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A full length contemporary romance.

Weary and battered after a stint in prison for killing her abusive husband, Tanya has been dreaming of the day [...]]]> Three of my most beloved novels from my contemporary romance days are now available in ebook format.

The Last Chance Ranch 

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A full length contemporary romance.

Weary and battered after a stint in prison for killing her abusive husband, Tanya has been dreaming of the day she could renew her relationship with the son she lost.  Now cooking at a ranch for troubled boys, she takes the first, tentative steps toward her son…and to his adopted father, Ramon, a man so real and true he might be able to teach Tanya how to trust…and live…again.

Story behind the story:

There was a string of domestic violence cases in Colorado one year. One woman left behind notes to her young sons, and as a mother of young sons at the time, I couldn’t bear it.  Another woman was gunned down at Taco Bell right across the street from the domestic violence shelter.  Finally, one Easter morning, my street was closed at both ends while an army of police tried to track down the man trying to kill his wife across the street. She had escaped with her daughter out the back door, but my youngest was outside playing when it all happened. I’d finally had enough and decided to write about a woman and child who made it out.

This book won The Janet Dailey Award, a $10,000 cash prize awarded to a romance that best explores a social issue.  It was also a RITA finalist, and remains a big reader favorite.

Jezebel’s Blues

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Jezebel’s Blues is a full length contemporary romantic novel.

When the Jezebel River overflows her banks and tries to swallow the small town of Gideon in East Texas, Celia Moon is alone and frightened in the farmhouse she inherited from her grandmother. When a mesmerizing and troubled drifter washed up on her porch, she has no choice but to take him in. As the river rises, the pair retreat to the attic to ride out the storm—and discover a compelling attraction.

The daughter of two artists who were besotted with each other, Celia has always felt the odd woman out. She yearns to find a place she can call her own, a family of her own, a life that has some stability and meaning.  Her grandmother’s farmhouse in Gideon has always represented that.

Eric fled his grim childhood in Gideon to find a life as an acclaimed blues guitarist, but that life has been taken from him, too, and he’s back in Gideon with a chip on his shoulder that hides the vast, hunger he, too, feels to find his place, his home, his life.  Waiting out the storm with sunny, optimistic Celia, he wonders if maybe there’s a place in Gideon for him after all, in the arms of a woman who might know more than she thinks about acceptance.

A novel as rich and deep as a river, Jezebel’s Blues is both a haunting love story and a tale of finding your way to accepting yourself.

Story behind the story

This is one of my personal favorites. It was my first RITA finalist, and the conference that year was in St. Louis, which was flooding that summer.  Mainly, I just loved it, and it helped me explore ideas that would lead to In the Midnight Rain, and to another tale set loosely in the same town during WWII (more as I am able to say).

Breaking the Rules

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Mattie O’Neal was on the run.  She’d stolen a car, cut off her hair, changed her name and was slinging hash in a small Arizona town.  She thought she was safe – until Zeke Shephard walked through the door. His rugged, muscled body set every woman’s heart aflutter – but his probing questions made Mattie weak for another reason.

Still, when the bad guys caught up with her, it was Zeke who rescued Mattie and took her to his own retreat.  Zeke who comforted her . . . protected her . . . and loved her.  Although Zeke insisted he was just a guy for the moment, could Mattie persuade him to make that moment last a lifetime?

Story behind the story:
I have a weakness for road books.  What happens when you disappear and start over–what can you find out about yourself, the world, and a great love? Zeke is a bad-boy with a broken heart, and Mattie is a woman who can heal and transform, both herself and her world.

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IN THE MIDNIGHT RAIN was my first mainstream novel, a book that was published under my romance pseudonym, Ruth [...]]]> Good news! We’ve been working behind the scenes to get old books into ebook format, and the first one, In The Midnight Rain, is ready.

Only $3.99!

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IN THE MIDNIGHT RAIN was my first mainstream novel, a book that was published under my romance pseudonym, Ruth Wind.  It was a hard reach for me at that time, a long book with stories in the past and present.  There is a dog, April. There is music–the blues, which I love with a madness I’ve never been able to quantify.  There is a beautiful,  lost Southern man who grows orchids.  And there is a community of women.  It was a RITA finalist, and a favorite book on many lists.

