Showing posts with label #JanScarbrough. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #JanScarbrough. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 5, 2024

Ghost Mountain Ranch – now in audio! by Jan Scarbrough


Ghost Mountain Dude Ranch nestles in the white-capped mountains of Montana. It’s an idyllic setting, a place for romance to blossom. But old secrets are stirring in Blue Sky country. Three couples reach for their chance at romance, but murder, mystery, and long-concealed truths threaten their loves, and their lives.

Darby York fled Ghost Mountain thirty years ago, torn by shock and guilt over the death of her mother. Now widowed, with grown twins, she returns to help her ailing father. Hank Slade, wrangler at Ghost Mountain Ranch, has never stopped carrying the torch for Darby. But the past has a way of catching up with you. Grief and secrets had torn Darby and Hank apart once. Given a second chance at love, will the revelation of more shocking secrets from the past destroy their hopes for the future?

Slade and Laurie:


For Slade Heston, growing up as a “rich” boy in Kentucky Bluegrass country is nothing like spending the summer as a hired hand at a Montana dude ranch. Laurie Chastain has come to the ranch, supposedly to write stories to draw visitors to Ghost Mountain. But Laurie’s hiding secrets. She can’t afford the distraction of a broad-shouldered and entirely too-sexy man in a cowboy hat. Someone knows the truth about the part Ghost Mountain Ranch played in Laurie’s life, and the terrible consequences. But when the ghosts of the past threaten the lives of the living, will their growing attraction be enough to protect Slade and Laurie?

Kelsey and Max:


Had Kelsey Heston made a mistake coming to Ghost Mountain Ranch? She’s come from Kentucky to untangle her grandfather’s business books and improve the tourist trade, but what’s her old college sweetheart doing here? Max Lee has always done what was expected of him, including abandoning the woman he loved when his family demanded it. Sent to Ghost Mountain to search for a long-missing woman, he turns up another he never expected to see again: Kelsey. But something dark is happening at Ghost Mountain Ranch. Max is stirring up old feelings and old secrets. Secrets someone might be willing to kill to keep. Can they finally lay the old ghosts to rest, or will the echoes of a decades-old murder destroy their second chance at love?


Ghost Mountain Ranch. Three couples. Three chances to rediscover love. And the one mystery that binds them all and could end their stories forever.
About Jan...
The author of two popular Bluegrass romance series, Jan Scarbrough writes heartwarming contemporary stories about home and family, single moms, and children. Living in the horse country of Kentucky makes it easy for Jan to add small town, Southern charm to her books and the excitement of a Bluegrass horse race or a competitive horse show.

The Ghost Mountain Ranch series is a contemporary western series with a good blend of mystery and happily-ever-after romance. The Dawsons of Montana is another four-book contemporary western series.

Jan leaves her contemporary voice behind with two paranormal gothic romances, Timeless and Tangled Memories, a Romance Writers of America (RWA) Golden Heart finalist. Her historical romance, My Lord Raven, is a medieval story of honor and betrayal.

A member of Novelist, Inc., Jan self-publishes her books with her husband’s help.

Jan lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with one rescued dog, two rescued cats, and a husband she rescued twenty-three years ago.

Websitewww.janscarbrough.com

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Recalling History Gives Meaning to Today by Jan Scarbrough

When I decided to write my Christmas novella, A Groovy Christmas, I revisited the year 1968. I’m telling my age when I reveal that this was the year I graduated from high school. It was a big year for me, of course. My parents and I hosted an exchange student from Chile. I was a member of the Student Council in charge of assemblies. I took my first journalism class, where the teacher told me that one day I would “remove my rose colored glasses.” My band traveled to Washington, D.C., to march in the Cherry Blossom Festival which was canceled because of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King. I participated in a six weeks English literature study program in Nottingham, England. Oh, yes, and then I went to college that fall and met the man who I would marry a few years later.

Big year, for me. But a big year for the country. Until I researched 1968 for the novella, I didn’t remember all the horrible events of that year, much as we’ve experienced lately in a new century with 9/11, long wars, economic crisis and inflation, COVID shutdown and open borders. Remembering 1968 brought me added perspective to what we face today.

Times have been tough for all of us whenever we’ve lived. I think of my parents and World War II, their parents making ends meet with large families during The Depression. Even back to my Civil War ancestors who fought for the Union Army, and those ancestors who were patriots in the Revolutionary War. They all saw tough times.

And somehow survived.

