I am always happy to welcome Victoria Vane back to Reading Reality! If I’m counting right, this is her fourth guest post for me. I think she’s got the record! While I adored her historical Devil DeVere series, I am also glad that she has branched out to contemporaries, as with today’s featured review book Sharp Shootin’ Cowboy. This time, Victoria is here with a giveaway of the series, and her thoughts about her life has influenced the art of her writing.
How have your experiences (where you live, your family, romantic life, hobbies, etc.) influenced the things you like to write about?
Those familiar with my work already know that my historical books almost always have strong elements of reality. I usually incorporate my fictional characters into real events and/or use real people as secondary characters. In my contemporary stories, I get my inspiration from real life situations and virtually anything else that interests me.
SLOW HAND, the first book in my Hot Cowboy Nights series was very much inspired by my own experience when my father died- which included a meltdown very similar to Nikki’s in the middle of an airport. I was so distraught that they actually brought the plane back to the gate! Elements of her background also came from my own life.
My inspiration for ROUGH RIDER came from getting to know a number of real people in the rodeo world which is far more grit than glamour. Dirk became an amputee after I read numerous accounts of similarly wounded vets struggling to put their lives back together. They all deserve to be romance heroes.
The idea for SHARP SHOOTIN’ COWBOY came to life during a research trip to Montana where I met several ranchers who expressed concerns about the booming wolf population and the threat to their livestock. Intrigued by this, I began researching the re-introduction of wolves into the Rocky Mountain States. Upon discovering what a political powder keg this issue had become, I knew I had to write a story about wolves.
In ROUGH RIDER I had already introduced a secondary character named Reid Everett who was a Marine from Wyoming. He seemed to be the perfect candidate to become my hero. Reid is an interesting combination of cowboy and warrior, and a protector to the core. The heroine was much harder for me to get a handle on, until I decided that Reid was based at Camp Pendleton. Suddenly, the answer was clear—she was a California girl named Haley Cooper, which also meant that she was going to be his opposite in every conceivable way.
The fourth book in the series, A COWBOY’S WHISPER, was inspired by my own experiences with wild mustangs and the people who adopt them. I was fortunate to meet one of the few private individuals in the United States who trains them for adoption and got to talk on several occasions with the people who gather them from the wild. The hero of this story was modeled after a real life horse whisperer and the heroine was inspired by a wild horse documentarian.
I have always believed that incorporating real elements gives my stories a more genuine feel.
As for the romance part, after thirty two years of marriage, I am a true believer in both fidelity and lasting love. At the same time, I know that it takes a lot of work! And while I’m no prude about sex, (after thirty two years, we still burn up the sheets), I want it to occur in the context of a loving, caring, relationship. These are the kinds of stories I believe in and the ones I most want to write about. My greatest hope is that my stories will make readers laugh and cry and fall in love right along with my characters.
About the Author:Victoria Vane is a multiple award-winning romance novelist and history junkie whose collective works of fiction range from wildly comedic romps to emotionally compelling erotic romance. Victoria also writes historical fiction as Emery Lee and is the founder of Goodreads Romantic Historical Fiction Lovers and the Romantic Historical Lovers book review blog.
Connect with Victoria Vane: Website | Facebook | @AuthorVictoriaV | Pinterest | Goodreads
~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~
Victoria is giving away a Hot Cowboy Nights Book Bundle (3 books) to one lucky winner. See the rafflecopter below for deets on how to enter:
This is why I *loved* writing a woman warrior! I got to live the fantasy of being Ursula – blazingly fast, able to defeat even a much bigger man. She’s smart, tough, strong and a hero to those around her. No, she’s not perfect. She’s also incredibly stubborn, prickly and doesn’t trust easily. Much like any number of male action heroes. Some readers have said she reminds them of Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones and I can totally see that.
Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook. Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera, which released beginning January 2, 2014. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and a fifth, the highly anticipated erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, will release starting in July.
I loved this series so much that I can’t resist sharing it. Therefore, I’m giving away a copy of any book in the Twelve Kingdoms series to one lucky winner. So that’s a choice of either The Mark of the Tala, The Tears of the Rose or The Talon of the Hawk.
About the Author:Suzanne Johnson writes urban fantasy and paranormal fiction from Auburn, Alabama, on top of a career in educational publishing that has thus far spanned five states and six universities—including both Alabama and Auburn, which makes her bilingual. She grew up in Winfield, Alabama, but was also a longtime resident of New Orleans, so she has a highly refined sense of the absurd and an ingrained love of SEC football, cheap Mardi Gras trinkets, and fried gator on a stick.Writing as Susannah Sandlin, she also is the author of the best-selling Penton Legacy paranormal romance series and The Collectors romantic thriller series. Elysian Fields, book three in the Sentinels of New Orleans series, won the 2014 Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence while her Sandlin-penned novel, Allegiance, is nominated for a 2015 Reviewer’s Choice Award from RT Book Reviews magazine.
About Brooke: Brooke is a stay-at-home mom, amateur seamstress, RPG enthusiast, and art hobbyist, in addition to all that book writing. As the jack-of-all-trades bard of the family, she adventures through life with her fiercely-bearded paladin of a husband, their daughter the sticky-fingered rogue, and their cowardly wizard of a dog, with only a sleep spell in his spellbook.
I parked my car outside the walls and walked through a huge stone archway into a setting that might have come out of Grimm’s fairy tales. Cobblestone streets, ancient houses huddled close together, and best of all, no cars. I checked into the Zum Riesen, an inn so old I had to duck to get through doorways. People were shorter in the fifteenth century.
The three medieval towns that officially make up the Romantische Strasse are Nördlingen, Dinkelsbuhl, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber. The one that stayed most in my mind after exploring this part of southern Germany was Rothenburg. Surrounded by high stone walls interspersed with vast arched gates, it is a reminder of how perilous life must have been six hundred years ago. Tall houses stand huddled close together. From a small park, I could see the surrounding hilly countryside for miles - an advantageous position for a fortress town that had to be ready at a moment’s notice to close its gates and defend itself from attack.
I returned to the Romantische Strasse many times over the ensuing years. I knew that someday I would have to bring a story to this setting. It was in Rothenberg that the plot of Romantic Road began to take shape. A heroine, I didn’t yet know her name, would take refuge here, pursued by someone who meant her harm. The title, I decided, would be double-entendre, reflecting both the old Roman road with the medieval towns on it, and the personal romantic road of my heroine’s life.
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