Murphy's Rainbow: Up Close and Personal

This collection of BLOGs is dedicated to Murphy's Rainbow which first appeared as a women's fiction novel published by Harper Collins back in 1993. It went on to win the National Reader's Choice Award for best Historical of 1993. Murphy's Rainbow has enjoyed world-wide distribution and has been translated into French, Chinese and Russian. It is currently in its second print edition and is also available as downloadable e-book or as a book on tape.

In the Beginning....

Murphy’s Rainbow was the third book I wrote, though it was the first one to be published. When I wrote my first book Shadows in the Wind, I sent it to a friend who said I needed another character to increase the romantic tension. I created a brother. Now everybody likes Levi Cantrell, but I adore him! He had no more than walked onto the page than he started to take over the book. Luckily my heroine kept her head, preferring the handsome Cole Cantrell to his older brother Levi. It was obvious Levi had to go, so he rode off into the sunset and into his own book, Willow Creek. About halfway through Willow Creek I realized why I love him so much. He’s my husband! I hadn’t recognized him because Bru is a dairy farmer/truck driver not a six-foot something cowboy, but the personality is 100% my sweetie.

When I finished Willow Creek, I still felt I hadn’t told the entire Cantrell story, somehow. I got to thinking about a housekeeper named Mrs. Murphy who was in Shadows in the Wind. It suddenly occurred to me that she wasn’t the housekeeper; she was Cole and Levi’s stepmother! With that in mind, I went back and wrote Murphy’s Rainbow, the story of Kate Murphy and their father Jonathan Cantrell.

When I set out to write Murphy's Rainbow, my first problem was how to get Kate to the middle of Wyoming. The obvious answer, to me anyway, was the Oregon Trail. So Kate and Bryan Murphy were on their way to start a new life in Oregon on what was probably the last wagon train to travel the Oregon Trail. The transcontinental railroad was completed later that year and made the wagon trains obsolete.

BLOG #2 Horse Creek

I have been asked many times if Horse Creek, Wyoming is a real place. There is a tiny town in the southern part of the state named Horse Creek, and there are at least a dozen creeks of varying sizes all over Wyoming with the name. My Horse Creek, however, is fictitious. It was created when I wrote Shadows in the Wind, my first book.

As most writers, I drew from my own life. You see, I grew up on one of those little Horse Creeks, on the ranch that my great grandparents homesteaded in 1887. The ranch I created for the Cantrells was set on that same land with an incredible view of the Big Horn Mountains and a pretty little creek running down through it. That’s where the similarity ended.

The Cantrell ranch was probably three times the size of the Lampman ranch. We raised cattle and sheep but the Cantrells in that first book were into horses. I couldn’t very well have a creek called Horse Creek running down through a horse ranch; it’s just too obvious. Nor could I use the name of the real town. Shell wasn’t even there yet. So I combined the towns of Shell and Greybull, put a railroad through it and named it Horse Creek.

Since the town of Horse Creek was established in Shadows in the Wind, all I had to do was back it up sixteen years and think what it would have been like in 1869.

BLOG #3 Saloons

This is one of those places where I tapped into my experience to help me get the setting "right". I needed a saloon and that saloon needed a name. When I was growing up my hometown had four bars, The Silver Spur, The Branding Iron, The Smokehouse and The Hanging Tree. While all are terribly western sounding and could easily fit into an old West setting, I always thought the Silver Spur had the classiest name. I tweaked it a little so it wasn’t TOO obvious, and the Golden Spur was born.

To describe the interior of the Golden Spur, I used a saloon at South Pass City in Wyoming. South Pass City is a National Historic site and well worth the side trip if you are on your way to Yellowstone or Jackson. They have restored many of the old buildings and made it a living history museum. My saloon is one of those.

The most noticeable item, at least to Kate, was the picture over the bar. The real one hangs over an identical bar in South Pass City and is exactly as I describe it except for one detail that Kate wouldn’t have noticed. The style in the 1800’s was for much heftier women than are in fashion now. The two “ladies” in the paining are not only naked, they are...well…downright fat!

When I took my 4th graders there on a field trip this spring, they noticed the picture right away, of course, and were thoroughly grossed out! In retrospect their reactions wasn’t that much different than Kate’s.

BLOG# 4 The Heroine and Supporting Cast

This chapter is all about characterization. It is where I began to build all my characters, especially Kate. I needed to show a contrast between the practical down-to-earth Kate the world saw and the beautiful sexy woman who lurked within.

Most heroines are lovely, lithe creatures that retain their beauty through nasty weather, run-ins with bad guys and every hardship fate throws their way; even sequels can’t fade their beauty. I decided to change that.

Of all my heroines, I think Kate might be my favorite simply because she is the most like me, or rather what I wish I were. Kate describes herself as plain, and I suppose she is, though I think she just doesn’t bother to primp and fuss with her appearance. I figured there needed to be something that made her attractive to the opposite sex. That’s why I gave her an hourglass figure. Though they have fallen out of favor now, back in the 1800’s an hourglass figure was what every girl wanted. Even up into the 1960’s and early 1970’s it was considered the pinnacle of female beauty. (Think Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield, and Elizabeth Taylor). I loved the way Kate looked in that dress almost as much as I loved her horrified reaction to it. I had as much fun with Kate’s makeover as Rosie and Frenchie.

I always have a lot of fun with my secondary characters. Some only have small parts and never amount to much, while others grow into characters nearly as complex as the hero and heroine. Many appear in more than one story ,and some have even warrented their own book.

When I wrote about Kate’s first job, I didn’t give much thought to her coworkers. Yet from the first, Rosie and Frenchie became two distinct personalities. I found them both quite useful in later scenes so don’t be surprised when they keep popping up.

As is the case with many characters in this book, Rosie first appeared in SHADOWS IN THE WIND. She is mentioned in passing as a friend of Kate's. To be honest with you, I don't recall if she made the final cut in all the rewriting, so I'm not sure she exists in the final version. Still, I already knew her background and fleshing her out was easy and kind of fun.

Rosie is open-hearted, and kind to strangers in need, though she also possess a liberal dose of independance and sheer gutsiness. She's part philosopher, part cinic, and part mother hen. In retrospect, I think she bears more than a passing resemblance to Miss Kitty on the TV classic, Gunsmoke. This was the first time I used Miss Kitty as the basis of a character but not the last. Angel in MEADOWLARK started out much the same, though she soon took on her own distinctly different personality. Apparently, there is something about the character of Miss Kitty that strikes a chord in me somewhere.

I'm not sure why I named my second saloon girl Frenchie. It probably had something to do with the fact that it was a popular name among the women in her profession. Though I’m especially fond of my Frenchie’s accent, the name usually had to do with certain...specialties the woman was willing to perform for her customers. Since this is not an Erotica, I didn't delve into it, but in the back of my mind I knew that Frenchie was a bit kinky for her day and age. At one point I even tried to change her name, but Frenchie would have none of it. So I gave her a fake French accent and wondered how many of my readers would see the name and know the truth.

Then there are the characters that walk onto the page fully fleshed out. Charlie Hobbs was one of those; in fact he was the first. Like Rosie,he was born in SHADOWS IN THE WIND so I actually knew him pretty well by this book. When he first appeared in SHADOWS IN THE WIND as a slightly-past-middle-aged cowhand, he immediately took on a life of his own. I knew the way he walked, the way he talked, even the stories he told.

Since then, I’ve learned that when this happens I need to look around and see who I’m writing about because sure as shootin’ it’s someone I know. In this case, it was my grandfather.

Grandpa was born the year after Wyoming became a state (1891) and lived his whole life on the ranch his father homesteaded. He liked the cattle and sheep, but he loved the horses. He broke his last one when he was 77 using the same methods Charlie does in SHADOWS IN THE WIND. When I was little, shows like Bonanza and Gun Smoke were popular on TV. I remember telling my dad I couldn’t wait until I grew up so I could go out West and meet a real cowboy. My dad just laughed and said, “Go take a look at your grandfather. Cowboys don’t get any more real than that!”

Grandpa wasn’t one to tell stories, though. That part of Charlie’s character is my father-in-law. Pete was always telling tall tales and joking around. When Charlie tells a story it’s probably one I got from Pete. Some were true, others so ridiculous that you couldn’t help but laugh. I’ll be sharing those stories with you as we come to them in future issues.

Then there is Jonathan Cantrell. What an entrance! Leave it Jonathan to be…. but I’m getting ahead of myself. I really can’t say more without ruining the next chapter so I’ll stop here. Until next time…

BLOG #5 A Hero to Fall For

In the last BLOG we looked at Kate Murphy. Now it’s Jonathan Cantrell’s turn. Ah yes, Jonathan. He’s one of my favorite characters, but then all my heroes are. I was asked once if I fall in love with my heroes. Of course I do. To date I have had nine heroes, and I’ve fallen in love with each and every one of them. I have to; if I don’t you won’t either. Jonathan was especially fun. Here’s this stunning, intelligent man with a great sense of humor and winning personality all wrapped up in a body to die for, in short everything any woman would love in a man. And then I gave him dimples.

Years ago, a good friend of mine introduced me a man she had described as breath- taking. When we finally met, I was surprised. He was kind of cute in a boy-next door sort of way, but certainly nothing to write home about. Then he smiled and a dimple appeared in either cheek. Oh my! Breath-taking didn’t even begin to describe it. I’d wanted to use those dimples as long as I’d been creating characters, but they never really worked on anyone else. For Jonathan they were perfect!

I find the more I write the more I sharpen my writing skills. Jonathan Cantrell taught me something odd about characterization. It is a character’s faults that make them likable, not their positive traits or talents. Jonathan was too good to be true so I gave him a wicked sense of humor, which gets him trouble with Kate right off the bat. I also made him a touch arrogant; as handsome as he is he’d almost have to be. The rest of his faults… well you’ll see them as the story progresses, and I predict each one will make him seem a bit more human.

Most romances have handsome heroes and beautiful heroines. As you saw with Kate in the last Blog, I decided to play around with that a little. Every woman who sees Jonathan Cantrell is instantly smitten. Everyone, that is except Kate. She finds his good looks intimidating which is exactly how meeting a man who looked like Jonathan would affect me. Since she doesn’t fall instantly at Jonathan’s feet, she piques his interest. If you’ll notice, the fascination in their initial meeting is mostly Jonathan’s. Kate finds him attractive, of course, but he sets her inner warning bells clanging loudly. So we have a drop dead gorgeous hero that is attracted to a plain-Jane heroine. Now who’s fantasy do you suppose that is?

What about a story with a beautiful heroine and an average-looking hero? Actually that was my next book, MEADOWLARK. The hero is a gentle giant, kind of like a buffed-out Hoss Cartwright and the other love interest is Fabio. I loved the idea of Hoss going up against Fabio and Hoss getting the girl in the end. But I digress, back to MURPHY’S RAINBOW.

Time for a bit of science/human anatomy. A blush is caused an infusion of blood under the skin. Nothing earthshaking there. However, did you know that a blush starts on the stomach and travels upward? (Or so they say. I’ve never really checked- being too embarrassed at the time to look). That’s why Kate reacts to Jonathan’s teasing the way she does and puts on the “show” he finds so fascinating. It was just one of those little tidbits I couldn’t resist using. Writing is such fun!

BLOG # 6 The Triple C Bar

First impressions are important. It’s human nature to judge things by the way they look the first time you see them. So I gave some thought to the Cantrell homestead. I wanted to portray a dream in process.

The house was easy. It was a building I had seen every day of my youth, a left over remnant of the 19th century, and the house where my grandfather was born in 1891. It was a small three-room log cabin with a sod roof. The cabin was built of logs because pine was plentiful in the nearby Big Horn Mountains. Roofing, however, was not. Ever resourceful, my great-grandparents used the next best thing, sod. As a roofing material is was superior to most at the time. With a layer of tarpaper underneath, it was waterproof, wind proof, fire proof, and had a very high insulation factor.

The most impressive part of the building was the plants that grew there. The cactus was my favorite. The prickly pear is not an especially pretty plant and has a zillion nasty spines, which make it even less appealing. But on wet years it blooms and is one of the prettiest wild flowers around. The petals are yellow, and vary from a daffodil yellow almost salmon in hue. Those on the roof were brighter than most and made a very pretty display. The cactus wasn’t the only surprise though. I remember my father pointing out the grass that grew there as well. It was the native grass that had been growing on the prairie when the house was built and has long since disappeared from the surrounding landscape. As far as I know that roof is the only place it still grows.

Though the building was once the family home, in my time we called it the saddle shop because that’s what we stored there. It always had three or four saddles, saddle blankets, bridles, old harnesses, kegs of nails and horseshoes along with the equipment my grandfather used when it was time to shoe the horses. Now that I think about it, I suppose that’s why the saddles and tack wound up in Kate’s kitchen.

The rest of the ranch is imaginary though the large “shed” that figures prominently in the next two issues is real and was still in use until we left the ranch in 1969. The windows in the house are mentioned in MEADOWLARK though the characters take little notice. I’m not really sure why I made them so large, but I suspect it’s just one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time.

BLOG #7 Levi and Cole

Most people who know me and read MURPHY'S RAINBOW think the Cantrell boys are my oldest two sons. In some ways that’s true, particularly the way they fight all the time. Actually, they are a combination of my sons, my brothers, and a hundred boys between the ages of 9 and 12 that I have known in my 29 years of teaching.

Since Cole and Levi were both created as adult characters in other books, going back and recreating them as children was fun. Physically, I already knew what they looked like as adults and used them to create Jonathan. You probably noticed that the boys are named Levi and Bernie rather than Levi and Cole. At the time I wrote this book, Cole was not a popular name and I just couldn’t imagine a child named Cole.. It was one problem I thought I had to solve. Now, I can’t imagine why I thought it was so important. Since I wrote MURPHY’S RAINBOW I’ve had at least three Cole’s in my class and twice as many Levi’s.