In A Groovy Christmas, my hero and heroine, like millions of others, pause on Christmas Eve to watch the Apollo 8 astronauts.

The three astronauts, who were orbiting the moon, took turns reading the first ten verses of Genesis. Then Frank Borman said, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.”

“That was from Genesis,” Kate murmured, her voice hushed and awed. “We are so blessed.”

Grant nodded, still absorbing all that he had seen and heard. The universe was so vast. In the context of space, the Vietnam War and his family feud with the Fields seemed petty and senseless. His heart warmed with a profound sense of wonder. It was almost as if he needed this broadcast to cheer him up after a year fraught with death and disillusionment.


Like my characters, we lose perspective amidst our busy daily activities. In 1968, we faced the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, who was running for president; Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive, and the social unrest over the Vietnam War, values, and race; riots in Chicago and Washington, DC., and other major cities; during the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two black athletes staged a silent demonstration against racial discrimination in the United States.

Today we live through a scary world, just as our forefathers did. What we need is our faith in God and the belief that, though times are tough, we will eventually prevail. 

The author of two popular Bluegrass romance series, Jan Scarbrough writes heartwarming contemporary stories about home and family, single moms, and children. Living in the horse country of Kentucky makes it easy for Jan to add small town, Southern charm to her books and the excitement of a Bluegrass horse race or a competitive horse show.

The Ghost Mountain Ranch series is a contemporary western series with a good blend of mystery and happily-ever-after romance. The Dawsons of Montana is another four-book contemporary western series.

Jan leaves her contemporary voice behind with two paranormal gothic romances, Timeless and Tangled Memories, a Romance Writers of America (RWA) Golden Heart finalist. Her historical romance, My Lord Raven, is a medieval story of honor and betrayal.

A member of Novelist, Inc., Jan self-publishes her books with her husband’s help.

Jan lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with one rescued dog, two rescued cats, and a husband she rescued twenty-three years ago.

Website: www.janscarbrough.com

Jan Scarbrough







Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Write what you know. Really? by Jan Scarbrough



Write what you know. Really?

So, you want to write a book. Then write what you know, you’re told. Well, what I know isn’t much. Should I limit myself to that? Once a psychic told me I couldn’t dare write about a psychic because I wasn’t one. Guess what? I wrote a story with a psychic medium in it.

My friend Dale, herself a psychic medium, said this about my book: TIMELESS is a beautiful love story that intertwines two different lifetimes, and Jan has done an incredible job of introducing reincarnation and numerous other ‘Spiritual gifts’ that we all possess in a clear and concise way that will help you to understand the possibilities, even if they are not in your reality yet.

So there, psychic, who said I couldn’t do it!


Several years ago, I wanted to write a western romance. What do I know about a ranch? About cowboys? I live in the city. In Kentucky. I know a little bit about American Saddlebred horses, because I’ve ridden them since I was thirty-five. The easiest thing for me to research was the Professional Bull Riders organization. I joined the club. I attended local PBR events. I read books. I watched documentaries.

I brought my bull rider home to Kentucky in KENTUCKY COWBOY where he hooked up with his high school sweetheart.


The research helped when writing BRODY. He is a bull rider too. But he’d grown up in Montana on a ranch. I still didn’t know anything about day-to-day life on a cattle ranch. I read a book for background. But what was the easiest kind of ranch to write about? A dude ranch! I surfed the web and found one in Montana and that became the fictitious setting for my series, The Dawsons of Montana. MERCER, another book in the series, has bull riding hero named Drake.

Then in 2016, my husband and I took a vacation to a real dude ranch in Montana. I got altitude sickness and rode a horse up a mountain. I experienced it. Still, I was not an expert. But that area of Montana became the setting for another western series called Ghost Mountain Ranch.

Emily Temple in the article Should You Write What You Know? 31 Authors Weigh In, tackles this whole subject of writing what you know. If you’re interested, check it out. Thirty-one authors, much more famous than I, give you their opinion on the subject.

BTW, BRODY is on sale this week at Amazon for 99 cents.

***

Timeless - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016UQNLEO

Brody - https://www.amazon.com/Brody-Montana-McKennas-Ranchers-Book-ebook/dp/B016XI57SW

Dawsons of Montana - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08ZM6V8H8

Ghost Mountain Ranch - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BL85Q8W

Kentucky Cowboy - https://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-Cowboy-Bluegrass-Reunion-Book-ebook/dp/B07NJPPKFD