Sit-Down a Spell with Western Romance

Happy Saturday morning, friends. Let's go back to the Old West for a look at my novella, Cloaked in Love.

If you're like me, you have certain expectations for historical western romance. It has to have a cowboy, a strong, and sometimes fiesty woman, a western setting, and though it doesn't have to, it's always good to have some two-legged polecats around to ratchet up the tension.

Cloaked in Love is set on an isolated ranch in Wyoming at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The quiet, beautiful scenery is deceptively peaceful because the story is about a young woman held captive by an outlaw gang.

A lot of gangs roamed the Old West, but their tactics and victims varied. There were the train and stagecoach robbers, the bank robbers, and those that wandered the countryside, robbing at random.

The gangs were romanticized in dime novels and the press until many, like Jesse James and Butch Cassidy, became folk heroes instead of the vicious killers they were. The truth is, these blood-thirsty, greedy men's quest for money and notoriety terrorized towns and countryside. They left hundreds of innocent people murdered in their rampages.

Shootouts mesmerized the public, though only a few were due to feuds like the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Most pitted the gang against lawmen, who were the true heroes of the Old West.

With Pa off on a cattle drive, Jeannie Baylor is alone on their isolated Wyoming ranch. When she's taken captive by a gang of ruthless outlaws, she realizes they intend to kill her when they get ready to move on. Unexpectedly, one of the outlaws proposes a fantastic scheme to save her life. But she has a plan of her own, and its success depends on the cloak she's crocheting for a friend.

Don't forget to leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for

Cloaked in Love by Stitches author Elaine Manders! Winner will be

announced in the April 30th edition of the Weekly Windup.