Author Spotlight - Excerpt from Substitute Lover

Thank you so much for supporting Delores' week in the spotlight. Enjoy this excerpt from Substitute Lover.

Smiles
Moderator Steph

*****

When she looked up at him, he clamped his mouth shut. "I heard Jasper had left town with you, and then it took me a while because you weren't in any of the places I expected to find a lady."

"I'm so glad you found me." She smiled and stroked his arm.

"We've got to talk, Tennyson. Have you eaten any breakfast?"

Her stomach rumbled at the mention of food.

"I guess not. Let's see to you, first." Caleb looked her up and down, and then turned her around. His big hands brushed down her long skirt. Bits of hay and dust fell onto the ground. Next, he fumbled with her hair.

"Let me." She lifted her hands to tuck the stray locks away, refreshing her dignity back into place before he escorted her to the stage stop for breakfast. "Is this better?" She turned her questioning gaze on him.

He narrowed his eyes and then he smiled. "A bit dusty, but any traveling lady would be. Let's go eat at the stage depot. Oh." He paused, and looked into the distance, chewing on his lip. He rubbed the toe of one flat-heeled boot in the dust. He sighed, then looked down and met her gaze. "Is there a ring on your finger?"

The intensity of his gaze bored into hers.

Her cheeks turned scarlet.

"Why, no." She paused, her voice whispery as she stretched her hands out for him to see.

"We never found the preacher, so we didn't get married." She swallowed. "And then Jasper left."

He quirked his mouth in a cynical grin.

"I'm not Jasper, but will I do for now?"


Find Substitue Lover at:
http://goo.gl/X3f5l (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1oqYI (Amazon.com)
Also available at Barnes & Nobel, major e-book publishers

Also available by Delores Goodrick Beggs:
Place in the Heart Book One: Breaking Point, May 2012
http://goo.gl/lH5NE (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1BIuN (Amazon.com)

Charming Champion, August, 2012, Contemporary single title
http://goo.gl/mfYCR (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/r8J1U (Amazon.com)

Coming June, 2013 - Place in the Heart Book Three: Perfect Tenderfoot

Author Spotlight - Going The Distance by Delores Goodrick Beggs

As my 50th birthday approached, visions of over-the-hill accoutrement and skidding down into life's shadows vanished when I made an impromptu decision to participate in a newspaper-sponsored10K mile footrace.

Why I made such a decision I didn't know, and still don't, any more than I ever knew why I'd taken up sewing as a 4-H teenager, or started my Place in the Heart western book series, typing evenings after a stressful work day before there were closed captions to interest me in television programs. It wasn't like I'd had an affinity for track as a teenager - in gym class we girls were required to run once around the track at the close of the hour, and I usually trailed in last.

I spoke of my new goal with my adult son, who'd ran some track races when he attended high school. There was a moment of silence.

"The 10k? I haven't even run in the 10k, Mom," said my three-sport letterman.
"All I have to do is finish," I replied. "And I get a participant's ribbon."

"You have to finish that same day," he reminded me.

"You can coach me through this." I decided I needed some expert advice.
I began to train hard at the local high school track, and felt a great sense of achievement when I could jog a bit further each day. "I'm soon going to be able to run all the way around the track once," I chortled to my coach son.

"For 10K you need to go 25 times around the track," he replied.

I frowned, somewhat shocked, before I gathered my determination again. I'd had no real sense of distance when I'd decided to do this. I just had an inner need to complete something new.

I refused to be daunted, however, and kept on keeping on toward my goal. On race day, I started near the end of the pack, and stayed there; admittedly, I'd figured out some options to reach the finish line. I had to walk a lot of the way after the half way mark, running a bit, and then walking a bit, but I did finish the race that day, and while I was close to the end of the racers that trailed in, I had the satisfaction of knowing I wasn't last.

Sometimes when I worked on writing my Place in the Heart western series, and I needed to decide what issue a character would run into next, and how he/she would handle it, my mind went blank. Then the 10K race would come to mind, and my determination to finish the book would firm up again, leading me to brainstorm fresh problems the characters might logically be involved in.

