Wildflowers, Wide-Open Skies, and a new release by Josie Riviera

 There is a reason women have always loved cowboys.

Not only the boots and the broad shoulders.

 The cowboy represents a man who keeps his word, who works the land with his hands, and who shows up. 

Here's what surprised me: the golden age of the American cowboy lasted only twenty years. From1865 to 1885, after the Civil War and the cattle drives began, an entire culture was born. Men as young as sixteen drove longhorns thousands of miles up the Chisholm Trail, earning about thirty dollars a month, sleeping under the open sky, and going months without seeing a town. Their handshake was their contract. Their reputation was everything they owned.

That code of loyalty and honest labor never went out of style. It moved into our fiction, where it belongs.

That's what drew me to write Wishes and Wildflowers, my newest sweet cowboy romance set in Bitterroot, Montana. My heroine, Lily, arrives in Montana carrying a grief she hasn't yet named. My hero, Reid, is a man holding his small family together with sheer stubbornness and love. Neither of them is looking for the other. But Montana has a way of stripping a person down to what matters.

I wrote this story for every woman who has ever needed a reminder that second chances are real. Sometimes it finds you in a dusty field full of wildflowers.

I'm so excited about my new release, Wishes and Wildflowers! Order your copy today.

Tell me in the comments — have you ever visited Montana, or is it on your dream list?

Josie Riviera is a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary, historical, and inspirational romances that read like Hallmark movies. She lives in the Charlotte, NC, area with her wonderfully supportive husband. They share their home with an adorable Shih Tzu, who constantly needs grooming, and live in an old house forever needing renovation.

Sign up for her newsletter and get a FREE ebook on her website: josieriviera.com

A Neighborly Day by Liz Flaherty

Good morning. It's sunshiny and breezy here in the middle of the Indiana cornfields. Mr. Rogers' song about the beautiful day in the neighborhood always trots through the side yard to greet me when I sit down at my desk beside the west window. The title of this post comes from the lyrics of that song, too, although I never gave them much thought before. 

As I said the other day when I talked about Patches of Red, I'm Liz Flaherty, the new kid at Sweet Romance Reads. I've written romance for a very long time. My books now lean hard into being women's fiction, but the truth is there's always a love story in there, too. A romantic one, I mean, and other kinds of love, too. The family, friends, memories, joys kinds.

I'm also a shameless blogger. Not just on my own blog, Window Over the Sink, but on Substack and anywhere I am invited. Or, I must admit, anywhere I invite myself. I think I'm a good guest, although I do go on sometimes, but I seldom leave a mess and if the host rolls her eyes about the going on part, she does it when her back is to me.

There is a reason for my love for blogging and for reading blogs. While I understand that the internet is huge and social media is ... well ... whatever it is, these days, I think of blogs as a big neighborhood. It's not a crowded, unruly one anymore, but you can always find a laugh on someone's blog, or information, or someone whose heartbeat is keeping the same time as yours. 

You can find a Bible study on a blog, someone whose health challenges mirror yours, a blog where the family dysfunction being discussed is one your family has. You can follow your favorite author if she blogs--or he does, journalists who help you to understand the news, quilters, musicians, pastors. And ... oh, thank goodness ... there are grammar blogs who show writers just how far we can bend the rules before they snap back and leave a bruise. 

All in all, pretty much like a neighborhood.

Besides being a women's fiction writer and a blog devotee, I've been married to Duane for 55 years. We have three kids, three more kids whom they married, and grandkids we call--with absolutely no bias, mind you--the Magnificent Seven. 

My latest two books are Books 1 and 2 of Colors, the Harper Loch Trilogy. While they both stand alone, I think they read better in order; therefore Pieces of Blue is 99 cents at the present time. It is my great hope that you'll love it and will read Patches of Red next. The main characters in the stories are friends of long standing, strong women both, whose lives are having a major overhaul in their 50s. Personally, I think they rock. 

Amazon: https://a.co/d/09fZR7nt 

D2D: https://books2read.com/u/mZ98YJ

Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear from you. Wishing you a neighborly day. 

Patches of Red ~ New Release by Liz Flaherty

Hi! 

I'm Liz Flaherty, the new kid at Sweet Romance Reads. I won't be blogging until June 6, but since I had a new release yesterday, I thought I'd introduce myself--and Ellie Wentz--a little early. 

I've written romance for a very long time. My books now lean hard into being women's fiction, but the truth is there's always a love story in there, too. A romantic one, I mean, and other kinds of love, too. The family, friends, memories, joys kinds.

Patches of Red, my new release, is Book 2 in Colors, the Harper Loch Trilogy. It's about second chances, starting over, and community. While it's a standalone, Book 1, Pieces of Blue, is a 99-cent download for a few weeks if you want to get a look at it first. Either way, I hope you enjoy visiting the little lake in Michigan, and I'll see you on the 6th!

Patches of Red

He’s handsome but couldn’t even remember her name. She’s pretty, but her finickiness drives him crazy. And yet … 

After twenty years as a nurse practitioner in the same practice, Ellie Wentz gives notice. When office politics interferes with her job, it’s time to get a new one. When her son and daughter-in-law buy her house and she has sold and given away everything else that’s not attached to her heartstrings, she packs up what remains and goes to Harper Loch to spend time with her best friend. She’ll decide what to do and where to go from there. No matter how much the handsome friend of her friends annoys her.

Jesse Grant comes to Harper Loch to help out his niece for a few weeks. He’s retired from the navy, his boys are grown, and he’s at loose ends. But he really likes the little lake community in Michigan—he thinks he might stay. Long widowed, he has no interest in getting married again, and neither does the redhead he can’t seem to avoid. And yet … again. 

Buy links:

Amazon: https://a.co/d/09fZR7nt

D2D: https://books2read.com/u/mZ98YJ

Excerpt:

She found Mom’s wedding ring right away, too. It wasn’t the diamond circlet Dad had given her for an anniversary … maybe the twenty-fifth … but the slim white gold band they’d started with. Ellie slipped it onto her little finger—her hands resembled her dad’s more than her mom’s—and sat and looked at it. She had the diamond one, too, but this one somehow meant more. This was the one bought by the young, hopeful lovers, not the successful real estate team they’d become.

She sorted out the sapphires—Mom would want Maggie, who loved blue, to have them—and set aside the others. Selena and Jan and their daughters would have a good time making their choices.

A few aprons were neatly folded in the tote. Delighted, Ellie got up and put one of them on. Like her mother, she always wore an apron in the kitchen. Neither of them had ever been the best cooks in any group of two or more, but Mom had been the sloppiest and Ellie the tidiest—which explained the aprons, although Ellie seldom needed hers.

At the bottom of the tote was a folder. She recognized it as one from the real estate office, one of her dad’s. All the partners had specific colors. The tabs would have clients’ last names on them, addresses of listings, or occasionally something cryptic.

Something like the name Declan.

Where had she heard that?

She lifted the folder out. It was heavy, full enough that she was surprised the contents hadn’t been divided into more than one receptacle.

In the background, Jimmy Stewart’s voice hoarsened in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Soon the corrupt senator portrayed by Claude Rains would speak out against him on the senate floor and the betrayal would nearly break young Jefferson Smith, the character played by Stewart. It was her favorite part of the movie. It had been Mom’s, too. They used to watch it sitting together on the couch with popcorn. Dad waved off their sentimentality, but he watched it, too. Or maybe watched Mom watching it. They were attached at the hip.

Weren’t they?