SPECIAL GUEST: ANNE CARROLE and Love Western Romances

(Celia) I'm so pleased to introduce Anne Carrole, a Western Romance author and co-founder of the very popular website Love Western Romances.

Anne says she is "a Jersey girl with a Western heart who was raised on a farm in NJ with horses, dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits, and whatever other animals she and her sisters could convince their parents to shelter." Besides reading and writing romances, you can find her rummaging around antique stores, in the garden, or on the tennis court when she's not watching the rodeo. She is married to her own urban cowboy, and is also the proud mother of a teenage cowgirl.

Anne, please tell us about Love Western Romances, the site you and Karyna DeRosa created several years ago. Why and how did this idea come to you?

(ANNE)

Thanks for having me here at Sweethearts of the West—just love that name.

Love Western Romances is a review site devoted exclusively to western historical romances. Our goal is to help readers find new authors and authors find new readers.

Karyna and I met at our local RWA chapter and were bemoaning the fact that we couldn’t find enough of the books we loved to read (and write), that is western historical romances. We figured a lot of other fans of the genre were having the same problem. Being Karyna is a whiz on the computer (she manages website design and programming for her corporate day job), and my day job used to be in marketing, the idea of starting a website devoted to promoting the genre seemed the answer and Love Western Romances was born.

(Celia) With all the success of Love Western Romances, is there extra pressure on you to live up to higher expectation?

(ANNE)

If you mean do we feel pressure to keep things going, we do. I won’t lie that there aren’t days when it seems too much, given we both have day jobs, personal lives, and are working to get our own books published, but when we hear from readers and authors, that keeps us going.

(Celia) I know the website well, and notice you have three main areas of promotion to offer authors of Western Romances. First, explain the Author spotlight and how does it work?

(ANNE)

Each month we feature a western historical romance author. We try to have a mix of up-and- coming authors as well as established authors. Many of the established authors we contacted and asked if they’d appear, but western historical authors can contact us through the site and if we have an opening, we’ll place them in our spotlight. We try not to repeat authors more than every two years and if we do repeat, it has to be because they have something new to say for a visitor’s interest beyond a new book to promote, though we are all for letting people know about the latest books. That’s why readers come to our site, to learn about what’s new in western historical romance.

 When we first got started we were a little intimidated about asking some of the “big names” in western romance to be in our spotlight. I mean, who were we but just an upstart website.  Our first author, Stacey Kayne/Harlequin Historical was releasing her debut novel and so we sort of launched together. After that, Cheryl St. John, another Harlequin author, graciously agreed  to be in our spotlight(she’s a real sweetheart). They both were very helpful in supporting us since they were starting their own blog, Petticoats and Pistols, and felt the more the merrier. Once we had a few authors in the spotlight,  I got bold and approached Leigh Greenwood, because I thought having one of the few male romance writers would be a good draw to our site. He couldn’t have been nicer. In fact that is what I have to say about ALL the authors who have been in our spotlight; every one of them has been gracious, generous and just plain nice.

For me, though, a highlight had to be when I gathered up my courage to ask Linda Lael Miller to be in our spotlight. Anyone who knows me knows she is my idol as far as western romance goes. In the very early days of our site, her publicist had contacted us about reviewing A Wanted Man—still a favorite of mine. So, through her publicist, I contacted her. Talk about being nice and supportive. She mentioned it on her blog, mentioned us on her publisher’s site, put up our logo during that year’s Best Western Romance and donated several times to our voter bundles. She appeared again in 2010. She’s a fan favorite and will always be one of ours.

 (Celia) The review section, I notice, is huge. How does an author get a review from LWR?

(ANNE)

Most of the time they contact us through the website. We get most of our books to review from the authors themselves, rather than their publishers. We can only handle about five a month because we don’t have that many reviewers. (Anyone who wants to review western historicals and will accept them in pdf format, please feel free to contact me. We are always looking for new reviewers.)

We accept only western historical romances because that’s what our site visitors are looking for and, just because of volume, we do not accept self-published or re-issued books for review, though we are happy to mention them in the author news section of our newsletter. Anyone can join our monthly newsletter, which is another way to find out what is happening in western romances at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lovewesternromances/

(Celia) The third important part of the site is the offer to buy ad space for a book cover on the Home Page. How does this work?

(ANNE)

This is the only form of paid advertising we accept on the site. The fees we charge ($10 per month per book cover ad) go to cover our maintenance of the website and to fund our Best Western and other contests. We’ve never made a profit on the site, take no money ourselves (there isn’t enough). This is truly a labor of love because we don’t want this genre to disappear.

An author who has a western historical book cover they want displayed on the Home Page can pay through Paypal on the site. Then they need to e-mail us at

annecarrole@aol.com

and provide us their book cover or banner in jpeg format.  We’ll then link the book cover back to their website. That’s it.

(Celia) One trivial question: If you bought a car that matched your personality, what would it be?

(ANNE)

Well, that’s definitely a question I haven’t been asked before. I’m not sure of the particular model but it would definitely be red and sporty, I think, but not necessarily an expensive one. Just one that’s fast and nimble. My favorite car back in the day was my Honda Prelude so maybe it would be that.

(Celia) Now, we'd love to know about your books in general and your newest release.

(ANNE)

I have a short story published with the Wild Rose Press called Re-ride at the Rodeo, a contemporary western, that’s available separately as an e-book or in print as part of the anthology Return to Wayback.

(Celia) Can you give us a blurb and a buy link for the book?

BLURB for Re-ride at the Rodeo:

Saddle bronc rider Clay Tanner is looking for a good time and the tempting little blonde who’s working the beer concession at the rodeo looks like she could use one—except she turns him down. Feeling like he’s been bucked off his bronc before the eight second buzzer, Clay’s betting he can score if she’ll give him a re-ride. But qualifying may call for more than he’s prepared to give.

Dusty Morgan’s nonplussed when hard-bodied cowboy Clay Tanner hits on her. She doesn’t exactly have the kind of figure that attracts Texas cowboys. Besides, even though Clay’s deep timbre voice sends tingles clear to her toes, he’s an undependable rough stock rider and a player to boot. Though he may be what she desires, Dusty knows from experience he isn’t what she needs—or is he?

(Celia) I remember this one from the RETURN TO WAYBACK anthology! In fact, I wrote short reviews for each story and posted them on my blog.

Friends--if you want a good read, check out Anne’s rodeo story. It’s part of a series from The Wild Rose Press--I think there are 14 books in the series (I have one in there, too.)   

BUY LINK:

Re-ride at the Rodeo: http://www.thewildrosepress.com/reride-at-the-rodeo-wayback-texas-series-p-991.html?zenid=932786aba858d911d196098c840f5f9e

Return to Wayback: http://thewildrosepress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=191&products_id=3435&zenid=932786aba858d911d196098c840f5f9e

Where else can we find you?

www.annecarrole.com  and, of course, http://www.lovewesternromances.com/

Thank you so much, Anne, for visiting the Sweethearts of the West. Good luck and best wishes for your continuing success.

Celia Yeary