Author Spotlight - Excerpt from "Breaking Point" by Delores Goodrick Beggs

Thanks so much for supporting Delores during her spotlight week. Leave a comment on the blog today, Saturday, and Sunday and on Monday I'll pick a name randomly to receive a PDF copy of her book. Don't forget to leave your email so we can get ahold of you if you win. Enjoy the excerpt!

Moderator Steph

*******

"Good colt. I'm Stemson Arroyo Smith, by the way."

Each crisp word shot a thrill of pleasure through her. Her eyes widened, and she smiled. He didn't drawl the way Tennyson's cowboy friends did. Cultured, she thought, and with a deep voice she could hear well.
"He needs work, a lot of work."

"A little at a time will do it. He's young yet."

"The house is over there." She nodded in Tennyson’s direction, drinking in the wonderful experience of not having to tilt her head in order to hear him.

Stemson made no move to leave.

Mauranie ground her teeth and clenched her fists, staring at him. She glanced past him to where Tennyson stood pressed against the veranda rail, her body rigid again, a grimace on her face.

"My sister sometimes keeps her suitors cooling their heels. I warn you, yours will be a long wait if you remain here. Tennyson’s hand-made boots have never seen the inside of a corral." Mauranie turned her back to Stemson and clicked the colt into motion.

"My business is with Mauranie Wells." His deep voice caused her to pause and turn back to better catch his words. "I daresay it’s you? Scott Ringer at the feed store in Mescal Flats told me your sister is a blonde. So you see, I am, after all, where I should be."

Warmth started in the core of her being and spread to engulf her. At the same time, uncertainty struck her. Had she heard him right? This nice man had come to see her? She well knew how her poor hearing sometimes tripped her up. She tensed. She had to check if she'd heard him right. She drew Showman to a stop and led him to the pole fence where the stranger stood.

"Me? What can I do to help you?" She scanned the crinkled corners of his silvered eyes, letting her gaze drop down smooth cheeks darkening with new afternoon shadow. Her tight muscles relaxed. She lifted her gaze and stared into the smile of those silvery-blue eyes.

***

You can find Delores at:http://www.goodrickbeggs.wordpress.com/

Author Spotlight - A Smorgasbord of Words by: Delores Goodrick Beggs

I have observed over and again how people react in different ways to items they come into contact with, make selections from the smorgasbord of life of those offerings they most enjoy to return to for satisfaction time and again.

For me the dish I continually craved and pigged out on when possible was books.

It started when I was a preschooler. My older sister played school with her friend and the two of them sparred, vying to see which one could first teach their younger preschool sister how to read. My sister never knew what a gift she gave me with all that personal reading coaching.

My mother had a set of 1912 - 1920's James Oliver Curwood novels that were given to her by her Aunt Irma. These books were passed on to me and I still thumb through those worn pages from time to time. I never tire of them, Back to God's Country, especially. One day my sister took me home after another day of playing school with her friend. I picked up one of my mother's Curwood novels and discovered I could read the words. I couldn't put it down. Isat on the floor in front of the bookcase and read all four Curwood books almost nonstop in just a few days. Curwood's books and later Zane Grey's series of Western novels, hooked me on reading for life. I have read all of the Zane Grey Western novels, and still have my favorite, Wildfire. My brother has the rest of the set.

When I began to write my own first Western Historical, Breaking Point, I went back and reread Curwood and Zane Grey because I wanted to write my stories the way I saw theirs - smooth, clear prose that journeyed up hills and down valleys across the pages and kept me reading, entranced, unable to put them down. Now my Western Historical series is being published.

I wonder, does my prose come across clear and journey up hills and down? The jury is still out.

Breaking Point was released by Desert Breeze Publishing on May 11, 2012.

Author Spotlight - The Inspiration of Horses by Delores Goodrick Beggs

I wrote some of my first published short stories sitting on a California mountaintop while I watched Moonrise, my part Appaloosa mare that I'd trained, play in the exercise corral at the hilltop stables that was situated so high a hazy snow cloud once hovered close enough overhead that I reached up into it and felt my hand grow icy and watched it disappear, the only time I have touched a cloud.