Actually, one of the coolest things that ever happened to me as a writer came about because of the names. Several years ago, a young woman came to one of my book signings with a small child. We chatted for a moment or two while I signed her book. Then she lifted up her baby, gave me a great big smile and said, “I’d like you to meet Levi. He’s named after Levi Cantrell.”

I was flabbergasted! She said she had been reading the Cheyenne Trilogy during her pregnancy and was thoroughly enjoying it. When the doctor told her there was a possibility of twins, she had decided then and there to name them Levi and Cole. Though it turned out not to be twins she decided to keep the name Levi anyway.
You may be aware that in my other life I am a fourth grade teacher. I’m not exactly sure how old “Levi” is right now, but I’m thinking he’s got to be getting close to 4th grade. I have no idea if his family even still lives here, but every year when I get my student list, I scan it looking for Levi. What a kick it would be to get to know him on a personal level.

POST SCRIPT- Reports cards were due the week I posted this. Our district had just installed a new computerized system and it had a few bugs. When they printed out my report cards I had an extra student. Though the computer thought he was in my class, I had never seen him. Since I teach in a 4th-5th building, there are six other 4th grade teachers. So I started making the rounds to see where the mysterious student really did belong. I found him two doors away in my friend Shannon's class. As I handed her the report card the name suddenly registered in my mind. LEVI!

As I said there have been any number of Levi's come through the system, but for some reason I decided to check this one out, probably because I had just posted this story to the web.

"Where is he?" I asked my friend. She pointed out a tall, dark-haired boy. I walked over and introduced myself. “I’m Mrs. Brubaker, but I write books as Carolyn Lampman.”

He started to grin. “My mom reads your books.”

I grinned back. "And you were named after one of my characters weren't you?" I asked.

He nodded and I told him the story of the book signing where I had met him and we'd had our picture taken together. I’m pretty sure I was more excited about the meeting than he was. Still, it was great fun to see him as a boy about the same age as a Levi Cantrell. From what Shannon says he's more like Cole than Levi or even Cole's son Josh from SHADOWS IN THE WIND. He definitely looks more like Cole or Josh.

So I finally got to meet Levi. If the computer hadn’t goofed up, I’d have missed him completely. I can't help but wonder about the coincidence of that. It was the only student out of almost 400 that wound up in the wrong class. Why him and why in my class? You have to wonder.

Issue #8 Mini Marauder

Personally, I like prairie dogs. They’re kind of cute little critters and their natural curiosity means if there are any around, you’ll see them. They like to sit at the top of their burrows watching everybody and everything. But the truth is prairie dogs do not mix well with ranching. For one thing their holes are a real hazard to animals like cows and horses who have a tendency to step in them and break legs. They also have a bad habit of eating the same vegetation as the ranch stock. Generally when homesteaders moved in, the prairie dogs moved out.

When my great grandparents first settled on the Horse Creek ranch there was a prairie dog town that covered at least 5 acres. By the time I was born nearly seventy years later they were all gone. My father remembered trapping them as a kid, and so did my grandfather, but that wasn’t what did them in. About ten years before I was born some sort of a plague swept through the county and all the prairie dogs disappeared.. I regret I never got to see the prairie dog town in its glory. Perhaps that’s why I decided to include prairie dogs when I created the Cantrell ranch and to have a prairie dog create havoc at some point.

While I was writing Murphy’s Rainbow, one of my critique partners went to visit friends in another part of the state. She returned bubbling over with amusement. It seemed that the two boys of the family had taken to branding prairie dogs with little branding irons they fashioned out of bailing wire. When she told me the story it was like kismet and the whole scene came together in my mind.

Frankly, I love the prairie dog scene and the resulting chaos. Until next time….

Blog #9 When the Characters Take Over

One of my favorite things to write is dialogue. This probably doesn’t come as a great surprise since my characters seem to spend most of their time talking. I’ve been told that it is what I do best and have been asked to share my secret. The truth is, I don’t have a secret. All I do is eavesdrop on what my characters are saying in my head and write down what they say

I can hear you thinking “All right, Lampman’s lost it. She’s hearing voices in her head now! Actually I don’t quite hear them. I just imagine conversations between characters and put it down on paper. Like real conversations, my characters never say quite what I was expecting them to. Jonathan’s comment about his neck and Kate’s reply were a complete surprise to me, but I loved the interaction between the two of them.

Up until this scene I was in charge. I was the one that set up the action, manipulated the circumstances and told my characters what to do. From here on out Kate and Jonathan took over the story and told me what to write. You will notice they are becoming more and more complex, especially Jonathan. I will take responsibility for the story up to this point. However, from here on in, you can blame most of it on Kate and Jonathan, and the rest on the boys.

Blog # 10 Names

This chapter is all about names. I find myself compelled to make a confession here. Abigail Kline exists only to fulfill my inner need for revenge. She is modeled after a real person who shall remain nameless, but has been my nemesis for years.. Every time I write about Abigail and her nasty ways, I get a surge of satisfaction. It’s sort of like thumbing my nose at the real person without her knowing. That’s one of the great perks of writing, you can get back at your enemies. She was NOT named after my first editor, by the way. That Abigail and I got along very well. In fact the person Abigail Kline is modeled after isn’t named Abigail, nor would anyone recognize her from the description.

Then there’s Bernie’s name change. This piece of the story comes from my own family. As I said before, I really don’t know why I thought Cole’s name would be such a problem. In retrospect it seems silly to have even worried about it. Still, I felt compelled to come up with a more childlike name for the youngest Cantrell. I don’t recall how I came up with the name Colburn, but as soon as I did, I knew it would work well for a surname as well. Of course the problem with being given a family name is that the recipient rarely appreciates it.

My middle brother was named after a favorite uncle. It is a family name that everyone likes and respects…everyone, that is, except my brother Francis. He lived with it, defended it even, the whole time he was growing up. Then he went to college and ran into a girl named Frances. The day a teacher mixed up their tests, my brother became Frank.

I’ll admit it was hard for me to change. I mean, I’d called him Francis for nineteen years! He convinced us to use his new name very quickly, though. He simply stopped answering to “Francis”. If you wanted to talk to him, you called him Frank. Though I slipped every now and then at the beginning, within a year he was Frank and so he remains today.

What about the uncle he was named after? Well, Uncle Francis said he never could understand what my mother was thinking when she saddled one of her children with that name anyway. He went by Smitty.

BLOG #11 Bathing

Americans are obsessed with cleanliness. A daily bath or shower is the norm and catering to our personal hygiene is a multi-billion dollar business. It is also a fairly recent development. In fact, in the not too distant past, bathing too often was considered a health hazard by some.

Fifty years ago a single bathroom for five or six people was considered adequate. Now we feel cramped if we have to share with more than one. A hundred years ago the concept of the “bathroom” as we know it didn’t even exist in rural America. The toilet was a privy outside, preferably downwind from the house.

Bathing itself was usually done in the washtub in front of the fire. The first person in the tub got the clean water; the second used his, and so it went until the last person had bathed. Since families were large and bath days few and far between, one can only imagine what the water must have looked like at the end. The youngest was often the last to bathe, and the water probably murky at best, hence the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

The hipbath made things somewhat different at the Cantrell household. First of all, it was a luxury way out in the West. Unlike the washtub it was made to accommodate the human body. It was shaped somewhat like a washtub with a high back and a cutout for the knees in front. The bather sat in the hip-bath with their knees and feet dangling over the side and their back leaning up against the back. Not what we would consider comfortable, perhaps, but a vast improvement over the washtub that put your knees up under your chin.

I did see another version of a bathing tub from the 19th century at the Ivinson mansion in Laramie Wyoming. It was built long and narrow to accommodate the bather’s feet and legs. It was so narrow at the upper end that I can’t imagine how anyone fit in it. People were smaller in the eighteen hundreds of course, with the average man about the same height as the average woman is now, (somewhere around 5’6”) but still…

Ok, I admit I took poetic license having the boys bathing before their father. It was an obvious plot contrivance, for which I’m not even going to apologize. I try very hard to maintain historical accuracy, but sometimes it just isn’t possible. The sexual tension produced by that particular scene was the whole point of the chapter. Jonathan’s teasing simply wouldn’t have worked with his sons as an audience. Instead of blushing and running to her bedroom, Kate would have boxed his ears!

Blog #12 Clay and Gallahad

Clay Langton exits for the sole purpose of owning a beautiful white stallion. See, my husband’s grandfather…. Well never mind that for now. You’ll find out why the horse is important somewhat later in the book. I don’t recall where I got the name Clay, but I do know where Langton came from. In the book Shadows in the Wind, Sally Langton is the vivacious widow of a close neighbor of the Cantrells and Cole’s love interest before the heroine, Stephanie, burst upon the scene. She was beautiful, wealthy, and Kate’s bitter enemy.

Only one thing could cause such deep dislike between two women who were quite obviously from different generations…a man The obvious candidate was Sally’s dead husband. All I knew about his was that he was significantly older than Sally, had built a fortune in the West and had some rather spectacular heirloom jewelry that had been in his family for many generations. After a particularly strenuous bout of love-making the adult Cole speculated whether the elderly Mr. Langton had died of exhaustion. So I needed the kind of man who had a family history of wealth and sophistication but would come to the West in the early days and still be attractive to a much younger woman. I knew almost immediately he was a gentleman raised in the wealthy aristocracy of the South before the War. The Civil War had destroyed his family and his home so he came west looking for a fresh start.

Though I invented him to facilitate a story from my husband’s family history, he became a most useful character. From the moment Clay Langton and his horse Gallahad trotted into Kate’s life there was a spark of interest between the two. I have no idea why his hair was prematurely gray, but I suspect it was because I have always loved the color of my mother-in-law’s hair. Though I met her in her early fifties, her hair was already a gorgeous silver. For some reason, the image of such hair on a handsome middle-aged man was quite appealing.

As the relationship between Kate and Clay developed, his character became more and more complex and I found myself really liking the guy. I was almost sorry to know that he was eventually going to marry the vindictive Sally Langton of Shadows in the Wind. I guess that’s why when I rewrote Shadows, I had Kate grudgingly admit that Sally did make Clay happy. I even set it up in this book. But that comes later, about the same time that the white horse becomes important…

BLOG # 13 Jonathan's Bedroom

This chapter further develops Jonathan’s character and there are a big surprises both for Kate and for me. I had no idea that he considered himself an artist, for instance, or what he did before he became a rancher. The picture didn’t surprise me, but where Kate found it did.

The secretary in his bedroom was a bit of a surprise too, though I know exactly where it came from. It sits in my house and once belonged to my mother who inherited it from her Aunt Alice who in turn inherited it from her Aunt Ethel. A secretary, for those of you who are not familiar with the term, is a drop-front desk with a built-in bookcase on top.

The bookcase on mine has glass doors and a fancy brass lock. It isn’t filled with books though, and I’ve never seen it when it was. My mother and I both put the family crystal behind the glass doors. Aunt Alice probably filled it with books but I don’t remember ever seeing it. I was pretty young when she sold her house and moved to a retirement community; too young to notice boring things like desks and bookcases.

There are two drawers below the drop front with brass handles. As I recall, I discovered they were brass about the time I wrote this scene. I tend to get distracted by odd things when I’m writing, particularly when I get stuck. This was one of those times. One day when I was trying to decide what came next in the story, I happen glance at the at the drawer handles of the secretary. It occurred to me that they might not really brown as I had always thought. I hunted down some brass/copper cleaner to test out my theory. Viola, they were a gorgeous gold color underneath years of tarnish. It took a screwdriver to remove them and lots of elbow grease to get those handles back to the original beauty. Then I went after the locks on the desk front and the bookcase. I wasn’t quite as successful with them, but in the end I was really proud of the change I had wrought. By the time I had finished, I knew what happened next in my story and went back to my computer.

I guess I was preoccupied with the secretary when I was writing this scene and that’s probably why it wound up in the book. You’ll notice I didn’t describe it exactly in the story. The one I have is a reproduction dating back to the 1920’s, but there were several original styles from various time periods. As with lots of little plot twists in this story, we’ll come back to the secretary later on, and you’ll find out its history.

Writing this made me glance over my shoulder at the secretary which is now right outside my office door. It’s been so long since I wrote this scene that the handles are starting to turn brown again. Funny how I never noticed it until just now.

Anyway, I hope this scene piqued your curiosity a bit and made Jonathan seem a little more real even if it added to his mystery. I loved the way he kept evolving as I wrote. Now, if you excuse me, I need to go find a screwdriver and some brass cleaner.

BLOG #14 Historical Trivia

This chapter was something of an experiment for me. A friend of mine challenged me to see just how much incidental historical information could I actually stick into a scene without destroying it. I’m not even sure why I took the challenge though I do remember it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I love the research and all of the interesting facts I dig up in the process. Those facts skillfully woven into the story are one of the things that make historical fiction popular. Never underestimate an avid Historical Romance Reader in a game of historical trivia. They have almost as much fun learning tidbits of history a book as the author does putting them in! The tough part is figuring out what to use and what to stick back into the folder and save for next time.

Even so, one of the quickest ways I know to lose a reader is to put in too much historical information. Though I might find it all fascination, chances are good my readers won’t be nearly as enthralled. It’s kind of like cooking with spices. Too little and it is dull and uninteresting. Too much and it completely covers what the main focus was in the first place. But with just the right amount it becomes a treat to savor and enjoy. I usually wind up putting in about a fourth of what I would like. I usually start with a trip to Grun’s Timetables of History (a resource book that gives snippets of what was going on in any particular year.) It turned that Kate lived in a pretty amazing time and there were some very exciting things going on. I don’t know recall how I hit upon the idea of the old newspapers, but it was truly an inspiration. Pay attention as Jonathan shares bits and pieces of his papers, and you will find yourself absorbing some history. It could come in handy some day. Who knows, you might even wind up on a game show.

