Cowboyland Exclusive Paperback

This was exactly how I started my romance novels.

Big-city girl, lost on some backwoods gravel road. Her rental car is smoking. It’s so early in the morning that the sky is still dark. No sign of life beyond the deafening sound of crickets and cicadas. Out of her element, she stares at the smoking hood of her car wondering how on earth she got herself into this mess.

I groaned as I accepted defeat and attempted to pull the rental truck over as far as I could on the Montana dirt road. The smoke now billowing from the hood mixed with the early morning fog made it impossible to see anything. These roads didn’t have shoulders, and if I wasn’t careful, I was going to—

I screamed as the right front tire of the rental truck lurched forward, and suddenly the truck slid hood first into the ditch. Luckily, it wasn’t too deep, and I came to a jerking stop when the truck hit the mounded ground on the other side.

My heart pounded as reality began to sink in. What was I supposed to do now?

Me–a New York Times bestselling author of cowboy romances was now stranded on the back roads of Montana. It was like fate was laughing at me. The exact place I wrote about in my books would now be the death of me.

Seemed fitting.

I should have known this was a bad idea when the man at the rental car counter hesitated before handing me the keys to the last vehicle they had available. Concern flashed in his eyes, and I should have taken that as my cue to head right back into the airport and book the next flight to JFK. But when he smiled, I brushed off the warning bells that were sounding in my mind as I took the keys from him.

It wasn’t like I had any other choice, I had to be here. My career depended on it.

I leaned back against the headrest and closed my eyes. I allowed myself to panic for exactly one minute before I opened my eyes and steeled my nerves. I was going to be okay. I could do this.

The clock on the dash read 5 AM.

I should have never booked the flight to Montana last night when I was that emotional. I should have never actually gotten on the plane, but I was desperate. A spontaneous trip to the country seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, not so much.

After my meeting with my editor, Priscilla, yesterday, I realized that my options were limited. I was trending on social media and not in a good way. The romance community was in an uproar that their beloved cowboy romance author had never once set foot on a ranch. I’d never been ashamed of growing up in a two-bedroom apartment in Chicago until last night when I decided to doomscroll what people were saying about me.

People were mean. People were brutal.

Trinity Lake, an up-and-coming cowboy romance author was leading the charge. She even went so far as to say that I’d used AI to write my books— which was wholly untrue. I was just good at research.

But the reader world would never be satisfied with that response.

“If you want to sell another manuscript, you need to clean up this mess,” Priscilla said as she studied me from over her readers. She reminded me of a librarian with her hair pulled into a low and tight bun at the nape of her neck and a perfectly fitted blouse that wouldn’t dare wrinkle.

It was funny that she thought the only mess in my life was this one. If readers wanted to nitpick, they should also bring up my love life— or lack thereof.

I’d expected social media posts eviscerating my love life. I could write about other women finding their heroes and living their happily ever after— I just couldn’t find one for myself. I wanted the perfect Prince Charming to scoop me up and take me away, but after going on one too many horrific first dates, I began to wonder if love wasn’t in the cards for me.

And to add the cherry on top, I was struggling to write my next manuscript. It was like all of my storytelling abilities had dried up overnight. Ideas I had in spades. But the ability to write a fully formed story was gone. I’d spent more hours than I cared to admit staring at a blank Word document as I willed words to form on the screen.

Unfortunately, one couldn’t just wish a story into existence. Two months later, I was now the next romance author on the reader chopping block with no work in progress and my career swirling the proverbial drain.

That’s why I bought a plane ticket and flew to Montana.

Did I know where I was going? Nope. Did I have a place to stay? Nope. I stupidly thought that once I got here, I’d know exactly where I was supposed to go. Living in the city did not prepare me for the wide-open landscape of Montana. Writing about these places was one thing. Experiencing it was something else entirely.

I blew at the strands of red hair that had slipped out of my messy bun as I grabbed my phone that I had tossed on the passenger seat. I held it up, the screen illuminating the darkness around me. I sighed. Of course. No bars. I held the phone up to the windshield like that was all it would take to get service.

Nothing.

“Crappity crap, crap,” I said as I tossed the phone back onto the seat.

I glanced around, wondering if anyone even lived down this dark, apocalyptic road. The headlights of the truck made the incoming fog glow. I narrowed my eyes as I tried to recall the last time I’d seen another car. It had been hours.

I zeroed in on the glove compartment and pulled it open. Maybe the rental company had a map tucked away in there. A relic from the past. My stomach sank when I came up empty-handed.

I settled back in my seat. Ah, well. It wasn’t like I knew where I was, which direction was north, or any significant landmarks that would make a map useful.

“What do they say to do if you’re lost?” I wrapped my hands around the steering wheel and stared at it like it held the answers. “Stay?” I glanced around. The darkness around me matched my dread.

I didn’t want to stay with the truck. What if I’d managed to find the one road that no one ever drove down? What if I was never found? The only one who knew I’d come to Montana was Horace, my cat. Looking back now, I should have told someone, anyone, where I was going. I’d stupidly let my pride get in the way. The last thing I wanted to do was admit to anyone how bad things had gotten. Plus, I didn’t think I’d get lost.

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as my mind raced.

