Please welcome my guest today, one of my favorite authors, Kathleen Eagle!

What a pleasure it is to pay a visit to “Jaunty Quills” and celebrate the release of COWBOY, TAKE ME AWAY with your blog visitors.  Thanks, guys!

No matter what’s up and what’s down, who’s in and who’s out, for me there is no more romantic setting than the American West, and there’s no hero quite as irresistible than a cowboy.  Both the place and the man are timeless, rugged, weathered, and completely natural.  The look hasn’t changed much.  The real West hates brick and mortar.  A real cowboy hates stiff collar and silk tie.  Western shirts and boot cut Wranglers haven’t changed much in at least half a century, and a long, lean cowboy looks mighty fine dressed that way.  You don’t want to miss the rear view.  And so begins COWBOY, TAKE ME AWAY.

Skyler Quinn is ripe for getting swept off her feet.  She’s a former beauty queen and the widow of an older man who started out as a father figure and ended up leaving her with a pile of debt and a stepson who refuses to grow up.  When she meets pro rodeo cowboy Trace Wolf Track, she thinks she’s in for her very first weekend fling.  Trace offers to trade his horse training services for 24 hours of her company on his birthday.  Skyler thinks she’ll have the upper hand with a handsome, charming younger man, but she has a few things to learn about this cowboy.   You can read the first chapter at Kathleen Eagle’s Website. 

If you’ve read any of my recent Special Editions, you know that I’ve built a series of connected stories around a fictitious wild horse sanctuary in South Dakota, inspired by the very real Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary, which you can read about online.   COWBOY, TAKE ME AWAY is the fifth book in my series—ONE BRAVE COWBOY is scheduled for late September release—and Trace Wolf Track has already made his first appearance.  He’s Logan Wolf Track’s (ONCE A FATHER) adopted son.  I knew he needed his own story, and I knew a few things about him, but it was a song that triggered my first mental images of Trace and Skyler together.  Take a listen to the Dixie Chicks and see if “Cowboy, Take Me Away” doesn’t make your heart sing:

 

This isn’t the first time a song has inspired me with a story idea.  For instance, Garth Brooks’s “That Summer” helped to inspire part of my hero’s back story in THE LAST TRUE COWBOY.  I’m more a rock ‘n roll fan than country-western, but I love a good ballad.  The best lyric is poetry, and poetry is full of imagery, and imagery makes story magic happen.  Some writers create their own soundtracks for their books, and I can’t say  I do that, but songs often pop up in my stories.  While we can’t quote song lyrics, we can mention titles, which aren’t copyright-able.  When a song fits the moment or the character perfectly, I hope the title turns the music on in the reader’s mind.  One of my longtime favorite contemporary romances is LIGHTNING THAT LINGERS by Tom and Sharon Curtis, and when I remember the hero shedding his clothes on stage, I hear “Stray Cat Strut.”

Writers, I wonder what particular songs or type of music may have inspired any of your books.  Readers, what do your favorite heroes have in common?   Let’s talk books, music, favorites, pet peeves, almost anything else that’s on your mind.  I’ll send an autographed copy of one of the earlier books in my series to one of today’s commenters.