Carolyn Brown On Being 'Gracefully' Challenged

We have two copies of Darn Good Cowboy Christmas to give to two commenters today.

My guest is romance author, Carolyn Brown.


Hold on a moment while I have a brief fan-girl moment-squeee! Okay, I'm better now. 


If you have to ask me why the squee, then you haven't been reading her books. Not only is she a fabulous storyteller, but she has some the sexiest and fun loving cowboys this side of the Rio Grande--both sides, if you want my biased opinion. Her towns and citizens feel so real I just know all I have to do is find a map (trust me, I've been looking) and I can go visit with them. I absolutely love the way they talk and the expressions used. It would be fun to head over to the O'Donnell house for Sunday dinner and listen to the music afterward--I'd even put up with Colleen to do that, LOL! Carolyn tends to make me laugh--a lot.


Today, she talks about a glitch she faced not so long ago, that wasn't very funny, but how she tells it in retrospect, is.

Happy Holidays everyone! Thank you, Sia, for inviting me to stop by your site today! Halloween is over. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and after that Christmas. And I have a brand new Christmas book on the market, Darn Good Cowboy Christmas.

Liz has been raised in a traveling carnival and the top thing on her list has been a house with no wheels. Her Uncle Haskell gave her the house, a barn and twenty acres. The next thing on her list was a cowboy of her own. Will the very sexy Raylen O’Donnell be that cowboy?

A few years ago it was doubtful that I would ever write another book. Talk about a glitch that put me quite literally out of the deadline world for a while. I had one that writers shiver about.

It was all Husband’s fault. He had house shoes that he just slid his feet down in and shuffled along like an old man. Well, in his shuffling he kicked some of the air from the living room into the kitchen without telling me that it was sitting there, precariously at the end of the bar.

Now, realize that I am gracefully challenged and even a little bit of air that’s been moved from one place to another is a disaster and I tripped and fell! Splat! Right there in the kitchen floor!

My left arm is the stupidest part of my whole body. I say this because it thought it could hold all of me up and prevent me from bashing my brains in on the kitchen floor. The silly thing hit the floor and I heard a loud crack and saw a lot of blood.

Husband said that we had to go to Beloved Daughter’s house and tell her about the accident before we could go to the hospital. So there I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of the pickup truck with my feet on the dash while he tells her that he thinks my arm might be broken. No, he did not tell her that it was all his fault and that I was already cussing those damn house shoes. That’s when I pushed my feet against the window to get away from the pain and made the prettiest spider web cracks all over the whole window.

We drove twenty-five miles to the hospital with him looking between the cracks and worrying that I’d never be able to type again. He sure didn’t want to live with me if that was the case. He pulled up to the emergency room doors and I let myself out of the truck with my good arm, started through those big double doors (I understand now they lock them) and the receptionist yelled at me that I have to fill out papers before I was allowed back there.

“Tell Husband to fill them out. I have to get this fixed so I can write a book,” I told her.

The triage expert had the audacity to ask me why I thought my arm was broken. I figured he had cow chips for brains so I peeled the towel off and held up the bloody mess. His little eyes popped out and he blanched. Then he asked me how much I weighed. Again, not so smart! I lied by ten pounds or maybe it was twenty. I figured I had the right since my bone was poking out of the skin.

They took me to a room to wait for the surgeon and cut my favorite denim jumper and my shirt off my body. I told them I’d just kicked the windshield out and they’d best leave my new bra alone so they laid the scissors down and backed away slowly.

I went to surgery and that’s when they told me that the “knockout medicine” was given based on weight. And I panicked! I had lied about my weight and I’d wake up too soon! There would be a mess in operating room four that no one would ever forget.

Being drug sensitive, I went out like a light and woke up several hours later, looked at my arm and knew I’d never type again. But in six weeks the apparatus came off and the cast went on and I told my fingers if they didn’t type, they’d listen to me bitch until the undertaker laid me in the casket and crossed them over my chest. They believed me and hence, Darn Good Cowboy Christmas, my tenth cowboy romance and fifty-fourth book is now on the shelves.

• The heroine of my book, Liz, wanted a house with no wheels and a cowboy. 
• I wanted to be able to type again. 
• What’s on your list this year?

Darn Good Cowboy Christmas   

by Carolyn Brown—In Stores NOW!

 He’s One Hot Cowboy

Raylen O’Donnell is one smokin’ hot cowboy. He could have any woman he wants, but he’s never been able to forget a certain dark-haired girl who disappeared from his life. So when she suddenly returns to the ranch nexct door, Raylen’s not fixing to let her get away again…

And She’s Out for a Sizzlin’ Christmas

Raised in a traveling carnival, Lizelle Hanson thought all she wanted was a house that didn’t have wheels and a sexy cowboy for her very own. But settling down’s going to take some getting used to, and cathing Raylen, the hotter-than-hell cowboy next door, might just take a little holiday magic…Excerpt 

BUY: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million Available in both print and ebook.

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than forty books published, and credits her eclectic family for her humor and writing ideas. She writes bestselling single title cowboy and country music mass market romances. Born in Texas and raised in southern Oklahoma, Carolyn and her husband now make their home in the town of Davis, Oklahoma, where she is working on her next book, One Hot Cowboy Wedding, which will be in stores in April 2012.

For more information, please visit http://carolynlbrown.com/.