The Country Girl Writes

Arlene James here to "talk" about how my childhood influenced my work. As a country girl growing up in the 50s and 60s near the small town of Comanche in south central Oklahoma, I rode the bus to and from school. We had neither television nor telephone for much of my childhood, so I grew up reading. Riding the bus gave me lots of time to read. By sixth grade, I had read every book in the elementary and middle school library, except the encyclopedia and dictionary, and I'd delved into both of those extensively. I happily read every textbook in my possession from cover to cover.
I knew early on that I wanted to write. I vividly recall that, one evening around the dinner table, my dad asked each of us three kids what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wasn't quite 10 years old, but I calmly said that I wanted to be a writer.
We were hardworking country kids, living in a tiny house (950 sq. ft.) on a big tract of land. Dad ranched, trained horses, sold real estate, owned an insurance agency that my mom ran, and was a self-taught auctioneer at the local cattle sales barn. I was privileged to grow up around a lot of "rodeo royalty." Neither of my parents had more than a high-school education, but my father firmly believed that his children could do anything to which they set their minds, so he didn't blink an eye when I said that I wanted to write. Instead, he said, "I'm happy to read what you write. Why don't you write something for me?"
Only he read my writings for some time. His usual comment was, "Very good." No further discussion would follow, but then I entered seventh grade, and on the first day of school I heard him tell my English teacher, "She writes better than most adults."
That teacher, God bless her, took him at his words. For a while, I thought she was picking on me because whenever she would assign the class a theme, she would call me to her desk and instruct me to write a short story on a particular subject of her choosing. Then one day, she presented me with a $5.00 check. She had been entering my stories in contests and submitting them to children's magazines. I was abruptly an award-winning published author! Ha!
Our school consisted of about 300 students in all twelve grades, but I'll forever believe that I received an excellent education while I was there. No one ever told this small-town, country girl that she couldn't fulfill her dreams. Rather, they calmly set out to help me do so in whatever ways they could.
When I write about ranching, cowboys, and small-town folk, I'm truly writing about what and who I know. And I'm proud to do so.
I moved to Texas, married, became a mother, was widowed, and married again. After my last child was born, I finally went to college, where a professor pointed me in the direction of romance. I'd never read a romance novel, but I knew immediately that I'd found a home. The very first book sold, and nearly 40 years later, I'm still at it, with almost a hundred books to show for it.
The latest is the third and final book in the Prodigal Ranch series, HER COWBOY BOSS. I know every inch of the fictional town of War Bonnet, where the series is set, and all the surrounding area. I've played in its dusty ravines, attended its churches and schools, driven its red dirt roads in a pickup truck, and ridden the pastures on horseback. I hope you'll come home with me and that you'll enjoy the trip as much as I always do. I've been blessed to see much of this big, beautiful world of ours, but at heart I'll always be a country girl. Who writes.