What Made You Write This Book?

By Lynn Cahoon

Ever since I found out that The Bull Rider’s Brother was going to be published, I’ve been asked the ‘author’ questions from friends, family and relatives. Like, when are you going to write a real book, like (insert popular book title here – from Twilight to Sarah’s Keys). Or, where do you get your ideas? Did this story happen to you? And my favorite, How can I get published?

The background for the book started the day after I met the man I would marry.

The next day Date Boy #1 and I went to the Riggins Rodeo. For those of you who have lived in a small town, you know how an event can take on a life of its own. That’s what happens each year when the rodeo comes to this little canyon town. Rodeo weekend is one big party running from the corrals and stands south of town, to the park on the north side. I enjoyed the weekend, but knew I would have to end the relationship because I wasn’t being honest. With Date Boy #1 or myself.

That weekend became a turning point in my life. Where I started to really trust that I could have the man of my dreams and the life I’d always wanted. That my choices mattered. I didn’t know it at the time, but one of those dart players I had been talking to that night, would become my best friend and my husband.

When I started writing this book, I knew my setting. I wanted Lizzie and James, my star crossed lovers in The Bull Rider’s Brother, to be from a small town like Riggins. I knew that as teenagers, their only plan was how to escape the small town. And, I knew that only one of them was successful.

And that was all I knew when I started writing. That and one of them would be running a tilapia farm. (That part got changed during revision.)

Is The Bull Rider’s Brother a story from my own experience? Yes and no. The setting, the gentle sounds of the river running through the town, the ice cream at the end of the parade? All from memories of my weekend.

The rest is and should be a work of fiction.

What questions do you want to ask your favorite author?

Rodeo weekend is the start of the summer the entire town of Shawnee, Idaho. On a girl’s night out, Lizzie Hudson finds herself comparing her life as a single mom with her best friend’s successful career when James Sullivan, the cowboy who got away, walks his Justin Ropers back into her life. Seeing him shakes Lizzie’s world but James is in for an even more eventful weekend, learning he has a son. James has enough on his plate trying to manage his brother’s bull riding career. Can he learn to redefine family and become part of Lizzie’s life before she gives up on him and marries another?