BLOG #15 Brothers

This is one of those times when I was very glad I had a copy editor. When I got back the copyedits she pointed out a discrepancy that might have really jolted my readers. At the beginning Partick’s eyes were a deep velvety brown, but by the end they had mysteriously changed to blue. Even his build seemed different. He went from short and stocky to thin and wiry.

I was shocked. Consistency is something I pride myself on. How could I have goofed so badly? Heck I’d even used my brother as a model. Then it hit me. That’s exactly what went wrong.

When I first described Patrick I saw him as my older brother, Louie, hence stocky broad-shouldered build and velvety brown eyes. By the end of the book, Patrick had changed to my middle brother, Frank, who has a wiry build and blue eyes. I’m not exactly sure why it happened, but I’m guessing it had to do with the kind of person Patrick turned out to be.

Frank has always been something of a rebel, and of my three brothers, the one most likely to spit in the eye of a man like Bullwhip Johnson. Louie would probably buy him a beer and talk his way out of it. He’s like my father that way.

Actually, Patrick is sort of a combination of all three of my brothers. My third brother, Eric, was in college studying business when I wrote Murphy’s Rainbow. That piece of Patrick’s personality you won’t get until later in the book. Of course, none of my brothers recognized themselves and will probably be rather surprised to find out that Patrick was modeled after them. But then I was kind of surprised to discover how much of Kate Murphy’s personality comes from my own. Maybe that’s why her brother is a combination of all three of mine!

BLOG #16 Levi and Jughead

I’ve never actually known any mules personally. We never had any on the ranch and, come to think of it, neither did any of our neighbors. We all took two to three hundred pounds of salt up the mountain several times during the summer for the cattle, but we packed it on horses not mules.

I’m really not sure why Jughead is so cantankerous or why he has it in for Levi. I did know that there had been a mule in Levi’s youth, and that they hadn’t gotten along very well. He’d mentioned it in Willow Creek.

Foreshadowing, or giving clues to what is going to happen later in the story, is much easier when you know what the end result will be. All I had to do was build toward that offhand remark Levi would make two books later. It turned out to be surprisingly easy. No one has ever complained about Jughead so I guess he’s all right.

Though Levi and Jughead are the main focus of this issue, the relationship between Kate and Jonathan begins to deepen here. It is very difficult to build sexual tension between the main characters without being too heavy-handed. It is a delicate balance that is easily upset. Though some writers use a love(or hate)-at-first-sight scenario, I like to build mine gradually.

As a reader you just know that the spark that flashes between them in this issue will soon become a sizzle. When I wrote it I thought it was a great bit of sexual tension. From the vantage point of six books later, and zillions of revisions, it seems a tad-heavy handed, and I can think of several ways of improving it. Ah well live and learn.

Blog #17 You Kill it You Eat It

The father of a good friend of mine lost his mother at an early age. As a result, he and his three brothers were raised by housekeeper. From what I gather, she was something of a character. Her philosophy was “waste not want not”. Early on she told the boys they had to eat whatever they shot. As the boys grew, they became expert marksmen and a steady stream of odd animals made it into the stew pot, though as I recall the story a skunk was the last straw.

The story has always tickled me, and I knew it was just the sort of thing Levi and Cole would do. A great idea for a scene popped into my head, and I started planning for it. This seemed to perfect place to do a little foreshadowing. I tried to write it so that the reader is hardly aware of Kate promising to cook anything they brought in. It’s one of those tid-bits of information that seems irrelevant at the time but holds great significance later in the book. I suppose I’ve got you wondering now. Don’t worry, your curiosity will soon be satisfied. So, until next time…

Blog #18 Charlie's Ploy

I do love Charlie! To date, he’s been one of my most useful characters. I can’t really recall where this thread came from which is odd since it’s such an important one. I think maybe it was just one of those things that happened. Like Kate, I thought it was Jonathan who had come to interrupt the picnic until Charlie showed up. I had planned some kind of cute little by play to get Kate away from Clay, and had even toyed with the idea of having it blow up in Jonathan’s face. I had no clue what Charlie was up to.

So I just let it go to see where it would lead me. These are some of the most exciting times for writers, and some of the most frustrating. When the story takes off on its own, and you’re not sure where it’s going you know you’re in the “zone”. You have built your characters so well that they take on a life of his or her own. There’s an almost magical feel to it as the words flow from your head and you really aren’t sure what’s coming. It’s sort of like exploring a new forest path; you have no idea what wonderful thing is just around the corner.

It can be horribly frustrating too. For one thing it can take off on a tangent that will eventually short circuit your story. I might be able to carry on for awhile but the story usually comes to a grinding halt and I can’t force the words to come. When that happens I back up to where it was flowing and take a hard look at what changed.

I used this scene to set the stage for Kate later telling Jonathan about the baby but that’s all. I was just as curious nervous about what was in that cabin as Kate was. I had to wait until she opened the door to find out what was going on…And so will you. Until next time…

BLOG #19 Moonflower

Character names are very important in any novel. The way a name looks in print affects the vision your reader has of the character. It’s one of the reasons I do a thorough character chart before I begin writing. Suddenly I had a character I hadn’t been expecting and needed a name for her. I wanted something that sounded pretty and delicate. It also had sound Native American.

I live on an Indian reservation and hear Indian names all the time. Many of my Native American students have surnames that reflect the name of an ancestor. Spoonhunter, Wallowing Bull, Whiteplume, After Buffalo, and Standing Elk are all common names around here. Female names are things like Cloud Woman, Blue Sky Woman, or Little Otter. The names are descriptions of things they were familiar with, things they saw everyday.

There are no moon flowers in Wyoming. I don’t even know if they exist anywhere in the world. An Indian woman named Moonflower? I doubt it. And yet it fit my character perfectly. You can’t help but picture a delicate beauty. Though it isn’t a “real” Native American name, it sounds like it is and reader will never forget Moonflower is Native American.

I had no idea where Moonflower came from or what kind of importance she might have in the story. As it turned out she came in very handy on more than one occasion. Her story, which I promise will be revealed before the end of the serial, is an interesting one that you will watch unfold the same way I did, one tiny piece at a time.

Blog #20 First Kiss

This scene has two purposes. First, to build sexual tension, a necessary part of any successful romance. I always like the first kiss to come as something of a surprise to both the hero and heroine. I don’t really know why, I’m not sure such a thing even truly exists. I know I never got a surprise kiss that took my breath away. I have had a few breath-stealing kisses and a couple that were knee weakening, but I don’t recall any of them being a surprise. Be that as it may, there is something terribly romantic about the chemistry between two people being so strong that it pulls them together and overwhelms their senses. I get all warm and mushy every time it happens. I suppose it’s one of the reasons I write romance.

Kate and Jonathan’s kiss, though, was something of a surprise. I knew it was going to happen but I didn’t know the catalyst was going to be a life-and-death-situation. Jughead came through for me though and that brings me to the second reason for this scene. Jughead.

Jughead is a cantankerous, unpredictable menace, and this scene cements that permanently into your mind. Remember I told you there was one thread in particular that I regretted letting the powers that be edit out? Well, this incident foreshadows a scene later on that is the pivotal part of that thread. Curious? I hope so. Until next time…

BLOG #21 Soap for Dinner

I remember my grandmother and her sister making soap once when I was tiny. About all I recall is them dumping ashes and fat into a huge kettle and cooking it. I know I asked for a taste which they found quite amusing. The only other memory I have of the incident was the smell. It was almost as bad as when they decided to make homemade horseradish sauce. That one made my eyes burn!

I love the story of the Indians! As with many of the most unbelievable tales in my writing, this one is true. I found it in a book of stories about the Old West. I’m not positive, but I think it was by Dee Brown, an excellent historian who writes wonderful books about all kinds of things in the West. You may well have seen him on television as he is frequently used as an expert on the History channel. I enjoy reading his material. It’s always entertaining, informative and full of stories like this one.

The story of the Indians went pretty much the way I told it in Murphy’s Rainbow only I think the Indians were Pawnee and the woman was too hysterical to offer them bread. This tale from the past proves once again, truth is stranger than fiction!.

Blog #22 Suffrage

Wyoming is known as the Equality State because it was the first state to give women the right to vote. What many don’t realize is that women were given that right twenty years before Wyoming became a state. The first Territorial Legislature convened in the fall of 1870. They were taxed with the job of creating a government for the newly formed Wyoming Territory. In my research I found all kinds of interesting little tid-bits, like the fact that the territory was originally part of Nebraska Territory and deciding who was going to be in charge was a hot topic for at least two American presidents.

That’s one of the tough parts about writing historical fiction. There are so many wonderful pieces of information that you want to use them all. You can’t. If you give in to the temptation, it will sound like a history book, your story will lose momentum and you will almost certainly lose readers. Everything in this story about the territorial legislature from the governor right up to how the woman’s suffrage bill got pushed through is true. I tried to weave it in using dialog. The folks around at the time almost certainly had discussions about what was going on.

One piece I was only able to allude to deserves more attention here. There is a story that Esther Morris of South Pass City had a tea party one afternoon and invited all the prospective legislatures. At the party, so the tale goes, she lobbied long and hard for giving women the right to vote and to own property. There is some speculation that the story is untrue, however William Bright of South Pass City did, indeed, introduce the bill to the legislature.

As for Esther Morris. That’s the best of all. When the law was eventually passed, the justice of the peace from South Pass City was incensed. He was so angry, in fact, that he said the day a woman could do his job, he’d hand it right over to her without a squawk. Esther Morris stepped forward and got the job, becoming the first female justice of the peace in the country perhaps even the world. She held the post for 18 months and meted out justice with intelligence and fairness.

BLOG #23 Until Death Do Us Part

This issue was supposed to be about Kate, but wound up revealing more about Jonathan. Murphy’s Rainbow is certainly not the first romance to involve previously married characters. What is somewhat unusual though, in that both of those pervious marriages were love matches. Usually at least one of the main characters has had a bad experience and it is up the other to “heal” the wound. For Kate and Jonathan that is not the case.

I hadn’t really thought about it when I started the story, but somehow both Brian Murphy and Mary Cantrell turned out to be sympathetic characters. It made the plotting somewhat difficult in that I couldn’t depend on tried and true formulas. The problem that kept Kate and Jonathan apart was not that one had been burned by love. On the contrary, the problem was both were still in love with their dead spouse and had no desire to let go! It turned out to be a far more difficult problem to overcome in the long run.

Back to Jonathan. This scene shows a side of his personality we have never before suspected. He drinks to forget. Luckily he is a rather lovable drunk, and his tongue tends to loosen a bit. It is the first time he admits out loud that he finds Kate attractive, and the first time that he mentions the horrible secret that lurks in his past. It will be awhile before Kate (and the reader) truly understands what Jonathan is alluding to. Even I didn’t know it all at this point, though I did know about Mary. It’s one of those things that kind of developed with the story. Writing is such fun!

BLOG #24 Snakes

What can I say? I LOVE this chapter. It’s one of my favorite scenes in this book. I told you earlier that I got the original idea from a story one of my friend’s father had told me. All I had to do was come up with something really obnoxious for them to bring in.

The rest of the scene came from trick my husband played on me. Several years ago my husband got a job about 400 miles away from home, near a large metropolitan area. On one of my trips to visit we went to a place called Furniture Row and I bought, among other things, a new desk for my office. It was/is a thing of beauty. It’s solid oak and is topped by a large hutch with several handy shelves and a small cupboard for odds and ends. Perfect for a writer. I’m still using it and still loving it.

It was delivered later in the week, after I had gone home and back to work. So it was at least two months before I actually got to take possession of it. That desk was all I could think of on the seven-hour trip to visit my husband, though of course I was anxious to see him too. When I arrived I discovered he’d set it all up for me complete with an office chair and an inviting display of pens, pencils and paper. As I explored my lovely new possession, I reached up and opened the cupboard. There, just inside the door was a HUGE coiled snake! I swear my eyes bugged out the way they do on cartoon characters, and I forgot to breathe. It was stuffed of course, which I realized within a few seconds but by then, the damage was done.

The snake, which I discovered later, is a nonpoisonous ruby boa, at first glace could pass for a rattlesnake. A friend gave it to my husband and told him to keep it until he got tired of it then pass it on.

He has had more fun with that darn snake. Every Halloween, for instance, it goes into a huge 10-quart stainless steel bowl that I have. Bru carefully buries everything but the head with candy and waits for the trick-or-treaters. The little ones he spares, but anyone over four feet tall is fair game. Sitting in my office I hear the same scene play out over and over. The doorbell rings, and I hear the traditional “Trick-or Treat!” Then I hear screams followed immediately by delighted giggles. The kids love it. In fact, they will often bring their friends and even parents back to see it.

The rest of the year, the snake sits by the door. We’ve had more than one salesman do a double- take and I even had one react so violently he hit the far wall. I’m sure that sometime in the future it will show up in one of my brothers’ Christmas boxes. In the meantime, it’s a well-known feature of the “Bru Zoo!”

Blog #25 September Snow

Every so often we have an early September snowstorm. Though most don’t do much damage, there are some that dump a foot or more of heavy wet snow. If the trees have not yet dropped their leaves it can cause some real problems.

