Kelly Dawson Author

3 years! I can't believe it!  Three years ago this week my first western  - The Ways of the West - was published! It all started when I discovered the old TV show Rawhide . You know, that long cattle drive from Texas to Abilene where all the drovers encountered different problems along the trail? My characters, and my story, were loosely inspired by that show. Most of my other books have been inspired by life... but as I wasn't alive back in the old Wild West days (and I live in entirely the wrong country) I get western inspiration from books, movies, and  telly shows instead.  Johnny, and Mr Jordan, remain two of my favourite characters to this day. Here's the blurb: Orphaned by an attack on her family’s wagon train, Jessica finds herself stranded a thousand miles from Boston, the only home she has ever known. Only one man—a rough, dusty cowboy named Johnny—stands between her and the perils of the West, and he quickly makes it clear...

Welcome back to my blog for this week's  Saturday Spanking s! The 8 sentences I'm sharing this week follow on from last week's excerpt: Mr Jordan sighed. “We’ll do this the hard way then.”   He dragged her over to the rock that had been blocking her escape just seconds ago and sat down on it, hauling her across his dusty thigh.  With one hand on her back holding her firmly in place he swatted her again, putting a lot more power into the swats this time, spanking her hard and fast through her skirts and reducing her to a quivering, blubbering mess in no time.   Each smack felt like she was being branded with a hot iron, and the pain from one had barely registered when another hard swat was landing.  The fire in her bottom was intensifying, building with every successive smack the big man laid down.   Jessica wriggled and squirmed, fighting to get away, but it was futile.   T he hard leather of his chaps dug into her and rubbed against her ro...

On the  WIPUTIP WEDNESDAY BLOG  Melody talks about being sunburnt. I'm so jealous!! I know that sounds bizarre - what kind of normal person is jealous of sunburn?? Well firstly, I'm not "normal". Secondly, we're coming to (hopefully) the end of a rather long, cold, wet winter here at the bottom of the world and I would give anything for enough heat in the sun to burn me right now. Alas, I have to settle for curling up next to our woodburner. This week I have some very exciting news to share with you all - my western - Longhorn Cowboys Book One: Heart for Home has been accepted by Stormy Night Publications!!! Yay!!!! I don't have any idea at this stage of when it will be released, but I'm sure I'll know once the excitement of acceptance wears off :)    Longhorn Cowboys  was originally inspired by the good looking, tough drovers on Rawhide  - Ramrod: Rowdy Yates played by Clint Eastwood, Trail Boss: Gil Favor played by Eric Fleming and Sco...

Welcome to my blog for this week's  Saturday Spankings !  I hope everyone is having a great 4th of July! Here in New Zealand we don't celebrate it (obviously) so it's just like any other day for us. But ... I'm celebrating the fact that it's the late Eric Fleming's 90th birthday today - if you don't know who he is he played Trail Boss Gil Favor in Rawhide.                                   But that was just a random piece of useless trivia. My blog post today has nothing to do with either Eric Fleming or Rawhide  - today I'm sharing another 8 sentences from my recent release Rachel's Journey ! James pulled her into his arms and wrapped her in a hug again.  Then he dropped his face to hers and kissed her full on the lips.  It was just a gentle kiss at first, but Rachel responded immediately, putting one hand on the side of his face and her other ...

Welcome to my blog. I'm participating in the  #SpankA2Z June Challenge  which is so much fun!  Today is O for Olden day story! When we were kids, my sister and I used to love asking Grandma to tell us stories from the "olden days" when she was a kid. We're talking 1920s - 1930s so not exactly the dim dark ages, but it was her stories that sparked my love for historical romance. I'm attempting to write my first-ever historical, a Western, set on a trail drive in the 1860s, inspired by the old TV show Rawhide. Here's a snippet: Whirling the pony around, the Indian took off at a gallop after the other Indians, abandoning whatever plans they may have had for the remuda.              Jessica struggled violently. She knew she had to get away. She worked at the gag in her mouth with her teeth and tongue, trying desperately to spit it out so she could scream; at the same time her fingers worked at the kn...

The  #SpankA2Z June Challenge  is heaps of fun!  Today's letter is G . Gorgeous, generous, gentle, good-looking, gentlemanly ...  what other important qualities start with G that make up a good man? Of course, along with all these good qualities, a good man must also be tough, brave and capable. One man who is the epitome of all these good qualities is Gil Favor trail boss of old TV series Rawhide - the inspiration for my latest WIP. (Of course lots of men fit these qualities, but how many of them start with G?) Keep an eye out for my Trail Drive series coming soon!

Hello and welcome to my blog! As you know, I'm taking part in the  June Challenge: Spanking A-Z Back when I was at school, in the dim dark ages of the 90s, friendship books were all the rage. You know the ones - question after question of 'favourite' and 'worst' of every subject under the sun. I thought it would be fun to do that on here. But I'm not doing 'worsts' and there's just 10 random questions. Read on to get to know more about me ... Favourite colour: Pink. Isn't it obvious? Favourite food: Chocolate. Specifically, white Lindt Lindor. I could be bribed to do anything with that gourmet treat! Favourite book:   I read anything I can get my hands on, although rural romance is my favourite genre. I love most spanking romance, but to list my favourite spanking romance books here would take all day, so I'll stick with mainstream: Therese Creed's Redstone Station  is a book I have read twice so far, and will no doubt re...

Welcome to my blog, and this weeks #WIPITUP WEDNESDAY blog hop!! I don't have a title for my historical western WIP yet, so I have to call it by the working title on my computer. Well I'm pretty sure it's going to be the the "Trail Drive series" but I haven't titled this individual book yet. You may remember the last time I blogged about this story, Jessica and Johnny had been riding for two days and had just seen the dust from the cattle drive. In this scene, they finally come upon it, hungry, thirsty and dusty. “We could use another man,” Mr Jordan said, scratching his chin. “We could use both of you actually. Can you ride miss?” he looked at Jessica.            “Oh no.” Jessica shook her head, disgust dripping from her voice. “No way. I’m not staying with a bunch of filthy, stinking cattle men! Drovers smell! We’re not staying here!” She stomped her foot, sending a cloud of dust swirling up around her, making her cough....

Welcome to my blog and thank you for visiting!  My #WIPITUP post this week is a snippet from the story I am working on right now. It's an historical Western, which probably sounds bizarre coming from a Kiwi writer, but I've been reading, and loving, Westerns forever, both books and movies. Louis L'Amour remains one of my favourite writers to this day; Larry McMurtry is another writer I really love. One of the books I read a few years ago, about an Englishman and his two daughters who hire some young cowboys to take their cattle to market over the plains, even has a couple of spankings (or threats of spankings anyway) in it, and I'd love to re-read it, but for the life of me I can't remember the title of the book :( If you know it, please help me out! Anyway, I'm planning to write a series. I've got the first 3 books planned out, and while I'm more of a pantser than a plotter, so far this first book is going pretty close to my original plot outl...