in-the-wool romance fan and have been since I discovered Anya Seaton and Georgette Heyer in my late teens. However, I cut my eye teeth on mysteries. I read Agatha Christi, Mary Stewart, and Mary Roberts Rhinehart voraciously. I adored Sherlock Holmes and read Ten Little Indians and the Ivy Tree so many times that I wore my copies out. I turned from mysteries to romance when I was consistently able to figure out the ending by the end of chapter two. When you know how it's going to end mysteries aren't any fun any more.

It was the foreshadowing, you see. I could read the clues and figure out where the author was headed. I still can. That’s why I don’t read mysteries much any more. It’s also one of the reasons I enjoy J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) so much. She surprises me at least once in every book. In retrospect I can always see the foreshadowing but rarely figure out what’s going on until she drops the bombshell. Every time I sit back and say, “Whoa, I sure didn’t see that coming!” I am a little more delighted with her work.

Sally and Stephanie’s initial meeting pretty much sets the stage for their subsequent relationship. It also blends rather well with Kate’s feelings the vivacious (or is that vindictive?) young widow and the back story that identifies Sally as a woman who sets her sights on a man and goes after him no matter who gets in the way. Without giving anything away I will tell you that the green wool and what it does to Stephanie’s looks as well the hairbrush are important foreshadowing for Stephanie and Cole’s later interaction. Frank Collins’ delight at thrusting a spoke in Sally’s wheel brings him firmly down on Stephanie’s “side” and sets the stage for several encounters as well as an important turning point in the story.

There are also several clues to Stephanie’s identity. The music box, the stranger coming into the store looking for Elizabeth Scott, and even the introduction of Cole’s horse, Midnight, are important pieces of the puzzle. I don’t know how successful I was with the foreshadowing in this book, but I do know it’s something I’ve gotten considerably better at over the next nine books. One of my most gratifying moments is when fans tell me they were totally surprised or had no clue what was coming. That’s when I feel like I’ve done my job. Even though this was my first book, I hope Shadows in the Wind holds a few surprises for you.

CHAPTER 8

BLOG # 11
Back when I was just beginning to write novels, about the time it started to look like I might actually beat the odds and finish more than one, the husband of a friend of mine made an off the cuff suggestion. He said, “You know it would be sort of fun if you had something that showed up in every book. Like a trademark or a name or something.” It was a passing comment; I seriously doubt that he even remembers making it. But the idea fell on fertile soil.

I discovered Shirely Busbee after she had written several books, instantly fell in love with her stories and gathered all I could find. Because I read them all close together, I picked up on a thread I might have otherwise missed. The first book had a hero who wore a gold amulet on his upper arm which was an exceedingly odd thing for a macho man in the 19th century south to do. That amulet really had nothing to do with the story, but it made the character memorable. The amulet didn’t show up in the rest of her books but the character did. Sometimes he was a full-fledged secondary character and others he just had a walk-on part as a friend-of-a-friend or a chance-met stranger. Once or twice he was just a name in passing, but he was always there.

Jude Deveraux did a similar thing with a golden belt in her Montgomery saga. It didn’t show up in all her books but would surface every once in awhile. At the final appearance it was so ancient and worn that the heroine couldn’t even tell what the original art work had been, but a faithful fan like myself recognized it immediately.

I loved the connection I felt with both authors when I found the character or the belt, like we shared a secret only the two of us knew. So I decided to come up with something that I could share with my faithful fans, assuming I would actually ever have any, since this was back when I was prepublished.

I actually have two of these secret symbols. One exists only in The Cheyenne Trilogy which I will discuss when it comes up. The other is a name. It shows up in every single one of my books and usually on a different character. To date it has been a dog, a mother, a girlfriend and a bartender (they were each in two books), a storekeeper, two different villains, and several minor characters. In Murphy’s Rainbow, the first book I wrote after I came up with the idea, I used the name no less than four times for different characters and didn’t even realize it until I went through the rewrite. Oddly enough, the copy editor, who caught the eye color change of a minor character, missed the fact that four characters all had the same name. In fact, to my knowledge, no one has ever realized I use that name in every book. Perhaps I hid my secret symbol too well!

What is the name? Why it’s….. you know I think I’m going to let you figure that one out for yourself. I can’t wait until someone writes and tells me they found my secret symbol. Happy hunting!

CHAPTER 9

BLOG #12

I wish I could say I came up with the idea of using a horse to churn butter on my own, but I didn’t. For one thing, when the pioneers coming west on the Oregon trail had fresh milk, they would fill the butter churn with cream in the morning and hang it somewhere on the wagon. By the time they made camp, the motion of the wagon jolting over the ruts had turned the cream into butter.

I’m not precisely sure I knew that interesting bit of trivia when I wrote Shadows in the Wind. But I did know about my grandfather. My grandfather, Rush, and his youngest brother Orr did not get along well. I gather it had a lot to do with Grandpa teasing him and the like. The day Orr chased Rush out of the barn with a pitchfork, my great-grandparents decided it was time to do something drastic. Having siblings of my own as well as children who fight with each other, I fully understand where my great-grandfather was coming from, though I do think his solution was a bit extreme. In retrospect, though, I have to wonder if he wasn’t also motivated by the idea of getting more land. He did have three sons to settle, and it was pretty obvious one ranch wasn’t going to be big enough for all of them.

Although Horse Creek and most of the area close to Shell had already been homesteaded, land was still plentiful in Wyoming. So my great-grandfather left Rush in charge of the place on Horse Creek and took the two younger boys, John and Orr, twenty miles away to Bear Creek where he established another homestead. Since Rush was probably about fifteen or sixteen and a bit young to run a 300 acre ranch on his own, Great-grandma, stayed with him. I suspect the girls, who were a bit older, were married by then so it was just the two of them and there was a great deal of work for them to do.

