My Top Two Real Life Heroes by Paty Jager

If my mom were alive, I'm pretty sure she would agree with me on my top two real life heroes. They are my daughters. I can remember my mom telling me how brave I was for driving 6 hours by myself with small children to visit her. When I flew to New York state to attend a writing conference by myself she said she would never have been brave enough to do that alone. My mom would be even more in awe of her two granddaughters. I know I am!

The oldest has a husband in law enforcement. That in itself is something many couldn't deal with. She is strong and has her faith and the knowledge her husband is well trained. She spends lots of time by herself with their two daughters, one of which has some special needs and can be a handful at times. Yet, my oldest takes it all in stride, holding it together better than I would. She can also shoot better than her husband, grow a wonderful garden, and keep her daughters' animals and poultry healthy. She is more rounded in her knowledge than I am.

My daughters when they were young.

My youngest daughter has six kids! The youngest is 2 months old and the oldest turns 15 this month. She not only home schools the three oldest children, but does it all alone while her husband finishes out his tour with the Coast Guard. This family of 8 is seven miles down the road from us. My husband helps out with the framing/ranching when he can and I help watch kids when I'm needed. But the majority of the work: building rooms, chicken pens, picking rocks, sowing fields is up to my daughter and the kids. She not only takes care of her family, she makes baby quilts for all her cousins as they have new babies, helps her in-laws, and designs book covers.

My daughters grown and starting out on their lives.

While I've always thought of myself as pretty self-reliant and undaunted by tasks that have to be accomplished, I do believe my daughters are braver and more self-reliant than I ever was or will be. They are strong women who are definitely my heroes.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 40 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest   / Bookbub

A funny thing happened on the way to Jane Austen’s House. by Dora Bramden

In November  2006 I was on a solo holiday in England. Half a world away from where I live in Australia, I was realizing my long-held dream of visiting the magical world of Jane Austen.

In heavy rain, I left London and drove along the M3 in my little black Fiat that I’d only just hired that morning. Cars whooshed past as I huddled inside my buzz box. The windscreen wipers worked furiously but failed to keep up with the deluge.  I thought I saw a signpost saying Slough, a village I thought I needed to pass through on the way to Jane Austen’s house. 

I made the decision to get off and assumed if I was wrong I would simply get back on the freeway and keep going. So I took the next exit ramp but it seemed rather narrow once I was on it. However, I was committed and had to keep going. Unfortunately for me, the off-ramp turned into a laneway which wasn’t the main road I was expecting. It was a one-way exit from the freeway. So I had no option but to keep driving while worriedly looking for more signs.

‘Oh boy. Where the heck was I?’ Except I don’t think I used the word ‘heck’

I drove for a few miles through green pastures when I started to have a meltdown. Where was I and how was I ever going to get back to the freeway? What if I didn't find my hotel that was already booked.  I pulled over and let the panic take me. I balled for a while and when I stopped I realized that crying wasn’t going to solve the problem of being in the middle of nowhere.

I wasn’t going to get rescued because it was a very quiet lane. I started to drive again and hoped that eventually, I’d find a village or even a house where I could ask directions.

I drove on for what seemed like a long time, but I think I’m an unreliable witness in my panicked state. A T intersection brought me to a halt and a small cluster of houses and a Pub relieved a little of the panic. But there was absolutely no signage to enlighten me where I was.

I parked in the pub car park and now noticed that at least the rain had eased to something between light rain and drizzle.

My hired Fiat

I ran around to the front door and went in. It was a busy Saturday lunch crowd but I was the only woman in the room and everyone stopped to look at me. So with the single intent of finding out where I was, I marched to the bar and said, ‘I'm a lost Australian. Am I near slough?’

‘No. I don’t even know where that is,’ he says. Then without warning, he yells, ‘DOES ANYONE KNOW THE WAY TO SLOUGH.’

I shrank inside. I'd created a spectacle of myself which I'd been brought up to avoid at all costs. I also didn't feel very safe. Instead of feeling more in charge of my situation I felt things were spinning way out of control.

‘I DO,’ said a well dressed middle aged man, sitting at the table with three other men dressed in laborer work clothes. I took in the beers they were drinking, it looked like the boss was buying a round after a mornings work. I decided to take the chance that they would help. So I paid for my coke and scurried over to them as the buzz of conversation started up again.

The well-dressed man asked where I needed to go and I told him, Jane Austen's House but I wanted to check in for the night at Fleet. He said I didn't need to go through Slough but to get off at the Fleet turnoff.  He explained that I’d got off the M3 too soon, it was easiest if I just waited until they finished their drinks and I could follow him back to the freeway. He was having lunch at his daughter's house and didn’t need to go on the freeway but he could go that way to show me.

