Author Spotlight - Linda McMaken talks about the inspiration behind "The 3 Baers Trilogy"

Even though I'm a Midwest girl by birth, my heart is in the West. My mom used to read me Zane Grey, Louis L'amour, and Max Brand books. She took me to every John Wayne movie that was made and she'd talk about mountain men and cowboys and their free spirits. Cowboys are tough, hardworking, quiet and unassuming, and I think that is what attracts many people to read and attracted me to write about them.

I'd have to say my inspiration for writing westerns, would be my mom. Although she never got to visit the West, it lived in her in so many ways. She would tough, dependable, hardworking, faithful, everything that history seems to have embodied in cowboys.

Since, I know about farming, but very little about ranching, I figured me being on a ranch would be pretty funny to those cowboys. So, there is a bit of me in some of those funny scenes.

Baer Truth, the first book in the Three Baers Trilogy began during a family vacation in Wyoming. We passed a cattle ranch where hundreds of head were grazing. I wondered about that ranch family, how long had they lived there? How big was the ranch? Then my snarky muse (who I call comedian Robin Williams evil twin) takes over and says "what if a cowboy on that beef ranch fell for a girl who happened to be a vegetarian?" Baer Truth was born, and other cowboys soon followed!

Booktrailers - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BuDECZsZrg - Baer Necessities
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaA8p65oOeo - Baer Truth


Linda McMaken
www.linda-mcmaken.com
www.makenwords.blogspot.com

BAER TRUTH - Book One of the Three Baer's Trilogy
-One of them will be just right for you!
From Desert Breeze Publishing

THE GRANITE ROSE
Ancient Rome, epic battles, endangered hearts
From Desert Breeze Publishing

Author Spotlight - Excerpt from Baer Truth

Baer Truth – Book One Three Baers Trilogy
To kick off Linda's new book release week, one lucky commenter will be randomly selected to receive a fun gift bag and a free copy of Baer Truth.


Excerpt – Baer Truth

Abby Takes a Job at Hidden Rock Ranch

He gave her an understanding nod and hopped in the truck with Abby. "Please, call me Mike." He smiled, starting the engine. Making a hard u-turn, the truck slid across the pavement.

Abby fastened her seatbelt and grabbed the handle above the window.

The truck fishtailed across the ice, but Mike didn’t slow down. "I hope you don't plan on going shopping very often." He turned the wipers on. They screeched painfully across the glass. "It's a fair piece to the nearest store. We plan far in advance for shopping trips, so you'll want to keep a list for pantry purchases."

They pulled off the main road onto a gravel road. He made several more turns onto smaller and smaller gravel roads, until they reached a rutted, one-lane dirt road. Suddenly the dirt road gave way to a smooth blacktop drive that wound around snow-covered banks, atop which a red snow fence ran as far as the eye could see.

"I think I'm going to have to drop breadcrumbs to find my way in and out of here." Abby couldn't remember ever having been so far from civilization. "Tell me, do you ever get snowed in back here?" As far as she could see in every direction was nothing, absolutely nothing, except hills, snow fence, trees, snow, and huge mountains.


"Occasionally we've been snowed in for a few days. We've got snowmobiles and we can get out for supplies with them."
A lump formed in her throat that refused to be swallowed.

"We've also got the Cat and the Deere with plows and shovels."

Abby had no clue what he was talking about, but as long as those things could get her out of this desolate wilderness, she liked them.

"Nobody's lived at the cottage for awhile. I had the boys go in, knock down the spider webs, and make sure no snakes or anything was living inside, but they don't always get everything. You aren't afraid of spiders and such, are you?"

The lump on her head began to ache. Mike's expression was kind, but odds were she was about to face those things, afraid or not. "I can't say I care too much for them."

"Well, snakes are hibernating this time of year. But they can move about when you start disturbing them. I'll have the boys leave you a hoe just to be safe." The truck slid across the blacktop road. Mike chuckled. "That was fun."

Abby pushed a hand against the dashboard, her mouth becoming suddenly dry. "A hoe? What do I need a hoe for?"

"For hacking the snakes' heads off, honey." Mike was matter-of-fact.

"Hack its head off?" The ache in her head turned to throbbing and was joined by a rumbling nausea deep in her stomach. "Couldn't I just call you or one of the men to come and--" she shuddered-- "hack the thing?"

"Sure, but we're usually out in the field or up at one of the cattle barns. It could be awhile before one of us could get it for you. By then it could disappear under the floor only to pop back out in the middle of the night and snuggle up with you in bed."

