Not Your Usual Christmas Book by Paty Jager

While my re-release doesn't have a Christmas theme or title, the book ends on New Years and a portion of the story takes place in December. specifically during the National Finals Rodeo that just finished in Las Vegas, Nevada.

To make my rodeo bareback bronc rider ring true, years ago when I decided to write this book, I interviewed four-time World Champion bareback bronc rider Bobby Mote. He and his wife Kate were very generous with their information.

I arrived at their house as Bobby was returning from a run. He trains like any other athlete, running and strengthening his muscles so his body can take the pounding it does while being whipped back and forth on a 1200+ pound horse. I discovered not only how they traveled from rodeo to rodeo but how they approached each horse and event. It was all fascinating. I tried to insert some of that knowledge into the book without sounding like an infomercial.

The other fascinating job and history I added to the story was my heroine. I sat beside a woman on a plane and we were talking. She was an ER nurse who worked at away places. She was coming back from Fairbanks Alaska to her home in Oregon when I met her. She worked 6-8 weeks at a hospital then had 2-4 weeks off before she went to another hospital. She had she made triple what she would working in the same place all the time and most of the time they hospitals provided housing so she made and saved a lot more money. I made Gina in my book a traveling ER nurse and her backstory was one about sexual abuse. Making her always traveling a good way to not have time to connect with anyone.

Pulling all these elements together, I came up with Bridled Heart, a contemporary western romance. Here's a bit about the book. If you're looking for an uplifting read this holiday season, I'd like to recommend Holt and Gina's story.

ER nurse, Gina Montgomery, uses a self-imposed vow of celibacy to keep from getting too close to anyone. Music saved her from an abusive past. But that same solace compromises her solitary life when her piano playing draws the attention of a handsome bareback rider. 

Holt Reynolds let his sister down when she needed him most. Seeing similarities between his sister and Gina, he can’t get visions of the woman or her poignant music out of his mind. He vows to find a way to free her of her past and prays it doesn’t resurface and destroy their chance at happiness.

 

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Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 25+ novels and over a dozen novellas and short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. She has a RomCon Reader’s Choice Award for her Action Adventure and received the EPPIE Award for Best Contemporary Western Romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

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