Please welcome my local RWA STAR chapter author and friend, Leigh Duncan! She is a great writer and such an encourager. I feel so encouraged after being with her.
Her newest release, Rodeo Daughter, was a Romantic Times Top Pick! Well, I'll let her tell you about it.
Rodeo Daughter Summary:Amanda Markette’s years on the professional rodeo circuit led to dreams of a home without wheels with a family-first kind of guy. That man is definitely not her old boyfriend, Mitch Goodwin, rumored to become the county’s next District Attorney. His demanding job has already cost Mitch one marriage. But Amanda’s plan to keep her distance falls apart when a bad-tempered judge permits the doting father only supervised visitation with his child…under the wary gaze of the one woman whose trust Mitch fears he’ll never win.Rodeo Daughter Reviews:“Readers better hold on to the tissue box.”
--- 4 ½ stars, RT Book Reviews June TOP PICK!
“Rodeo Daughter is a nostalgic tale of two adolescents falling in love and later finding their way back to each other…I hung on every word.”
--- Kay Quinton at Fresh Fiction.
BLOG: Where Did You Come
From?It’s summer
in Florida. The heat index is
climbing and the humidity, whew!
Let’s just say everything is soggy and let it go at that. At our house, the air conditioner runs
full time. The cucumbers in my
garden have died back; the first tomato harvest is over and I’m getting ready
to start a new crop. And tiny baby
birds chirp from nests in the Chinese Ting that grows outside my office
window. So, with all
this new life bursting on the scene, is it any wonder that I’ve been asking, “Where
did you come from?” No, this isn’t
a lecture on the birds and the bees.
It’s a question about the heroes and the heroines in the stories we
write.
Where do
they come from?
For me, every
new book starts with the characters.
And because I write romance, I usually “see” the hero or the heroine
first. I’ll be going about my business—shopping,
cleaning, cooking, whatever—and one of them will pop into my head. Sometimes, they wave and keep on going. There’s a woman in an orange grove
who’s been doing that lately. But
she doesn’t stop, so I wave back and let her go, knowing her story isn’t quite ready
to be told yet. When it’s time,
she’ll come back and stay a while.
She’ll start talking or she’ll do something that catches my
attention.
That’s how
it was with heroine in Rodeo Daughter,
my third book for Harlequin American Romance. Before I even started working on the book, I caught a mental
glimpse of a young woman running the barrel race in a rodeo. At the time, I was knee deep in edits
for my second book (The Daddy Catch,
June 2011), so I just gave her a nod and went back to work. She didn’t leave, though. She hung around. She’d pop in at the oddest moments. Each time she did, I got to know her
better. I learned that her name
was Amanda Markette, that she and her father had problems they needed to
resolve. She’d given up the rodeo
scene and turned her attention to family law. Recently, she’d moved to Melbourne, FL where her latest
client was a prodigal mom determined to win back custody of the daughter she’d
abandoned four years earlier.
All well and
good, but what’s a romance without a hero?
Mitch
Goodwin took his own sweet time making himself known. But one day, as I watched Amanda prepare for a case, I
noticed this tall, dark-haired man in a business suit cutting through the
courthouse. Right away, I knew my
hero had arrived on the scene. Of course, Mitch didn’t think he needed a woman
in his life. He was a workaholic,
and he pretty much thought he had it all.
In fact, he’d just received the nod from the outgoing District Attorney
and was excited about his prospects of becoming the lead DA. The only shadow on his bright horizon
was the custody suit his ex-wife had filed. She claimed he didn’t spend enough quality time with their
daughter. She was right, but with
his focus set on his career, super-confident Mitch couldn’t see it.
Clearly, Mitch had lessons he needed to learn. That’s where my job came in. The result was Rodeo Daughter, my third book for Harlequin American Romance, one that I hope you’ll enjoy.Bio:
 |
| Author Leigh Duncan |
Leigh Duncan writes the kind of books she enjoys reading, ones where home, family and community are key to the happy endings we all deserve (The Daddy Catch, June 2011 and The Officer’s Girl, June 2010.). Rodeo Daughter, her third book Harlequin American Romance. Leigh is a long-time member of the Romance Writers of America. When she isn’t busy writing or helping aspiring authors, Leigh enjoys curling up in her favorite chair with a great book. To learn more about her, visit www.leighduncan.com
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