For me, completing a book manuscript could be likened to running the marathon. Once started, I needed to go the distance and cross the finish line, or I didn't have anything to speak for the time and work I'd put into the creative process.


Find Substitue Lover at:
http://goo.gl/X3f5l (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1oqYI (Amazon.com)
Also available at Barnes & Nobel, major e-book publishers

Also available by Delores Goodrick Beggs:
Place in the Heart Book One: Breaking Point, May 2012
http://goo.gl/lH5NE (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1BIuN (Amazon.com)

Charming Champion, August, 2012, Contemporary single title
http://goo.gl/mfYCR (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/r8J1U (Amazon.com)

Coming June, 2013 - Place in the Heart Book Three: Perfect Tenderfoot

Author Spotlight - Humpty Dumpty by Delores Goodrick Beggs

I have a problem I suspect is common to most writers. My days are unbalanced. I spend too much time writing at my laptop and not enough time exercising. In addition, I usually also have a small dish with a snack to nibble on while I pause to think what a character would say or do next. Although I try to concentrate on healthy, from time to time sweets slip in, compounding the original problem.

I have tried various ways of exercising while I sit at my desk, but the appetite increases.

I have tried breaks every hour, but my characters usually manage to be in the middle of an important scene I just can't drop without losing the original idea/flavor of it.

For a while it worked to jump right into an exercise routine when I first got up in the morning, but soon my mind put a stop to that by popping up fresh ideas that I just had to capture on my computer before I lost them.

There was no help for it. I had to find another way to add in more exercise to my daily routine. I needed something that got me outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine and busy moving. I needed a project, a big one.

I wasn't good about dumping the daily and weekly newspapers often so the stacks grew pretty good-sized before I gathered them up and headed for the trash bin. One day I opened my extra closet and noticed I had enough brown cardboard rolls collected, the kind sheet gift wrap comes rolled around, to make stick arms and legs for numerous make-believe creatures, or a paper fence to enclose my garden. When the ideas flowed I always headed for my computer, not for the trash can.

But on that particular day, looking at the high pile of old newspapers, and cardboard rolls, I was reminded of the various crafts projects I dabbled in before I started writing my novels. I searched my mind for something easy to make, and then gathered an armload of newspapers, some cardboard rolls, a mop bucket, and my canister of flour to make flour and water paste and headed for the back yard.

A couple of hours and much bending and twisting exercise later I left my creation sitting in the sun of the back patio to dry. I needed to pick up some blue paint for Humpty Dumpty's suit anyway, and black to add his face and buttons.

At that time we lived in a neighborhood where folks often put decorations in their front yards for the neighbors to admire. I worried though, that neighborhood dogs would make up-close visits to Humpty and make his suit run with streaks. Our house had a flat roof, so in the end, we sat Humpty up on the roof, his legs hanging over the edge.

For a week, he drew admiring glances from the neighbors taking their daily walks. Then one morning a neighbor knocked on the front door and asked me where Humpty Dumpty was. I stepped outdoors to check the roof. He was gone.

The neighbors assisted me in my neighborhood search for him. We didn't find him.

I went down to the local authorities' office to make a report. The officer glanced at my report. "Humpty Dumpty?" he asked with a concerned face.

"Yes. He's wearing a blue suit and he has black eyes and black shoes on his feet. He was sitting on my roof, and he's gone. I want him back." The officer studied me a moment, and then hollered loud enough for the crew in the break room to hear, "Humpty Dumpty's missing boys! Anybody sees him, bring him in to the station!"

Sadly, Humpty Dumpty was never found. I still wonder what became of him. But I moved on to my next paper mache' project. I had to keep the exercise going.