According to the story that has come down through the family, Great-grandmother Mary asked her son to churn the butter in much the same manner as Kate told Josh. Rush knew better than to argue with his mother so he grudgingly took her small round butter churn with him when he went to do his day’s work. As luck would have it, he was in the process of breaking a horse, one that was not taking to the process well. I’m not sure if Grandpa Rush came up with the idea on his own or if it was a lucky accident, but he tied the churn to the saddle and went on about his business. By the time he was done working the bronc for the day, he had butter.

After that, Grandpa Rush always churned the butter on horseback. Even after my great grandparents sold him the ranch on Horse Creek and settled permanently on the Bear Creek ranch, Grandpa took his cream with him in the saddle-bag. He always had fresh butter, and he never had to do a lick of work to get it.

CHAPTER 10

BLOG #13

This chapter is somewhat autobiographical. For one thing I’m terrible at sewing and always have been. My friend Val, who was my very first reader and who also watched my battles with the sewing machine and seam ripper, recognized me in this chapter right away. In fact, on the draft she wrote “Are you speaking of Stephanie here or yourself?”. I don’t hate it quite a badly as Stephanie but I certainly have experienced the frustration. In all my years of sewing I think I have made a grand total of three things I would actually wear. It felt darn good to laugh at it instead of scream in frustrated rage and toss what ever I was working on into the corner, which I have been known to do on occasion.

The other autobiographical part is cooking for large crews of men. My first experience was at the age of eleven when my youngest brother decided to put in his appearance a month and a half early. My family will never forget that week and a half my mother spent in the hospital. She had planned to leave me several days worth of casseroles in the freezer for when the baby came. By then the calving, sheep shearing and most of the lambing operation would be done, so I’d only have the family to deal with. My brother had other ideas. Instead of the end of March when there is usually a lull in the spring chaos, my mother went into labor at the end of January without a single casserole or frozen dinner set by. It was up to me to cook for my father, grandfather, two brothers, and a shearing crew.

I wasn’t a complete neophyte. I had been helping around the kitchen for several years and could already make a few simple dishes, but there was no way I was prepared to take on cooking for eight hungry men who expected a good meal as part of their pay. That first Saturday I fixed a huge stew, some rolls and a tossed salad. If I had stopped there everything would have been fine, but then I decided I needed some kind of dessert. I got out my mother’s cookbook and started hunting. After several minutes I found it, cream puffs!

I have no idea what possessed me to try cream puffs. My mother had never made them for us, and I’m not sure if I had ever even tasted one at the time. At any rate I followed the recipe and mixed up a batch. I don’t really know what I did wrong but I wound up with a batter instead of a dough. I remember being somewhat surprised but having very little experience I thought the “pancakes” I poured into the pan would somehow magically form into balls. They didn’t of course, and I wound up with two pans full of something that vaguely resembled the clay model of a geological formation we’d made in science at school.

As I considered the gold brown sheet of lumps, bumps and wrinkles I remembered my mother’s old saying. You can almost always turn a kitchen mistake into a new dish if you use your head. So I got out a couple of boxes of chocolate pudding and went to work. I spread a layer pudding over one of my sheets, then put the other on top and covered it with more pudding. Most of the hills and valleys disappeared under the pudding and the second layer perched on top of the first reasonably well. I decided to top it off with whipped cream (we lived on a ranch remember, and always had fresh milk and cream) and went to set the table

When it came time to serve dessert I set the cake on the table and went back to get the whipped cream. I have to admit it still looked pretty weird, and when I came back everybody was just sitting there staring at it. Not wanting to hurt my feelings, I suppose, my dad kind of cleared his throat and asked what it was. I thought for a minute then smiled brightly and said, “Cream puff cake!” I don’t remember who had the courage to eat the first piece, but it tasted surprisingly good, and they wound up eating every scrap. To this day, four decades later, I still get teased about my cream puff cake.

CHAPTER 11

BLOG # 14

Ranching today is, of course, much different than it was a hundred and twenty years ago, but branding really hasn’t changed that much. Oh sure, calves are now given inoculations as part of the process and many ranchers use a branding chute rather than roping each calf and dragging it to the fire, but the overall operation hasn’t changed that much.

I have to admit branding is not really a cherished part of my childhood. I’m afraid I can’t find anything romantic about giving a poor little calf shots, burning a brand into his side, slashing off the end of his ear, castrating him, and digging the horns out of his heads with a dehorning spoon. In fact if I look back on it, the three memories that stand out in my mind are the stench of burning hair, the incessant bawling of the calves, and of being sprayed in the face with blood.

That said, I participated in many branding both for sheep and cattle. Sheep are much the easiest since the branding is done with paint and the docking (castrating and cutting off the tails) is done with elastic bands. The bad part is that you have to rebrand every year since the brand gets cut off with the wool. Once a cow is branded, it’s branded for life since the brand is actually a scar on its hide.

When we branded calves, I spent most of my time on the ground running irons and keeping the fire going. As I got older, they gave me more responsibility, but it wasn’t anything I enjoyed. I was in charge of giving inoculations and daubing pine tar on the calves’ heads after they had been dehorned. Tenderhearted to the extreme, I never got over feeling sorry for the calves.

There is a whole a whole raft of rules about where you put the brand, the ear-mark and even the color of sheep paint. All of which is intended to identify individual owners. There also brand inspectors who job it is to check out cattle, sheep and horses that are being sold to make sure the seller is also the owner. IT isn’t out of the realm of possibility for an animal to have several different brands if it has been sold or resold. Think of it like a car’s title where all the owners are listed. Brands are the same thing only the animal wears its “title” on its hide.

The other piece here that is important, at least to me, is Stephanie’s view or the “W”. It truly does exist and was the view I saw very morning when I looked out my window. The Big Horns are rather unique mountains anyway, but there will be more about that later.