If I were writing a romance, this would be the exact moment where the hero would come walking up to the heroine’s truck and knock on the window, scaring her half to death. In her mind, she’d think he was a serial killer out preying on women with car trouble. When I switched to his point of view, you’d discover that the only reason he stopped was because he didn’t want his grandfather to haunt him from the grave for leaving a woman abandoned on the side of the road.

The heroine would keep resisting the hero, and he’d be moments away from leaving her, but then the fear of being left alone would overpower her fear of being murdered, so she would climb into his truck even though every part of her was screaming that it was a bad idea. Make him a little grumpy, and you have the perfect meet cute.

I peered out my window, half expecting to see headlights pulling up behind me, but all I saw was my own reflection on the glass. “This isn’t a romance novel, Ember,” I mumbled to myself as I turned my attention back to the dash. Once again, day dreaming was going to get me into trouble.

I’d lost count how many teachers told me that I needed to get my head out of the clouds and focus. As a child, my imagination always ran wild. As a writer, my imagination became my superpower. As a woman stranded on the side of the road, about to die from the elements, my imagination was rendered useless. I wished I’d paid attention when my grandpa tried to teach me about car engines, or when Gran would play Gilligan’s Island on repeat.

I wished I had an ounce of survival skills in my body. I could write a handsome MacGyver hero easily enough, but I was furthest away from being MacGyver as one could possibly get.

“I am a fraud,” I whispered as the comments I read last night came flooding back to me. I’d always stayed away from reviews. They had a tendency to mess with my head and my writing. Last night, I broke the number one author rule and dove headfirst into what people thought about me.

I could only imagine what they would say now. They’d probably laugh and say, I told you so. And they’d be right.

I was spiraling and I knew I was spiraling. I wasn’t going to get rescued by sitting in my car and berating myself. I rolled my shoulders and took in a deep breath before letting it out slowly. I was going to be okay. I could do this. This trip was about me finding myself, and even though this was not how I saw this going, I was bound to learn something from this experience.

My readers wanted authenticity, so I would do everything in my power to give them authenticity.

I racked my brain and let my story telling juices flow. My go-to meet-cute was to have the hero come up to her car, but I could take the story in a different direction. What if she got out of her car and started searching for any form of life?

My mind began to race as the story unfolded.

She stumbles upon his cabin buried deep in the woods. She’s dirty from the trip and weak. She knocks on his door, and when he opens it, she faints in his arms.

Ooo, this is good.

Then he has to nurse her to health, all the while not knowing who the woman is.

“It’s perfect.” I reached behind me and searched around until I found my laptop bag. I unzipped the largest pocket and grabbed out my idea notebook, which was tucked in right next to my computer.

I had pages and pages of story ideas. They would come to me when I was in the shower or walking through Central Park. I’d see the most innocuous thing and that would spark a story idea.

If I didn’t jot them down, I’d forget them forever. Some of the sentences didn’t make sense to me anymore, but the majority of them were books waiting to be written. If only I could actually write them.

I dug around in my purse for a pen before I flipped open the cover to the notebook and wrote down the story idea. Once it was on the page and out of my head, I slipped my notebook into my bag before zipping it closed.

I tucked my phone into my purse and shouldered my laptop bag— I don’t go anywhere without my laptop— before I opened the driver’s door. I wasn’t going to sit around to see if my hero would show up. Even though I lived in my romance worlds every day, I was going to be realistic and search for civilization.

If I stumbled on my hero in the process? Well, I would be okay with that.

Plus, I needed to pee and my stomach was starting to grumble. I wasn’t going to survive in the rental truck much longer with no food and no bathroom.

I slammed the driver’s door and made my way to the bed of the truck to grab my luggage. I pulled down the tailgate and had to shimmy my way under the truck bed cover until I could just barely reach the handle of my suitcase with the tips of my fingers. After a few tugs, I managed to slide it toward me as I backed out of the bed. When my feet finally touched the ground, relief rushed through me.

I used both hands to pull my suitcase out. It fell onto the gravel road with a thud. I straightened, hating that I’d worn a pencil skirt. It looked cute with my graphic tee and sneakers, but I was now realizing it was an impractical outfit to wear when tromping all over God’s green earth. In fact, I was beginning to realize that most of the clothes that I’d packed were impractical for Montana.

I shut the tailgate, pulled up the handle of my suitcase, and started to drag it behind me. The wheels bounced and jolted over the rocks, the handle threatening to spring from my fingertips at any moment. It took me exactly two seconds to realize there was no way I could go anywhere with it.

I made it to the cab of the truck before giving up completely. I yanked open the driver’s door and used all of my strength to heave the suitcase up onto the faded cloth seat. Hopefully, I would find civilization and come back to rescue it. Or I would die, and it would be found someday in the future. They’d put it on display in a museum, immortalizing the cowboy romance author who died doing cowboy things. I could see it now. Ember Sage, the romance author who died doing exactly what she wrote about.

Oh, the karma.

I slammed the driver door shut and sighed before I pulled my purse and laptop bag higher up on my shoulder and glanced around. I wasn’t sure which direction I should go. I knew what lay behind me. It had been at least a half an hour since I’d seen civilization, which meant I was most likely to run into someone if I kept heading in the direction I’d been driving.

Roads were made to link places together. I just hoped that the future town ahead of me was closer than the town behind me.

I was ridiculously confident that I could do this, and I wasn’t going to give up. If my readers wanted a romance author who actually lived what she wrote, then I needed to keep moving.