Note from Carolyn to the BNK Readers: Thank you all so much for inviting me to stop by your site today and visit about Billion Dollar Cowboy, the debut book in my brand new cowboy romance series, Cowboys & Brides. It’s a delight to be interviewed here. A word of warning—I’m a writer and I love words so sometimes I do get a little carried away with answers!
Can you please share with us a little about yourself?
CB: I’m a wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Yes, I was a very young bride (17 years old) and I’ve been married 46 years. My first two books sold the same day in 1997 and Billion Dollar Cowboy is my 63rd book to be published. My goal is to see 100 books on the shelf with my name on them. I have other more immediate goals like finishing the rough draft of the work in progress but that’s one of my big goals.
Have you always wanted to be an author?
CB: Oh, yes, ma’am. Ever since I picked up one of those little fat pencils and a Big Chief tablet (that was in the days when a tablet was not a technical device) I wanted to write stories.
Can you share with us your typical writing day. Is there anything you have to have while writing?
CB: My typical writing day starts when I wake up. My characters and I plod across the hallway to my office and we get busy. I like to have a thousand words done before breakfast. Husband brings a cup of coffee, sits it on my desk, eases the door shut and leaves me alone for an hour. After that I don’t bite or cuss and we have a wonderful breakfast together (he is a retired English teacher so he’s home all day). Then I finish the chapter I’m working on, have lunch and write one more chapter before bedtime. My goal is 5000 words each day but sometimes the grandchildren or the birds singing in the back yard gets in the way of the goal
Most challenging or rewarding part of writing?
CB: The most challenging part has to be letting go of my natural controlling nature and letting my characters out of the box. I tend to want to tell them how the story goes but they were there and if I listen to them, my editor is far happier with my work.
(Shhh…don’t tell anyone that I have voices in my head!) The most rewarding part is when the book is finished and on the shelf and I get a note like this: I have always hated reading. But about one year ago I was walking through a book store and “Red’s hot cowboy” grabbed my arm. I fell in LOVE with the book and author. I’m buying your books like crazy and I’m loving reading. Keep writing Mrs. Carolyn Brown, you are one awesome lady!!!! Thank you for changing my life!!!…Carla Jones-Sawyer. To know that one of my cowboys turned a non-reader into a reader just puts a smile on my face for days and days.
Can you please tell us about your latest book?
CB: Billion Dollar Cowboy is the story of Colton Nelson, a ranch hand who won the lottery and boom, he was a millionaire. His best friend, Andy, who was a financial genius invested well for him and turned him into a billionaire. But down deep in his heart, Colton just wanted to be a rancher. The women in the area were like the little kids in the Christmas story…only visions of dollars danced in their heads, not visions of sugar plums. Andy’s distant cousin, Laura Baker, has been getting her older sister out of gambling debt for years so it’s nothing new. But this time her sister has borrowed a lot of money and Laura has just lost her job. Andy offers her work on the ranch as his assistant until she can earn enough to get the sister out of debt. She’s there. Colton needs a fake girlfriend to keep the gold diggers at bay…and so the story begins.
How did you come with the idea for this story?
CB: Go back to #4 about those voices in my head. I had just finished the last book in the Spikes & Spurs series and these four cowboys popped up behind me. Colton said that he wanted his story told first and he introduced me to Laura and then to the secondary characters: his grandmother, Maudie, her foster child, Roxie, a sixteen year old girl that reminds Laura of herself at that age, and Rusty, the ranch foreman. I had no choice but to tell the story or else I was going to spend lots of sleepless nights fretting about just how things were going in Ambrose, Texas.
Can you share with us your current work in progress?
CB: I’m writing the last chapters of the fourth book in this series this week. How to Marry a Cowboy. So how does one marry a cowboy? Rachel Green says that the first thing you do is put on a wedding dress and then fall asleep in the swing on his front porch. I’m very excited about this book because it has a set of twin girls that are so ornery that folks in the first three books of the series have declared that they could scale a glass wall on a rainy day.
Who are some of your favorite authors?
CB: LaVryle Spencer has always been a favorite but I’m a very eclectic reader. I also like Leon Uris, Carl Hiaason, Randy Wayne White, Sue Grafton, Joanne Kennedy, J. A. Jance and…how much room do we have for this interview. I can just get plumb carried away when I talk about my favorite authors. Oh, did I mention Mary Kay Andrews, Jill Mansill and Grace Burrowes?
Do you feel that any of your favorite authors have inspired your writing style?
CB: Every author I’ve ever read has inspired me in one way or the other. Maybe it was the way they wrote a tender love scene or a hot sex scene. Or maybe it was their way of presenting the story, or the way they made their characters come alive, or the way that their writing touched my emotions. I really believe that if a writer can touch their readers’ emotions then that reader will come back for the next book. We like to feel what we read; not just look at words.
Open your book to a random page and tell us what’s happening.
CB: Page 81: Laura needs a dress to go to a fancy party with Colton and Maudie has taken her to an exclusive little shop in Sherman. Laura’s having no part of it, not with price tags with that many zeros. Excerpt:
“What if you had as much money as Colton? Would you spend that much on a one-of-a-kind dress,” Roxie asked.
(Laura’s answer) “I would not. But I’m not rich. And I won’t ever be rich. And I’m not impressed by rich people or money. There’s the Ross store, Maudie. That’s where I want to go.”
What is in your To Read Pile that you are dying to start or upcoming release you can’t wait for?
CB: Joanne Kennedy’s Cowboy Tough is on the top of the pile right along with Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews and Husband bought me a signed copy of one of Nora’s older books, High Noon.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
CB: I’d like to thank you again for letting me speechify about my books and I’d like to tell my readers to keep their boots on and their cowboy hats close by. There are three more books in the Cowboys & Brides series: The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (Oct. 2013), The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride (Feb. 2014) and How to Marry a Cowboy (May, 2014) AND the final book in the Spikes & Spurs series, Cowboy Seeks Bride (Aug. 2013).
BILLION DOLLAR COWBOY
by CAROLYN BROWN
IN STORES JUNE 2013
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books-a-Million | IndieBound | Chapters/Indigo | Discover a New Love | Sourcebooks
Colton Nelson was 28 when he won the Texas Lottery and went from ranch hand to ranch owner overnight. When people started lining up wanting some of his millions, he hired a friend, Andy Joe, to handle his affairs and find him a bride and buy her, no matter what the cost.
Laura Baker and her sister, Emily, had been raised in foster homes. Though she was the younger of the two, Laura was always bailing Emily out of trouble. So when Andy Joe slid into her booth at a diner one night and made a proposition to Laura, it seemed the perfect solution…until Laura met Colton and realized she didn’t give a damn about his money and that her love was not for sale.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carolyn Brown is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than 60 books published. Born in Texas and raised in southern Oklahoma, Carolyn and her husband now make their home in the town of Davis, Oklahoma. Carolyn’s first women’s fiction novel, The Blue Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee is now available, and you can look for her next cowboy romance, Cowboy Seeks Bride in August 2013! For more information, please visit: www.carolynlbrown.com.
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