CHAPTER 12

BLOG #15

Once again, this issue contains a character I pulled from real life, though in this case it’s not a person. Tatter is modeled after the horse I learned to ride on. She was a black and white pinto mare named Bonnie, and she was the quintessential “kid horse”. My grandfather bought her for my brothers and I when I was about 4 years old. She was part American Saddler and part Welsh pony. Because of the pony blood, she was bit smaller than a regular horse though not by much because Welsh ponies are considerably larger than the more familiar Shetland pony. She was also quite strong and had incredible endurance. Her personality came from her horse blood, and she had none of the meanness associated with ponies, though she was a bit stubborn at times.

When Grandpa bought her, Bonnie was about three and had never been broken to a saddle or bridle. She had been ridden though. Apparently she was born on a ranch owned by a family with several children. They had been riding her bare back without so much as a halter since she was big enough to carry them on her back. As a result she was so gentle you could have taken a nap and used her for shade. I don’t remember Grandpa breaking her to a saddle and bridle but it probably wasn’t too difficult. I only have a few memories of riding her before she was trained.

The thing that really identifies Tatter as Bonnie is her gait. I don’t really know why, but she had the roughest gait of any horse I’ve ever ridden. Her lope was as rough as most horse’s trot, and her trot was enough to shake your teeth loose. My father used to tell me if I could stay on Bonnie bareback through all of her paces I could ride anything. I don’t recall if I ever succeeded, but I do know I tried and failed many times.

Bonnie turned out to be more than just a kid horse. Her stamina and strength made her the perfect packhorse. She could pack 300 pounds of salt up the Mesa Trail, and then carry my Grandfather back down when his horse was too tired. She was also quite agile and a great cutting horse. She almost lost me more than once when we were chasing a cow and she made a sharp turn that I wasn’t prepare for. My dad like to use her for irrigating because she was shorter than the other horses and he could ride her bareback since it was easy to jump on and off. It didn’t matter how far you rode her or how hard you worked her, she never seemed to tire out. Bonnie was worked more consistently than any other horse on the place. Partially because she was so versatile and partially because she got fat if she wasn’t getting a daily workout, due to her pony heritage no doubt. The few times she wasn’t working, usually when she was about to foal, she seemed dissatisfied somehow, though that could have been my imagination.

First and foremost though, Bonnie was “our” horse. My brothers and I rode her everywhere. She carried us out into the hills on uncountable adventures, on roundups with Grandpa, the two miles to Shell to see friends or run errands for our mother, the list was endless. I vividly remember riding her to Bible school one summer in particular. My older brother, Louie always sat in the front, then my little brother Frank because he was only four, and finally me. Very few horses would allow somebody that far back on her rump, but she had no problem with it. In fact, the only difficulty came the day Louie decided we needed to make an “entrance”. I’m not really sure how I stayed on as Bonnie went through her bone-jarring trot, but we thundered into Shell at a high lope. I suppose I ruined the effect somewhat when I took Louie to task for nearly losing me, but we were always fighting so nobody took much notice.

After we left the ranch we boarded Bonnie with close friends of ours. The youngest daughter of the family was and is one of the most incredible horsewomen I have ever met. Dawn was about eleven when she started taking Bonnie to the Omoksees, an event where horse and rider run obstacle courses of various kinds. Bonnie loved it! For the first time in all the years we had her, we discovered she was fast as well as agile. She and Dawn were unbeatable.

I don’t know what ever happened to Bonnie. I lost track of her when I was about eighteen. She’d have been seventeen and still had many good years left. Many horses live past thirty and with her stamina she could easily have been one of them. There is no way she could still be alive, of course, but I still find myself checking out every black and white pinto I see. My brothers Frank and Louie confessed they do too. She lives again in Tatter. In fact, everyone who knew Bonnie recognizes her immediately. It’s natural I suppose that she showed up in Shadows In the Wind. I can’t imagine the ranch without Bonnie any more than I can imagine it without my grandfather. There have been other horses in my life, but none of them have been quite as near and dear to my heart as Bonnie.

Click here for pictures

CHAPTER 13

BLOG #16

I’ve never actually been around a one-man horse though I do know they exist. I suspect most are stallions since they tend to be a bit bad tempered anyway. All that testosterone, I guess. Since I’d given Midnight the personality of a hot-blooded stallion, as was his due, the “one-man horse” status seemed a natural. Stephanie riding him was a given too, I suppose, though I’m not sure any amount of spoiling would actually get her on his back.

Midnight exists only in my imagination though he is sort of loosely modeled after a horse we had named Taffy. My grandfather had bought Taffy’s mother, Lady, from a local Western artist who had used her as a model. When Taffy reached his full size, Bob had decided to use him instead, and so sold Lady to Grandpa. Taffy was a big beautiful light sorrel and starred in several of Bob’s paintings until his stallion temperament showed through. I clearly remember the day Bob showed up at the ranch looking like a thundercloud and leading Taffy. He didn’t waste time with chit-chat just asked where my grandfather was and stomped off to find him. The next thing I knew, Taffy was in the corral with the other horses and my grandfather was convincing my father the horse was a good buy even though we really didn’t need another saddle horse. Taffy, it seems, had grabbed one of Bob’s favorite goats by the back of the neck and shaken it to death, which put him beyond pale.

The first thing Grandpa did was change the horse’s name from Dynamite to Taffy claiming the name was half the problem. The second thing he did was get rid of the bad temper by completing the job of gelding Taffy. Horses are usually gelded when they are colts and easier to control. Bob had apparently tried but had only gotten half of the tissue he should have, so Taffy was still a stallion.. I wasn’t present when they completed the job, but I remember hearing the tale. I don’t recall if they borrowed a chute or not, but I do know it took my father, my grandfather and a couple of neighbors to get the job done. In retrospect, I think the same process would have made the horse suitable for Bob’s use, because as a gelding, Taffy was the sweetest horse imaginable.

