Guest Blogger: Jenna Howard - Spurred On

I'm so happy to welcome my friend Jenna Howard today. She has a new release out, which I'm going to let her tell y'all about:


****

I’m not a cowgirl. I’m not even a country girl. Sure there were the summers when I was in the single digits when I’d settle into the station wagon with my mom, brother and the dog and we’d head East to Manitoba but it was never my…thing.

Yes, I used to sing to the cows at my aunt’s farm but my options were limited. I certainly didn’t want to go fishing with our uncle or drive the tractor on the other farm or go catch frogs with the neighbour (to use the term loosely since we had to walk through the creepy woods, down the gravel road and then down another gravel road to get there) boy.

My choices were reading (which I did), sing to the cows, or…help my Granny bake. And considering she scared me (and lectured me a lot in her German accent), I sang to the cows when the books were read.

Yes, I rode a horse once in Penticton, BC. Big Red, however, didn’t like the freaked out city girl on his back and took great exception to his rider and tried to remove via tree branches. But at least her horse had a cowboy name and wasn’t Cotton Candy like the one my brother was riding. He says now that he rode Big Red. Nope. No sirree that was me. With my mom. He was on Cotton Candy. (Hm…is Big Red why I refer to the big ass horse in Spurred On as Crow instead of Red since his full name is Red Crow? Hm…could be something there…)

Yes, yes, I live in Calgary where we have the Calgary Stampede & Exhibition, where for ten days people wear jeans that are tight, dust off their Western shirts they only wear for ten days out of the year and polish the cowboy boots (see Western shirts). We get duded up, the city goes Western and the tourists invade.

But I’m no cowgirl. During Stampede I may wear my jeans but my shoes say Keds and my shirts start with Tee.

So imagine my surprise when 20 years later from those dreaded farm days I’m writing a cowboy story.

With a bareback bronc rider (because saddles are too sissy for him) and a country music superstar.

My one thought was… “WTF???”

My heroes have guns, my heroines wear high heels and they live in the freakin’ city.

Not on acreages.

Or ranches.

With horses.

I’m not sure how it happened. Perhaps in a comment I made to Marie Tuhart who is in a cluster of fellow writers Sherrill & I hang with online when she mentioned she was writing a Cowboy Kink book for Wild Rose Press. “Oooh,” I typed, “rope! Lassos. Oooh and spurs! Bondage and torture!” “No,” Marie said adamently, “no spurs.” (I wonder if she added spurs into her Cowboy Kink story…well? Did ya?)

What? You can’t have kink without spurs!! So…I put in spurs. That my heroine used on the hero. Because she’s a Dominatrix and he’s her submissive.

Yeah…I may not be much of a cowgirl but I can sure use some freaky stuff on a hero who’s willing and able to have a spur run all over his body. (My mom would be so proud if I let her read Spurred On.)

It was also natural (hah…like writing a dominating heroine with a penchant for rope and spurs is natural) to set the book during the Calgary Stampede. Yee and haw. My heroine’s singing at the Saddledome and my hero’s competing in the rodeo…and they’re both playing with ropes and spurs. (Have I mentioned that yet?)

There’s still a vague sense of surprise that I wrote a cowboy story. That I added kink to it…

Is no surprise at all.


Sherrill, thanks for letting me blab on your blog. You rock!

Now make sure everyone buys Spurred On okay? I mean how can they resist? Cowboys and rope and spurs…oh my!

Jenna


****

You're quite welcome, Jenna! Readers, you can check out Jenna online at her website.

I'll see y'all next year!