Authenticity

Click to buy on Amazon
Click to buy on CBD
Click to buy on Barnes and Noble

I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what ‘Write What You Know’ means.

In some fundamental ways, I don’t believe in it. Because honestly I write with a LOT of research. So I sure don’t really KNOW what I’m writing about.

I’ve just finished a series set in northern New Mexico. I took a trip to Northern New Mexico once. I rode on a narrow gauge train through hills and valleys, trees and grasslands.

Does that mean I know about that area?

Ditto for most every book I’ve written EXCEPT mostly I haven’t even taken a trip. I’m just looking at pictures, reading tour books, history books. Googling a bunch of stuff.

It’s all me writing what I DO NOT KNOW.

In another fundamental way, I sort of DO know it. I write cowboys. I’m married to a cattleman. He’s not really a historical western cowboy. He was born to recently for that!!!

But he knows cows.

I’ve lived in the country around farmers and animals and pastureland and all the attitudes that go with those things, all my life. So in that sense I am writing what I know.

I think, considering I wrote twenty books before I got the first one published, all romance novels, but within that broad genre, I covered a lot of territory. Sweet contemporary romances, contemporary romantic suspense, prairie romances, historical romance (obviously), even a gothic romance. Maybe the historical cowboys hit because I finally just got good. Or I hit a rising tide. But where I agree with ‘Write What You Know’ is…I think I can bring a really authentic voice to cowboys. Rural attitudes. Country life.

Newborn baby...80 or so pounds.

We have a cow/calf herd. That means we own about 120 cows and each year they each have a baby. We raise those babies from 80 pound newborns to 800 pound calves in less than a year.

Last Friday was our annual calf sale day.

8 months and 720 pounds later

We haul all the cattle to an auction barn about an hour from our house and sit there while the auctioneer rattles along in that odd way auctioneers do. Then pen after pen of cattle come through until finally they sell ours.



Auctioneers...why do they talk like that?
Have they done a scientific study that proofs the way the talk raises the bids?
For whatever reason, it's fun to listen too. I can even occasionally understand them

It’s early in December. Our first baby will be born at the end of January or the beginning of February. At which point we begin again, another 120 calves. Another year. Another sale.

My 2 year old granddaughter attended the calf sale. She waved bye-bye any time a pen of cattle left the arena. The auctioneer came up to My Cowboy afterward and said Katherine now owned 250 head of cattle.

It’s bittersweet because we know it’s the way of life for a cattleman…but we love those calves. My Cowboy husband pours so much work and care and attention into them.

It’s sort of that old commercial about ‘the milk of contented cows’…but there’s some truth in it because a stressed, unhealthy…and thus discontented cow…doesn’t grow well. It pays to make your cows happy. And that takes more than just good food and clean yards. It takes careful handling, gentle attention.

Hard work.

As I watched those calves sell, surrounded by other cattlemen, truckers, auctioneers, I was struck by the unusual life I live and I decided I am writing what I know in the sense of authenticity of attitudes. Roots that grow deep in my life…and in my work.

Today, I’d like us to talk about what we really know.

Think about your life. Who are you? Where did you come from? Is there a way to bring authenticity to your work in a way that might lead you to write better books…by writing what you know.

Leave a comment -- what do you KNOW about yourself??? Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a copy of

Calico and Cowboys Romance Collection.

Love sneaks up on eight couples in the Old West.The Advent Bride
Melanie Douglas is alone on the Nebraska plains, teaching school to get by. She finds a unique box with hidden drawers to use over the advent season to engage a young boy in his schooling. When Henry O Keeffe sees a positive change in his son, he has to see for himself what this new teacher is doing.

A Bride Rides Herd
Matt Reeves arrives at his brother s ranch to find Betsy Harden alone with the little girls during a cattle drive. Will the ladies be too much to handle when Matt steps in for the missing ranch hand?

His Surprise Family
A lonely young rancher orders a mail-order bride and after the vows are spoken, she surprises him with her three little brothers. No amount of apologies Meghan McCray gives are going to make Silas Harden, Jr. believe a word she says. Should Silas just build himself another house and let his mail-order family take over the one he s got?

Homestead on the Range
Widow Elle Winter meets new homesteader Colin Samuelson on the Nebraska prairie, but the attraction between them is soon dampened by the discovery that they have seven children between them. Soon their children are working against them to bring the two families together.

Sophie s Other Daughter
Dr. Ike Reeves comes home to visit his family only to bring trouble in the form of outlaws who believe he witnessed their latest crime. When the gang traps Ike and his old nemesis, Lauren McClellen, in a cave, they must work together to outsmart the thugs. But will their time together put them in a compromising situation that will threaten both of their good reputations?

The Sweetwater Bride
Debba McClain takes offense at being offered a wedding in exchange for valuable water rights. But she doesn t like to see a good man s cattle die of thirst and the rancher Tanner Harden is rather handsome.

Texas Tea
Luke Reeves has gotten wealthy in the oil business and goes to visit his uncle to convince him to sign over the oil rights to his land. But when he meets his grown up adopted cousin Libby Cooper, he may be forced to give up one dream to win another.

Hope for Christmas
It might be 2016, but Montana is still a mighty rough place to survive the winter. When Silas Harden finds the very pregnant Kelsey Black in a wrecked car surrounded by a pack of wolves in the heart of a blizzard he takes her to his remote home. What will Silas do when the baby decides to come and Kelsey confesses why she was out in such a terrible storm?

Enjoy a lighthearted ride alongside seven historical and one contemporary cowboys and the women who tame their hearts.