Though not as muscled as Midnight nor nearly as grand, he was my favorite horse next to Bonnie, and the one I would always choose to ride. He was huge; the top of his back was even with the top of my head. I had a heck of a time saddling him (had to rest the saddle on my chest, and then heave it up on him)Then getting my foot in the stirrup was a major operation, since the stirrups hung nearly waist high. Oh, but I loved riding him. It was like a rolling river- so smooth and wonderful. Unfortunately he was also dumb. Once he got to running he'd just keep going. Most horses will stop when confronted by some kind of obstacle, not Taffy; he'd just keep on running. I discovered that the hard way when we almost fell into a gulch before I got him turned.

All of the horse related injuries I ever had were from Taffy, most because my own stupidity and usually because I misjudged his height. For instance the time I rode under a pine tree I'd ridden under a dozen times before on Bonnie (better known as Tatter:-)With Bonnie all I had to do was duck a little and I could ride under without even taking my hat off. With Taffy I laid flat on the saddle and still managed to rip my shirt and wind up with long ugly scratches on my back. I have a dozen stories like that but it didn't matter, I loved that horse!

In fact, about the only time it was his fault was the time he ran away with me up on the Horse Creek Mesa at the top of the Big Horn Mountains. (You’ll read about the Messa Trail and the Horse Creek Mesa in a week or two) We’d stopped at a tiny stream for drink of water while Grandpa rode ahead. When I went to get back on, I stuck my foot in the stirrup, bounced a couple of times then pulled myself up. I have no idea was spooked him, but he jerked then took off at high speed with me half-on and half-off. I had the hand holding the reins on the horn, the other hand on the pommel and one foot in the stirrup. There I was clinging to his side unable to throw my other leg over the saddle or pull back on the reins.

We went tearing past Grandpa, in a blur, with me screaming at the top of my lungs, which I'm sure made everything much worse. We raced the full length of the Mesa which drops off rather dramatically into Red Canyon at the end. I could see the canyon coming, and knew there was no way to stop him. I really thought we were going over the edge, and knew it would be certain death for both of us. Luckily, Taffy used his head for once and made a sharp turn before we got there. The turn was so sharp, in fact, that I went flying through the air. I landed, bounced and landed again. I broke my camera, which was around my neck, and my tailbone though I have no idea which was on the first bounce and which was on the second. In retrospect I realize I was incredibly lucky. I know people who have been permanently impaired or even killed by a fall like that. (Look at Christopher Reeves) but I sure didn't feel lucky at the time. It must knocked the wind out of me because for several minutes I couldn’t or breathe or move. It didn’t last very long and I was sitting there on the ground crying by the time Grandpa got there. I’ll never forget his first words which were the hated, “Come here and I’ll pick you up.” That was what he always said when one of us got hurt by doing something stupid.

Grandpa must have been scared to death, it had have been terrifying to watch. But when he rode up he didn't give me an ounce of sympathy, just took me to task for screaming like that. I thought at the time he was mad because I had startled the horse he was riding, but in reality he figured that's what had caused the problem in the first place. I remember walking off the mountain because I couldn't sit in the saddle, but when we reached the bottom got back on and rode the rest of the way home. I also remember spending the next couple of days lying on the couch because my butt hurt so bad. I didn’t discover that my camera was broken until later but that only added insult to injury. What it didn’t do was dim my love for Taffy. I still rode him every chance I got.

Anyway I never could ride like Stephanie, just wished I could. I would certainly never be so dumb to take a horse Grandpa had told me not to ride, but then I think he had more faith in my riding abilities than I did:-)

As for Taffy, we sold him through the sale ring when we sold the ranch. My brother Louie, who was full-grown by then, rode him through bareback. My then future sister-in-law was in the crowd and said she remembered him because he was such a gorgeous horse. She also remembered thinking my parents must have been crazy to put such a little kid on such a big horse. Maybe we should have had my seven-year old brother Frank ride him through. That would have really made them sit up and take notice.

CHAPTER 14

BLOG #17

I’ll never forget my first trip up the Horse Creek Mesa Trail. It was much like Stephanie’s though I was about eleven or twelve and I was with my grandfather, not some gorgeous hunk. The quote about not holding on to the horn was grandpa’s quote too.

I can honestly say the trail has never been climbed by any motorized vehicle. It is simply too steep. Even if you could get your four-wheeler or trail bike up the rocky hog back, the trail itself would cause the rider to flip over backwards. It’s about as close to straight up and down as you can get and still have a trail. I never climbed it on foot, I’m not even sure I could anymore. I tried to take a picture of it from the top, but it didn’t work. The photo just looked like I was lying on my stomach taking a picture of the ground.

Trailing cows up is a bit hairy but after they’ve been up a time or two they learn to stay on the trail where the climbing is easier. The cows and horses stop frequently for rest as they climb. Even so, the calves can be a royal pain. Most stay with their mothers but occasionally one strays off the trail and the riders have to go after them. It can be quite scary. The only trail I’ve seen that was worse was is the chute trail which is the one we used to trail our sheep up the mountain. It isn’t as steep as the Mesa Trail, but it winds up through an area of slide rock which has a bad habit of sliding down onto the trail.

Luckily, the first time I went up the Mesa we were packing salt up to the herd that was already on the mountain so all I had to do was hang on. I didn’t even have to do much guiding since Bonnie knew the way. I don’t suppose I cursed under my breath, but I do recall being scared to death. I seem to recall seeing a rattlesnake coiled under a rock but that may have been a different trip.

Then we reached the top. The view is incredible! You feel like you can see for forever in three directions. Horse Creek, Beaver Creek, Bear Creek and Shell Creek are plainly visible as long winding strips of green wending their way down between dry hills. The most amazing sight is 100-foot tall tower that is part of the sugar plant in Lovell, Wyoming.