Moonrise was a feisty mare with personality plus, and always did something unexpected. She was never what you'd call a tame, broke horse. She was perfectly capable of ignoring a command if I neglected to make it the correct way I'd trained her since she was a young, unbroken filly. She gloried in keeping me on my booted toes as well as providing inspiration for my stories.

One time I remember well was the day the exercise corral had a number of tumbleweeds rolling about in the wind. She began to nudge at them with her nose, and then picked one up in her mouth, carried it close to where I sat somewhat sheltered from the blowing gusts, and dropped it. She cantered away after another rolling bush, caught it in her muzzle, and brought it over to pile on the first one she'd dropped. She repeated that until she'd piled four tumbleweeds in a neat stack while I watched her play with them.

In my 1989 short story Aestart and the Shadowfolk, part of a published collection of my skyhorse stories, Aestart the skyhorse saved the heroine from the swarming Shadowfolk by covering her with dried brush in a similar manner as how I'd observed Moonrise pile tumbleweeds that day.

Moonrise was also a part of one of the most special events in my life. My daughter and I were riding at the stables late one afternoon, I on Moonrise and her on her big bay, Beau, which she kept at the stables also. We rode around the barn to overlook the exercise corral,and watch the city lights come on far below, savoring the end of another nice ride together. We turned the horses around to go put them up just in time to see a huge, milk-white moon rise over the barn roof. We halted our horses and stared watching it climb on up into the sky, glorying in the specialness of experiencing the moon rise together.

Author Spotlight - Unexpected Moments by Delores Goodrick Beggs

Perhaps there are persons who sail through life without any unexpected moments, but I have never known one. My experience has been the persons I have known have been working to minimize issues occurring in their lives and in spite of their efforts found they were still challenged by unexpected moments they could do nothing to change.

Such a happening occurs in my debut historical romance novel Breaking Point, when the heroine Mauranie Wells, who has been in conflict with her younger sister Tennyson, finds a breaking point comes where she is backed into a corner and has no choice but to let Tennyson go and experience life for herself.

The sisters were left orphans when their parents were killed in a horse and wagon crash.
As a result, Mauranie, who has a hearing disability, is thrust suddenly into the role of adult and runs the ranch in an effort to make a living for them from their Wells Double Bar ranch, their father's legacy to them.

Sometimes coming of age happens when a young woman finds herself at an unexpected moment in a sudden point of time where she must utilize the lessons she neglected to take advantage of before, and this is what happens to Mauranie's sister Tennyson, who comes to realize growing up involves more on her part than a constant stream of new gowns and partying with bad boy Jasper Greon.

But life holds unexpected moments, in the form of lessons for everyone. Mauranie has
something to learn also, a new understanding of her sister, when she agrees to cowboy banker Stemson Arroyo Smith's impromptu invitation to attend the town dance, and hastily stitches together a gown for herself from her dead mother's wardrobe so she can to wear it to the event.

Author Spotlight - Q&A with Delores Goodrick Beggs

STEPH: I don't know much about "Breaking Point." What's it about?

DELORES: Breaking Point is about sisters Mauranie and Tennyson Wells, whose tastes are totally different. Mauranie wants to move their horse ranch forward to a paying proposition in order to support them both. But Tennyson lives for the bright lights of town life. Mauranie has always taken a back seat to her social sister, preferring that because of her poor hearing. She is happily shocked when banker-cowboy Stemson Arroyo Smith rides into the Wells Double Bar one day, and does the unthinkable. He passes by her petite, beautiful sister on the veranda, and stops his horse at the corral where Mauranie is working the black colt Showman. He wants to speak with her, not her sister?

STEPH: How long did it take you to write?

DELORES: Mauranie became my best friend for about a year's worth of long evenings at home after my day job, evenings spent listening to her tell her story in my head as I typed it. Like Mauranie, I have a hearing disability and television in those days, without captions, held no appeal for me. Radio was just noise. My children, two sons and a daughter, led busy lives and were seldom at home evenings.

STEPH: How much research did you have to do?

