Today's interview is with Kari Lynn Dell. And you can win her new book at the end :)
Welcome!
1. Tell me about yourself.
I am really good at falling down. This might seem like an odd life skill to brag about, but living on a northern Montana ranch littered with gopher holes and rocks and frozen cow turds, it saves my butt almost every day. Literally.
And this time of year, in addition to all of the usual hazards, there is ice.
We live in a zone along the east slope of the Rocky Mountains known as chinook country. A chinook is a mass of warm air that rolls in on the heels of bitter cold, sending temperatures shooting up twenty, forty or even sixty degrees, from minus twenty to the mid-forties within a few hours. Chinooks are wonderful. The air turns balmy, our smiles turn sunny, and snow begins to melt, sending water running in streams and sheets around our yard and barns.
And then it freezes. Instead of trudging through knee deep snow, we’re now skidding and slipping on solid ice, which is often conveniently disguised by the inch or two of new snow that has fallen since the last chinook. Every step is adventure. Will I slip, trip or have one foot suddenly drop out from under me into a hidden hole? Or a combination of all three?
Thanks to long and frequent practice, I’ve learned to fall with…well, maybe not style, but enough resignation to just go limp and crumple, as opposed to stiffening up and being body-slammed. And luckily, everywhere I go I have my first aid squad on hand to administer an immediate resuscitative face-licking. (photo)
2. Tell us about this book:
Tangled in Texas is a comeback story in every sense of the word. Delon is fighting to make a physical comeback from a potentially career-ending injury. Tori is struggling through the emotional comeback after her husband’s sudden death. She fled the Texas Panhandle for Wyoming and obscurity, but circumstances have forced her to come back and once again face the harsh scrutiny and crushing expectations of being a Patterson, the richest family in the Panhandle. With his rodeo career in jeopardy, Delon has come back to the family trucking business to try to find his place there, beside his bitter, estranged brother. Tori is the one physical therapist who might be able to help Delon make his rodeo comeback—six years after the disastrous end of their scorching affair. Can their love make a comeback too? Or do two such damaged halves have too little trust left to make a whole?
3. What was the inspiration behind this book?
It all started with George Strait’s I Can Still Make Cheyenne playing on the pickup radio while we were driving to a rodeo. If you’re not familiar, it’s about a cowboy who has been dropping in and out of the woman’s life, not even bothering to call her between pitstops as he traveled the country pursuing his rodeo dream. With nothing but the monotony of the Eastern Washington plains to distract me, I began to wonder—what kind of man would treat a woman that way, and what kind of woman would let him? And what would happen if, several years older and wiser, they meet up again after life has knocked them around some? Thus, Delon and Tori were born.
4. Tell us 3 things about Delon? :)
Of all the characters I’ve written, Delon is more me than any other. He grew up in a family that is very stoic and lousy at showing their feelings (it’s not a coincidence that I’m not a hugger), but will always have your back. By most measures he’s had a successful rodeo career, but he’s never been that dominate force we all secretly dream of being, even while we pretend to be all about consistency. And I gave him my taste in music. I start every week with Metallica Monday from a hard rock station out of southern Canada, but I love Texas indie country music too. And of course, George Strait.
Oh, yeah. I also have a shiny new blood red Dodge Charger parked out in front of the house. I blame it entirely on Delon.
5. What are you working on now?
I just finished the copyedits for the third book in the series, Tougher in Texas, which stars Shawnee Pickett and Cole Jacobs and comes out August 1, 2017. And I am engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the fourth book in the Texas Rodeo series (due spring 2018), currently known as This Damn Book, which at some point is the working title for everything I write. This one stars Wyatt, the best friend of the hero of the first book, Reckless in Texas, and Melanie, the lifetime BFF of the heroine of the same book, which makes things complicated right off the bat. As one character points out, “You two hooking up would be like dating your best friend’s sister.”
Toss in the intense physical attraction they’ve made a pact to ignore because—inconvenient friendships aside—in every other way they just flat-out rub each other wrong; Melanie’s trouble-making brother; Wyatt’s rundown whorehouse turned bar; and give them a good stir when Wyatt, ever the savior, offers Melanie a job in Oregon after she loses her legendary temper and causes a scandal so big she has to get the heck out of Texas.
Then wait for the explosion.
Thank you!
GIVEAWAY
Win a copy of Tangled in Texas
1. Open to US only
2. Ends Feb 25th
3. Enter by commenting :)
Series: Texas Rodeo, #2
Author: Kari Lynn Dell
Pub Date: February 7, 2017
ISBN: 9781492631972
It took 32 seconds to end his career.
But it only took 1 to change his life.
Thirty-two seconds. That’s how long it took for Delon Sanchez’s life to end. One minute he was the best bronc rider in the Panhandle and the next he was nothing. Knee shattered, future in question, all he can do is pull together the pieces…and wonder what cruel trick of fate has thrown him into the path of his ex, the oh-so-perfect Tori Patterson.
Tori’s come home after her husband’s death, intent on escaping the public eye. It’s just her luck that Delon limps into her physical therapy office, desperate for help. All hard-packed muscle and dark-eyed temptation, he’s never been anything but a bad idea. And yet, seeing him again, Tori can’t remember what made her choose foolish pride over love…or why, with this second, final chance to right old wrongs, the smartest choice would be to run from this gorgeous rodeo boy as fast as her boots can take her.
Kari Lynn Dell is a ranch-raised Montana cowgirl who attended her first rodeo at two weeks old and has existed in a state of horse-induced poverty ever since. She lives on the Blackfeet Reservation in her parents' bunkhouse along with her husband, her son, and Max the Cowdog, with a tipi on her lawn, Glacier National Park on her doorstep and Canada within spitting distance. Her debut novel, The Long Ride Home, was published in 2015. She also writes a ranch and rodeo humor column for several regional newspapers and a national agricultural publication.
Diane has a charmed life as a wife, a mother and the owner of a literary café in Paris called Happy People Read and Drink Coffee. But when Diane suddenly loses her beloved husband and daughter in a car accident her perfect world is shattered. Trapped and haunted by her memories, Diane withdraws from friends and family, unable and unwilling to move forward.
