Before I announce the winner from the Hell for Leather contest, I wanted to share with y’all an overheard conversation. As a writer, I am an enormous people watcher and listener. Gads, I get a lot of ideas by just observing human behavior.

So I tend to tuck away pieces of overheard conversations because they tend to replay in my head (no, I don’t need meds, I swear!). When I was in the airport in Orlando, I was there for about 2 hours – the shuttle dropped me off WAY early.

I sat near the gate, reading and keeping one ear tuned to the conversations around me. There was a family around me with a little boy who was around 5. In fact, he ended up behind me kicking my seat (lucky me). He was with his grandparents when his mother called him over to dig into the “candy” bag. They’d apparently bought a bunch of candy at the overpriced store across the way.

Well he pulls out this bag of Gummi-Savers and starts into them like a starving wildebeest. Of course probably half of them ended up barely chewed. LOL.

The little boy asks his mother to watch him chomp a gummi-saver in his teeth over and over. His mom just look at him, clear affection in her eyes as she wolfed down her own candy (I think it was malted milk balls). She asks him “Why do you want me to watch you?”

… wait for it…

Little candy beast says “Because you’re the mom and you’re supposed to watch me do everything, even poop.”

Okay it was really funny at the time, although I held in the chuckle. Especially after she said “I don’t want to watch you poop, but I’ll watch you eat.”

Anyway, back to the winner! Thanks to everyone who popped by to comment on the Hell for Leather post. The winner of a free download of choice from my Malloy series is…

Gabby!

Congrats girl! E-mail me at cowgirlbeth@gmail.com and let me know which book you’d like and what format.

It’s time for Hell for Leather! Yeeeeeeehaaaaaw!!!

I’m pleased as punch to announce the print release of Kincaid’s story, Hell for Leather. He’s been a constant in my cast of characters since he first appeared in the The Gift as the gunslinger readers loved to hate and lusted to love. Then when he became Brett’s best friend in The Tribute, I fell half in love with him, and I knew then he needed his own story.

And so did he.

Kincaid became my muse, whispering in my ear and generally haunting me until I wrote his happily ever after. Yet it’s never going to be easy for a man with a dark soul to find that happiness…

Le Blurb:

Exile…or love. Life…or death. His demons will force him to choose.

Gunslinger Kincaid has traded his black clothes and pistols for a homespun shirt and trousers. Now he’s Cade Brody, a man with dark hair, dark eyes and an even darker past. The blood money he’s earned bought him a small piece of property in New Mexico territory, at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. But it can’t buy him peace.

Sabrina Edmonds, a tough, no-nonsense widow, runs the post office and store in the small town of Eustace. She’s made her way in life with an independent streak a mile wide. Sabrina doesn’t want to get involved with Cade, but she finds herself drawn to the dark stranger who hides in his mountain retreat.

Cade wants nothing more than to be left alone, but an elusive wild child who delights in tormenting him, and a town full of people determined to befriend him, conspire to intrude upon his self-imposed exile. Then there’s Sabrina, who should be afraid of him—but isn’t.

Not even when the deadly demons of his past catch up with him.

To celebrate the release, I’m giving away a free download of any of the Malloy books, the precursor to my dark-eyed gunslinger’s book. How do you win? Why, you simply post a comment and tell me your favorite bad guy you love to hate/hate to love. :D

I’ll draw a winner on Thursday morning, 6 am eastern time!

In the meantime, if you’d like to get your own copy of Hell for Leather, here are the links to the bookstores for ya!

Monday’s eye candy for your viewing pleasure.

I’m on my way to Orlando this morning to attend the Romantic Times Convention. If you’re going to be there, please be sure to find me! I’ll be in various places at various times so hopefully we’ll meet up. Here is where I know I’ll be:

Ying & Yang Workshop with Sasha White – Wednesday at 2:15 in the Biscayne room

Club RT – Thursday at 2:30

Book Signing – Saturday 10:45 to 2 pm

Not sure I will be online posting during the convention at all but I will try. I’ll be back online next week for sure.

Yeehaw!

I love the Kindle – really love the Kindle 2. My sister has one and I totally have Kindle envy! *green*

If you do have a Kindle, do you want a free book? Cool! This week until Saturday, April 25th at midnight, you can get a copy of The Bounty free!

What are you waiting for? Go forth and download!

One really cool thing, the last I looked it was #1 in Romance, and Romance>Historical, and #21 in Kindle books. Waaaaaaaaaa cool!

As I was reading the news online, I read a piece about a couple in Kansas who recently died and it warmed my heart. Sounds ghoulish, right? Read on, dear readers.

It seems these two Lyle and Arnita Yingling had been married 67 years. That’s SIXTY-SEVEN years. Holy cow, y’all. That’s almost seven decades of your life.

They were both in the nineties, and in ill health. Lyle had a bum heart and Arnita had cancer. He was living in a nursing home and she lived at their home.

Arnita died in her sleep, and within hours Lyle passed away miles away. It brings tears to my eyes to think about the “till death do us part” because not long after that, they were reunited again.

As a romantic (obviously), the story of the Yinglings really did warm my heart.

Monday’s eye candy for your viewing pleasure.

Okay, my allergies are seriously kicking my butt. Being off antihistamines (this is day 3) is not fun. I know I need to be prepared for my retesting on Monday (which requires you to be off antihistamines for 5 full days), but it’s soooooooooo hard. I’ve gone through boxes of tissues and my eyes constantly water. With the trees in full bloom, the pollen is way high, adding to my sincere discomfort.

Anyhoo, whining over. I am really glad it’s Friday. It’s going to be absolutely gorgeous here in NC and I have a million things to do. With the Romantic Times Convention coming up in 5 days, I am behind in my preparations and packing. I kind of wish they’d move RT to May so it would give me an extra month to prepare. LOL.

So, anyone out there going to Orlando for RT? I’d love to know who’s coming so I can look for you! I’ll be posting my schedule on the blog while I’m gone so y’all can find me.

Happy Freakin’ Friday!

After getting nagged by my peep Don, I have created my Facebook profile. I don’t know how to customize it yet, but it’s there and I added two covers (still got 18 to go, LOL!).

If you’re on Facebook and I haven’t friended you, please send me a request. Pretty please? *flutters eyelashes*

On another note, I either have a cold or my allergies are going bananas – probably both. The trees are all getting leaves and while it’s beautiful, the pollen is flying like a hurricane. AND I’m getting retested for my food allergies on Monday so I can’t take antihistamines because you have to be off them for 5 days before testing.

Pity me y’all. I’m using my fair share of Kleenex right now…

However it’s Wednesday already which means one week until RT!!!

So I went on a cruise that left from LA and went to the Mexican Riviera, specifically Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan (my absolute favorite stop) and Puerto Vallarta. I’m going to share some of my pics with y’all – these are my favorite images.

Here is my first view of Cabo San Lucas.

And two shots of the famous rocks and arch that Cabo is known for.

The next day we went to Mazatlan. It was beautiful, clean and I can’t say enough about it. I would definitely come back for a stay in Mazatlan and not just because they brew delicious Pacifico beer. :)

Here is a picture of Mazatlan from atop the hill – note the Pacifico factory in the background.

It has beautiful coastline too.

And the world’s tallest natural lighthouse.

The last stop was Puerto Vallarta. As a Love Boat fan from my childhood, this was one of those dream cities I wanted to visit.

A pretty city with a wonderful boardwalk (malecon) along the pretty ocean waters.

I even tried my hand at taking some night shots – don’t the cars look cool?

And last but not least – nothing compares to seeing the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. Absolutely stunning.