I didn’t expect the research for A Lady in Defiance to break my heart. If you have read my Defiance books, you know I’ve gone to great pains to bring the old west mining town of Defiance to life. Those “great pains” were hours of research. Admittedly, since I’m a history freak, I enjoyed most of it. Some of it, not so much. Here’s what I didn’t enjoy: learning just how awful the lives of prostitutes in these lawless towns were. While disease was the number one cause of death,

I did not want my precious readers to miss out on this very special promotion! Read on… Searching for your next favorite Christian historical romance author? Pick an author from this fabulous group, sign up for her insanely interesting newsletter, and you will receive a FREE book. Sign up for as many as you like. I’ve included one of my favorite stories as a giveaway. Grace be a Lady is just too incredible to be based on a real person! And the other authors in the group are:

She lifted the lid on her trunk and sighed at the sight of her corset. Why did she keep that thing around? She picked it up, contemplating tossing it in the stove and burning it. Have you ever had something so horrific happen in your life you just couldn’t believe for an instant God would bring anything good out of the experience? When I read the true story of Juliet Watts I was profoundly impacted by how she not only survived her ordeal but lived a full, fruitful life. She w

I know most often I focus on ladies in defiance–women who do amazing things or survive incredible situations. However, I was having a conversation about how truth is stranger and often more incredible than fiction. To prove my point, I shared the story of the man who is the inspiration behind my character of Dent Hernandez in Hang Your Heart on Christmas. I thought you might find it interesting as well. Enjoy! The legendary Elfego Baca is the inspiration for my hero. In 1884,

I would like to thank reader and friend Jeannette Shields for tipping me off to this intriguing lady in defiance–a real one! I get so tired of the feminists making us feel like victims. We’re only victims if we choose that road. I’ve profiled many, many women who simply refused to accept their societal limits and shot right past them. So, here ya go. Here is another one, a gal breaking the rules, exceeding the expectations of society, living life to the fullest. When Isabella

Jack Colton : My minimum price for taking a stranded lady to a telephone is 400 dollars. Joan Wilder : Will you take 375 in traveler’s checks? Jack Colton : American Express? Joan Wilder : Of course. Jack Colton : You’ve got a deal. You probably recognize those lines from one fabulous romantic comedy, Romancing the Stone. So what does that have to do with my blog post today? Barely anything at all. I just love that movie. NOW, HAVING SAID THAT, I would like to offer a FREE bo

Last week I gave you some thoughts on who and what inspired my character of Charles McIntyre. This week, I’d like to dish on his forever-love and my favorite heroine, Naomi Frink Miller McIntyre introduced in A Lady in Defiance. So from where did this fictional character spring? Originally, she was me. Literally, for the first couple of chapters, I was Naomi. While a touch embarrassing to admit, this is pretty common for authors writing their first book. But pretty quickly so

Quirt Evans I often get asked if any of my characters are based on an actual person. Sometimes, they are, sometimes they’re straight out of my imagination. I thought it would be fun to share with you today who I saw in my head when I was writing one of my favorite and most popular characters, Charles McIntyre. Charles McIntyre Who can resist a man running from love because he knows it will be his undoing? Think John Wayne’s classic character of Quirt Evans in Angel and the Ba

Lilian Heath. Such a demure name. She was anything but. In the 1880s, Lilian’s pa got her a job assisting Dr. Thomas Maghee, the physician Lilian Heath in the wide-open railroad town of Rawlins, WY. A petite little thing still in high school, Lilian was pretty fearless, but not stupid. She dressed like a man and carried a .32 when she went on calls late at night. She and the doc did everything from delivering babies to reconstruct a man’s face after his failed suicide attempt

Love conquers all. Eventually, right? One of my favorite stories of a determined man finally winning the heart of his beloved is the true tale of Ethel and John Love. Yes, Love. This is the story of a girl who held out against this love-struck sheepherder for five years…but John wore her down. I hereby republish this blog from 2012. Again, I am intrigued to read between the lines. A city girl leaves Denver, degree in hand, to accept a job as a teacher on a Wyoming ranch. Her

