I am looking for Beta readers. These are folks who get a free copy of an ebook before it goes public. Beta readers are asked to prepare a review so that when the book is published, they will be notified and should put reviews up at Amazon, Goodreads, Apple (ibooks), Nook, Kobo (as many places as possible. One is good enough, two even better).

I am writing now with a group of NYT bestselling authors, a collection of 16 authors, and they want Beta readers. My group includes myself and three others, and I will be able to offer their books to you as well. You read only the ones you are interested in. This collection contains sweet Christmas romance-type stories, all involving a pet.The book collection is named Christmas Pets & Kisses, and is currently being offered on pre-sale for 99¢.

Contact me at  romauthorn@yahoo.com if you would like to do this, either now or later. I will have more Trahern books doing out, as well as children's books and some thrillers I write with my son, Nolan Radke.
Thank you.

Most folks think that any horse will chase cows, pull a cart, and be a good parade horse, but they are trained different ways, and have different personalities. So some either refuse or just can't do certain things. In my Trahern story, The Quietest Woman in the South, I wrote about a Civil War mule, General Wheezer, who would pull a wagon or a plow, and would let you ride him, on his terms. He was a truly multi-purpose mule. My dad had one of those, a white mule he rode and who also pulled farm equipment.

For many years I rode a mountain-bred horse, Flicka, who was half Morgan and half Quarter horse. She was a working companion, much more than a pet, and loved to eat my peanut butter sandwiches. She would come up behind me and steal a bite if I wasn't paying attention.

She was sure-footed on the mountain trails, and would chase a cow full speed down the hillside. All I had to do was lean back and give her her head. I used this experience in Appaloosa Blues, as I knew what it was like to "fly" on a horse. I would ride from sunup to sundown and sometimes late into the night.

I rode her in parades, but it bored her, and she fought being loaded in a trailer. She did fine in speedy drill team performances, although I had to make sure she missed the other horses, as she was used to pushing cows around and would run right into a horse and rider if I didn't steer her away.

My last year of high school, I was chosen as one of the Rodeo fair court. All the other girls had sorrels, while my mountain horse was a Palomino. So they looked around for a sorrel for me to use as a parade horse, and to ride in the fair.

 One of the fair officials found an Arab called Ali, and we brought her out to the ranch for me to ride. They mentioned that she was owned by a woman who rode her once, was bucked off, broke her arm, put the horse out to pasture, and never rode her again.

I saddled her up, and she tried to put her hind foot into the stirrup. I was still on the ground, so spun her around, backwards, and got on and off her, loosening and tightening the cinch, and then spinning her about whenever she tried to hook her foot into the stirrup. Finally she gave up trying.

Next I galloped her out into the fields, doing fine until she stopped abruptly and put her head down. She caught me unprepared, and I flew over her head and landed on my feet, facing her, as I always did when thrown off unexpectedly. So I remounted and galloped her again. This time when she full stopped, I was ready, and made her run full tilt again. Next she started spinning fast to try to throw me off. After all morning doing this and not succeeding, she stopped trying to throw me. Never tried again. 

I rode her all summer, along with my mountain horse. Ali was the perfect parade horse. She loaded quickly into a trailer, was calm in the parades, and let people pet her. But she stumbled on the mountain trails and did not know one end of a cow from the other, getting her feet all tangled, so I still used Flicka when herding cattle.

During the rodeo Grand Entry, Ali would gallop full bore up to the other horses and slide into place. For the Grand Entry, everyone rode into the arena one at a time, and stopped abreast in front of the grandstand. It was to introduce the court and present the flags. Ali was the only horse who would run full bore right up to the end of the line, and then slide to a stop, so they had me come in last.  She seemed to thrive doing it. She was a great parade horse and riding horse, even if she didn't know how to stand upright on a steep slope.

 

            When I wrote the last Trahern story, it had an evil mother-in-law in it, like Cinderella. When I was young, I used to think that no mother would ever treat a daughter, or daughter-in-law like that. A mother's love wouldn't let that happen. Then my husband's grandmother told me about coming over from Germany in a boat, and how sick everyone was on the trip. They loved America, but her mother died and her father married again. Her new mother hated her, and made her cook and clean, do the laundry and the mending. She was never satisfied. She treated Grandmother well whenever her husband was around, so there was no way to tell him what was happening.

            Grandmother was miserable, but when she was a young woman, she met and married Grandfather, and her life changed completely. She told me how wonderful it was to do those same chores for a loving husband and three sons. Love made all the difference, and she willingly worked and sacrificed for them.