You never really think about it, but the leaves on the trees weigh a lot. I have no idea what the total “poundage” is but when I rake leaves in the fall I know those bags and bags of leaves that I carry to the composter are heavy! Add the extra weight of water and living tissue in a green leaf, as well as the broad surface to catch the snow and you have a recipe for disaster. Dozens and dozens of branches and limbs break under the extra weight. Fences, decks and even an occasional vehicle are smashed. Power lines break. Large, beautiful trees are destroyed and there is nothing you can do about it.

We had one such snowstorm as I was writing Murphy’s Rainbow. I sat in my nice warm house listening to the trees break outside and wrote this scene. It occurred to me about halfway through that in the days before electricity and expensive landscaping such a snowstorm could be more of an inconvenience than anything else.

Blog #26 GOLD!

This issue contains one of the three threads that holds the Cheyenne trilogy together. It is the most obscure of the three, and I have a suspicion that no one has picked it up. The gold shipment that Jonathan was guarding, and what happened to it, played an important part in Shadows in the Wind and Willow Creek as well as Murphy’s Rainbow.

The gold was on its way to St. Louis in payment for a shipment of pistons that had been purchased from Scott Manufacturing. They were traveling through Maryland when they were suddenly ambushed by several men wearing confederate uniforms. Taken by surprise, all of the Union soldiers except Jonathan were killed in the initial attack, but not before they managed wipe out most of the attacking forces.

Though Jonathan’s wound was not fatal, the shot knocked him unconscious. He came to just as the one remaining confederate triumphantly lifted the strongbox from the wagon. Jonathan fire two shots from his rifle before losing consciousness again. That much you know from issue #25. But there is more to the story.

The confederate soldier was mortally wounded but managed to make it to a small house on the edge of town where he hid in a woodshed unable to go on. An eleven year old boy, Cyrus Chandler, found him and the soldier begged the boy to hide the strongbox and keep it safe until he recovered. Cyrus did as he was told, but the soldier died before he could give the boy any other directions. Uncertain what to do, Cyrus broke open the strong box and discovered it was filled with gold bullion.

Since the Chandlers were trying not to take sides in the War Between the States, Cyrus didn’t know which side to give the gold to, and in the end wound up leaving it hidden. Twenty some years later, Cyrus would give a leather pouch full of that same gold to Levi Cantrell, and ask him to exchange it for money in South Pass City. Yes, the same Levi Cantrell who is appears in Murphy’s Rainbow. The gold is a very import part of WILLOW CREEK, which is Levi’s story.

Meanwhile, Ashton Scott, the owner and chief stockholder of Scott Manufacturing, waited in vain for the shipment of Yankee gold that would pay for the large order he had filled for the government. The loss of the gold nearly destroyed his company, in fact he had to devote every waking minute to keeping his business solvent. So much so, that his two young daughters, Stephanie and Elizabeth, are left to their own resources much of the time. As the girls reach adolescence, Elizabeth and Ashton clash and Elizabeth runs away from home. For the next ten years, loneliness is Stephanie’s constant companion. Finally, on Ashton’s death she goes looking for Elizabeth. An accident steals her memory and pitches her right into the arms of the devastatingly handsome Cole Cantrell. SHADOWS IN THE WIND is their story.

As Paul Harvey would say, “And now you know the rest of the story!”

BLOG #27 Meg's Cloak

This was one of those things that just happened. I hadn’t given much thought to Kate’s wardrobe until it snowed. That’s when it occurred to me that all of Kate’s clothes would have burned up in the wagon including a winter coat. There were too few women in Horse Creek for Abigail to stock something as expensive as a cloak or pelisse and she certainly wouldn’t have stocked them for the women at the Golden Spur. Like Kate I started looking around for something for her to make a coat and hit upon the only solutions… a blanket.

I was just as surprised as Kate when Frenchie produced Meg’s cloak. I thought that would be the end of the matter, but it turned out to be one of those things that just kept surfacing in the story and wound up becoming a very important part of the plot. I love it when that happens. Until next time…

Blog #28 Tragedy

As you may have guessed, I am meticulous about my research. I’m almost obsessed with “getting it right”. My husband has been known to laugh at me more than once because I tend to get a little carried away with the need for accuracy. It’s a very vital part of my “writer’s voice” but it also made this scene very difficult for me to write.

I personally have been very fortunate when it came to pregnancy. I did have a miscarriage, but it was so early on that I didn’t even know I was pregnant. Though it provided me with the symptoms that Kate went through at the beginning, the finer points of what really happened were a complete mystery to me. I know people who have experienced it first hand but couldn’t bring myself to ask about something so devastating.

Now, of course, I’d just log on to the Internet and Google “miscarriage”, but back in the early 90’s the Internet was in it’s infancy, and I didn’t have access to it. I spent several days worrying about how I was going to write it and finally hit on a solution in the middle of the night. That’s why you see one of the most intensely emotional scenes of Kate’s life through Jonathan’s eyes rather than hers. He didn’t know what went on in that room either, and oddly enough, it works.

Issue# 29 The Sweat

This scene that underwent extensive revision in the first version. My first publisher insisted that I remove all religious references from this chapter. They objected both to the reference to the Catholic missionaries and to the religious overtones of the whole “sweat” concept . In the Native American culture a sweat such as I have describe is a deeply spiritual experience, which is why Moonflower used it to heal Kate’s “spirit”.

As a new author, I was anxious to please the publisher, but had no idea how to remove the religious overtones of the ceremony. It would be sort of like trying to take religion out of a description of a Catholic mass or a Protestant sermon. Not impossible, but bound to have a negative effect on the scene.

My husband, who was a wild land firefighter at the time, had several friends on the ShoRap fire crew from the Windriver Indian Reservation. (The name ShoRap is derived from a combination of the two tribes that live there, the Arapahos and the Shoshones). They wound up together on a fire out in California, and Bru told one of them about my dilemma. After shaking his head over the odd perception of New York editors, he suggested I just make it a healing sweat rather than a spiritual one. I took his suggestion and the editor was satisfied. However when it came time to redo the scene for the serial, I decided to take the chance on inadvertently insulting someone and put the spiritual part back in. To me, it just makes more sense!

BLOG #30 The Skunk & the Bronc

This scene is one that was cut entirely from the original story. In retrospect I guess it doesn’t add much to the romance, but it does show that Kate is fully recovered from her ordeal as well as adding some comic relief to the story.

It has its origins in two real-life tales from my family. The first comes from the autobiography of Charles Lampman, my great grandfather. In about 1889 or so a new canal was started near Worland Wyoming. Charlie brought in a little extra cash by hauling supplies from stores in two small towns out to the camp. One night, he was stopped over at the town of Bonanza. Mr. Taylor, the owner of the store had gone out into a lean-to he had next to the store. After several minutes, Charlie heard Taylor calling him.

When Charlie cautiously opened the door, the sight that met his eyes brought him to a sudden halt before he was even inside. There stood Taylor in the center of the room, holding the lantern in one hand and a skunk by the tail in the other. Now I’ve been told that a skunk has to have at least one front foot touching something in order to spray. Though I have never had the opportunity to test this bit of wisdom, it does sort of make sense, and I’ll gladly take their word for it. At any rate things were safe as long as the skunk was suspended. The trick would be to get the animal away before it touched the ground.

My great grandfather was still trying to figure out what to do, when his dog raced in through the partially open door and grabbed the skunk. Charlie beat a hasty retreat but poor Taylor didn’t have a chance as the dog made several rounds of the room shaking the skunk as he went. As Charlie put it in his autobiography, “Words fail to described just how bad that mess was. Taylor wanted to move the store and shoot himself.”

The second half came from a cousin of my father’s, Irvin Kershner. His father had bought a pretty little black filly at a sheriff’s auction. Since she was a stray, no one knew if she was broken, but when Irvin saddled her up and rode her around the corral, she seemed tame enough. It wasn’t long before he discovered his mistake.

He decided to ride her out to sheep camp to retrieve a gallon canteen he had left there. Everything was fine until he slung the canteen over his shoulder and started back. Suddenly the mare started bucking for no reason he could see. He got her under control, but it was only the beginning. She tried to buck him off every little way, eleven times in all. The trail went right along the edge of a gulch, and there was one place that had a ten foot drop off. You guessed it, the mare chose that place to blow sky high.

Irvin remembers, “I kept trying to think what I was going to do when we went off that bank. Well, believe it or not, she bucked for about twenty feet right along the edge of that bank, just as straight as string. Every time she would buck that canteen would fly up and hit me on the head. It made bumps all over my head.”

It’s funny how well the two stories fit together in the book, though of course what happened to Cole and Levi wasn’t nearly as funny as what happened to Charlie and Irvin. As you can see from these two stories, truth really is better than fiction!

BLOG #31 Ox Bruford

This chapter is tied closely to history. First of all, it sets up the timeframe for Wyoming’s Territorial legislature which took place during the winter and spring of that year. It also establishes that they will travel on the newly completed Transcontinental Railroad. Without the railroad, Jonathan wouldn’t even have considered such a trip so late in the year.

Though it is difficult to comprehend in the world of jet travel and the world wide web, the Transcontinental Railroad was one of the biggest transportation innovations of the 19th century. A traveler could make the trip from New York to California in a matter of days instead of months. The trip from Cheyenne to California took four days by train and more than three months by wagon. In reality, it would take nearly three times as long to get from the Cantrell ranch to Cheyenne than from Cheyenne to Chicago, a fact which my New York editor had a great deal of trouble believing, but more about that later.

The most important part of this chapter, wasn’t the logistics of the trip or even Clay’s near proposal. This chapter marks the creation of new character; one who has appeared in more of my books than any other, and who is the only connection between my two trilogies. For this is where Ox Bruford came to be.

When Jonathan went to Abigail’s store the conversation seemed to call for the name of a freighter. I couldn’t come up with one right off hand so I asked my husband. He thought for a moment and said, “How about Ox?”

I couldn’t help but grin. What a perfect name for a muleskinner! A minute or two later I had added one version of my husband’s high school nickname, and Ox Bruford was born. I never intended Ox to be more than a name. He doesn’t even show his face in this book, but when I needed a freighter in Meadowlark, I pulled him out, dusted him off, and sent him to get the black powder my hero needed.

A few weeks later Ox showed up at Garrick’s door. That’s when things started to get interesting. Suddenly Ox became Garrick’s best friend and they developed a history of working together on the Transcontinental Railroad after the war. As the book began to develop, so did Ox. He even became involved in a clandestine romance with another minor character behind my back. In fact, the chemistry between Ox and Angel became so powerful that I got letters from fans wanting to know when I was going to write their book. I finally did. Silver Springs is the story of Angel Brady and James Oxford Bruton Treenery III, better known as Ox Bruford.

BLOG #32 The Lost Thread

This issue and the next have haunted me since this book was published. The editor saw the thread started here as one that could be cut without significant damage to the story. She was wrong. Though it isn’t terribly important to this specific book, it is the glue that holds the whole trilogy together.

The seeds for it were sown long before I wrote Murphy's Rainbow. It began with Levi, Jughead and the animosity that exists between them. Though I had no idea what it was, Levi first mentions it in the book Willow Creek. At the time, it was just a peek into his past and a clue the relationship he’d had with his father. I had no idea it would bloom into a key element in another book. In fact, I didn’t know at that point there would even be another book.

I’ve always found it interesting what a small idea can grow and bloom into. The funny thing is, I’m usually surprised when something like this takes off and turns into something more. I have to admit, though, it’s one of my favorite things about writing and something I would miss entirely if I were one of those authors who plan out every part of a book before they start writing. I’m more of a seat-of-the-pants author and love watching the story unfold as much as I love sharing it with readers.

Anyway, the whole point of redoing Murphy’s Rainbow was to put this piece back in and I can’t tell you how good it felt to do just that. It is the beginning of a thread that will surface again several issues on. Until next time…

BLOG #33 Wild Bart Kelly

Wild Bart Kelly, or old Dirty and Smelly as Cole and Levi call him, never made an appearance in Murphy’s Rainbow. I ruthlessly cut him out as the editor suggested, but didn’t throw him away. See, it’s a game I play with myself. I find it very difficult cut scenes and characters; every word I write seems so perfect at the time I write it. That changes when I get some distance, of course, but it makes editing in the short term tough. So when I make the necessary cuts, I store the scene for later. I’m always sure I’ll find a place for that deleted description, sparkling dialogue, or fabulous characterization somewhere. Some I do use again, but most eventually wind up in the trash where they belong.

Bart Kelly was such a delightfully disgusting character; I couldn’t bring myself to do away with him completely. So I pulled the original pages from the manuscript and stuck them in a folder. He wasn’t the first that I saved, but he is the first that I resurrected. In the book, A Window in Time, I needed a repulsive freighter that worked for the Pony Express. I pulled Bart Kelly out of retirement and plunked him into the story. I didn't even need to tweak him; he was perfect. The only change I made was that he was a disgusting freighter instead of a disgusting buffalo hunter. I even told myself it was the same character earlier in life. Ever the opportunist, Bart Kelly could easily have been a freighter for the Central Overland and Pike’s Peak Express Company until 1861 when the company went bankrupt. It’s not even a stretch to have him working for the railroad as buffalo hunter by the end of the decade. I am delighted to have him back in Murphy’s Rainbow. I can’t help but wonder if my readers will realize it is the same character.

Blog #34 Speedy Horses
I loved my first editor. Abigail and I got along very well though we sometimes had major communication problems. To start with, we had something of a generation gap. Abigail was almost 20 years younger than I, but that wasn’t our biggest difficulty. The fact that she had spent her whole life in New York City, and I had spent mine in Wyoming often made for major misunderstandings.