"They're cold-blooded, you know, and they like to find a warm spot to sleep. So it would be best if you just hack them when you see them."

Her head swam. Her vision turned gray and began sliding into black. She had gone from a bad dream to a horrific nightmare. Abby pinched her thigh, wincing at the pain. Awake. She was awake. The nightmare was real.

Author Spotlight - The Truth about Tractors

Wyoming


Abby Clark, the heroine in Baer Truth has a funny incident with a tractor in the book. I've had a couple of readers ask me if that was based on personal experience. No, I replied, confident in my tractor driving ability. And while I never had a similar incident happen, I have had some rather interesting moments on a tractor.

As a teen, I helped bale hay, feed horses, and all that goes with farming. Since I was younger, I usually got the grunt work of any job, like being in the barn loft on a hot August day stacking hay bales, but I rarely got to drive the tractor. I parked it in the barn, moved it for various reasons and that was about it.

Moving forward in time -- As a young mom I was offered a job mowing area fields and roadsides by a local farmer, I'll call Bill. I did know how to drive a tractor and how hard could mowing be? It really was a great job. I could mow when I wanted, he paid me cash, and if I needed to go home to the kids, no problem.

Bill's idea of instruction was, "here's the tractor, it's full of fuel, flip this lever to engage the PTO and mow." With that, he went to his tractor and left me in the middle of a 400-acre field.

Alright, I could do this. Starting the tractor, I got that, using the clutch, that was a cinch, engaging the PTO, no problem, the circling of a tree – I so didn't get that. I didn't pay any attention to that 7-foot wide bush hog trailing along behind me and it didn't exactly flow around a tree.

I must have taken the lives of twenty trees with that bush hog before I realized what I'd done. Every new little sapling that had been lovingly planted were now only tiny spots of mulch in a vast field of grass. When Bill came back to get me to break for lunch he stood beside those little spots of mulch, looked at me and said, "don't you know how to square off with a tractor?" Then he looked across the field I'd mowed (well, only 1/3 of it was mowed) and said. "Are you drinking or on something?"

I was aghast. "No! Why would you even think such a thing?"

"Get off your tractor, stand here, and look down that field." Well, there wasn't a straight row of mowed grassed to be found. It seemed I was "tacking" to the right, and mowing in a very nice 90 degree arc. Bill shook his head, snorted and said. "Remind me to never let you plant my corn."

The next day, (farming sense of humor here) he brought several other farmers to get a look at my field – before they went to the local and only store for coffee. They were all having a good laugh. I told them I was being creative and making crop circles, got on my tractor and mowed.

A few days later, we were mowing the roadsides of some rural roads. My Walkman (yes, I'm that old) was blaring in my ears, the sun was shining, and suddenly my tractor slowly sank off the side of the road. With an ugly hissing sound, it sank farther until there was; well the only way it can be described is a really loud, wet, juicy fart. I'd hit a patch of brush with locust trees. Locust trees have some mighty long, hard, and nasty thorns. Well, I popped one of those huge rear tires on the tractor. We had to call for the "farm tractor tire" service to come fix it. One bonus, I'd popped that tire in front of a really sweet neighbors house and we had lemonade and cookies till the tire guy got there. Then her husband came out of the barn, looked at me and started laughing, realizing I was the "crooked mower woman." He patted Bill on the back and wished him luck.

We have a Renaissance Faire in the area where I live and we mowed the field where they park cars for the faire. Another huge 200-acre field of scrub inhabited by rabbits, groundhogs and big-a** snakes. As I was mowing along, Walkman on, I saw this huge 100-foot long snake travel in front of my tractor.

Now, if there'd been a video camera around this would have been worthy of the ten grand. I'm on a big tractor, pulling a huge bush hog, roughly ten-feet above the ground. When I see this Anaconda (it seriously looked that big) I jumped to my feet on the tractor seat, screaming like a scalded dog. Bill came crashing across the field thinking I'd been swarmed by bees or was having a seizure. I'm screaming, "Snake, Snake!"

He points to my bush hog and says, "Run over the damn thing."

I'm still screaming, shaking my head no, so he makes a pass in front of me and misses the snake. This thing's head pops up, it's hissing, and jumping, my screaming gets louder, as I am sure this snake on steroids is going to seek me out and bite me, squeeze me or whatever those wretched things do.

