Thursday, May 2, 2013

Heiress Bride Virtual Book Tour: An Interview with Cynthia Woolf


Welcome, Cynthia...can you tell us a little about Heiress Bride?
Heiress Bride is the story of two young people who are both scarred. One, Ella Davenport, is scarred on the outside from a carriage accident and inside from the reactions of the people around her to her physical scars. The other is Nathan Ravenclaw, a half Arapaho Indian, who is scarred from the prejudice that he’s suffered

Would you have liked to live in the Old West? How was it better/worse than living in the 21st century?
Living in the Old West was hard. No running water, indoor bathrooms, electricity, heat. Dirt floors, no glass in the windows. We have idealized the Old West and made it romantic but it was not a great place to live at all. Those people who did it were heroes.

What kind of research goes into the writing of your historicals?
I research the specific facts of what I’m writing. The train schedules, how they trained horses, how horses are born, etc. A lot of the stories I write are based on how my father lived. He was a cowboy, worked on the ranch that is the setting for my first series of westerns, specifically the book, Tame A Wild Heart.

Why are historicals your chosen genre?
I like the genre. I kind of grew up in a western style house hold. When my father was a young man, he was a cowboy, and I loved the stories that my mother told me about him. He died when I was five so I only have those stories and pictures of the era. I also worked at a pioneer museum and a railroad museum in my teenage years and gleaned a lot of information then.

Do you have any advice for an aspiring writer?
Write. Write what you love and everything else will fall into place.

What are some of your favorite books/authors?
I love Johanna Lindsey and Julie Garwood.

Anything you'd like to reveal about yourself that your readers might find surprising?
I’ve worked as everything from a sales tax manager to a janitor to a waitress and tourist booth operator. I didn’t marry until I was forty, though my husband and I knew and dated each other for twenty years before that.

What are you working on now?
I’m working on the third in the Matchmaker & Co. series, Fiery Bride. It is the matchmaker herself, Maggie Selby’s story.

Book Synopsis

Heiress Ella Davenport survived a carriage accident that killed her father.  Her life saved in exchange for savage scars marring her beautiful face.  Her friends, socialites, showed their true colors, casting Ella from the social circles and leaving her a social pariah. Even her wealth can’t buy her the kind of marriage she wants. Desperate to find a husband who can accept her despite her scars and, without knowing about her money, she seeks to become a mail order bride.  Matchmaker & Co. has a new client.

Nathan Ravenclaw was run out of town by the father of the girl he was courting once he discovered Nathan’s Arapaho Indian heritage. It didn’t matter he was a successful rancher, businessman and a positive member of society.  The white community suddenly saw only a half-breed. Even his money couldn’t buy him a wife. That was ten years ago.  He moved and rebuilt everything that cold rancher took from him except a wife.  Matchmaker & Company can get him a wife.  But Nathan is not expecting the beauty that waits for him on the train platform.  Though he still lacks the ability to trust, he determines that she will be the wife and mother he needs.

Can these two people find love and healing together? Or are their scars too deep to bridge the gap between trust and acceptance?

LINKS:

The Author

Cynthia Woolf was born in Denver, Colorado and raised in the mountains west of Golden. She spent her early years running wild around the mountain side with her friends.
Their closest neighbor was one quarter of a mile away, so her little brother was her playmate and her best friend. That fierce friendship lasted until his death in 2006.
Cynthia was and is an avid reader. Her mother was a librarian and brought new books home each week. This is where young Cynthia first got the storytelling bug. She wrote her first story at the age of ten. A romance about a little boy she liked at the time.
She worked her way through college and went to work full time straight after graduation and there was little time to write. Then in 1990 she and two friends started a round robin writing a story about pirates. She found that she missed the writing and kept on with other stories. In 1992 she joined Colorado Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America. Unfortunately, the loss of her job demanded she not renew her memberships and her writing stagnated for many years.
In 2001, she saw an ad in the paper for a writers conference being put on by CRW and decided she'd attend. One of her favorite authors, Catherine Coulter, was the keynote speaker. Cynthia was lucky enough to have a seat at Ms. Coulter's table at the luncheon and after talking with her, decided she needed to get back to her writing. She rejoined both CRW and RWA that day and hasn't looked back.
Cynthia credits her wonderfully supportive husband Jim and the great friends she's made at CRW for saving her sanity and allowing her to explore her creativity.

Find more about her at: www.cynthiawoolf.com


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2 comments:

woolfcindy said...

Thanks so much for having me today.

Unknown said...

I love the premise of Heiress Bride. I'm sure Ella's inner beauty shines through her external scars. I am going to read this book!