Western Romance, The Story of Us —– Conclusion

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Cowboys, Time Travel & Not One Single Alien

by Lyn Horner

When assigning topics for this series, I saved paranormal western romances for myself because my book, Darlin’ Druid, falls in that genre. Well, sort of. Some readers class it as a regular western romance with a psychic heroine, while others consider it an action western. Fine by me, as long as they enjoy the read. Nevertheless, I chose WPR to blog about, thinking it was right up my alley and I’d have no trouble finding various types of paranormal within the category. Boy was I wrong!

After hours of scouring the net for paranormal romances set in the Old West, I’ve concluded the only ones out there are time travel romances. The recent movie Cowboys and Aliens notwithstanding, I found no trace of visitors from outer space in Old West romances. No trace of psychics, either – kind of strange since séances, mesmerism and other psychic phenomena fascinated many people in the nineteenth century. A western romance with a psychic character isn’t that much of a stretch. Perhaps such books exist, but I couldn’t find them.

Left with little choice, I dove into western time travel romances, seeking info about the history of this sub-genre. I couldn’t find any articles online but did manage to dig up some info from book descriptions and reviews on amazon.com. Thank you Big A!

Dubbed the “Original Queen of Time Travel Romance,” Constance O’Day-Flannery has written numerous time travels. Her “Time-Kept Promises,” published in 1988, is “one of the original and best time travel romance novels,” according to the Library Journal. From the book description on amazon.com, I couldn’t tell if this is a western, but I suspect it’s not. However, O’Day-Flannery did write some western time travels, including A Time For Love and Anywhere You Are.

Linda Lael Miller has penned several popular western time travels, including There and Now, Here and Then, My Outlaw, and Beyond The Threshold. A daughter of the West herself, Linda writes beautiful descriptions of the land she loves. She uses time travel to compare the past and present and to draw her characters together emotionally.

Another of Miller’s books, Sierra’s Homecoming, uses time in a different manner. In it she connects two women, a grandmother and granddaughter, who live in the same house in parallel time dimensions. What a clever idea! I have this one waiting on my kindle. Can’t wait to start reading it!

Eugenia Riley is another prolific author of western time travels. Two examples of her work are Wanted Across Time and A Tryst In Time. Many others have dipped their toe in this sub-genre, but I confess I haven’t read much of their work. I needed a change. Hmm, maybe that’s why I chose a different paranormal twist for my Texas Druids series. You think?

Well, pardners, this brings us to the end of our western romance series. I want to thank all of the gifted ladies who contributed their time and talent to this project. We’ve had fun getting to know one another better, and I’m delighted to say we will be participating in another blog series together.

Sue Grimshaw, Editor at Large and Category Specialist for Ballantine, Bantam, Dell (Random House) has invited us to write a series for Romance At Random  beginning on September 28. The topic will of course be western romance, but our format will be very different. Fictional reporters will interview favorite characters from our books and find out what life was like in the Old West. I hope you will stop by and meet them for yourselves. http://www.romanceatrandom.com/

’Til then, happy trails from all of us!