Mule Tails--and Tales

Again I am running to catch up. Too much going on at once. I'm leaving for a short trip to Alaska on my "Women Who Run With the Dogs" project and almost let the release of The Mule Man slip past me! It is now available from JMS Books right here: http://www.jms-books.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=29_94&products_id=1716   I'll repost the
cover so you can spot it easily.

The next cool thing is I have a cover for A Mule For A Princess and it is going to be released at JMS also, on  9  July. I'll post a link when it is up but you can go to www.jms-books.com and new releases to find it when it's there. It's already appearing in the coming soon page.

If you are wondering why I would write stories about such a strange and almost obscure kind of animal as the lowly mule, well, I have a lot of history with mules! From about age twelve to twenty three I worked as a 'ranch hand' and trainer in business with my dad. We bought, trained or re-trained and sold a lot of good horses and also mules. We had some the Grand Canyon decided would not make it for tourists and sold them some that would. We had ads in Western Horseman magazine and sold mules for trail riding all over the USA! I rode many a rough and mountainous or desertish mile on muleback and came to have a deep respect and admiration for those long eared critters. They were amazing in very rough terrain, tough and savvy about taking care of themselves and a rider if you stayed on top. They also were less disease and accident prone than most horses, especially the "hot blooded" pedigreed type. With this background ,I always knew in the back of my mind that they'd pop up in some of my fiction. That finally happened. Here is a photo of me with two of the mules we had back then just to verify that I've 'been there and done that'. The big one saddled is Annie and the other is Mindy who had a Quarter Horse mama that got messed up with a jackass. Hey, she wasn't the first and I am betting too many of us could say the same. ;-) LOL. To meet the handsome prince you sometimes have to kiss a bunch of frogs and even a horny toad or two!