This chapter one of those places where my editor and I had trouble. She wrote me a note in the margin saying, “The timing on the trip is all wrong. It takes them four days to get from Cheyenne to Chicago, but two weeks to get from Horse Creek to Cheyenne. You’ve got to make them move faster.”

When I planned out the journey I did it with a calendar and a map. The Cantrells would have followed the Oregon Trail down through Wyoming Territory to Cheyenne where they would have caught a train to Chicago. I knew from my research that the trip to Chicago from Cheyenne would take four days, but what about the trip to the railroad?

A good horse carrying a rider can make around forty miles a day. It is hard on them to keep that pace up day after day, so I figured around 35 miles a day to be safe. I shortened the time from two weeks to ten days.

Abigail phoned me this time. “It’s still taking them too long,” she said. “I mean they’re only traveling across one state, for heaven’s sake!”

“Right,” I said, “They have to go clear across the whole state.”

“Then they should be able to do it in a couple of days at the most.”

That’s when I figured out the problem. When you look at a map of the United States, you can see that New York is a giant when compared to the states around it. Wyoming, on the other hand, is dwarfed by Montana. It plays tricks on your mind and you think the two states are about the same size. They aren’t even close. In reality, the whole state of New York would cover less than half of Wyoming. Abigail is used to traveling across four or five states in a few hours, while I’m used to driving 65 to 70 miles an hour for hours and never leaving Wyoming.

Neither of us ever did entirely get it. I still can’t conceive of states the size of some of our counties, and she can’t imagine traveling 120 miles to the nearest mall. We compromised on the 10 days to get to Cheyenne, though.

I knew that was stretching it then, and I know it now. My characters are covering a distance of 350 miles in ten days. It takes a whale of a good team to make 35 miles a day pulling a wagon. I’m not sure it’s even possible for horses to keep up that kind of pace for the better part of two weeks. The covered-wagon pioneers on the Oregon Trail used oxen because horses didn’t have the stamina to make it all the way to Oregon, and usually died on the trail. In later books the Cantrells of Horse Creek are known for their exceptional horses. I guess this is where they got their start.

BLOG # 35 Riding the Train

I wrote almost this whole chapter from a couple of pictures in one of my reference books. (Time-Life, The Old West, The Railroaders. The pictures are worth looking at if you have the books) The first was of a herd of buffalo stampeding over the track. (pg 137) Though most people don’t realize it, the buffalo were a big problem for the railroad. Huge herds roamed the prairie at the time. I takes a lot to stop a buffalo and they pretty much went where they wanted to. Trains were frequently delayed just like the one the Cantrells were on. The delays cost the railroad big bucks so they hired buffalo hunters like Wild Bart Kelly to take care of the problem.

About the same time, the US government had decided the “Indian problem” could be solved the same way. Wiping out their food supply would force Indians onto reservations. So the slaughter began, with both the government and the railroads paying top prices for killing the animals. By all account the waste was horrendous. The hunters often shot the animals and left them to rot without even taking the hides. Buffalo Bill Cody got his name for killing 350 buffalo in one day, a feat he was quite proud of.

The other picture (pg 129)showed the interior of the coach with people trying to sleep in the cramped seats. It was before the days of sleeper cars, though the book had some rather entertaining stories about those (I used several in my book WILD HONEY which took place twenty years later). About half way down the car, there was a couple snuggled together. In spite the cramped conditions they looked as though they were quite comfortable, the only ones in the car that did. As I looked at them, I realized that was precisely how Kate and Jonathan would have to sleep. Once I put them together the sexual tension grew at an amazing rate. It seemed the natural place for Kate to realize she’d fallen in love, and I must say, it worked out rather well!

Blog #36 The Daytons

Daniel and Belle came as something of a surprise to me. I knew Daniel and Jonathan were cousins, but I didn’t know Belle and Mary were twins. The resemblance between Levi and Cassie was unexpected too, though as soon as I created it, I decided I could exploit it somehow. Levi does go to Colorado to visit Cassie in SHADOWS IN THE WIND, but I have never come up with a story for Cassie, which is not to say I won’t some day.

Belle was one of those characters who plopped onto the page fully formed. I still haven’t figured out who she is, but I do know I like her. I’m actually sort of surprised she hasn’t shown up in one of my other books. Still she was most useful in this one, as you shall see in the next few issues.

The best part of this chapter, though, was how well I was able to set things up for later. I wanted a ball of some sort and adjoining rooms for Kate and Jonathan. Both were easily arranged though I was somewhat surprised how rich I wound up making Jonathan’s relatives. In the end, it worked out very well, though, so maybe I had it in the back of my mind all the time.

BLOG #37 Belle

Belle really comes to life in this issue. I remember well how she took over without even asking permission. Belle’s open, giving personality, her intense curiosity and the tendency to flit from topic to topic made for lively conversations. It also made her a veritable gold mine of information for Kate and for me. She’d known Jonathan Cantrell for most of his life; more importantly she knew Mary Cantrell as only a twin sister can. It is through Belle that Kate gains the most insight into Mary and her relationship with Jonathan. To be honest, I suspect that was the main reason I created Belle. She also tells us a lot about Jonathan, his affect on women, and the affect of their adoration on him.

And then there is her tendency to match-make. It was a character trait that I threw in to help my story along, but, like everything else with Belle, it sort of got out of hand. With her it’s more of a compulsion, kind of like breathing or eating chocolate. I love the fact that she can’t keep a maid because she finds them all husbands. It’s completely unrealistic, of course. Even modern computer dating services backed by twenty-first century technology and decades of research in sociology, psychology, and human behavior, can’t match her success rate. But then this is fiction and I can go where the story or, in this case, the character leads me. You know from the beginning she won’t be able to resist dabbling in Kate and Jonathan’s love life. Frankly, I’m grateful to her. Without Belle Dayton’s help, I’m not sure I’d have ever been able to get Kate and Jonathan together!

BLOG #38 The Coat
As I have mentioned before, I am very meticulous about my research. There is very little that annoys me more than reading a book with sloppy research. Finding something that isn’t accurate is kind of like biting down on a piece of tin foil with a filling. So I was quite chagrined to have a fan call my attention to a faux pas I had unwittingly committed.

I have dozens of reference books on clothing that I have gathered over the years. However, when I was writing the Cheyenne trilogy I only had a couple. I depended heavily on the library though there wasn’t much there either. I can’t remember exactly where I found the picture of the coat, but it was love at first sight. I made a photocopy and stuck in my files. There is a description next to the drawing which says “English 1893, coat in Alaskan seal skin trimmed with Russian sable.” It must have been absolutely gorgeous in real life.

I knew I couldn’t use it the way it was. For one thing, it fur and probably horrendously expensive as well as being as inappropriate for Kate as the fancy dresses she rejected. More importantly the style is distinctly 1890’s with big puffy sleeves. The minute I saw it, I knew Kate had to have that coat and also that I’d have to change it some. On the same page there is an 1869 Paletot (sort of a mid-length coat that flared out over the skirts of the day). I took the fabric, sleeves, and black braid from the Paletot and used them on the fur coat. Viola, a fabulous coat Kate couldn’t resist and one that fit the styles of 1869.

That’s when I made my mistake. I made it red. It seemed the perfect color. After all I had already established it was one of her colors and that Jonathan was very taken with her when she wore it. When they met at the Golden Spur he couldn’t take his eyes off her. And that was the problem. Red was NOT an appropriate color for a decent woman. Only whores wore it. I should have known, really. I mean, I knew that a scarlet woman was one of questionable morals. It was even the color of the infamous letter in Hawthorn’s classic tale of adultery and betrayal, The Scarlet Letter. So in this version I changed it to russet, a pretty color in its own right and one that would look good on Kate. Oh, in case you’re wondering why I’m making such a big deal out of a coat she didn’t even buy, you’re going to see it again. Of course, I’m betting you’d already figured that out!

BLOG # 39 The Waltz

I love the waltz. It’s such a graceful dance and surprisingly, to me anyway, considered quite scandalous when it first appeared at the end of the 18th century. It required the man to put his hand on the woman’s waist and the woman to place her hand on her partner’s shoulder. They were almost embracing, for heavens sake! Though it seems pretty tame to us today, it was a degree of intimacy people just didn’t indulge in, at least in public.

The intimacy as well as the beauty of the dance is precisely why I find it so useful. It’s the perfect way to fire up the old sexual tension. I’ve used it in no less than three books and am trying to figure out how to use it in my current WIP (work in progress). It puts my characters in close contact, staring deeply into each other’s eyes, and gets those hormones racing. From there sexual tension builds on its own.

It’s quite possible that Kate could have already known how to waltz, lots of people did. I confess I did have an ulterior motive for inserting the waltzing lessons. It was foreshadowing. Oh, not for this book. The sexual tension could have just as easily been built at the actual ball. This is where Cole learns to waltz, you see. Though he’s just a kid here, he turns into a man eventually, one who is nearly as devastating to the ladies as his father. In Shadows in the Wind there is a waltz scene that practically made my heroine’s garters smoke.

On a personal note, I feel I should confess. As much as I love the dance, I don’t waltz myself. I have two left feet, you see and have never mastered the steps. That’s why I leave it to my characters. None of them have ever made a fool of themselves dancing the waltz. Sadly, I can’t say the same.

BLOG #40 The Dress
Everyone has moments in their life they wish they could go back and fix. From “I wish I’d said…” to doing something differently to prevent disaster, we all wish we could do an instant replay and change things. As I was rewriting this chapter in the book, I realized I had done exactly that, though I had no idea of it thirteen years ago when I wrote the original scene. This time, as I was working on the scene, the image of a dress popped into my head, but it wasn’t the dress I had designed for Kate. It was a dress I myself had worn.

The date was December 1967. As a freshman in high school, I went out for choir. In retrospect I wonder what I was thinking. My voice is too deep for alto, too high for bass, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, and I have a range of approximately three notes all of which are flat. I do like to sing though and have used it to great advantage in my teaching career. When I want my students to behave all I have to do is threaten to sing and they straighten right up. I was probably the only student in Greybull high school who was ever asked to leave the choir for something other than discipline problems! The instructor gently suggested that my time might be better spent elsewhere. My voice has a unique carrying quality, you see. I never really understood until I went to my daughter’s concert several years ago and could pick her voice out of the choir clear from the back of the auditorium. Luckily she inherited her singing ability from my husband’s side and is quite good.

But I digress. For the Christmas concert that year the choir director decided that all the girls would wear floor length formals. As a freshman, I had never been to a formal dance, been in a wedding or had any reason to wear a formal. Nor were my parents inclined to buy one for me. For one thing, at 14 they weren’t sure I had stopped growing. For another, there was no money for such an expensive dress even if there had been one in the town of Greybull so early in the year, which there probably wasn’t. That kind of thing was only stocked in the spring around Prom time.

My mother, being a resourceful woman, said no problem, we could borrow one. And so the search began. I went to school in Greybull but lived 16 miles away outside of the town of Shell, a tiny rural town (population 50) surrounded by sheep and cattle ranches. There weren’t a lot of older girls in the community, but my mom figured someone would have what we needed. They were all willing to help out; that’s what people do in communities like Shell. Unfortunately, luck wasn’t with us. Linda was too short. Althea was too thin. Nancy’s formals were all knee length. Martha and the Smith twins had taken theirs to college with them. Finally Althea’s mom thought of her daughter-in-law. We made a call and sure enough, JoAnna not only had a dress, she was delighted to let me use it.

It was a beautiful creation of maroon velvet and satin with a wide skirt and miles of net and lace, much like the dress Kate wore to Belle’s ball. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical of the slightly out-of-date styling, but it was gorgeous on me. According to my best friend ,the maroon coloring made my skin look like a cameo just like Kate’s. Even the long dark ringlet draped over the shoulder was mine. I felt beautiful right up until I got to school and saw everybody else in their pastel sheaths.

On page 28 of my freshman annual is a picture of the choir dressed in their finery for the Christmas program. There I am in the front row on the end nearest the camera. You can’t miss me… or the dress. My most humiliating high school moment captured forever on film. Ten years earlier I’d have been in style. You could wear that dress to a formal function today, and it would fit right in. But in 1967, when the style was empire waists and long straight skirts, I stood out like a crow among a bunch of pigeons.

So I gave Kate the dress. Instead of wanting to slink away and die of embarrassment, she spent the evening being admired. It took me almost thirty years, but I did manage to “redo” that horrible evening and turn it from a social disaster into a rousing success. Ah the power of the pen!

BLOG #41 Ooops!

This was another place I have a chance to go back and correct a historical inaccuracy. As I’ve said before, I’m quite picky about that, and I’ve beat myself up a dozen times since I realized the goof I made, though I doubt many readers caught it (if any did).

About three months after MURPHY'S RAINBOW came out I had the opportunity to attend a historical clothing class at the Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie, WY. The Territorial Prison is a living history museum and well worth a visit if you are ever in Laramie. The class had been put together for people who had been hired as reenactors for the museum to help them make historically accurate costumes. It was one of the most incredible workshops I have ever been to. I learned more about historical clothing in that one day than all the rest of my knowledge combined.

The first thing they did was put a model on stage dressed only in her drawers and shift, then proceeded to dress her explaining each piece of clothing as they went. It is amazing how much women wore under their dresses! I discovered how ignorant I was even about things I thought I already knew. I learned, for instance, that the corset never touched the skin. Women wore a shift underneath and a corset cover over the top in order to keep it clean. I also found out that girls were put in corsets at 2 years-old so that their bodies would conform to the shape as they grew. Corsets actually deformed the rib cage and squished the lungs into unnatural shapes. It’s no wonder they fainted all the time. A corset also prevents the wearer from bending her back, so women couldn’t relax on a sofa or chair the way we do now. They had sit on the edge of their seat with perfectly straight posture.

