Cowboy, Take Me Away by Charlene Teglia

Cowboy, Take Me Away by Charlene Teglia

There is something about cowboys. The jeans, the chaps, the boots. The way they stand, the confidence and strength in their movements, the angle of a cowboy hat pulled low and the shiver-inducing sound of a slow, western drawl. They represent wide open spaces and deep silences and nights spent under a canopy of starry skies. They’re romantic figures, larger than life. It’s easy to see why the Dixie Chicks sang, “Cowboy, Take Me Away”. After a stressful day, being swept up on horseback by a sexy man sounds pretty good to me. And riding off into the sunset together makes for an idyllic happily ever after.

Wild Wild West introduces three cowboys and the women brave enough to tame them against the backdrop of Missoula, Montana, where the newcomers clash with the conservative old guard in the city John Updike called “the Paris of the 90s.”

I had a lot of fun writing to a soundtrack of Dixie Chicks songs mixed with Big & Rich, remembering what it felt like to speed along a Montana highway. I put in sheep ranching and a glimpse of the Montana wool industry (did you know this state produces 4 million pounds of wool a year?). I daydreamed over the creak of leather and the way hay smells in the sunshine and the men who came to life in my imagination, all individual but with key characteristics and values in common. Men of honor. Men with staying power. Men of the west, heroes.

If your heroes have always been cowboys, I hope you’ll enjoy an erotic contemporary take on a classic romance theme. And if you’ve never picked up a cowboy novel, I hope you’ll give Wild Wild West a try. You might find the fantasy universal, even to the most confirmed city-dweller who’d never trade her Jimmy Choos for Tony Lamas.