            She came to visit my husband and I when we lived in Hawaii. In her nineties, she could barely climb up the stairs when she got there. She sat out in the sun every day, and when she left, she could do two flights easy. She bought some bright colored muumuus, with huge floral prints, and once she returned to the nursing home, she wore them to dinner. The elderly women there immediately stopped wearing black, and wore their most colorful outfits, cheering that place up.

            Once I returned to the mainland, I took her great-granddaughter in every Thursday to visit her. There is nothing quite like a happy child to bring a smile on the faces of folks in a nursing home.

            Just think of all the joy Grandma's stepmother missed by being so mean to her stepdaughter.

            Now enjoy a short excerpt from "The Sunniest Gal from Tennessee," and see how I wrote about a woman who let meanness rule her heart to the point that she drove away her daughter-in-law. The time is right after the end of the Civil War.

*1*

 

Four women in black. Black silk dresses, black hats, long black gloves, all looking like they had just eaten sour pickles on top of their griddlecakes. I was one of the four in the picture, Mary Trahern Dawton, the sourest-looking of them all.

My mother-in-law and her daughter stood beside me, and the grandmother sat in front. Four sour women in a huge depressing house. Would I take on that expression permanently, as the other three seemed to have done? Was I expected to stay in mourning the rest of my life, now that my beloved Charles was gone?

Charles, the light of my life, who refused to adhere to his mother’s dictates, had married a southern girl right after the end of the Civil War.  We felt love at first sight, had a whirlwind romance, and were married before I could think about what we were doing. We were in love, and that would surmount any opposition. Including Charles' mother, a contentious woman, who wanted her own way.

Why should she not want me as a daughter? I was always welcomed into any house I entered. They used to say that I brought the sunshine with me, even into a house of mourning. My happiness overflowed to everyone around me, and I refused to be sad, even in times of trials. During the war, I found that a smile and a happy "Hello" was sometimes the best medicine I could offer a wounded soldier. Sometimes, it was the only thing I could give him.

I had sung and danced down the hospital corridors, spreading my sunshine as far as I could. My songs lifted the spirits of both doctors and patients, and sometimes most everyone would join in, especially with songs of "Home! Sweet Home!" and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

Charles brought me here to this barren New England house as a happy young bride straight out of the Tennessee hill country. I felt a stranger to life here on the edge of the ocean, so dampened down some of my enthusiasm while I adjusted.

Still, it must have shocked Julia to the core as soon as I opened my mouth and she heard my accent. And expressions. I wouldn't even know I was saying them until her horrified face would warn me that I was getting in way past hip-deep waters.

Charles spent a month home, getting his ship ready for his next three-month voyage, while I tried my level best to adjust to my mother-in-law. A Yankee trader, he had sailed all during the war, bringing goods over from England and Paris. This time he planned to sail to Spain and Italy, bringing in a variety of goods from those countries.

I begged to go with him, as I had a glimmer of what life could be like in my mother-in-law’s home. He said, “Next time.”

There was no next time.

As soon as his ship sailed, Julia began her constant correcting. Nothing I did satisfied her. I wasn't used to being bossed around like that, and rebellion stirred within me. That is until I found out Charles was gone.

When we heard his ship had been lost in a storm, I changed into black mourning, attended a funeral without a body, and for two years obeyed my mother-in-law’s dictates as to how I should speak, what I should wear, and why I should always be silent. That included no singing.

Toes were not to be tapped on the floor, the voice should never be raised, and no one danced on the balconies, as I had done when I first arrived, sending Julia to her bed.

When Charles died and the joy left my life, it took it a while to resurface. But it finally did one spring morning in late May, 1869, on my twentieth birthday. I popped out of my oversized bed and wrapped a white sheet around myself, and spun, barefooted, around the room.

I detested black. I had worn white cotton muslin back in my Tennessee hills, decorated with a colorful ribbon. Here, even the maids were dressed in black. The seamstresses who came to the house only brought black cloth. No ribbons, ever, except some black ones.

Right now my thoughts were black. I was not going to bury myself in this house. I was not going to wear black. Never again.

Today, for my birthday, I would go into town and order a blue dress and a white one with a bright purple sash. And I would sing as I was being measured for them. The mourner had awakened.

For now, I would wear the lovely blue traveling dress from Paris that Charles had bought me. I had worn it on my honeymoon. Charles said it had brought out the sparkle in my eyes, but I knew that love for him had caused them to shine, making them glow more than normal.

Such a short time we were together. It had been the love of a lifetime. I doubted I would ever find a love like we had, which saw the good in everything, including each other. I was so happy, and cocooned in that happiness, that every day brought intense joy. Life with Charles was such a contrast to the army hospital where I worked during the war, that I was almost giddy with relief.