Before my trip to the Territorial prison, I envisioned women’s drawers like those I’d seen on T.V. and in movies, essentially long white bloomers with possibly a little lace at the bottom. The reality is actually very different. Ladies drawers consisted of two legs held together with a string at the waist. There was no crotch at all. Though that seems rather shocking to us, there was a sound reason for it. I had never really thought about the logistics of going to the bathroom while wearing a dress with as much as ten yards of fabric in a skirt. Without a crotch in the drawers, it becomes a much simpler process. The presenter that day also gave us a whole new perception of the scandalous Can-Can dance. When the dancers were doing high kicks, they were exposing far more than just their underwear! And we thought our ancestors were prudes.

So what was my mistake? In the original book, I had Kate rush into Jonathan’s bedroom wearing only her drawers and her chemise. No matter how drunk she was, Kate would never do that. She would have essentially been naked from the waist down. This time around I put her in her shift which at least covered her decently. I did like the way Jonathan removed the chemise better than the shift, but at least now it’s accurate, or at least mostly so. In reality, Kate and Jonathan probably wouldn’t have bothered removing the drawers, but sometimes historical accuracy needs to be sacrificed, especially when writing love scenes.

BLOG #42 The Trip Home
I’m not sure why I made Jonathan a financial wizard. It was just one of those things that kind of popped up by itself though it does go with what we already know of him. After all, we saw him teaching his preteen sons Algebra back at the beginning of the story and then discovered he’d been a mathematics professor at Princeton. A man that involved with math obviously has a love of numbers and would likely derive great satisfaction from manipulating them. The two forms of number manipulation that occur to me are business and gambling. The world of stocks and high-level finances encompasses both. Because of Mary’s delicate health, it was the only way Jonathan could quench his thirst for adventure. Of course I never thought of that until later so it doesn’t explain why I made him rich.

I suspect it had to do with Sampson, the Hereford bull they traveled clear to Chicago to retrieve. In retrospect I’m not even sure why he existed. I think, perhaps I wanted my characters to travel on the newly completed transcontinental railroad and needed an excuse.

In 1869 Herefords weren’t exactly unheard of in the United States, but they were considered an exotic breed, especially in the West where Texas Longhorns reined supreme. There were a few people experimenting with breeding Herefords commercially because they produce more meat per pound than Longhorns as well as being considerably easier to handle. In SHADOWS IN THE WIND the Cantrell ranch is devoted to raising horses, but Jonathan’s obsession with his cattle is mentioned in passing so I knew he had an interest there. Dabbling in the genetics of an exotic breed of cattle is another mathematical challenge Jonathan would have relished. It fit his personality to a T. To buy the cattle and ship them all the way from England would have cost a fortune. So I gave him one and the means by which obtain it. The fact that he doesn’t seem to care about money adds another dimension to his character. It means he made lots of money for the thrill of it rather than because he enjoyed being wealthy.

Kate also reveals an interesting side to her personality in this issue. Her initial embarrassment and shame are pretty much what you would expect given the circumstances. But the way she turned it around and wound up setting Jonathan on his proverbial ear surprised me. It was also pure Kate. It shows her natural resilience and no nonsense attitude, the perfect foil for Jonathan’s “pout”.

BLOG #43 Uncle Matthew & Sufferage

Uncle Matthew was one of those characters that wandered onto the page without much help from me. Like Moonflower, he was completely unexpected. In fact, I even had to go back and write him into Bryan’s deathbed scene. I had no idea why he was there but had learned by then to “go with the flow” so to speak. So Uncle Matthew stayed, and as usually became very handy. He was the reason both Kate and Patrick found themselves so far from home. In fact, Uncle Matthew showed up in a very surprising place and turned out to be a pivotal character in the final conflict of the story. But that's for later Clay’s discussion of the Territorial legislature is straight out of the history books. Even the women’s suffrage bill being introduced as a joke is a well documented fact. From the accounts I read in my research, there were very few legislators who took William Bright’s bill seriously. They all assumed it was a practical joke and had a great deal of fun with it. There seems to have been very little if any serious debate on the floor, and it was passed amid a great deal of laughter and hilarity. They all assumed the governor would veto the bill and send it back into oblivion where most of them thought it belonged. The governor surprised them though and signed it into law in 1869.

It was like opening Pandora’s box. Once the genie was out of the bottle, they could never put it back again and Wyoming Territory became the first place in the world that allowed women the right to vote . Weeks later, it also became the first place where women could own their own property. No longer did all of a woman’s possessions flow into her husband’s hands when she married. Nor were widows without sons kicked off the land they had worked with their husbands when he died. Looking back on it from a 21st century viewpoint, it is hard to fathom why anybody would think women so stupid and weak that they couldn’t take care of their own business.

The suffrage bill was easily the most significant legislation to come out of the Wyoming Territorial legislature for it impacted the entire world. Even the struggle of women’s lib in the 1960’s didn’t produce as monumental a change in the women’s place in this country. You truly have come a long way baby!

Issue # 44 The fight

This issue marks another place my original editor took out a big chunk of story, almost and entire chapter, in fact. In retrospect, I have to admit she was right. As I mentioned several Blogs ago, I can’t bear to throw anything away. This scene is one I didn’t think I’d ever find a place for, though. It’s too specific to this story

In the original version, they run into two seedy characters on the trail. They exchange idle trail chatter with the cowpokes and continue on their way. The next morning, Sampson, Jonathan’s expensive imported Hereford bull is missing. Thinking it has something to do with whatever Kate and Patrick are hiding, Jonathan forces Patrick to go with him to retrieve the animal. While they are gone, the two saddle bums, Pete and Billy ride into camp intent on stealing everything of value. Irritated at finding nothing worth anything except the two quarter horses, they kidnap Kate who prays the boys will stay hidden.

Just as they start out of camp Cole comes tearing out of the brush toward them, intent on saving Mrs. Murphy. Without a pause, Billy pulls out his six gun and fires. Kate watches in utter horror as the boy falls to the ground. Her last vision of camp is Cole’s lifeless body lying where he had fallen with his life’s blood soaking into the ground. She has no way of knowing that the bullet only grazed his temple. Though the wound bleeds copiously it does little damage other than knocking him unconscious.

When Patrick and Jonathan return to find camp torn apart and Kate gone Jonathan jumps to the conclusion that the two outlaws are accomplices. He and Patrick have the same fight they have in issue #43 with the same outcome. The only difference being at the end Patrick convinces Jonathan they need to go after Kate.

About that time a bloodied Cole greets them with the information that the two outlaws have taken Mrs. Murphy and Levi is following on foot. The knowledge that his son has gone after the outlaws galvanizes Jonathan into action. They follow the trail of scraps Levi has dropped from Kate’s sewing basket and eventually catch up with the miscreants, Jonathan shoots one and rushes in to save Kate. Patrick saves them both by shooting the second outlaw.
The whole purpose of the scene was for Jonathan and Patrick to have the fight which established Patrick’s relationship to Kate and exacts a promise from Jonathan to protect her no matter what. In retrospect this scene was a little over the top, and the simple fight prompted by jealousy worked as well, maybe better.

I wasn’t even tempted to put it back in, but I have found a place for it. I think some of it will work rather well in the book I’m working on now. There is a major plot point coming where the heroine is kidnapped by the bad guys to lure the hero away. Here I am thirteen years and six books later delighted to have unearthed 10 pages of great dialog and two wonderfully sleazy characters that I can use. I’m glad I saved it!

Issue #44 Kate’s Plan

The bed they found along side the road really exists, though I didn’t know it at the time. In fact, when I wrote the scene I was thinking of an oak bedstead I had seen in South Pass City. In an earlier Blog I mentioned a trip I made to Laramie to take a class on period clothing at the territorial prison. During the same trip I visited the Ivinson Mansion. It’s a great Victorian building with two towers, a huge curving staircase and a dozen or more stained glass windows..

It was built in the mid 1800’s by a Edward Ivinson who had stopped in Laramie on his way to California. He had originally intended to open a store in the Gold fields but recognized an opportunity in the end-of-the-tracks town that Laramie was in those days. He made a fortune, and by 1868 had started building his mansion.

The mansion is open for tours almost every day in the summer. You can take a virtual tour at www.laramiemuseum.org. (There’s a link here on my website) My friend and I arrived just in time for the last tour of the day. It had been a slow day, and we were the only two on the tour. Our guide was very knowledgeable and so delighted with our interest that she took extra time. In fact, our 45-minute tour lasted a little over two hours, and I shot three rolls of film.

Upstairs in the master suite sat the very bed I had imagined when I described the bedstead that had been left beside the road. I had a shock of recognition when I saw it, and muttered something like, “Oh my gosh, it’s Kate’s bed!” Which I imagine had our tour guide thinking I’d lost it for sure.

The other piece of reality from this issue the furniture left along the Oregon Trail. It was common practice for pioneers to discard belongings in a desperate effort to lighten their loads. Block and Tackle Hill isn’t really on the Oregon Trail but is actually located about ten miles north of it. You leave the highway up on South Pass on an unmarked but well-traveled dirt road. A couple of miles in, the road forks into an awesome quaking aspen forest that is absolutely breath-taking in the fall. You wind back through the trees on a road that rapidly narrows and deteriorates into double wheel tracks with weeds growing in the middle. It’s all very picturesque and more or less drivable until you reach the hill.

I don’t remember why I know it’s called Block and Tackle Hill. It may be on a map, or maybe there’s a sign there. At any rate it has the name because travelers actually had to use a block and tackle to get freight wagons up the hill. On our first visit we had a small 4-wheel drive that was probably never meant to leave the highway. My husband being a typical man decided to see if it would make it up the hill. It didn’t. In fact it almost didn’t make it down again when it got high-centered on a boulder. It isn’t accurate, in reality Kate and Jonathan wouldn’t have traveled that far west on the Oregon trail. Still I couldn’t resist using it in the story. Funny thing is, I’ve had copy editors question almost everything else, but none of them find anything odd about a hill that was almost impossible to get up right in the middle of a well-traveled thoroughfare like the Oregon trail.

Issue #45 The Buffalo Coat

This, at last, is the piece that I have always regretted letting the editors cut. The infamous buffalo coat. True, it doesn’t have a great deal of importance per sec in Murphy’s Rainbow, nor is it the glue that holds all three books of the Cheyenne Trilogy together. What it does is bring a smile of recognition to the reader’s face when it is mentioned.

The coat appeared for first time when I wrote SHADOWS IN THE WIND. At the time, I needed some way to disguise the strong family resemblance between Cole and Levi as well as give him a somewhat disreputable look because the first time the heroine, Stephanie, sees him she thinks he is a cattle rustler. A heavy beard took care of the resemblance and an old buffalo coat made him look downright villainous. The coat may have been too big when Levi was twelve, but he grew into it. In fact as an adult it fit him perfectly and added to the general appearance of size. Not that he needed any help in that department. As adults both Cole and Levi were large men, a genetic gift from the Grandfather Colburn no doubt. At any rate, he scared the bejeepers out of Stephanie.

The coat appeared again in WILLOW CREEK. This time it saved Levi and the heroine as a prairie fire swept over them. It was also the end of the buffalo coat. The thick hide protected him from the cinders that fell on his back and the fire that raged around them, but not even Levi could wear it after that. Nicki made him a new coat and when he thanked her for it, he said it was the nicest coat he’d ever had. When she remarked his old coat was the ugliest she’d ever seen, he told her he’d traded his Pa’s mule for it and always figured he got the best end of the deal since he hated the mule so much.

Since I wrote MURPHY’S RAINBOW after the other two, I already knew the history of the coat. It was a simple matter to invent a cantankerous mule and build toward the eventual trade. Perhaps the best part of it is Levi’s declaration that he’s going to wear that buffalo coat until it falls off and think of Jughead every time he puts it on. The first time you see him in SHADOWS IN THE WIND, twenty some years later, he’s still wearing that darn coat. It’s a good thing buffalo hide is so durable.

Issue # 46 The Hofflemeir cabin

Dirt floors are something of an enigma to modern people. We have a hard time imagining floors in the days before carpet, let alone those before the days of… well…floors. I’ve never lived on a dirt floor, but I have had an experience that relates. When I was in grade school, I went to a little country school. There were twelve students ranging from first to fifth grade. Our playground had two swing sets, a teeter totter, a merry-go-round and about an acre of dirt. With all the running feet, grass never got a chance to grow, though there was a huge cottonwood in front of the school and a pretty good stand of sagebrush near the south fence.

One of our favorite games was to stake out our own little piece of ground and make “claims”. No one could go on your claim unless you invited them. You couldn’t claim the tree, any of the playground equipment or the small alleyway that ran between the fence and the back of the school. The rest was fair game.

Of course, once you had your claim you had to figure out something to do with it. It’s pretty boring to spend recess just standing on a piece of ground. The boys often brought trucks and other “heavy equipment” to build roads. The girls made houses. We’d gather rocks and pebbles to outline the “rooms” and walkways. Some of them got pretty elaborate. One of the most prized possessions of the school ground was a piece of sagebrush to use for a broom. Harvesting the stuff was very difficult since sagebrush is an extremely tough plant and next to impossible to break off.

If you were lucky enough to get a sagebrush broom, your house became the envy of all. You might think that sweeping dirt would never get you anywhere, but that is not the case. Those sagebrush brooms whisked off the lighter soil on top to reveal hard-packed dirt underneath. It was nearly as hard as cement and brushed surprisingly clean.

I assume the dirt floors the early settlers had were much the same. I really don’t know how to describe the surface of it except it’s somewhere between marble and cement. It was quite hard, fairly smooth, and surprisingly easy to keep clean. In some ways dirt floors were probably cleaner than our carpets with long fibers that trap dirt and germs.

