Western Romance Novels

If there's anything I like to read it's a good Western romance story. I used to like them set in the old West, but now, stories about the modern West are my preference. And no one is better at the latter than my favorite author, Jeannie Watt.

Jeannie has a new modern West novel slated for release in February 2009. It's titled A Cowboy's Redemption and already I like it. In the first place, the cover has a cowboy and a girl nuzzling and the two fit my imagined perfect partners to a tee. In my mind, the cowboy is me and the girl is the spitting image of the girl I have dreamed about for years.

And they're leaning on what looks like a beat-up old pickup truck. Men like pickups, so they'll be drawn to this book right away. And women like men who drive pickups. How's that for capturing an audience?

But that's the marketing department at Harlequin Superromance. What about the good stuff, like the plot and the characters? Secrecy is the name of the game in the publishing business. The plot of this book hasn't been revealed yet, but if Jeannie writes true to form, it's going to be filled with twists and turns with a surprise ending. She's good at keeping her readers' eyes glued to the page.

However, despite the secrecy, I've managed to dig up a hint of what's to come. The front cover of the book includes a single descriptive sentence: "He won't let her family ruin him... again." Already I'm interested and in my demented imagination, I'm trying to fill-in the blanks. But on reflection, I'll wait for the book to hit the book stores. Jeannie is very talented at surprusing her readers.

The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com, as well as from a British outlet that I ran across by accident called Fantastic Fiction. I know that the Brits have always liked to read about the American West and they've been enthralled with the cowboy image of America in general. I'll bet Jeannie has a nice number of readers over there.

By the way, the main difference between Old West romances and Modern West romances is simple to figure out. If you've read some Old West romances, you'll notice right away that they didn't have sex in the old days. The cowboy kissed his horse and rode off into the sunset.

Doesn't work that way in 21st Century America. Men don't run around kissing pickup trucks and then burning rubber across a rolling prairie.