Only An Okie Will Do, Book 8
Contemporary Western
Date Published: 01-16-2024
The moment Chance Nash bumps into a sassy blonde at the local bar, he knows she's The One. She might play hard to get, but he gradually wears her down and even learns her name on their first date.
Isla Michaels has come to Oklahoma under false pretenses. Sort of. Although she grew up with privilege, her family life lacked warmth. She recently learned she has a half-brother she never knew about. In order to meet him, she pretends to be interested in one of his horses. Maybe if it goes well, she'll tell him who she is. What she doesn't expect is to be charmed by Chance. He's cute, he's caring, and he immediately breaks through the walls she's erected to keep her heart safe.
But pressure to return home is mounting and Isla's still not sure she wants to spill the truth about her family history. Her deepening feelings for Chance complicate everything she planned for her future. And even though he promises to follow her anywhere, she knows it's wrong to take him away from his family legacy. Isla's decisions will either lead her away from the cowboy she's hooked on or back home to the austere life she built before Chance.
Interview with Becca Turner
Have you read anything that made you think differently about fiction?
I actually don’t spend a lot of time reading. When I do, it’s usually really far out of the romance genre. I enjoy reading books with murder and mystery—my favorites recently are by Jennifer McMahon, so they’ve got the element of the supernatural in them as well. I do have my favorite romance authors who I can’t turn down, but I worry that I might let themes and tropes from other romance novels influence my own too much.
How do you select the names of your characters?
Behindthename.com is my go-to for character names, but sometimes they just come to me. In Cowboy Kind of Hooked, I thought maybe it seemed a little silly for the hero to be named Chance when he’s a bullfighter. Obviously, he takes a literal chance with his life every time he steps into an arena to dance with bulls. Most of the time, I find a name I really like and stick with it. A couple of characters have been through random name changes, though. Some of them just don’t want to give it up. That’s when naming websites come in handy.
Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
That kind of goes back to naming characters. Sometimes I like to give them a name with a particular meaning, hoping the readers either already know it or would be curious enough to look it up. If I’m getting to a point where I feel like I need to be deep, I try to make it obvious enough for readers to go, “Oh, I get it!”
What was your hardest scene to write?
In the first full-length novel I wrote in my series, Cowboy Kind of Trouble, there’s a scene where the MMC, Will, who’s a paraplegic and massively depressed, is sitting in his bathroom holding a bottle of prescription painkillers and contemplating taking the entire bottle. One of the toughest sentences to write and decide to leave in the book was, “He was too afraid to die so easily and just as afraid to live. But what the hell did he have to live for?”
Trouble is a very important book for me because at the time, I was badly depressed myself and pouring pain into Will was one of the things that kept me going. Later in the book at a doctor’s appointment, he admits he hasn’t been taking the anti-depressants prescribed for him. Getting to know the FMC, Jessi, and realizing he has a promising future ahead of him makes Will change the way he sees things. I like to use the message in Trouble to advocate getting mental help, because it changed my life too.
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
I set out two write the first three books and a handful of novellas all based around the same fictional town in NE Oklahoma. I actually didn’t plan on a series that connected. It just sort of happened thanks to some successful box sets and loyal readers. Each of my books has a happily-ever-after or a happily-for-now, but I was surprised as connected as they are, that a lot of readers are content to pick up any of them, read it, realize there is more to the storyverse, and read more. And they’re even satisfied if they read out of order because they just happened to catch an advanced reader copy or something.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
I wanted to write a romance about an unusual occupation, in this case, bullfighting, with another cinnamon roll hero and a sassy heroine with a few secrets. My goal was to create snappy banter that would make readers laugh, and from early reviews, I’ve accomplished that. I really hope that the Only an Okie Will Do series is full of books that make readers feel like they know the place and the characters and they want to keep visiting.
What inspired you to write Cowboy Kind of Hooked?
I love cowboys, which is no secret. My heroes are almost always cowboys on some level. They’re often involved in rodeos, and I follow the Professional Bull Riders and Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association to see what’s going on in the sports. Until the end of 2022, I didn’t realize that bullfighters have their own association. They don’t just keep bulls away from bull riders in the arena. They literally have their own sport to prove who the best bullfighters are. I saw a short reel on Instagram about bullfighters and I was amazed. Some of the moves these guys pull are astounding. And as popular as the cowboy romance genre is, there aren’t books about bullfighters. So I decided one of my heroes had to branch out from the normal events.
Can you tell us a little bit about the next books in the Only an Okie Will Do series or what you have planned for the future?
After Cowboy Kind of Hooked, I have a Valentine’s release in my historical Only an Okie Will Do series called Where Love Beings. That branch is about the early settlers of my fictional Oklahoma town. My historicals are all sweet romances. It’s one of my favorite historicals and brings in the ancestors of some of the modern day characters. After that, I’m releasing another contemporary collection that’ll contain three novellas. In the fall, I have Cowboy Kind of Grit, which is about the hero from Hooked’s cousin, and in late fall, I’m releasing a standalone historical romance based on a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Cowboy Kind of Hooked?
The hero, Chance Nash, isn’t really complicated. He basically loves two things in life: the family ranch he grew up on and bullfighting. Until he meets Isla Michaels in the local bar. There’s a little quirk about the Nash family. They tend to fall hard and fast. No exception for Chance when he lays eyes on Isla. Except she wants nothing to do with him. She’s not in town to meet guys—well, one. Her long-lost half brother that she recently discovered after doing one of those DNA spit tests. The results surprised her when she learned that she has a brother who lives halfway across the country. So on the pretense of being interested in the horses he trains, she comes to Oklahoma to meet him. Then she’s charmed by Chance, which was unexpected because she’s not even sure she wants to tell her brother who she is, and she has no intentions of staying in Oklahoma. Isla is very stubborn and insists nothing can develop out of the relationship with Chance, but when he’s involved in an accident, she sticks around to help him out—revealing her softer side—and then she has to make the decisions that will either bind her to Chance and her newfound family or take her away from it all again.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
Definitely the banter between Chance and Isla. He knows he’s handsome, he’s part of a very successful ranch, he’s kind of a celebrity in his bullfighting circles, and he’s pretty sure he’s a hot package. Isla isn’t have any of it. Although the more she fights, the more she’s drawn to him. It’s not a romcom by any means, but it has it’s funny parts. I also loved making another connection between Isla and her half-brother. The first three books in the series are all about the brothers and sister at a ranch called the Tumblin’ B. I was able to bring Cowboy Kind of Hooked and the characters in it to circle around with the Tumblin’ B too.
About the Author
"The West isn't won until a cowboy claims your heart."
Becca Turner was raised in Missouri except for a couple of formative years in SW Oklahoma that left her with an Okie accent. One day she was reading cowboy romance novels and wondered why they're all set in Texas. Then she set out to do something about it.
She lives in Missouri with her husband and two dogs.
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