GO WEST YOUNG WOMAN

This story is atypical of many groups who headed west in the earliest migrations. Getting a late start, a small group of wagons left Sapling Grove, Missouri on May 12, 1841. In the group were 35 men, 5 women and 10 children. about 20 miles west or Independence, MO., and not one of them had any notion of what lay ahead.

Of the women in the group three were married, one was a widow and one was a girl of marriageable age traveling with kin. Totally…

Here are my Western Historicals

Many times I'm asked where I get ideas for my western historical romances.  It's simple, really. In fact I have enough stuff scribbled down to write these books for another…

Many times I'm asked where I get ideas for my western historical romances.  It's simple, really. In fact I have enough stuff scribbled down to write these books for another twenty years or so. I prefer to write about the 1860s through the 1880s, though that's not a set rule. Each time I go on a trip through that era in my research the most fascinating thing happens. Characters begin to appear and talk to me. Tell me what it's like to live in the time and place I've stepped into. They speak…

When was the last time you cried or laughed aloud while reading a book? Do you remember why the story affected you so? Let's discuss what it takes as a writer to create fiction that will make our readers laugh or cry.

Is it the story? The answer to that is yes and no, for a story alone has no power to make the reader's emotions erupt. Yet a bad story can ruin everything. Most importantly, for emotions to come to the surface, the reader has to have people to care about. Real…

WOMEN CONQUER AND RULE

Besides being a writer, I’m a woman, a wife, mother, grandmother and a great grandmother. And I’m a human being, an American, a daughter of pioneers.

Over the past 28 years that I’ve written and been published, I’ve seen the role of women in novels and stories evolve from the meek to the mighty. Some could say this has happened much too slowly, some could add that the female role has become a bit ridiculous in some…