Find Substitue Lover at:
http://goo.gl/X3f5l (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1oqYI (Amazon.com)
Also available at Barnes & Nobel, major e-book publishers

Also available by Delores Goodrick Beggs:
Place in the Heart Book One: Breaking Point, May 2012
http://goo.gl/lH5NE (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1BIuN (Amazon.com)

Charming Champion, August, 2012, Contemporary single title
http://goo.gl/mfYCR (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/r8J1U (Amazon.com)

Coming June, 2013 - Place in the Heart Book Three: Perfect Tenderfoot

Author Spotlight - Friendship learned with my horse by Delores Goodrick Beggs

It would be easiest to start this with saying "Friendship I learned FROM my horse,"
but that is not the way it works. Learning, between a human and a horse, is a shared experience.

In Place in the Heart Book Two: Substitute Lover, Tennyson at last learns what her older sister Mauranie has known all along, how to make friends with a horse. Or rather, the horse befriends her, and she is enthralled and eager to expand her friendship with horses.

My father, known as "The Old Cowman" in our rural Wyandotte County, Kansas farm area, first taught me to make friends with a horse. When I met Snowball, his 14-hands-tall white mare, she ended up becoming my faithful riding companion. I moved close to her head, lifted her nose a bit, took a deep breath, and breathed into Snowball's nostrils several times. Dad told me that our horses remembered the smell of our breath and thus labeled us "friends." I have observed that horses in a herd share breaths this way in the process of selecting friends they graze with, groom each other's necks, and generally stand around with.

I could be grooming Snowball in preparation for a ride when she would sometimes raise her head, ears pricked forward, and I'd feel her skin rumble with vibrating sound.

Horses do communicate. A quick nicker alerts me something caught her interest. A neigh when she sees me coming for her in the pasture is a greeting to me, or a call to her wandering foal to come back to Mama. A snort may be caused by a tickle in her nose. The first time I saw one of our horses curl her upper lip in a "horse laugh" when I haltered her, I was shocked. It happened again the next day, the open mouth and curled upper lip. The Old Cowman asked if I was using a new hand lotion; I was. He suggested not using it until after I rode, so I followed his suggestion, and the horse laughs stopped. Something in the scent of my particular hand lotion caused the "horse laugh."

Horses learn fast and in my experience remember very well what they learn. The most important word to teach a horse is "Whoa." I usually combine this with "Easy now," rather than repeat "Whoa" over and over when a horse is panicky. Horses sense my emotion in the stiffness or relaxation of my hands, in the sharpness or calmness of my voice, in the smoothness or jerkiness of my motions. An important lesson I learned, growing up, was if I remained calm, they will calm, but if I get panicky, they gather themselves ready to bolt and have to be held back.

It is the "Whoa's" and the calm emotions that can make all the difference when I'm horseback and the unexpected happens.

For example, in my teen years I rode my equine friend Snowball on the road going uphill and down, between our house and my best friend's house several hills away rather than walk it. It would have been a long, tiring walk under the hot Kansas sun; Snowball cantered it smoothly and quickly and the exercise of regular visits with my friend helped to keep her in good shape. Besides, I loved to ride horseback, given the slightest reason.

But one day Snowball jumped straight up in mid-canter, all four hooves off the ground. I was riding bareback with a saddle pad as I often did, and when she jumped I tumbled forward over her shoulder, onto the road, still clutching the reins. She managed to land just on the other side of me, missing me with her hoofs, as I called "Whoa," and then she stood perfectly still, lowering her head to nuzzle me. I was confused by her action, but the mare seemed calm enough so I grabbed a handful of mane, and jumped back on, and we continued to my friend's house without further incident.

A few days later the same thing happened again. This time my younger sister was riding a bicycle beside us while I rode Snowball, and when I stood up from my tumble over Snowball's head and dusted my jeans off, she asked me if I'd heard that.
"Heard what?" I asked. I have a hearing impairment.

"There was a loud bang," she said. "Then Snowball jumped."

That evening, after I told Dad about it, the Old Cowman introduced Snowball to simulated sounds by banging on a metal pan and calming her so the sound no longer startled her.

Also, when we'd returned home after the visit to my friend earlier that afternoon, I'd praised Snowball again for having avoided stepping on me when I fell and gave her an extra handful of oats. She never startled on me again.

Friends watch out for friends, after all.

