Guest Blogger — Heidi Thomas

Today’s guest is Author Heidi Thomas, who has written the book:

Cowgirl Dreams

Back Cover:

Defying family and social pressure, Nettie Brady bucks 1920s convention with her dream of becoming a rodeo star. That means competing with men, and cowgirls who ride the rodeo circuit are considered “loose women.” Addicted to the thrill of pitting her strength and wits against a half-ton steer in a rodeo, Nettie exchanges skirts for pants, rides with her brothers on their Montana ranch, and competes in neighborhood rodeos.

Broken bones, killer influenza, flash floods, and family hardship team up to keep Nettie from her dreams. Then she meets a young neighbor cowboy who rides broncs and raises rodeo stock. Will this be Nettie’s ticket to freedom and happiness? Will her rodeo dreams come true?

Based on the life of the author’s grandmother, a real Montana cowgirl.
Cowgirl Dreams is available from the publisher, Treble Heart Books, Amazon.com or the author website. It is suitable for both adult and young adult readers.

Website: Heidi M. Thomas

HEIDI’S BLOG

Author Bio:
Raised on a ranch in isolated eastern Montana, Heidi Thomas has had a penchant for reading and writing since she was a child. Armed with a degree in journalism from the University of Montana, she worked for the Daily Missoulian newspaper, and has had numerous magazine articles published.
A tidbit of family history, that her grandmother rode steers in rodeos during the 1920s, spurred Heidi to write a novel based on that grandmother’s life.
Cowgirl Dreams is the first in a series about strong, independent Montana Women.
Heidi is a member of Women Writing the West, Skagit Valley Writers League, Skagit Women in Business, and the Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She is an avid reader of all kinds of books, enjoys hiking the Pacific Northwest, where she writes, edits, and teaches memoir and fiction writing classes.
Married to Dave Thomas (not of Wendy’s fame), Heidi has no children, but as the “human” for two finicky felines, describes herself primarily as a “cat herder.”

Heidi describes her writing process:

Cowgirl Dreams: The Process
Writing a book begins with a seed of an idea. Like the Montana native grasses and wildflowers that lie dormant, sometimes for years until a good rain season, it takes a long time for the idea to germinate and to bloom.
My grandmother rode steers in rodeos.
That was my seed, planted while poring over picture albums with my dad. I was young, not yet inclined to think of writing about that fact, although I was certainly a want-to-be writer from the time I could print my letters.
I graduated with a degree in journalism and set upon my non-fiction writing career, thinking, “I’d like to write a book some day, but I have no idea what I’d write about.” I continued writing articles about other people for newspapers and magazines for many years. Then, when I was about 30, I just happened to take a 13-year hiatus from writing by becoming a 9-1-1 dispatcher in Missoula, Mont.
That was about as far from writing as I could get, and toward the end of that “career,” I felt the great need to find a creative outlet. I took a community class in writing for children. At one point the instructor said that biographies of women who had done unusual things were popular with kids.
My grandmother rode steers in rodeos. Hmm. I wonder if that would make a good story.
The seed began to germinate. But it was several more years and a move to Washington state before I nurtured the idea. I wrote another novel first and began to send it out to agents and editors.
Now it was time to start another book.
My grandmother rode steers in rodeos in the 1920s.

Why not write about her or a character like her? I read non-fiction books written about “old-time” cowgirls, including The Cowgirls by Joyce Gibson Roach, and Daughters of the West by Anne Seagraves, newspaper clippings about fellow Montana cowgirls Marie Gibson, Alice and Margie Greenough. I didn’t find much, if any, fiction about these women. Their lives fascinated me.
Rather than write a non-fiction biography of my grandmother, I decided to create a fictionalized character for my book. (See my post on Angela Wilson’s blog on May 27, “Writing the Novel, Based on Real Characters.”)
Research takes many avenues. First, I had my dad and the stories he told about growing up in the 1920s and ‘30s with his parents. I had several photo albums and a large scrapbook my grandmother had put together. This was a treasure trove—newspaper clippings and photos about the ranch and rodeo life.
In addition to the books and pictures, I took a trip to the Cut Bank/Sunburst area in Montana where my grandmother grew up. I found the ranch where my grandparents lived when they were first married (See my post on Susan Tweit’s blog / about “Sense of Place” on May 26.) I immersed myself in the ambiance of the Sweet Grass hills, the prairie, Montana’s “Big Sky.”

Excerpt from this blog post:

Montana is my inspiration—for my books and many other things in my life. The “Big Sky” stretches from horizon to horizon like a great blue dome. Its sunsets are unequaled, with streaks of orange and gold painting the edges. In spring, green-tinged hills roll through the landscape, buttered with bright yellow wildflowers. White-faced reddish-brown calves frolic through the meadow pastures, happy to be alive.

Spring in Montana often comes late, after a long, snow-filled winter that seems to last forever. After four or five months of isolation, cabin-fever, and bone-numbing cold, spring is the new awakening, a new beginning, a season of hope.

As the saying goes, “You can take the girl out of Montana, but you can’t take the Montana out of the girl.” There is always something palpable that washes over me when I crest the summit of Lookout Pass from the Idaho side and see the sign “Welcome to Montana.” It is a warm sense of peace, a comfortable state of being.

And I began to think “What if?” I wrote, I brought pages to my weekly critique group, and I rewrote. That process took three years and then I started sending it out to collect rejections. The first effort was a book titled Memoirs of a Cowgirl, and was 135,000 words on 475 pages.
Somewhere along the line, I realized publishers of the “western” genre wanted shorter books. So I divided the book into two books, renamed the first one Cowgirl Dreams, revised it and sent it out some more. Toward the end, I had two publishers in a row tell me that they loved my book, really wanted to publish it, but due to financial structure, etc., they wouldn’t be able to for two or three years. They released me to submit elsewhere, reserving the option to resubmit later if I didn’t find another publisher.

So close, I could almost grasp it.
Ten years and 17 rejections after I launched my book journey, I found Lee Emory at Treble Heart Books, who believed in me enough to publish Cowgirl Dreams.
The seed of an idea at last blossomed into fruition—a real live book that I could hold in my hands and say “I wrote this.”

And that’s my “overnight success” story.

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Heidi, thanks for sharing your story and your inspiration.