A dirt floor did get dirty, of course. Grease and food could stain it, for instance, and it was possible to gouge holes in it making the surface rough and difficult to walk on. According to my Great-grandmother Lampman the best way to take care of a “dirty floor” was to dig it up and invite the neighbors over for a dance. The dancing feet had the surface packed hard and cleanable in a short time as well as giving folks a reason to get together. All-in-all it seemed like a good way to get Kate’s new home off to a good start.

BLOG #47 Murphy’s Rainbow

This is the first time Jonathan used the words “Murphy’s Rainbow.” As usual the title was the last thing I came up with when I wrote this book. In retrospect I’m not really sure where it came from, but as soon as it occurred to me it seemed perfect. For an Irishman like Bryan Murphy telling his wife to look for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow seemed natural. Jonathan thought the Hoffelmeir homestead would be Kate’s pot of gold. So I went back and sprinkled references to the rainbow and it’s pot of gold in strategic places. This was one of them.

If you look at the cover of the book you will see how my clever cover artist portrayed this. There are tiny rainbows in Jonathan’s glasses that arch over what I am sure is the Hoffelmeir cabin. It turns out that Kate Murphy’s Rainbow is actually something quite different, but that’s for later.

Issue # 47 Winter

Wyoming is known for its cold winters, but most people here can’t wait for the snow. Nearly everyone goes sking, snowmobiling, or ice fishing; many do all three. Not me. I hate winter, and if you read between the lines in this issue, I’m afraid my prejudice shines through. In retrospect, I think the reason I dislike winter so much is that I have only spent the last fifteen years or so in a warm house. It makes a big difference and is one of the things I think I may have in common with people who lived in the 19th century.

With our central heating, warm cars and huge commercial furnaces in most businesses we are actually exposed to the cold very little. I suspect people in the past were better acclimated to cold weather than we are now simple because they . Even so, those early pioneers must have spent a good part of the day huddled around the stove. I know that from personal experience.

The house I grew up in was the two- story gypblock house that replaced the original log house with the sod roof I used to create the Cantrell’s house. It was built in 1905 or so out of local materials. Gypblocks are large white bricks similar in size and shape to modern cinderblocks. I suspect they were molded in a similar fashion. They are made of gypsum, which is the white “stuff” in the middle of modern sheetrock. Though I’m not sure exactly what goes into the actual process I do know as teenagers my grandfather and his two brothers mined the gypsum in the hills and hauled it to the ranch in farm wagons where my great-grandfather, crushed it, mixed it with something and made the blocks. The four of them built the house. The inside walls were constructed of some sort of wallboard. There was no insulation in those days so the walls were against the bare stone of the outside walls.

My great-grandmother talked about how much more comfortable it was than the original cabin, but my father remembered frost forming on the inside walls when he was growing up. I’m not sure what my grandmother thought, but since my grandfather built her a very nice (warm) log house when my father was a teenager, I suspect she wasn’t crazy about the gypblock house her husband had helped build when he was a lad of seventeen.

When my father married my mother they gave the house a serious overhaul. They lowered the ceilings from nine feet to eight, wired it for electricity, installed a shower and a kitchen sink and put insulation in the walls. My mother talked about what a huge difference the remodeling made during the winter. I can’t even imagine how cold it must have been before. My own memories are of a house that was anything but comfortable from November to April. First of all, it was heated with an old fashioned coal and wood stove we called “Roarin’ Anne”. I have no idea where the “Anne” came from or how long she’d been in the house, but she did get to roaring when there was a good fire burning. Unfortunately, it was a rather inefficient stove and most of that heat went right up the chimney.

When I was about thirteen, my father replaced Roarin’Anne with a Stokermatic coal stove which was considerably more efficient and much loved by the whole family even though it was not an especially attractive addition to our dining room decor. Even so, we could only heat three rooms, the kitchen, dining room and living room. The rest of the house was shut off and pretty much ice cold all winter long. My brothers’ room was upstairs directly over the stove so they got a good bit of heat through a vent in the floor.

My room, however, was over the hallway, which had no heat at all and was usually ten degrees warmer than it was outside. If it was 95 degrees in the summer, my room was 105. If it was 40 below zero outside it was 30 below in my room. Add to that the fact that there was no indoor toilet and you get the picture. A midnight trip to the bathroom meant going down fourteen stairs, through the rest of the house and walking 100 yards to a privy that was often several degrees colder than the average deep freeze. Not too long ago someone asked what my best Christmas present was. I didn’t even have to think about it. The best Christmas present I ever got was an electric blanket!

BOG #48 Painting

I love the fact that Jonathan is a poor artist. It’s another one of those tid-bits of characterization that makes him more human. Had he been another Leonardo DeVinci, he would have been unbelievable, and to my mind, just a tad irritating. This “humanness” makes him worth loving. In fact, the discovery makes Kate feel closer to him than before, probably because it makes him fallible and therefore vulnerable. It is this vulnerability that makes the near-death scene all the more poignant.

In retrospect, I know exactly where this particular facet of Jonathan’s character came from. I always yearned to paint but am, as a friend of mine once said, physically retarded. My fine-motor coordination is pretty much lacking, and though I have the imagination for it, I can’t seem to make my fingers understand what I want them to create. Add to that the fact that, though I am not color blind, I match colors as though I were, and you begin to get the picture.

When I was a teenager I satisfied my compulsion to paint with dozens of paint-by-number pictures. Even those, which are pretty much ‘idiot-proof’ turned out…well …mediocre. My mother framed a few, but I think it was more out of maternal kindness than because she really thought they were good. She was the kind of mom that saved anything her children made for her. When she passed away, we hauled off truck-loads of the stuff, and, yes, more than one of my paint-by-number paintings.

BLOG #49 Pneumonia

Pneumonia is nothing to mess with. Though fairly rare, people do still die of it, especially the elderly or those have other health serious conditions. In the years before antibiotics, though, it was a familiar killer. It could strike a healthy victim and cause death in a matter of days.

I felt kind of bad giving it to Jonathan, I’ve had it several times myself, and it isn’t much fun. However, I needed a way to reveal part of his past to Kate without him being aware she knew it. Delirium is great for that, enter pneumonia. Once I had the disease I realized Kate would need an intimate knowledge of it to know how to deal with it. That meant someone close to her had had it, and to give her a sense of urgency, they probably died of it. I searched what I knew of her family and came up with the closest thing Kate had to a mother, her grandmother. So Kate is tending Jonathan day and night, frantic with the notion that he could die like her grandmother did.

Now comes the research. I knew what should be in his delirious ramblings, but I lacked the knowledge to make it seem real. I knew I was dealing with the Battle of Gettysburg, but it was way too big to use. I mean, they made a three hour movie out of it. I decided to focus on one small part and settled on Pickett’s Charge. I spent hours and hours reading about it, including a first hand account of a soldier who was there. In all, it distilled down to exactly four sentences that were about Pickett’s charge. A historian who had studied Pickett’s charge for years and years might recognize it, but I doubt anyone else would. However, when I saw the movie “Gettysburg” I recognized my piece of Pickett’s charge when it happened. The director had portrayed it exactly as I had imagined it. I even saw Jonathan stab Ben as he came over the wall. It lasts about 4 seconds in the movie, but it gives me cold chills every time I see it.

As for death crouching in the corner? Well, I’ve never actually been at a deathbed vigil for more than an hour, but I suspect that after awhile your imagination begins to play tricks on you. Kate was exhausted and overwrought. She had, after all, lost a beloved grandmother to the very thing Jonathan was facing. Plus there was the deathbed vigil of another man she loved heart and soul less than a year before. Bryan had quietly slipped away from her in the middle of a declaration of love, for heaven’s sake. I think she might well feel death was a physical presence trying to steal another loved one in the dead of night. So she fights it with the only weapons she has. This time she gets it said, and it saves the day, at least in her mind. It may not be true to life, but I love the image. It’s one of my favorite scenes from all my books

Blog #50 The Truth About Mary

One of the most important parts of characterization is motivation. It’s what makes characters act the way they do. With real human beings it is what makes us who were are and how we react in different situations. In this issue Kate discovers the motivation for Jonathan’s drinking when he discovers her pregnancy, his terror when she miscarries and one of the things that has kept him from remarrying, but it didn’t start with this book.

When I was writing Willow Creek, I needed something to keep the hero and heroine apart, something so strong that the hero, Levi, wouldn’t even think of marriage. One of my critique partners came up with the idea that Cole and Levi’s mother had died in childbirth. It turned out to be an inspired idea. The scene I wrote was so horrific it not only provided motivation for Willow Creek but for Murphy’s Rainbow as well. It was also the first time I ever wrote about Jonathan Cantrell.With this scene already written, all I had to do was regress it about twenty years and tell it through the memories of a twelve year old.

Rather than tell you about it, I’ve decided to share that scene with you. Keep in mind this is where my first thought of Jonathan Cantrell gelled. The two pieces of information you need for the following excerpt to make sense is that Levi Cantrell as an adult is well over six feet tall and weighs around 220 pounds. He is, indeed, a big, big man. Nicki Chandler, the heroine of Willow Creek is a five foot tall, ninety pound tomboy with a spit in your eye attitude. The perfect match, in fact, for the taciturn Levi. It is the difference in their sizes that is alluded to in this excerpt.

Here is the excerpt from WILLOW CREEK:

That night the nightmares began. They were dreams born of a reality so long ago, Levi’s conscious mind had all but forgotten. Once again he was a terrified two year old,
huddling unnoticed in the corner of the room. Wind and rain lashing against the darkened window pane were nearly drowned out by the loud, demanding cry of the new-born child.

Levi’s big, strong father knelt by the bed, his head touching the cold, white hand that lay so still. Jonathan Cantrell, the man who feared nothing, cried unashamedly, tears coursing down his face, as he begged forgiveness, blaming himself for the death of his beloved wife.

Most frightening of all was the blood. The bright red horror was everywhere, on the floor, the blanket, and especially on the bed surrounding the one who lay there
unmoving. Though the small boy didn’t fully understand what was happening, he knew something had gone very, very wrong in his safe little world.

The nightmare of his mother’s death recurred repeatedly during the next few days. Then, gradually, it began to change. Levi became the man by the bed and Nicki, the wife
who had died in childbirth. The first time he saw Nicki’s face surrounded by blood, Levi woke in a cold sweat. Sitting up in the half-light of dawn, he crossed his arms and sank his face onto his bent knees with a stifled moan.

At last he understood why he’d been having the same dream over and over. He was a big man, larger even than his father, and Nicki’s tiny body was too small to bear his children. Levi could never marry her. He’d rather be without her than responsible for her death. Levi raised his head and pushed his fists against his forehead in defeat.

BLOG # 51 The Blizzard

I love blizzards, in books that is. Not in real life, you understand. Some of the most terrifying trips of my life have been through Wyoming blizzards, driving from one reflector pole to the next because that’s all the farther I could see. In real life I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out than drive through a blizzard.

As a plot device, though, they’re great. For one thing they effectively cut the characters off from the rest of the world. I have included a blizzard in nearly every book I’ve written. Out of nine novels all but three have blizzards. One of those three takes place in the summer, and one I purposely left it out because I realized I had blizzards in almost every book. I had one planned for that book, but decided enough is enough so I didn’t to use it.

Out of all my blizzards, though, I like this one the best. As we discovered early on, Jonathan is a lovable drunk, especially in this scene. And Kate is so self sufficient, so reliant so nurturing, the quintessential mother. She even mothers Jonathan in this scene…sort of. Then there’s the love scene

Love scenes have never been my favorite things to write. If you are a fan of my work you’ll notice there aren’t many. When I wrote Murphy’s Rainbow I was experimenting with different methods. In Willow Creek I had hit upon the idea of giving each one a theme and generating a list of words that went with that theme. Then I wrote the love scene using those words. To date I’ve used music, glass, color, heat and in this case a storm. As you can imagine it works better with some themes that with others. It worked very well with music. It was soft and sweet. The storm, however, turned out to be more than I bargained for. Like a true storm it started wild and quickly escalated into a violent tempest.

As a love scene it isn’t too bad, but it was over very quickly. The same thing happened with the love scene centered around heat, though I don’t recall which book that was in for sure. I discovered that if I wanted to use a theme I needed to make sure it was something mild or it would quickly get out of hand. Oddly enough none of my characters ever complained about those love scenes. In fact, they sort of seem to like them. Maybe hot and heavy isn’t so bad after all.

BLOG #52 Orgies and Death

I love this scene. It delves deeply into both characters and shows them at their best. I’ve always thought Kate and Jonathan’s best was very, very good! The by-play between them was a lot of fun to write and actually gave me the perfect setup for the final scene of the book. More about that later….

Entertaining as it was to write, that “sparkling dialog” wasn’t the reason for this chapter. It is actually a turning point in the story. In every romance there has to be a death. Not literally, of course, but a death just the same. It is the death of the relationship, and it usually happens shortly after the characters discover they love each other. Something has to happen to rip the lovers apart, something so catastrophic as to make the rift seem impossible to mend. For this to work, the conflict has be a real one, an insurmountable obstacle that can’t be resolved by the two characters sitting down and being openly honest with each other. In other words it can’t be a simple misunderstanding. I will admit that there have been times when I’ve written myself into a corner at this point by making such a great obstacle that I wondered how I was ever going to get the hero and heroine back together again.