At this point, my tractor is plotting its own course across the field, with me standing on the seat screaming, and Bill is swiping back and forth trying to bush hog this snake, who is fighting him like a ticked off bull in a Madrid bull fight. I came to a clanging stop against a metal farm fence post and was thrown off the tractor and into a wet, gunk-filled ditch where a pack of hungry blood sucking mosquitoes and chiggers attack as though I was their last meal.

By now, performers and vendors at the faire were in the field thinking someone was being killed, Bill was making made circles in the field his head snapping around like it was on a stick and I was trying to climb over the fence and shut off the tractor.

On second thought, maybe Abby's tractor experience is a bit more personal then I realized.

Author Spotlight - Meet Linda McMaken

I'm actually a very boring person. Seriously, if the FBI ever tapped my phone I would be hailed as the cure for insomnia! When I was ask to write about myself, I had one sentence that said, "Hi, my name is Linda," blinking at me on my computer for about week. That's so sad for an author; you'd think I could at least "invent" something exciting to talk about.

Besides my family and writing, I guess I'm most passionate about travel. We have a very small fifth wheel and run away whenever we can. In recent years, with the kids graduating, parents being ill and hubby fighting cancer, those days are pretty few and far between.

When our daughters were younger, we had a very, very small travel trailer, only 18' and it was nearly thirty years old when we bought it. The girls named it "Tumbleweed," right after they saw their first tumbleweed, and that name has stuck with every camper we've ever owned. We towed that trailer everywhere, and had a blast. We've been fortunate to see 46 of the 50 states, had the most amazing adventures, and met some incredible people. This is probably another reason my stories are "character driven."

We yanked them out of school one October and headed west for two weeks. They were studying Native America culture, so we ended up at a reservation at Four-Corners. The place was deserted except for the folks working there. One of the ladies spied a textbook in my daughters backpack, and took an interest. Pretty soon, they were being taught Native American history by Native Americans. We spent several hours there, eating, laughing, and learning so many things even I didn't know.

Some interesting people - a Vietnam vet glassblower in Vermont, the mother of twelve at South Pass who panned for gold, the retired tug boat captain, and the cute Hispanic border guard, on the Canadian border! ☺

The plains of Wyoming


Then there were those other moments - getting stuck in the mud in the Big Horn Mountains, losing a muffler in Independence, Missouri, chased by geese in Tennessee, losing my daughter in the snow on the Rocky Mountain Parkway (sank up to her neck – in July!), blew a transmission line in the Appalachian Mountains, and got struck by lightning in Cape Cod. Through it all, we laughed, made s'mores, had some really awesome campfires, met truly amazing people and made incredible memories. Hopefully, with prayers and blessings from above, hubby and I will soon be "On the Road Again." I sing, hubby just politely nods.

Author Spotlight - Linda McMaken talks about books with character

I was recently asked why I write contemporary novels. I had to think about that quite awhile, as there wasn't a definitive answer. Since I was writing a blog post, I had to come up with a bit more then, "I dunno, I just like'em".

Right when I had it all figured out, Desert Breeze Publishing contracted for a historical novel I'd submitted. Then I was asked if I plotted, outlined, or created a story first? I had to answer none of the above. My books usually begin with a character. I love personalities.

I am a people watcher and many manuscripts have evolved from my encounter with one person who made me laugh, or cry or even made me angry. Joe, in Baer Truth came from a cowboy I'd listened to at a rodeo in Wyoming.

There was a woman reporter was talking to him. She was interviewing the cowboy because he'd just won the bronc riding event. I felt so sorry for the poor woman, because every question she asked him, he would answer with "yep" or "nope." The cowboy was handsome, covered with dust, and didn't seem very comfortable in front of a camera. Plus, she wasn't asking questions that begged for an answer. Suddenly a kid popped up, wearing a cowboy hat and asked what every cowboy wants to talk about - the horse he bested, and the next rodeo. Then he talked like a mockingbird on speed!
Joe's personality is loosely based on this cowboy. Joe doesn't talk much until Abby asks him about Hidden Rock Ranch, then she gets to see a side of him she never knew existed.

Tessa, Abby's friend in Baer Truth is based on a couple of people. A co-worker, a cousin, and a friend, she's a blend of personalities. Of all the characters, Tessa was the most fun to write because she vocalized what everyone else was thinking and wanting to say.

The brothers in the book all have very different personalities. As in most families, siblings, like the Baer brothers, have a love/hate relationship. They do love each other; will always be there for one another, but sometimes they just cannot understand each other. Of course, the Baers had a little help from other people driving those wedges into their family, and now they are trying to mend fences.