DELORES:My memory was loaded with what Mauranie did with the horses because I grew up with horses and ponies. My father owned his own acreages and himself built the house we lived in and the outbuilding, so most of the information I needed was there to draw upon. The actual research I did was to determine what kind of writing I wanted to tell the story in. Earlier in my life I read my mother's old favorite books by James Oliver Curwood - she passed that set of books on to me - and the entire set of Zane Grey novels, of which I still have "Wildfire," my favorite one. My brother has the rest of the set. My father read western paperbacks constantly, and when he finished one I read it. I grew up reading western after western, and I knew I wanted to write that kind of stories.

STEPH: How does the cover reflect the story within?

DELORES: I feel the cover is perfect. It so reminds me of my days riding Snowball, and my heroine Mauranie Wells grew up working horses with her father. She is at home breaking and training her horse of promise, Showman, just as the woman on the cover looks natural, with a fine seat on her horse, including feet in the proper position for what the horse is doing.

STEPH: Mauranie is the heroine. What are her strengths? Weakness?

DELORES: Mauranie knows what she is doing. She has adapted over the years while growing up, learned from her father how to handle and work horses, and to solve, or at least minimize, problems. She had that strength to fall back upon when she and her sister Tennyson suddenly became orphans.

Her weakness is her younger sister Tennyson. Tennyson grew up used to socializing in town with their mother and Mauranie tries to allow her younger sister to continue her own socializing way of life until their banked funds mysteriously disappear and money becomes an issue between them. She still continued to put Tennyson's unreasonable demands first, even when foreclosure on the ranch loomed, and she'd promised herself to finally say no.

STEPH: What does Stemson find appealing about her?

DELORES: They have much in common, their love and knowledge of horses, sibling issues, and neither spends much time on the social scene. Stemson takes advantage of an unexpected opportunity to get to know Mauranie better after he meets her, and is delighted when Mauranie accepts his impromptu invitation, even though she qualifies it that she isn't into "improper."

STEPH: What is the theme of the novel?

DELORES: Families are forever. Even when her own family has problems, Mauranie Wells goes the extra mile to reunite a mother with her two children, and hero Stemson, is moved to take his own younger sister under his care.

STEPH: As a writer, where do you draw inspiration from?

DELORES: Relaxation. My story ideas pop into my mind when I am totally concentrating on something else. Gardening among my clover plants, working a puzzle, cooking... all are fertile ground for my mind to interrupt with a new story idea. Even a real life experience can unexpectedly bloom into a story idea later in a moment of relaxation. This happened after I trimmed the tree back from between my driveway and my neighbor's. I stood in weeds and brush to lop the branches short. I moved to a new position and stepped in a nail that went completely through my foot and out the top of my tennis shoe. I was home alone and on my own. The nail had been driven through a board hidden among the brush and the only way to get free was to stand my other foot on the long end of the board and pull my foot back off it. At a later time this experience turned into my 1991 published short story "Sweetgum," about a tree gone wild on a people.

STEPH: Do you have an ebook reader? If so, which one?

DELORES: Yes. I have had a Kindle (2nd generation) for a while and I read all books on it! I have it set exactly the size I want to read without my glasses, and it is SO quick and easy to search by author name, then select to download from Amazon. I am hooked on ebooks!

STEPH: Fun question: What are your plans for Memorial Day?

DELORES: I will be reminiscing about my beloved parents and spreading more clover seeds in my containers. When I was a small child, my father taught me the art of finding 4-leaf clovers and the Irish luck of his family. I know this is going to sound strange, but in 1998 I had a surreal experience. I was thinking about him while I alked in a park near my California home. I looked down at the grass beside the walk, and spied a 4-leaf clover. A few steps further, another...when I finished my walk I had a whole bunch of 4-leafers in my hand. Later I started growing my own clover, and have found numerous 4-leaf clovers in my own gardens. I was privileged last spring to show one of my granddaughters how to find 4-leaf clovers and she came up with a handful of her own. I was delighted to discover she, too had the touch. I work each spring at enlargement of my Lucky Clover Garden, a memorial to my father and my heritage.

You can find Delores at: http://goodrickbeggs.wordpress.com