How My West Was Won by Victoria Chatham

 

AVAILABLE HERE

Recently, a reader asked why I wrote contemporary Western romance when I had previously primarily written Regency and historical romance. My answer was that an editor once told me I was too English to write a Western romance, historical or contemporary. I didn’t necessarily take that as a challenge, but over the years, it became a bit of a niggle, like the proverbial burr under a saddle.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing the Regency and historical romances, but I’ve always believed that writers should be able to stretch their writing muscles and write anything. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Take, for instance, a writer colleague who strayed from her usual Western historical and contemporary romance genre to try her hand at women’s fiction. The resounding response from her beta readers, me included, was that it didn’t work. She has since reworked her premise into an engaging second-chance romance with a cast of more mature characters that works very well and will shortly be available.

My fascination with the West and cowboy life began at an early age. My parents could not understand where my passion for ponies came from, but during those early years, I begged for rides from a neighbour who tethered his pony on open grazing land close to our house. During the long summer holidays in Cornwall, I rode every one of the beach ponies and hung around at the end of the day to ride one back to the stables. Ride ‘em, cowboy.

1941 edition (publ. Random House)

At some point, and probably because I’d pestered my parents, I was given a pair of Roy Rogers cappistols, holsters, and a black cowboy hat. That was when I was six or seven and had no time for dolls, which appeared to be every little girl’s top priority then. I wish I had photographs, but my family owned nothing as exotic as a camera, not even a plain old Brownie box camera. My interest in the West progressed into writing the lurid adventures of Virginia, Girl of the Golden West. What drama! What tales of daring escapades astride her coal-black Arab stallion! Yes, I had read most of Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion books by the age of ten. What other horse could Virginia, with her tangled mane of flaming red hair, possibly ride?

I wrote those stories in pencil on scrappy paper and provided my parents with endless amusement. I didn’t understand what was so funny about Virginia defending her adobe hacienda with her trusty Winchester rifle and wasn’t impressed with their response. I gradually stopped sharing my stories and then stopped writing them. But I still had this interest in cowboys and their culture. Although I read a lot of Regency romances as a teenager, I also read any Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour books I could get my hands on. I appreciated the artworks of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell after I found coffee table books about them in our school library.

After over thirty years of living in Western Canada, I think I’ve absorbed much of the culture I dreamed of as a child. Trail riding in the Rockies, talking to ranchers and ranch hands, the working cowboys and girls, stock contractors, and some rodeo riders over these years all added grist to my mill. That editor was only partially correct. Any story requires some research, and I found I had to do as much for these books as for my historical novels, so being English became irrelevant. Loving That Cowboy was my first contemporary Western romance, then came Legacy of Love, and now, my latest, Loving Georgia Caldwell. So far, I have had no complaints, so maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t matter how English I am.

Victoria Chatham

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