Flynn gets his great take on love from his parents, who are dealing with the devastating reality of his father’s diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. It takes her a while to understand that Flynn loves her as she is-and that her happiness is more important to him than his own. She’s afraid of trusting someone else-and herself-in an intimate situation again. Mel, my heroine, had a difficult first marriage with a husband who spent six years trying to change her.
My November Harlequin Superromance book, All They Need, is about two people who learn to love each other exactly as they are. Because, like I said at the get-go, none of us is perfect, right? To my mind, loving someone and choosing to build a life with that someone is about accepting all the lumps and bumps and crazy and sad and angry that all of us have inside us. Apart from a very small sub-set that appear regularly in underwear catalogues, most of us have bodies that are real and flawed and wonderful in their own way, and we have personalities and make-ups that are just as unique and challenging. The thing about people is that none of us are perfect. Photo Caption: Lindsay McKenna on her personal part-Arabian mare, Missy, in Ohio. I created Thor, the Mustang stallion in The Last Cowboy, to show his incredible speed, endurance and competitiveness that are all hallmarks of a champion endurance horse. I wanted to share my knowledge of remarkable Mustangs with my readers based upon my own, personal experience. My very first horse, when I was twelve years old, was a sorrel (red) mustang stallion that I called Pretty Boy.
She was three-quarter Arabian and one quarter Morgan, and an incredible athlete. This type of Arabian was calm, had good bone and a great disposition. On our Arabian breeding farm, we utilized Crabbett/English bloodstock. Arabian blood is usually found in the top ten endurance contests. The Tevis Cup ride is the most famous and challenging contest in the USA, and almost always, an Arabian or part-Arabian horse wins it. Did you know Arabian horses are the most chosen breed for this grueling and demanding type of contest? Endurance contests can be 25, 50 or 100 miles long for the horse and rider. Because my husband and I bred, raised and showed Arabian horses for ten years, endurance riding was very familiar to us. Writing The Last Cowboy, I wanted to introduce my readers to a little known realm called endurance riding. I would be putting on my derby hat and my dark brown riding coat and gloves for the actual class when it was called. Photo Caption: This is a photo of Missy and me warming up for the English riding class. And here I’d gone into these classes thinking that the best horse would win, haha. In my own experience, I decided remaining honest and riding with integrity in the ring was far more important than winning. That’s where I came up with the inspiration for my villain, Curt Downing, another endurance rider in THE LAST COWBOY. And then there were amateurs who were super competitive and would do anything to make sure they looked good in front of the judge, the rest of the riders be damned.
Harlequin romance novels of the 90s professional#
Some professional trainers who were really assertive would cut you off in front of a judge so your horse lost its gait or changed leads….either of these situations could get you knocked out of a competition. You’d think everyone had integrity when it came to riding. It was fun to compete but being in the ring allowed me to see some of the riding ‘games’ first-hand. I got busy showing and I used Missy in my riding classes.
Here, I could finally realize my dream of having an Arabian horse farm. When my husband David and I moved to Lisbon, Ohio, we bought a two-story house and barn on twenty acres of land with a creek running through it. My dream of one day owning a horse ranch materialized at age thirty.