Apparently, author Amélie Wen Zhao hasn’t heard the famous Lincoln quote: You can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time. As Publisher’s Weekly put it, “…particularly that a slave auction scene in Blood Heir was insensitive to POC readers due to the history of slavery in the U.S.” Well, uh, I would suggest the mere historical FACT of slave auctions is pretty darn insensitive to POC (People of Color, if you’re not familiar with yet ANOTHER hip acronym). This is a shame. T

Abortion. Yeah. I’m going there. As a history freak, I’m pretty well acquainted with how hard life was for the women who settled and–might I add–fought–for this country. Sometimes they manned cannons or rode through hell and high water to deliver intelligence. They fought marauding Indians, beat off snakes with sticks, stared down cattle rustlers, stamped out brush fires with handmade quilts, heck, even crawled through blizzards. And a lot of the time our ancestors did these

I couldn’t resist sharing this tale with y’all. I was doing a little research and stumbled across the story of  Kate McHale Slaughterback. Born in Longmont, CO in 1894, Kate was a pistol. By all accounts, she was strong-willed, independent, arguably surly, and she did not like to be told what to do. By anybody. Which may account for several failed marriages. Perhaps headstrong to a fault, I can’t help but think this is the very flaw that saved her life and created her legend.

REVISED and EXPANDED and FREE just for my precious readers! One of the coolest things about being an indie author is how responsive I can be to y’all! You can literally tell me what to write! Last year I released a book entitled To Love and to Honor. A lot of you wrote or commented that you loved the story but wanted to know more about a secondary character, a Cheyenne Indian named Henry Long Feather. He trains horses in the story and is my hero’s confidante. Here’s the link.

22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.  1 Corinthians 9:22 Too often, the history of missionaries in America has been one of overriding a group’s identity to Christianize them. Capt. Richard Pratt said, referring to Native Americans in 1892, “Kill the Indian in him, save the man.” But I discovered a missionary who did it right and the Cheyenne loved her. Marie Gerber Petter came to

Christmas in the West in the 1800’s. For some reason, I get warm-and-fuzzy feelings thinking about the wide open spaces, deep snow, tall pines, warm hearths, homemade gifts, sleigh rides, fiddle music, shy cowboys asking for a dance at the Christmas ball–Whoops! Sorry, I drifted off there for a second! You can see why I write this stuff! I’d like to share with you three of my favorite things that put me in mind of a Western Christmas: a certain book, a certain song, and a cer

As a nation, not only have we become deeply divided, but we’re divided over stupid things. Maybe–here’s a crazy thought–if we were a little less sensitive we’d all get along a little better. Instead of scouring the universe for something that hurts our little feelings, maybe we could be more concerned with things that matter. So, here’s the reason for my rant. I recently read an article (Writing with Color Description Guide Part One) that said writers shouldn’t use words like

Can you hear me now? I mean literally. Have you ever thought about listening to an audiobook? Several of my books are available for listening and more are coming. Audiobooks are awesome because you can get lost in a story while you’re cooking, cleaning, crafting, or whatever. I love them for long road trips. They make the time fly. But there is a lot of work that goes into creating and producing an audiobook. One of the things that I have to do is listen to auditions of narra

This post first appeared at Cowboy Kisses, May 2017 by Heather Blanton A simple question on the surface, I thought a quick Google would give me the answer. Turns out, a few females claim the honor. So after a little more serious digging, I came up with Mary Hallock Foote and her first novel, Led-Horse Claim: A Romance of a Mining Camp published in 1883. In 1876, she married Arthur De Wint Foote, a young mining engineer whose career would take her deep into the wild-and-wooly

How did all this come about? It’s one crazy God-story! Actor Matt Williams I was on facebook private messaging with my assistant when I happened to see actor Matt Williams announce that he’d done well in an audition, got the part, and probably another one. I hopped over to just quickly congratulate him. He commented back that he’d like to get a part when one of my books was made into a movie. I said, “Well, it just so happens that I do have a script for A Lady in Defiance, bu