Wildcard Weekend: Man, Woman,Earth Wind and Sky + Giveaway

The Pink Heart Society is delighted to welcome award winning Special Edition Author Kathleen Eagle and she is doing a Giveaway!

UPDATE: Kathleen's winner has been drawn and Alison (pageturner 45) was first out of the hat.

Ah, Pink Hearts Society.  A group after my own heart. 

Thank you for inviting me over for a visit!  I want to tell you all about my new book and send out a prize to one of our visitors, but let me extend an invitation to come Riding With The Top Down with my friends and me whenever you feel like getting a little wind in your hair.

Now, about writing the kind of book we all love to read...
The Dakotas are made for Romance. 

The landscape is all powerful.  Like love, it is at once fearsome and fantastic.  It can make you, it can break you, but it cannot be ignored.   I remember the first time I drove—or was driven—from the airport, through Bismarck and down the two-lane highway that followed the Missouri River onto the prairie.  The town ended abruptly.  I was used to Western New England, where towns butt up against each other, one after another.  But out there on the Great Plains, suddenly there was nothing but grass and sky as far as I could see.  It took my breath away.  Every friend and relative who came from the East to visit me over the years had the same experience.  So this is what they mean by wide open spaces.  Suddenly, you’re not surrounded.  You’re barely sheltered. 

Suddenly, you’re not a cog in a wheel or an ant in an enormous colony.  You are part of something bigger.  The landscape is a major character in your journey.

Most of my stories are set in the Dakotas.  Most of my heroes are either cowboys or Indians or both, and many of my heroines have come to this land from somewhere else.  It’s an experience I know well.  My husband is Lakota, and he was a cowboy when I met him.  Like the horse and the coyote and the hawk—but unlike any other man I’d ever met—that man was a beautiful extension of his surroundings. 

My next book, ONE BRAVE COWBOY (September 20 release, Harlequin Special Edition), is the story of courageous people harboring shy hearts.  This is basically the way the book’s back cover sets it up:

“

The name’s Cougar.  Just Cougar.  One name is enough.”

Behind the bravado is a complex man.  Indian cowboy, war hero, walking wounded in search of answers.  Cougar needs to build a new life, and he’ll start with what he loves most.  Horses.  Which brings him to the Double D Wild Horse Sanctuary and into the lives of ranch volunteer Celia Banyon and her very special son.
The boy suffered an unspeakable accident, and his mother feels equally unspeakable guilt.  But maybe a man like Cougar can her back from the brink with the offer of a chance to feel like a woman again.  Now, suddenly, one name isn’t enough for what they might have—healing, love, family, forever.  The risks are great, but the possibilities are endless.

The vast prairie setting helps bring this emotional story to life.  Everything in Celia’s life is in need of repair.  She’s moved into an isolated farmhouse that’s very much a fixer-upper, and Cougar, like all cowboys, carries a well-stocked toolbox in his pickup.  And like all cowboys, he likes to roam.  But he needs a home, preferably one with a place to keep a horse and an unrestricted view of the sky.  In the Dakotas, the night sky is full of all kinds of possibilities.  Setting a scene under the stars invites the characters to imagine, to remember, to share secrets and dreams in the dark.  Setting a scene during a sudden storm—the kind that rolls across the prairie like an angry lover—tosses characters together in whatever shelter they can find while the weather has its way.  Wind and rain on the outside easily redouble intimacy inside. There’s an old car in Celia’s barn—a 1966 Ford Fairlane left behind by a previous owner—and when the rafters start rattling, that cozy back seat is pretty inviting.

ONE BRAVE COWBOY is the fifth book I’ve linked to the Double D Wild Horse Sanctuary and Mustang Sally’s Wild Horse Training Competition.  It’s a setting I often dream about and a collection of characters I’ve truly come to love.  I hope you will, too.  Tell me about your favorite romantic settings.  I’ll send an autographed copy of one of the first books in the series—your choice—to one of our visitors who posts a question or comment today.  One Brave Cowboy is currently available in bookshops and online -- both in print and as an e-book, including at Amazon.com

ONE BRAVE COWBOY will be a featured alternate for the Doubleday and Rhapsody Book Clubs.  Kathleen is thrilled to announce that seven of her most popular novels will soon be available in digital format and trade paperback through Bell Bridge Books.  You can check up on Kathleen and read excerpts from her books at kathleeneagle.com