Then there's that historical I have coming in January 2012, The Granite Rose. It's set in ancient Rome – I know I get that look a lot. Well, as a kid I did have a major crush on Charlton Heston, and Kirk Douglas, and Tony Curtis – I had lots of crushes! I will be having updates on my website for this one.

My writing path starts with a character, and then I wonder what that personality would do when placed in a certain situation. From there the story evolves, and usually I have nothing to do with it other than the typing. My characters, they are a determined bunch!

Author Spotlight Week - Q&A with Linda McMaken

STEPH: I'd like to welcome author Linda McMaken to the blog this week. Linda's latest release is "Baer Truth." What's Baer Truth about?

LINDA: Baer Truth is a romantic comedy about a vegetarian punk rock singer who is unceremoniously dumped in the middle of beef country in the dead of winter, the small town that rescues her and the cowboy that falls for her.

STEPH: Where did you find the inspiration for it?

LINDA: I was inspired by my travels to Wyoming. I visit every chance I get. It feels like home, and I miss it terribly when I leave. So, naturally I wanted to set my story there, plus they have some awesome cowboys in Wyoming! If any reader ever gets the chance to attend Cheyenne Frontier Days – GO. It is the premier rodeo in the U.S.A. (I have this fantasy (I am a fiction writer) that I'll be invited to Wyoming, perhaps Yellowstone Lodge to do a booksigning) See, I'm always looking for a chance to go back.

STEPH: How long did it take you to write?

LINDA: Before, during or after revisions and edits? LOL It took about 6-months for the first draft, then a few months worth of edits and revisions. By the way, I'd like to shout out a loud thank you to my editor, Mandy Moore – she's awesome.

STEPH: How important is setting to the novel?

LINDA: Very important. The mountains, the ranch, the small town are integral to the plot. The snow is a secondary character. To both the hero and heroine, home is important, family is important. Hidden Rock Ranch is part of the hero's DNA, and it ends up infecting Abby.

STEPH: Did you have to do much research for the novel?

LINDA: Some. I have a hubby that knows horses, I live in an area full of rodeos and farms, so much of the information in the book is firsthand. Of course, farming and ranching are very different, and the Midwest and Wyoming are worlds apart, but some things remain the same in both places. I did get some great information on the finer points of bull riding from the Professional Bull Riders Association.

STEPH: Hollywood just told you they want to make a movie of your novel. Cast the leads!


LINDA: Wow! Is that every author's fantasy? Well, first I'd negotiate to write the screenplay, and as for the cast, -- I think they should hold auditions for hot, hunky cowboys in Wyoming and let me pick the lead. For Abby, I think Katherine Heigl would be fun. She's very cute, has great comedic timing, and I think she'd look adorable with purple and orange hair!

STEPH: What do you want people to take away from the novel?

LINDA: Fun! Just a genuine, lighthearted, fun read about how important home really is and no matter how different two people are love can conquer all. And that colleges should offer a course in Tractor Driving 101.

STEPH: Are you a plotter or a panster?

LINDA: Both, depending on the day, actually depending on the hour of the day you ask. The voices in my head go in all directions, and I tend to follow where they lead. With each book there are certain plot points that I wanted included, but how I get to them, well it's never a straight road. Now that The Baers is going to be a series, I might have to alter that procedure. Since the books will need to bring pieces of each book together – wow, I just realized how much work this is going to be! I'd better stock up on coffee.

STEPH: What's your writing space like?

LINDA: My writer's cave is a spare bedroom. There is a wooden sign on one wall that reads, "Nobody gets in to see the wizard, not nobody, not no how." I have a candle burning if I'm working at night and there's a window with a view over a lush, green Midwest cornfield. Unless it's October then it's a field of brown, withered, dried up cornstalks waiting to be combined, or January, then it's a field of spiky cornstalks sticking up like evil little scarecrow arms through the snow. It gives you that weird "Children of the Corn" feel on occasion; I'm guessing Stephen King's office overlooks a cornfield, too! LOL

STEPH: Tell us a little about the state you live in?

LINDA: The Buckeye State, home to the National United States Air Force Museum, the largest museum dedicated to aviation – we have Air Force One (sorry, Harrison Ford not included) and the Wright B Flyer parked here. Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we are the birthplace of the Wright Brothers, six U.S. Presidents, Doris Day, Dean Martin, and Steven Spielberg. And we have Buckeyes - delicious rounds of peanut butter, dipped in chocolate to almost the top, leaving just a smidge of the peanut butter showing (hence the name Buckeyes).