The sugar tower is about thirty to forty miles away, and you can see it clear as day. Trying to portray that fact brought me into direct conflict with the copy-editor. The sugar tower wasn’t there in 1885, of course, so I had to think of something they would have been able to see from the top of the mountain. I finally hit upon the Owl Creek mountains you can see way off in the distance. I’m not sure why the copy-editor was so concerned about it. Cole’s comment to Stephanie that those mountains were over a hundred miles away was a throw away comment anyway. I do know it was her first romance and I’ve often wondered if she was trying to prove a point. At any rate she wrote me a note saying she couldn’t find the Owl Creek Mountains on any map of Wyoming. I have no idea what map she was looking on because they’re on all the maps I’ve seen. It didn’t really matter anyway. I’ve read many books by famous authors that are totally wrong when it comes Wyoming. At any rate, I now live on the South side of those same mountains, so I wrote her a note back that said: Don’t worry, I just looked out the window. The Owl Creeks are still there! She accepted it.

CHAPTER 15

BLOG # 18
In the original manuscript Levi didn’t exist. Not only was Cole an only child, he didn’t seem to have any parents either. Kate wasn’t his stepmother, in fact she wasn’t even Kate. She was his housekeeper, Mrs. Murphy; just a bossy and motherly. Cole’s father had died, who knows when, and his mother was never mentioned at all. Cole was, I suppose, the closest I ever came to creating a cardboard character. I guess I could use my inexperience as an excuse because I truly didn’t know any better.

He might well have stayed that way if it hadn’t been for my friend Val. I hadn’t set out to write a book, and no one was more surprised than I was when I managed to finish it. Unfortunately, I had no idea if it was any good or if I had wasted the better part of two months on an exercise in futility. That’s where Val came in. We had been best friends since the day we’d met at the ripe old age of 14. With an IQ somewhere around 145, she was one of the most brilliant people I have ever known, but she had never learned the fine art of polite lying. I was pretty sure she’d tell the truth, even if it was unpalatable. She and I also shared our taste in reading material. We were both dedicated historical romance fans before it was a genre. Who better to judge my creative efforts?

So I took my courage in my two hands and sent Val all six hundred typewritten pages. Surprisingly, her response was positive. She said, “Well, it’s pretty rough, but I think you have something here.” In retrospect I have to wonder if she hadn’t become more adept at polite lying than I gave her credit for. I have since discarded the original manuscript so I can only imagine how truly wretched it was. At any rate, she gave me enough confidence to continue working on Shadows in the Wind.

Val also gave me several pieces of advice on how to improve the story. One of the most important was that I needed another man to spark conflict between Stephanie and Cole. She felt they were too much friends. I thought about it and realized she was right on the money. So I invented a brother. I can’t remember for sure how I came up with his name, but I do remember once I thought of Levi it seemed like the perfect name. He was everything Cole wasn’t, namely realistic.

Once I had Levi, I had to figure out how to introduce him into the story. Somehow having him there at the beginning didn’t seem like a good idea. For one thing, he was such a nice guy, Stephanie would have been more likely to choose him than Cole. Besides the farther into the story he appeared, the less I would have to rewrite. I don’t recall when or even how I came up with the rustler scenario, but I knew his entrance had to be dramatic. The beard, rifle and the buffalo coat all were part of that. What I didn’t realize was how those three items would define who he was. The kind of man who can appear frightening when he is really a pretty nice guy is anything but cardboard.

Another strange thing began to happen when Levi rode into the story. Cole suddenly became more human. Now there was something to his background. He had a brother that he interacted with quite naturally which probably meant he had parents somewhere too. Their interplay alluded to a shared past that was both interesting and believable.

I suppose some of you are remembering that though this is his first appearance, it isn’t the first time you’ve heard of Levi Cantrell. That’s the beauty of rewrite. If you know something is going to happens, like the reappearance of a long lost brother, it’s pretty easy to go back and sprinkle the foreshadowing leading up it along the way. At any rate, I really like this scene, it’s one of my favorites. Though I had no thought of it at the time, the buffalo coat, which seems unimportant here, became part of the glue that holds the Cheyenne Trilogy together. If you’ve read Murphy’s Rainbow you know why and you probably felt a flicker of recognition as soon as you saw it, you may have even smiled. I know I did. I fact, I do every time I read it. Until next time…

CHAPTER 16

BLOG #19

I remember the first time I saw saddle soap. Though I didn’t goof up like Stephanie did, I do remember wondering why the heck they called it soap. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything less soap-like. It’s actually kind of a thick grease with a consistency somewhat stiffer than shortening. Saddle soap works by adding moisture and suppleness to leather. It pushes dirt and stains out and makes the leather shine too. Pretty awesome stuff, actually, but definitely not soap.

I needed a reason for Stephanie to take off and get caught in the blizzard. I really don’t know why I used the saddle soap. I hadn’t used it myself for many, many years. Perhaps it was one of those things I got from my husband. I can easily imagine saying “Hey, Bru, what would be a good reason for my heroine to take off when the weather was bad?”

He’d look thoughtful for a moment, then say something like, “Maybe she does something stupid and doesn’t notice the weather.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, maybe she ruins his good boots or something,” he’d say with a shrug and go back to his newspaper or his TV program.

I may not remember exactly where the saddle soap came from but I do remember writing the blizzard scene. I remember it because I was sitting in the bleachers at the local swimming indoor pool while my two oldest sons took swimming lessons. It had to be at least a hundred I that building and humid to boot. The baby was in her carrier at my feet dressed in a cool little summer outfit and fussy because she was so hot. She finally fell asleep, but I felt parboiled. I suppose I wrote the scene out of self-defense. Thinking about snow did help cool me down. At any rate, every time I read this scene I catch whiff of chlorine and the memory of a hot steamy afternoon at the pool flashes through my mind. Kind of an odd memory to be attached to a blizzard scene.

I confess I’m one of those that reads the last page of the book before I get there. I don’t know why; it’s ruined many a surprise for me over the years. In the past I have promised myself many times when I started a book that I wouldn’t peek at the ending. I’ve never been able to keep that promise to myself so I finally stopped making it. I guess it’s just a quirk in my character than I’m going to have to live with. I’m not alone, though. There are many of us out there. Some, I’ve heard, even read the ending before they buy the book. I also like to reread favorites and find things I missed the first time. J.K. Rowling is a great one for that. So is Shirley Busbee.