It is more of a romance than some of my women’s fiction, but not much more than A Piece of Heaven or The Secret of Everything.   Here is what people said about it at the time:

“Intriguing and absorbing.” - Sandra Kitt, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

“In her mainstream debut, Ms. Wind blows away much of the competition with a remarkable rousing drama that touches the inner soul of the reader.” - Harriet Klausner, Book Browser Reviews

“Stunning! Powerful! Eloquent! Emotional! These are just a few of the words I’d use to describe this wonderful story. To say I loved it is a huge understatement. Ruth Wind has written a gem of a book for her breakout novel” - Kate O’Connell

“A multiple RITA award winner, Wind (aka Barbara Samuel), has many strengths that show well in “Midnight Rain.” With La Vyrle Spencer’s retirement, Wind/Samuel inherits the crown as the Queen of Heartfelt Emotion. Wind is more consistent than Spencer, indeed, than most, and her contemporary heroines are more complicated and interesting. She also gracefully delves into cultural territory that publishers often discourage romance writers from entering. Issues of race, ethnicity and class form the solid backbone of many of Wind’s novels. “In the Midnight Rain” traverses the social landscapes of an integrated east Texas small town with respect and love.” - Lynn Coddington, Contra Costa Times

from the back cover…

LOOKING FOR THE PAST… Ellie Connor is a biographer with a special talent for piecing together fragments of the past. Her latest project, though, promises to be her most challenging–and personal. Not only is she researching the life of a blues singer who disappeared mysteriously forty years ago, but Ellie is also trying to find the truth about the parents she never knew. The love child of a restless woman who died young and an anonymous father, Ellie has little to go on but a faded postcard her mother sent from a small, East Texas town–the hometown of her latest subject.

…COULD MEAN HER FUTURE
It is there that Ellie meets Blue Reynard, a man with deep roots and wide connections who may help her find answers. With a piercing gaze and cool grin, Blue is as sultry and seductive as the Southern night air. Beneath his charming surface, however, lies as soul damaged by loss. Despite her better judgment, Ellie finds herself irresistibly drawn to Blue’s passion–and his pain. But Ellie’s been lured by sweet talk and hot kisses before. How can she possibly stay with Blue when every instinct tells her to run?

Click here to read the full excerpt >

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

My grandmother has been telling me stories as along as I can remember, and the weft and warp of those stories was never woven in fairy tales or proverbs. Her method of instruction has always been tales of sin and redemption from real life–the triumphs and falls of women and men who were tempted and seduced by the wide array of sins–and how they paid if they fell, or how they triumphed if they resisted.

She never hurried through them–they’re laced with details as rich as one of her pecan pies–washed with a moody Southern quality and a thick kind of light. As a child, I loved doing any kind of kitchen chore with her because I knew she’d start telling stories. I lived for that sudden shift in her cornflower blue eyes, that slight unfocusing on the present as she looked the past and she would begin, “I remember when…”

Even better than the stories of sin and temptation, I loved the ones about people who had tried to do the right thing, and only made things worse. My grandma would say it was the finger of God, teaching a lesson, and we should be thankful, but I always privately wondered just exactly how you could manage to be thankful if God kept knocking you over with that finger.

There’s plenty of sin and redemption, temptation and triumph, in MIDNIGHT RAIN, which was born out of those long hours doing chores at my grandma’s side. Ellie Connor, tough and earnest, smart and vulnerable, arrives in the little East Texas town of Pine Bend to uncover the secrets of a mysterious and beautiful woman who disappeared more than a generation ago–and also do a little poking around about the mysteries of her own life. It’s there, in the sleepy, haunted little town that Ellie also finds Blue Reynard, a man as beautiful as he is lost, with a whisky-dark voice and a dangerously seductive understanding of the secrets of a woman’s heart. Blue is everything Ellie has vowed to avoid, and everything she can’t resist.

This is a story about community, about discovery and loss and the way we each find a way to get through those long rainy nights that fall in every life. It’s most especially a very sexy, emotional romance, and I hope you’ll enjoy as much I enjoyed writing it.

Oh, and by the way, Grandma makes an appearance. Bet you won’t have any trouble at all recognizing her.

We’re doing some spring cleaning around here and while transfering files from a box (really) to an actual file cabinet, I found this query. 

It ended up leading to my first sale. 

The phone number was my mother’s, by the way.  I was too poor to have a phone of my [...]]]>

We’re doing some spring cleaning around here and while transfering files from a box (really) to an actual file cabinet, I found this query. 

It ended up leading to my first sale. 

The phone number was my mother’s, by the way.  I was too poor to have a phone of my own.