Rick Blackmon's Blog

Life ripped them apart, but fate will bring them back together…

Bound in childhood friendship, they share laughs, dreams, and secrets. But before that friendship blossoms into something more, life sends them on different paths, following different dreams. While both achieve success, neither one realizes true happiness. Fate steps in when Jake places an ad in a newspaper, desperate to find the right someone to end his emptiness. The childhood friends are now back in each other’s lives, and Julie faces a heart-wrenching choice. Which should she walk away from, the possibility of real love, or the teaching career of her dreams? Julie’s Dilemma is an emotional second-chance romance set in the 1870’s, will leave you gasping for more.

Winnie’s Amazing Cowboy is the seventh book in the charming New Mail Order Brides historical Western romance series. If you like old-fashioned swooning, unapologetic female protagonists, and dreamy ranchers, then you’ll adore Susan Leigh Carlton’s chivalrous story. Buy Julie’s Dilemma and solve her dilemma.

She had the perfect plan to secure a marriage. He ruined it without even knowing. Will this unlikely match find love?

Montana, 1870. Winnie Phelps spent the first twenty years of her life as a living disappointment to her social-climbing father. Striving for a better future for herself and her mother, they venture West after she corresponds with a man looking for a mail-order bride. But when she’s stranded at a watering station, Winnie is crushed to learn that her husband-to-be was jailed for stealing cattle.

Rancher Dusty Walton has always struggled to court the ladies. But after turning in a local cattle rustler to the sheriff, he rescues a beautiful maiden and her mother dragging their belongings down a dirt road. Falling for her at first sight, Dusty’s horrified when he discovers the man she seeks is the scoundrel he just sent to the gallows.

Though the headstrong woman finds her heart slowly melting in the gallant cowboy’s company, she struggles to forgive him for destroying her walk to the altar. And when Dusty realizes Winnie plans to return to her miserable life back East, he vows to put aside his awkwardness and properly woo his heart’s desire.

Will the Big Sky Country stars align to let Dusty put a ring on Winnie’s finger?

Winnie’s Amazing Cowboy is the seventh book in the charming New Mail Order Brides historical Western romance series. If you like old-fashioned swooning, unapologetic female protagonists, and dreamy ranchers, then you’ll adore Susan Leigh Carlton’s chivalrous story.

Buy Winnie’s Amazing Cowboy to lasso love today!

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Closeup portrait of young kissing couple at sunshine

Courting Temperance is now live on Amazon! This new novel marks my return to the Historical Western Romance genre.

Abandoned by his mother, Cody Duncan has lived his life on the brink of disaster, yet somehow he managed to reach for something most would assume was unattainable. Now, college-educated and working as a Deputy US Marshall, his life may be vastly different from where it began, but the ghosts of his difficult youth continue to haunt him.

Temperance Boozer’s life has been anything but easy. Born to a gambling drunkard, who was crippled in a mining accident, her early years were filled with images of her mother doing everything she could to keep her family afloat, but when she passed away, all the responsibility landed on Temperance’s shoulders. Her life was forever changed, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is her reluctance to believe in love and family.

When these two lost souls meet, the pain from their early lives come to the forefront. Although deeply smitten with each other, both struggle to release their pain.

Can they overcome all they’ve endured and forge a new path forward together?

Click here to purchase Courting Temperance for 99¢.

Sign up for my new release alerts and be the first to hear about new releases and special discounts. Subscribers also receive unedited copies of the first chapter before the book is completed. Enter your email address in the form on the top right of this page to join.

Be sure to check out my previous release “For the Love of Kari” It’s the fourth and last of my Time Travel Series. Learn more on Amazon.

“Laurie” Volume 2 of the Second Chance Mail Order Brides is now available on Amazon.

Laurie Winston, the sweet daughter of a lawyer, wants to follow her father’s footsteps. She plans to someday join his practice after finishing law school. She’s single-mindedly focused on her career pursuits and has no interest in the young men her age.

When Caleb Lewis, a university student, is introduced to Laurie, he falls fast and hard, and their engagement comes quickly. After learning of a childhood friend’s unexpected death, he worries he brings bad luck to those with whom he becomes close. He worries about her future if he stays with her.

Can the love and caring of Laurie overcome his despair? Or should she move on?

“Cowboys Don’t Lie” volume 1 of the series is here.

Montana Christmas Bride is now available on Amazon.

A historical western romance set in Helena, Montana in the period between 1872-1883.

Titus Britton is the son of Cindy Gaston Britton and Carl, who died on Jul 3, 1863 in the Battle of Gettysburg. At the age of twelve he befriended Inger Swenson, a quiet girl with no apparent friends. He told Inger he would be her boyfriend. The friendship turned to love. He remained true to his promise until 1878 when she disappeared a week before Thanksgiving, and three weeks before he would be coming home on his Christmas break.

Inger broke off all contact with him after she found her father had been cheating people in Helena, and fled town. She did not want to shame him because of her father’s misdeeds.

When his stepfather saw how broken hearted Titus was, he hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to locate her family. They were found two days later in Minneapolis, their former home.

Titus went to Minneapolis to convince her she was his world and what her father had done did not reflect back on her.

This is the love story of Titus and Inger as she struggles to overcome her shame and become a part of the Britton family.

In response to the survey I did about the covers of the latest book, I have changed the cover of “Alone No More”.

The new cover can be seen on Amazon by

 

Red old barn on historical farm in Parker, Colorado.

 This is a sweet, western romance; complete with no cliffhangers and does not require reading of the three previous stories to enjoy it. There is a minimum of sexual activity between husband and wife, and no explicit descriptions and no vulgarity.

The story is set in the 1870 time period on a ranch outside Helena, Montana. Cindy Britton was a Civil War widow who found a new love with Whit Goodson through a matrimonial newspaper, and moved to the Box C Ranch. The storyline is about the fortunes and misfortunes of their family that eventually included four children.

An encounter with cattle rustlers left Whit in a hospital in Missoula with gunshot wound in the back that took away the use of his legs. He falls into a level of despair that threatens their marriage as well as nearly costing them their lives.

Life on the frontier of Montana was difficult enough without the misfortune that strikes just when everything seems to be coming up roses for them. Can their marriage take this hit and survive?

Now live on Amazon, Click Here

It’s here! The sequel to the popular A Soldier’s Widow. If you like sweet, tender, western romance, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Cindy Britton was twenty-three when her husband was killed in the Battle of Gettysburg. The war had taken its toll on men her age and by her twenty-seventh birthday her mother began inviting men her father’s age to come courting. She refused and moved her children to her late husband’s farm.

One of the older men paid her father for her hand. He kidnapped her from where she was living and took her to the fat merchant to be married.

To get “Alone and Expecting” now Click here

This was taken years ago. I can tell because my hair is thick and Rick is wearing one of his IBM uniforms.