In Murphy's Rainbow, however, it appeared as though I had done just the opposite. Jonathan’s mistrust seemed to be one of those things that could be classified as a misunderstanding, and yet it seemed to be working without being contrived or silly. It when I was writing this scene that I realized the conflict is not caused Jonathan’s lack of trust but by the demons that haunt him. His guilt and self-recriminations color his world. His decision to contact his old spy-master has more to do with his own guilty conscience than him mistrusting Kate. Somehow Kate appears to know the deep dark secret that lurks at the very depth of his soul so he strikes out in defense.
Had he stopped to think about it, Jonathan would have realized that there was no way Kate could have discovered the truth except from him because no one else knew it. By reacting the way he did, he sets in motion a series of events that he will deeply regret later in the story, but which served me quite well. I don’t think I quite knew what was going to finally happen at this point, but I was beginning to get a glimmer of the ending.

Blog # 53 The Picture

As I reworked this scene, I realized the picture of Kate had a basis in reality. Not the good part, of course, but the part that marked it as Jonathan’s work. When my older brother, Louie, and I were in early grade school, my dad got a new camera, a twin-lens Rollicord for you camera buffs out there. It was great for taking candid shots because you couldn’t tell when the photographer was looking through the view-finder. Before we figured that out, he had snapped “THE PICTURE”. You know the one I mean. The one your mom absolutely adores and you’d burn in a heart-beat if you thought you could get away with it. I was standing behind my brother with my chin was on his shoulder. Of course, my hair looked like we’d been through a tornado, he was squinting into the sun and had his shirt on inside out. It was my mother’s favorite picture, and we had to endure twenty years of a framed 8x10 of it on the wall.

When we were in our twenties Louie got the bright idea of redoing “THE PICTURE” with us as adults for a Christmas present. Louie’s good friend, Doug, who was and is an awesome artist, offered to paint it for us. Personally, I thought it was a great idea. Not only would Mother love it, I figured it was the only way we would ever get “THE PICTURE” off the wall.

So we retook “THE PICTURE” as a slide. It’s amazing how close to the original it was since neither of us had paid much attention to the darn thing for many years. My chin was on the wrong shoulder, but Louie had the same squint and I had the same doofy expression on my face. The difference in our height had changed, but I stretched a little instead of scrunching, down and it was perfect.

Doug projected the image onto a canvas and began to paint. Somehow the shadows on the slide made Louie’s face come out a little too round. No problem. Doug pared it down until he had a perfect image of Louie’s chiseled features. I suspect the fact that they were roommates at the time probably helped that process. Unfortunately, everything he took off the left side of Louie’s face, he had to put onto mine. He actually did a really good job, but my face came out a little skewed.

My mouth is a tad too big, while my nose is a trifle more crooked than reality and a bit off center. My mother loved it, of course, and it spent fifteen years on the wall before she passed away. Looking back, I think I might have disliked it even more than ”THE PICTURE” . It was considerably larger for one thing, and hand-painted to boot. Occasionally a visitor would miss “THE PICTURE,” but no one ever missed the painting. It hung over the couch, and was the first thing you saw when you entered the house. People recognized Louie immediately and invariably commented on what a good likeness it was. I don’t know that anyone ever commented on me, and if they did, I pray it wasn’t to say it looked just like me.

When my mother passed away, I made a big deal out of presenting the painting to Louie. He was quite pleased, and thought I was being terribly generous. I was even able to lay claim to the only surviving original of "THE PICTURE". Though it was not the framed copy, we never found that, and it’s a bit beat up, I have it tucked safely away. (You can click on the link below to see it. I can’t believe I’m actually putting THE PICTURE on the Internet for the world to see!)

As I look at it now, I see the faces of my son and daughter, and I finally understand what my mom loved about it. Funny how becoming a mother changes your perspective on things isn’t it?

BLOG #54 The Blue Horse

Ok, I admit it. This scene is the whole reason I created Clay Langton and his beautiful white horse, Gallahad. As I mentioned when Clay and his horse first burst upon the scene, I needed Gallahad for a favorite story from my husband’s family history. You see, the blue horse is real, only it was a horse of a slightly different color.

Bru’s grandfather, Cash, (short for Cassius) was apparently something of a character. The stories I hear of him remind me a great deal of my husband, but more of my nephew and son. This prank was more worthy of the younger generation, though I wouldn’t have put it past my husband in his teen years.

Cash had set his heart on a particular young lady, but so had another young swain. The rival’s name and most everything about him has been lost over the years. I suspect the animosity between the two was more than a competition for the same woman, but all the family knows is that he owned a magnificent white horse with a beautiful long flowing mane and tail. That horse was his pride and joy much like a man and his sports car, I suppose. Think of it as a Porsche or a mint condition 1960 Vet.

Now it seems there were certain unwritten laws when it came to courting that were apparently respected by one and all. One was that who ever got there first got the girl, and whoever came later was out of luck for that day. Apparently Cash got there after his rival one time too many and something snapped. The story goes that he shaved off the horse’s mane and tail and painted it purple with gentian violet, a horse medicine which is a brilliant violet and really quite pretty. Soon afterward (some say the same day) Cash left Iowa for good and went west to Colorado where he married and raised his family.
Unfortunately when I went to write the scene I discovered gentian violet hadn’t been invented in 1869. So I had to search around for something to use instead. Indigo seemed the perfect choice and it worked well. I get more comments about the “blue horse” than any other scene in any of my books. The best part is that it really happened though it was a purple horse rather than a blue one. But then most of the best, and funniest scenes in my books come from real happenings. Truth truly is better than fiction!

BLOG # 56 Bullwhip Johnson

In retrospect I’m not really sure where Bullwhip Johnson came from. He’s about the closest I have ever come to creating a truly evil character. Though Bullwhip was not based on a real character, there were many men like him. Bands of guerrillas claiming allegiance to one side or the other, roamed the countryside after the Civil War. Jayhawkers from the north and Bushwhackers from the south were often nothing more than mounted bands of hoodlums who terrorized the local inhabitants in the name of patriotism.

Though Bullwhip was a Jayhawker, that was not the only facet of his personality that came into play. Wars leave scars. The worst may have nothing to do with flesh and bone. Damage to the psyche is often far more crippling than the bloodiest wound. It has been given many names over the years, combat fatigue, chronic stress syndrome, and battle fatigue among others. Some victims recover from the traumas of war on go on to lead normal lives, of course. Others do not. Add to that the fact that Bullwhip had also suffered a head wound and most likely had traumatic brain injury as well and you have the recipe for disaster. On the other hand, he may have just been a nasty piece of work, a soul less monster, evil incarnate. Whatever he was, he definitely made a great villain, probably the best I ever came up with. He truly is a man you love to hate.

BLOG # 57

Though my books usually have a western setting, they are not really what you’d call westerns. They are simply missing too many elements of the tradition Westerns, gun fights for instance. This is as close to a gunfight as any of my characters have ever gotten. Jonathan is, in fact, the only one of my characters who prefers a pistol to a rifle, and that’s only because he’s so farsighted that he can’t use his rifle sites. Even so, it’s really no surprise that he manages to kill the bad guy with a perfect shot; he is the hero after all. The surprise is that he only meant to stop Bullwhip not kill him, and the bullet that pierced the villain’s heart was aimed at his shoulder not his chest.

At the beginning of this scene the reader knew just how despicable Bullwhip Johnson was, but Jonathan was still laboring under the impression that the man was a war hero. At the same time, he had serious doubts about the man he knew as Tom Fielding. Given that set of circumstances, there is very little chance that Jonathan would choose one man over the other. Kate and Charlie’s doubts about Bullwhip as well as his own gut feelings about Fielding would give him second thoughts but they wouldn’t be enough. I had to come up with a reason that Jonathan would kill Bullwhip. The solution was simple, he didn’t mean to.

In retrospect I don’t really remember when I came up with the idea of Bullwhip’s fortuitous death being accidental. I may have created Jonathan’s farsightedness as a means to dispose of Bullwhip and then gone back and planted it other places. Or I might have given him glasses to make his character more believable and then created the scenario where his inability to see causes Jonathan to miss his target. I suspect it was the latter. At any rate, even years after I wrote this plot climax, I like the fact that Jonathan’s most heroic deed was a miscalculation.

BLOG #58

As I mentioned before, Uncle Matthew turned out to be far more important than I ever expected him to be. I really can’t remember when I came up with his connection to Jonathan, but he somehow became both a clever businessman and a 19th century James Bond. Frankly, I thought that would be the end of him. He was born in Murphy’s Rainbow and he would die there. I was wrong.

For some reason, my secondary characters keep popping up in other books. I’m not sure why, but I suppose it’s because I spend so much time creating them that they become real to me. A couple of years ago I began working on a book about a Pinkerton Detective. When the book opens in 1858, Luke McCabe is in Independence, Missouri investigating a series of odd discrepancies in the records at the army depot. He is expecting a routine embezzlement case, which most of the Pinkerton Detective agency’s cases were. When Luke discovers it is anything but routine and may even threaten national security, he reports to his immediate superior, one Matthew McNesby. It is McNesby that orders him to follow the bad guys on the Oregon Trail.

As I got into the book I began to wonder why the Pinkerton Detective agency would be investigating something that was obviously a job for government agents. In fact Luke and his partner Ben Baxter seemed to be bouncing back and forth between being Pinkerton men and government agents in my head. I did what I always do when things don’t make sense, I started to research. What I found surprised me. It seems that before the Civil War there was no government agency that performed investigations of this kind. In fact there was no secret service of any kind.

In 1861The Pinkerton Agency was hired to guard Lincoln during the inauguration and foiled an assassination attempt. When the war started Abraham Lincoln hired Allen Pinkerton to set up the first US secret service. That much is well documented historical fact. The rest is a flight of fancy on my part.

McNesby worked for the government as a consultant of some sort, probably financial since he was a banker after all. Gradually he became involved with the seamier side of things and wound up having to investigate various embezzlement cases. Since he had no agents of his own, he went to his friend Allen Pinkerton who assigned two of his best agents, Luke McCabe and Ben Baxter. As a result Luke and Ben had worked with McNesby many times before and were quite used to his “crazy adventures” as Luke refers to them. Then, of course when the War began, Pinkerton set up the Secret Service and McNesby was already there and could easily have been made the head of espionage. It’s a bit convoluted but it makes sense and fits well with the man we see in Murphy’s Rainbow. Ah, I do love when history falls in with my story that way.

BLOG #59 Mac Anespie/McNesby

I have a third or fourth cousin on my father's side who is obsessed with genealogy. She spends a great deal of time digging for information and hunting down obscure Joneses. Since my grandmother maiden name was Jones, I’m pretty obscure. Still, to my everlasting delight, Helen found me, claimed me and proceeded to fill my eager ears with family information. Because of her diligence I have a copy of the passenger lists from the ships that carried my great-grandparents and their children across the Atlantic and other priceless odds and ends that have made my own genealogy searches much richer.

Even more exciting to me, though, were the family stories. This one came from a family that is on her father’s side and no connection to me. Still, the first time I heard it, I knew I would use it in one of my books. The family was named Mac Anespie, you see, but as they came through Ellis Island, the person processing them either misunderstood or didn’t care enough to make sure the name was correct. Whatever the reason Mac Anespie became McNesby and so it remains today. The current generation wasn’t even aware of the name change until they tried to trace the family roots back to Ireland.

Though no one has ever commented on the McNesby/Mac Anespie change, it’s one of those things in retrospect that seems contrived. On the other hand, if I hadn’t heard the story I would never have come up with it on my own. At any rate now I’ve set the record straight and you know the truth of it. As usual, the oddest things in my books are probably true.

Oh, one more note on my cousin Helen. The first time we met was at my youngest brother’s wedding about fifteen years ago. Since we were family, we had a picture taken, Helen, two of my brothers and me. When we got copy of the picture I was stunned. Though it really wasn’t obvious when we met, the family resemblance is astonishing. In fact, when I show it to people they will guess she is my mother or my aunt. We have the same smile, same nose, same eyes, same chin, same laugh lines, and though hers is white and mine is dark brown, we even have the same hair. In that picture I look more like her than I do my mother. The odd part is we are only something like fourth cousins once removed. You have to go clear back to my great-great-grandparents to find a common ancestor. Her mother and my grandmother were first cousins so she and my father were third. That's far enough removed that they legally could have gotten married. By rights Helen and I should only share about a sixteenth of our genes. Yet, there is that amazing resemblance. Genetics are a strange thing.

BLOG #60 The End

And so we come to the end of the book. I am one of those authors that just has to clean up all the loose ends. I can’t help myself. That’s why Kate and Jonathan have their little talk in the sweat lodge to tie everything up. Jonathan’s deep dark secret is revealed, Charlie and Moonflower seem on their way to happy ever after and everything about Bryan Murphy, Patrick Mac Anespie and Uncle Matthew is cleared up. Of course I can’t stay serious for long so I just had to throw in Kate’s offer to orgy. I’m rather proud of that, if you want to know the truth. It never fails to bring a smile as does the overheard conversation between Charlie and the boys.

I always have two objectives when I end a book. First I want to leave you with a smile and a warm glow. I also want the final scene to keep my readers thinking about the characters long after they have closed the book and put it back on the shelf. You know that Kate and Jonathan are…well…involved, and you can’t help but wonder is going on in Kate’s kitchen. You will have to be the judge of whether I have succeeded in keeping the story in your mind.

I hope that you have enjoyed this peek into my creative process as much as I have. I’ll admit when I started this I had no idea how much would be revealed. Some of the background was a much of a surprise to you as it was to me. It’s funny how ten years or so will give you distance and allow you to see things you weren’t aware of before. Gives you a different perspective I guess.

I would love to have you drop me an e-mail and let me know your thoughts on MURPHY’S RAINBOW UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL. I am beginning the same process with the second book of the Cheyenne Trilogy, SHADOWS IN THE WIND. I do hope you’ll join me. Thanks for being a part of my first book blog.