N IS FOR NOÉ AND COWBOYS IN MY LIFE

Hello, Everyone!

Today, I'm so excited to have back on my blog my dear friend and fellow author, Leslie P. Garcia. Leslie, it is wondering having you and your hunky cowboys back for a visit. Have a great time with the letter N.

N is for Noé and Cowboys in My Life ....

Leslie P. Garcia...

            Nancy C. Weeks invited me to stop by her blog today and hold forth on the letter ‘N.’ With the enormous success my co-authors and I have enjoyed with our Cowboy Up and Cowboy Up 2, I thought it might be nice to tell how cowboys came to mean so much in my life.

            Many of you probably cut your teeth, as I did, on TV and movie westerns, on men like Roy Rogers or Little Joe or so many others thundering at breakneck speed across treacherous deserts or through raging rivers. Who couldn’t fall in love with the idea of independent men with courage, men who could catch (and then free) wild stallions or tame wild women and love them faithfully, if sometimes from afar. Cowboys were royalty to many of us, and we wouldn’t trade a man in boots and a hat for a prince.

            Regretfully, reality always comes clawing through fantasy. One of my first disappointments with an actual ‘cowboy’ came at the hands of my father, dressed in a snap shirt, boots, and a hat, getting stopped and given a speeding ticket on the way home from the train station. My mom, brother and I had been left in California for several months, and I couldn’t even remember that strange man who looked sinister rather than heroic. Years later, when he bought a lame, but flashy, pinto mare with a split tongue, and rode her around in the same get-up---complete by then with a holstered revolver, I had come to understand that as in any arena, there truly are the good, the bad… and well, you get it.

            But while some cowboys turned out to be the outlaws and bad guys of my childhood, working on a dude ranch in the hill country introduced me to a real cowboy, and pretty much brought back my respect for the real professions.

            I met my husband at the dude ranch, and while he could do rope tricks like jumping through the lasso he was swinging, he wasn’t a cowboy. In spite of a number of teenagers my age who ‘wrangled’ the tourists who packed the place every summer, the only cowboy there was Noé.

            Noé was ancient, I thought, and friends would have ridiculed me if I’d said he was attractive. He was fencepost thin, and his chest, which was always covered by a faded, long-sleeved shirt, wouldn’t have turned heads. But when he tipped his hat, which he did always, or spoke, which he did seldom—you could see clearly that those long ago heroes still lived. In flesh.

            He could corral and shoe horses, find and treat injured livestock, and hitch the hay wagon to a tractor for an evening’s festivities. He told me once, on a rare occasion when he came into the social room, that he decided to wrangle dudes because nobody really ran cattle in the area and he would die doing the work he had always done. I knew Noé only briefly, and a lifetime ago—but he will always be the cowboy in my life that defines ‘real.’

            Noé would never be confused, appearance wise, for the sexy, troubled, hot men in the Cowboy Up stories. But he’ll always be the epitome not just of our fictional heroes, but of cowboys in our real lives. Because now or a lifetime ago—cowboys have always made us sit up and take notice.

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Blurb from “Cowboy in Waiting” (Cowboy Up 2)

She’d buried a hero. She wasn’t looking for another. But her cowboy in waiting was far from a hero…

Bury enough dreams, and you’re bound to grow up.

Diana Salas Chester is a rancher’s daughter and a hero’s widow. There isn’t a lot she can’t do, from raising her daughter Gwen to facing down the loss of dream after dream. And then a birthday celebration goes wrong, and Diana winds up in Border Patrol Agent Ray Bennett’s bed.

Not many of her acquaintances approve of Ray “Baby” Bennett. But is he just the cowboy she’s been waiting for? Ray Bennett spent his life running away from the demands of his cowboy brothers and the ranching life. So when he wakes up in bed with his Border Patrol partner’s sister, he doesn’t want the complications. But suddenly the choice isn’t his to make.

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Leslie P Garcia would be delighted to answered any questions you might have for her. All comments welcome!

Until tomorrow, have a great day, and as always, be nice to one another.

Hugs,

Nancy C. Weeks