I sipped my coke as he chatted to me kindly asking where I was from, and when he found out I was an Aussie he told me about every friend and relative of his that lived in Australia too. 

He led me back to the freeway in his silver Mercedes Benz. When the Fleet exit came up he put his left indicator on. I went off and he stayed on the motorway. I found my hotel, checked in and stayed put. I went to see Jane Austen's house the next day when I was calmer and could enjoy it properly.

Does this story familiar, like something you’ve read before? It’s the real-life event that created the inspiration for 'The Scottish Billionaires Secret Lover'. I've included the first chapter excerpt containing a scene very similar to this in past posts. Of course, Natalie has a much bigger adventure than I did but mine was plenty big enough for real life.

To this day I still have no idea where that pub was. I'm kicking myself for being so panicked I didn't ask, but I’ll always remember how, despite all the anxiety, I had been able to carry on. It was such a profound moment in my life that it inspired a book about a woman who’d lost everything and had to start again, relying on her inner strength.

2006 in England

Dora Bramden

Heart-Melting, Passionate Romance.

Dora posts weekly on her romantic lifestyle blog on her website: www.dorabramden.com/blog

Follow Dora on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter

Heroines Don't Have To Be Beautiful by Dora Bramden

I recently became engaged. Ahhh! When Sam asked me it was a huge thrill. I posted Our Romantic Proposal Story on my website blog last Sunday. The fact that I'm in my mid 50's and weigh more than I ever have, when the man I love proposed, reminded me of a post I put up in 2016 about heroines not needing to be perfect in the way they look. 

You see I'm the heroine of my own life, ( That's a line from the movie 'The Holiday' that resonated with me ).  I now wear a lovely diamond ring and am looking forward to our wedding in late 2019. When I met Sam, I suspected he would be my happily ever after, and I was right. I found a keeper, a man worthy of a kind hearted loving woman who doesn't need to be thin or young and beautiful to have love and romance in her life. 

Heroines Don't Have To Be Beautiful

Heroines in romance novels seem to be always beautiful and slim, right?  Bertrice Small’s Sky O’Malley, had perfect skin unmarked by a single blemish. I loved that book but I also love it when an author goes against the trend and creates a less than perfect body type in a heroine who’s perhaps past her prime or has a plump figure.

In the book ‘Where The Heart Is’ by Billie Letts, the heroine, Novalee Nation, is overweight. I know, the movie version cast a tiny actress for the role but its heart and soul was born from the book that had had a less than perfect body heroine. Hero, Forney Hull, sees her inner beauty. He’s fascinated by Novalee when she visits the library to find out how to save her sick tree.

There is no perfect body, of course, and beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. As in Anne Gracie’s ‘The Perfect Rake’, hero, Gideon shows us. He falls in love with plump (by Georgian standards) Prudence; he admires her figure a number of times. She’s his kind of beautiful. She has a “mother hen” nature in taking care of her sisters that he loves too. He’d sworn off marriage but in Prudence, he finds the kind of woman he could spend a lifetime with and it’s his brand of attractive.

My favorite reunion-story, ‘Persuasion’, by (I don’t need to tell you but I simply must give her credit) Jane Austen, has the heroine, Anne Elliot, a faded version of her younger self. Poor heroic, heartbroken Captain Wentworth claims to barely recognize her she’s so changed. If this isn’t proof that she’s not the prettiest girl in the room, he drives it home by giving all his attention to the pleasing Miss Musgroves.  So much attention that by the time he realizes Anne is the only one he could ever love, her status as more attractive than any other has returned, but he’s created expectations in one Miss Musgrove that may divide him from Anne forever.  That his foolishness costs him a few sleepless nights is his just deserts.

All heroines have an inner beauty. They’re understanding and compassionate but flaws are fine, even physical ones. I’ve read lots of Mills and Boon Sexy and Desires with heroines who’ve been scarred or suffered burns, but their hero isn’t put off by them. For me, it makes the HEA all the sweeter because I want life to compensate her for her pain and I’ve become so invested in her worthiness of being loved by a good man.

Let’s acknowledge that most of us have something we feel a bit insecure about even though we know we shouldn’t. Fiona Lowe’s Ruby and Rita winning ‘Boomerang Bride’ has a secondary character who is dealing with physical disfigurement. I became so deeply invested in her journey and felt sad for her, but it was a joy to watch her find the courage to deal with real life issues and be valued and loved.

I guess we all want acceptance, so seeing a heroine who’s not beautiful in the traditional sense find love, reassures us that everyone is worthy of happiness as these heroines are. Christina Aguilera summed it up. “You are beautiful, no matter what they say.”

Dora Bramden writes contemporary romance. Find out about her books on her Amazon author page.
Follow Dora on Instagram or Facebook