Shadows in the Wind was written with those of us who are “peekers” and rereaders in mind. The last line was written specifically to confuse that particular audience. I’m not going to share that last line with you now, but I will tell you that it’s connected to this chapter as well as the second one (Issue #4). I doubt most people catch it the first time through because both pieces are short and seemingly disconnected to anything. Twice, when she is near death, a voice speaks to her. It isn’t until you know who Stephanie is and why she is where she is that the voice in her head means anything. Pay attention to her strange delusion as she lies freezing to death. Then go back and check out Chapter 2 (Issue #4) and you may get a slight glimmer of what is going on. Or maybe not….

CHAPTER 18

BLOG #20

I may not remember exactly where the saddle soap came from, but I do remember the bit about Sam finding first Brindi an then the cabin. Everyone who has had dogs will tell you there are some that are special; so special you will spend your life looking for another as awesome. Brindi was one of those. Bru’s parents raised Pembroke Welsh Corgis for many years. While Bru and I were dating, about a year before we got married, they gave him a particularly feisty puppy. He was kind of foot-loose and fancy free in those days so he left her with me. Brindi and I bonded, but Bru was always her favorite person. Then he got a job on his brother’s dairy farm. A house came with the job so he took his job and moved in. We were already engaged and had set the wedding date, but I told everyone it was a “have to” marriage. I mean the man took my dog. What else could I do?

Bru trained Brindi to be a cow dog, and she was one of the best. In spite of her small size, (30 pounds) she would go up against the biggest Holsteins without even batting an eye and put them right where they needed to go. I never actually saw her work because every time I’d get anywhere near the corral, she would “protect” me from the cows by getting between me and them. If Bru gave her a command when I was there, she would give him an apologetic look as if to say, “Sorry, but I have a more important job right now. I have to admit there was more than once that I was glad of her protection when I was crossing the corral on the way to the barn. Dairy bulls are often viciously mean and have been known to kill people. With Brindi along I never had to worry when there was a bull in with the cows. All I had to say was "Get the bully-bull," and she was after it. ”

My brother-in-law had a gigantic bull named Signal. He stood six foot tall at the shoulder and weighed over a ton. When people asked if he was mean. We’d just shrug and say, “Don’t know and nobody seems inclined to find out.” One day Signal got out of his pen and took off across the countryside wreaking havoc as he went. Our neighbor, Marvin, saw him and thought perhaps he could herd the animal back home with his pickup. Marvin drove up next to him and honked the horn. It wasn’t what you would call successful. Signal just looked at him, then put his head under the front bumper and bounced it up and down a couple time. Marvin said he wasn’t sure if the wheels actually left the ground but it made him downright nervous. By then Bru had discovered Signal’s escape and told Brindi to “find the bull”. She was off like a shot. In spite of the fact that Signal was a hundred times her size weight-wise, she brought him back and put him in the pen within a few minutes.

Oddly enough Brindi and Signal actually seemed to be friends. When Bru was working near Signal’s pen, and Brindi wasn’t otherwise occupied, she would go in and “play” with the monster. Signal would lower his head, which was considerably bigger than Brindi, so she could run up on his face to grab the top of his head. Signal would shake her off, then put his head down so they could do it again. They would “play” like that for half an hour or more at a time. What does all this have to do with finding a cabin in a blizzard? Nothing really except it gives you an insight into the dog that was part of my life at the time I wrote this.If she had been trained to find me (or anyone else) nothing would have stopped her. I have never known such a brave and dedicated animal.

As for finding the line shack, Brindi liked one thing even more than working cows or playing with Signal. Chasing mice. She was as good or better mouser than any cat we had on the place. All you had to do was say “find a mouse” and she was after it. She had her favorite places to find them, too. If he told her to “find a mouse” and there wasn’t one in the immediate vicinity, she’d take off for the barn. While I was writing this scene, I realized the only way to save them was for Sam to find the cabin, because I knew Cole would never be able to do it alone. The difficulty was making the dog understand. So I tried to think of what command I could give Brindi that would get her to take me someplace she knew. There wouldn’t be any cows at the line shack, and a relationship between a dog an old range bull seem ludicrous. Then I came up with finding a mouse. IN retrospect it seems a bit silly, but with Brindi around, it didn’t seem the least bit farfetched.

Whatever happened to Brindi? When my brother-in-law sold the cows she was forced into retirement and some of the joy went out of her. We had children by then, but they never quite took the place of the cows. She died in my arms at the age of thirteen, struck down by a sudden illness. It was devastating at the time (she was our only child for six years) but thinking back now, it was perhaps the easiest way. She never got old, you see. The day before her death she and I had taken a five mile hike down to the lake and back. She’d run all the way, chasing rabbits and prairie dogs, barking and grinning the whole time. I can only hope my last day is as happy.

CHAPTER 19

BLOG # 21 The Blizzard of '75

There are many stories about blizzards in the old West. People from the East weren’t always prepared for the violence of the winds and snow blowing across hundreds of miles of open prairie. Of course, people still aren’t always prepared, including myself. The blizzard. I used in Shadows was based on one I tangled with when I was in college.
As I recall it happened in late November, just as I was heading back to the University of Wyoming after Thanksgiving break.

The weather forecast didn’t look too good, but I had a couple of classes I couldn’t miss the next day. I wanted to leave early but I couldn’t get my car started. In the end I wound up taking my mother’s little Datsun and setting out several hours later than I had planned. But I figured I had plenty of time to make the seven-hour drive to Laramie from Basin and still be able to get in some studying.