Find Substitue Lover at:
http://goo.gl/X3f5l (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1oqYI (Amazon.com)
Also available at Barnes & Nobel, major e-book publishers

Also available by Delores Goodrick Beggs:
Place in the Heart Book One: Breaking Point, May 2012
http://goo.gl/lH5NE (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1BIuN (Amazon.com)

Charming Champion, August, 2012, Contemporary single title
http://goo.gl/mfYCR (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/r8J1U (Amazon.com)

Coming June, 2013 - Place in the Heart Book Three: Perfect Tenderfoot

Author Spotlight - Q&A with Delores Goodrick Beggs

STEPH: I don't know much about Substitute Lover. What's it about?

DELORES: Substitute Lover is the story of Tennyson Wells, sister of hearing-impaired Mauranie Wells in Book One of the Place in the Heart series, and Caleb Cameron, who follows bad boy Jasper Greon to Mescal Flats New, Mexico, and appoints himself Tennyson's protector when Jasper's
proposed larks go beyond fun.

STEPH: How long did it take you to write?

DELORES: I wrote the story during a period of time when I worked overtime and before captions were readily available on television (I have a severe hearing loss.) I usually got upstairs to my writing desk at home in time to watch the owl that nested in the palm tree in front of my bedroom window fly past on its nightly hunt. Then I'd sit at my desk and write for several hours. Completing Tennyson's story a few hours at a time took me the better part of a year.

STEPH: How much research did you have to do?

DELORES: Regarding research, I knew markers had been responsible for bringing a couple together, but I didn't know anything about how they were used or the tradition they represented, even though they were in universal use back in the 1800's. The family relation who had marker experience in her family line explained to me how they worked back then.

STEPH: How does the cover reflect the story within?

DELORES: I think the cover is perfect, thanks to Gwen Phifer, who seems to effortlessly envision illustrations that capture the essence of my stories in her creations. Tennyson Wells loves to be in town and wear pretty dance gowns.

STEPH: Tennyson Wells is the heroine. What are her strengths? Her weaknesses?

DELORES: Tennyson is much more than a pretty woman who loves to wear new gowns and dance. She has a warm heart and she loves to help people, sometimes too much, because she sees the good in everyone and doesn't distinguish when bad has unexpectedly been thrown into the mix.

STEPH: What does Caleb Cameron find appealing about her?

DELORES: Caleb notices Tennyson because bad boy Jasper Greon, whom he has been trailing for some time, takes up with her, and Caleb feels a need to protect her when Jasper's larks take a wrong turn. Caleb is himself drawn to Tennyson's kind heart and her desire to help people.

STEPH: What is the theme of the novel?

DELORES: The theme of the novel is finding ways to help persons who need help. It has seemed to me everybody needs someone sometimes.

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

DELORES: I draw inspiration from everywhere as a writer. An act, an incident will stay upon my mind and formulate itself into the basis of a story. Or just jump into my mind unexpectedly when I am concentrating upon another task, and then I have to jot myself some quick notes before it will let me be to finish the task I was on when it struck me. I have scorched the breakfast bacon more than once because of this.

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

DELORES:I have a kindle e-reader and I love it. I always have a book on it ready to read when I have spare moments, usually to relax before bedtime.

STEPH: Fun question: do you have any New Year's traditions you'd like to share? How did you celebrate New Year's?

DELORES: Usually I make a small list of new things I'd like to try in the coming year. But this year I got waylaid by the idea for a new story and it wouldn't leave me alone until I captured the essence in words on paper. So I guess writing the new story is my plan for this year.

Find Substitue Lover at:
http://goo.gl/X3f5l (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1oqYI (Amazon.com)
Also available at Barnes & Nobel, major e-book publishers

Also available by Delores Goodrick Beggs:
Place in the Heart Book One: Breaking Point, May 2012
http://goo.gl/lH5NE (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/1BIuN (Amazon.com)

Charming Champion, August, 2012, Contemporary single title
http://goo.gl/mfYCR (www.desertbreezepublishing.com)
http://goo.gl/r8J1U (Amazon.com)

Coming June, 2013 - Place in the Heart Book Three: Perfect Tenderfoot

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