But the hospital was where I met Charles, so in a way it was the source of my greatest sorrows and my greatest joys.  He brought in one of his sailors who had taken a bad fall from a horse and broken his neck. Charles said the sailor wasn't that good of a rider and shouldn't have been on that horse in the first place. He was lucky not to be paralyzed.

I took care of the man while he was healing, and Charles visited him, at first for an hour every day, then, when he had completed selling his cargo, he spent the entire day there. With the sailor, and with me.  He would wait until I had my breaks, then walk with me into the courtyard, where we would sit and talk. And talk. I had never talked so much in my life, and I was a talker. The sailor was puzzled at first, then figured out why his captain was visiting him so often.

As a ship’s captain, Charles promised that the world would be our playground. We had intended to live together aboard the ship our first few years, once some modifications were made to the ship's cabin. He wanted to raise most of the ceiling, to make it more comfortable. Both he and I were too tall to stand upright in the cabin, except for a small square raised area in the middle, which had an opening on one side, so that the captain could stand there and look out across the ship.

The height didn't matter to him, as he mainly used the cabin to sleep in or to sit at his desk and write. He spent the rest of the time out on deck, but during stormy weather, I would want to be inside for most of the day and not knocking my head against the ceiling every time I tried to straighten up—unless I was in that one spot.

When Charles died, Julia had ordered all black dresses made for me. I was in a state of shock when she did it, so by now I didn’t remember where she had put my Paris dresses. They weren't in my room, so I expected she had them stored in a trunk in the attic.

I pulled the cord to ring for my maid, Amber, who curtsied as usual when she entered my room. I couldn’t break her of that habit, and she insisted on doing it, even though she was only a few years younger than me.

“Goodness, Ma’am. What are you wearing?” She couldn’t have been any more shocked than if I had been standing there in my birthday suit.

“A white sheet, for now. I’m not putting on another black dress. It’s my twentieth birthday and I want all my dresses brought out of storage. The ones Charles brought from Paris. I don’t know where Julia stored them.”

Her face went as white as the sheet, and she put both hands up to her mouth. “Oh, but…she didn’t, ma’am. I thought you knew.” 

“Knew what?”

“She sent them to the store, to be sold. I expect they fetched a pretty penny.”

“My Paris dresses?” Dumbfounded, I couldn’t believe it.

“Yes.”

“And my wedding dress, too?”

She nodded.

Knees weak, I sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Those were mine! Why had Julia presumed the right to sell them? They were beautiful dresses, fit to wear in any company.

My thoughts swirled in complete chaos. It was unbelievable. My Paris dresses were both stylish and comfortable, which was a rare combination those days. Julia should have known that I would not mourn forever, that I would want to wear those dresses again. Even my wedding dress, which I had added a colorful sash to, and transformed into a ball gown.

“Yes, Ma’am. Everything. They didn’t even look worn.”

They weren’t. “My shoes? My boots!” The boots were brown, lovely things Charles had picked up in Madrid. I had never worn anything quite so comfortable.

“Those too.”

It made me sick to lose those boots. Of the things Charles had given me, all I had left was my ring. It was as if Julia had tried to strip me of every joyful memory I had.

 And so the story goes, of how Mary rebels against her mother-in-law’s rule and strikes out westward to find her own happiness. Like my husband's grandmother, she finds a man, love, and a family, but not until she has some harrowing adventures. 

Recently, I started a new website called The Authors Billboard. It’s a place where Mimi’s Gang (a group of 33 of my author friends) hang out and share their successes, new releases and stories about their lives in the form of blog posts. 

Our group will be running contests, like our current Pin-To-Win Contest which you enter through our Facebook.com/theauthorsbillboard site. Our Pinterest site is at www.Pinterest.com/authorsbillboar. There you can see all of the books our authors have written, on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, & Kobo.

Also, each month, we’ll be setting up a huge book-sale page on the website with a book being submitted from each of our wonderfully successful (many of them NY Times, USA Today and Amazon best-selling) authors. Then for three days each the month, our readers can peruse and buy these books at notoriously low prices or… if they subscribe to our newsletter, maybe win one of the10 books we’ll be offering as prizes. The winners will get to choose the books they want.

So, can I ask you a huge favor? Would you look around the website, check out the various pages and then please sign up for our newsletters. I promise, we’ll try and keep them full of great news, fabulous specials and interesting tidbits about our authors. Just know that you will be supporting a wonderful group of hard-working women who absolutely deserve and sincerely appreciate your consideration.