The sky was an ugly gray, but the snow held off clear to Shoshoni. If you look at a map of Wyoming, you’ll see that Shoshoni is a very small town close to the center of the state. My journey took me east toward Casper. Even on the map it looks like a desolate drive. In reality, it’s ninety-nine miles of nothing but ninety-nine miles. In the summer you can see sagebrush, an occasional herd of pronghorn antelope, and more sagebrush. In the winter it’s pretty much the same only the antelope aren’t as abundant and the sagebrush is often covered with snow. It is one of the most boring drives in the state. That night it was anything but. In fact I’d have taken boring in a heartbeat.

I left Shoshoni about 3:00 in the afternoon. Dusk hit about 3:30 and so did the snow. At first it wasn’t bad, but before long the wind began to whip up. By dark it was a complete whiteout with the snow so thick I couldn’t see much past the hood of the car. My only guide was my headlights shining on the reflector poles.

Too late I realized the survival kit with winter gear, a sleeping bag, and high energy snacks that I always carried with me was at home in my car instead of in the trunk of my mother’s car with me. The tiny little car was so light it slid all over the road. I remember thinking it was like I was driving a plastic roller skate. There was no way I could turn back. I couldn’t see the road well enough to turn around without running off into the borrow pit and I knew that way lay disaster. Stranded motorists suffering from frostbite or even dying from carbon monoxide poisoning or freezing were not all that uncommon. Thirty-two years later I can still remember how terrified I was.

I crept along from reflector pole to reflector pole completely alone in a totally white world. The only radio station I could pick up had one evangelistic preacher after another who went on and on about the fires of hell and eternal damnation. It didn’t matter; it was another human voice and I clung to it like a life-line.

There are several small towns, well roadside bars really, along the way. I didn’t know for sure, but I figured they were used to stranded motorists and I could probably find a safe haven there. I planned to turn off at the first one I came to. Unfortuately, the snow was so bad I never even saw the lights. On and on I crept, until at last I saw the lights of Casper. The 90 mile trip that usually takes and hour and a half, had taken me almost seven.

As I rolled into town I passed a sign that said the road I had come in on was closed which was why I hadn't seen any one else. I was may even have been the last car that had left Shoshoni without turning back. It turned out all the other roads in and out of Casper were closed too. I was lucky. I had a friend who had recently moved there. It took me awhile but I finally located her and she welcomed me with open arms. The next morning, I found I had developed a new attitude about missing my classes. I didn’t leave until the sun was shining and the road report was good all the way to Laramie.

Though I have experienced several other blizzards that was the only one where I was alone and in a unfamiliar car. Every blizzard scene I write has its roots in that night of stark white terror.

CHAPTER 20

BLOG #22 Research
The important thing that this chapter marks is the first real research I did as an author. From my Blogs you can tell that up until this point I was pretty much writing what I knew. I can’t really remember why I decided to have the can of beans explode but I did know it was possible; I’ve seen it happen. What I didn’t know was when tin cans were invented. Now I have half a dozen books I could look it up in as well as doing a search on the Internet. None of that was available to me in 1987 and I remember having a really tough time finding out what I needed to know.

In my research, I discovered something that has been brought home to me time and again since, and that is that many of our most innovative inventions were created out of necessity during wartime. Food preserved in tin cans came into being during the Civil War. As I recall the first food to be preserved that way was sardines, but that may nor be right. I do know that by 1886 there would almost certainly been canned food left in the line shack as part of the supplies.

I got the beans right but I dropped the ball on the money. Like Stephanie, I can’t remember exactly where the money came from. Oh, I know what the fictional story behind it is, and you will too by the end of the book, but I can’t remember where I came up with the idea. I do recall that I had already written the end of the book, or at least the first ending, (it changed several times) I suspect the knowledge of who she was and where she came from prompted me to put a veritable fortune into the hem of her cape. Foreshadowing again.

When I decided to put a large sum of money in her cape, and I didn’t have a clue how much I needed. It had to be a huge sum to work but I didn’t know how much. It stopped me dead in my tracks. In light of the dozens of far more complex problems I’ve solved in my writing since, it seems silly. I remember coming up with the sum of five thousand dollars in one hundred dollar bills, which I now realize wouldn’t have worked. An American bill is exactly six inches long so fifty of them would measure twenty-five feet. No cape would have a hem that long. Oddly enough nobody has ever called me on it, not even the copy editor who wouldn’t accept “quaking aspens” and the Owl Creek mountains. Perhaps they were sewn double. At any rate, this chapter marks the beginning of what has become one of my favorite parts of the writing, the research. As I look back on it, my first attempt seems very humble indeed.

CHAPTER 21

BLOG # 23 Levi: You Gotta Love Him

I have to admit Levi Cantrell is the first of my characters that I fell in love with. Now everybody likes Levi, but I love him. In fact, I loved him so much that he started to take over the book. This is the chapter where Levi started to get out of hand. Remember, he didn’t exist in the original version; I added him during the first rewrite. The thing is, he was so much more human than Cole. The moment he appeared on the page he was a real person with none of wooden characteristics that belonged to his brother. I suspect it may have been partially due to the fact that I had learned a lot. By then I had developed a whole cast of characters as well as having six hundred pages worth of writing experience.

In retrospect, I realize Cole was what I thought a romance hero should be, with all of his hot-headed, egotistical romance-hero flaws. The problem was, he was so shallow he just didn’t seem real. He was defined almost entirely by his looks and a few rather unlovely character traits. Levi, on the other hand, was multifaceted with a distinctive style of talking, thinking and even dressing. He had a warm friendly manner and a delightful sense of humor that his brother lacked. As far as I know I’ve never met anyone like Cole Cantrell. If I have, I certainly never bothered to get to know him. Levi, it turns out, I know rather well.

Like Jonathan, Levi was not the kind of person that could fade into the background of the story. The prospect of rewriting the entire book with such a strong character in it was rather daunting, which is why in another chapter or two he had to ride off into the sunset and into his own book. I was halfway through Willow Creek when I realized why I love Levi so much. He’s my husband. Bru doesn’t look like Levi. In fact, physically, Levi rather strongly resembles a man I dated toward the end college. Though Levi’s eyes are the color of Bru’s, they twinkle just like those of my first college crush. His personality and most of his character traits belong to Bru. It’s no wonder I fell so hard for Levi. He’s every man I ever loved all rolled into one! How could I resist him? Luckily, Stephanie kept her head and her love for Cole never wavered, though I do have to wonder why. Any woman with a lick of sense would prefer Levi over Cole- but then maybe I’m a bit prejudiced there…

CHAPTER 22

BLOG # 24 Sparkling Dialog

This chapter is all about dialog. It is one of things my writing is known for. But when I was writing Shadows it was a skill I hadn’t perfected yet. It’s also something I changed in the rewrites….repeatedly. In fact, it is the one thing I have doctored over and over again. It seems I have an ear for dialog and those first lines I wrote grated on my ear like sandpaper on gravel.

During my high school days we did very little writing so the few tips I was given stand out sharply. One of those was never to use the word said. We even did several exercises coming up with all the words we could use instead. It turns out that is all wrong. In the real writing world said is about the only dialog tag an editor will let you use. It is sort of invisible to the reader, you see, while things like guffawed and rasped stand out. Since said had been “beat out of me” (metaphorically of course) at an early age, it was a bit a of a challenge to write dialog. Later in the book there are five or six pages of dialog without a single said. I wrote it early on as a challenge to myself to see if I could do it. I managed but it too has been rewritten many times. It took awhile but I taught myself to write long passages of dialog with no dialog tags at all. In fact, it has become almost automatic. Now it is more a matter of listening to what my characters say to each other in my head and writing it down.

How does all this relate to this particular chapter? It marks the first time I tried a new technique, one that was, perhaps, a bit beyond me at the time but I managed to pull off anyway. The conversation between Cole and Levi was the first time I tied dialog to movement. It was a new experiment for me, one I’ve always thought turned out well. In fact I was quite proud of the result. Having Levi roll that cigarette and smoke it was pure inspiration on my part. To this day I’m still rather proud of the way it all worked. I have written much better dialog in far more clever ways, but that small piece remains one of my favorites probably because it gave me a glimpse of what could be. I doubt anyone has ever read that particular scene, and stopped in amazement to say “Wow that was awesome!” In fact, no one has probably ever even noticed it…until now. I’m pretty sure everyone reading this BLOG will go back and check it out. It’s kind of like showing off some cute little trick one of my children perfected, I guess, but I can’t resist doing it. There are definite advantages to this BLOG thing!

CHAPTER 23

BLOG # 25 Jonathan Returns!

This chapter marks the return of Jonathan Cantrell. He has barely more than a cameo appearance, but Jonathan is so much more complex than either of his sons that he couldn’t stay around for long. Nearly all writers grow with each book, but for me the learning curve was steepest in the first three books I wrote. The difference between Shadows in the Wind (my first book) and Murphy’s Rainbow (my third) is perhaps the largest that can be found in any of my books. This is particularly obvious in the characterization of the heroes.

When I sold Murphy’s Rainbow, the publisher offered me a contract for the other two books in the trilogy and I knew I was in trouble. As I mentioned in an earlier BLOG, Jonathan didn’t even exist in the original Shadows except as a passing comment here and there when Cole referred to his father. There was no way I could write Jonathan into the book without completely changing the story. If Levi had been more realistic than Cole, Jonathan was a hundred times more so. The only option I could see was to kill him off, and that’s exactly what I set out to do.

I’ve been asked if I fall in love with my heroes. Of course I do. If I don’t fall in love with them, then you won’t either. Jonathan was no exception. In fact I have to say he’s one of my favorites. Orchestrating his death, even in back-story, was excruciating. It was a sad, sad tale that Kate told Stephanie toward the beginning of the book. So sad, in fact, that I couldn’t stop crying as I wrote it. There had been a terrible fire, you see, and Jonathan had died saving Kate’s life. She still bore scars of the blaze.

After signing the contract, the first thing an author gets on a manuscript is a letter of revision letter telling him/her changes the editor feels needs to be made. Shadows was the first book my editor, Abigail, and I had done from start to finish. We’d worked on Murphy’s Rainbow together, but the initial revision letter had come from the head editor who had originally purchased the manuscript. Abigail’s letter wasn’t terribly long as revision letters go, but she made several points, the most definite of which was that I absolutely couldn’t kill of Jonathan. When I explained my difficulty in putting him in the book she said I didn’t have to. Maybe he was just gone somewhere. Now why didn’t I think of that?

I’m not precisely sure when I came up with the idea of sending him to England with his cousin Daniel but in retrospect, I think I might know why. Jonathan and Daniel went to settle the estate of an Uncle. I used the name Hedley, which was my father’s name. He was named after and uncle who was, coincidently, born in England. In the deep recesses of my mind I have always associated the name “Uncle Hedley” with England, hence the trip there to settle his estate.

Whatever the reason, the trip worked very well. Jonathan lived once again. I have to admit, there was no one happier to see him walk through that door on Christmas morning than I was. Even now, it gives me a little spurt of joy every time I read it.

CHAPTER 24

BLOG # 26 Time to Go!

The fight between Cole and Levi, turned out to be far more useful than I ever imagined. Originally only Charlie was there, but his reaction to the brother’s battle as well as Kate’s unconcerned attitude as she prepared to treat the inevitable wounds gave me a huge clue about what they we like as children. The fact that the “boys” follow Jonathan and Charlie back inside, holding each other up and arguing about something completely different shows that the fight wasn’t nearly as serious as it seemed to Stephanie or the reader. I kept all this in mind when I wrote Murphy’s Rainbow. In fact, the first time Kate ever sees Cole and Lei they are rolling around on the ground exchanging blows trying to decide who will show the new housekeeper around. Their “scrappin’”, as Charlie calls it, soon became a integral part of their relationship and helped add depth to their characterization. During the rewrite of Shadows, it was easy to add Jonathan to the appreciative audience watching the adult Cole and Levi duk