Day 5: Meet Margaret Brownley, author of A Pony Express Christmas

Today's best-selling and award-winning author, Margaret Brownley, offers a glimpse into her novella A Pony Express Christmas, a story set in Nebraska Territory in 1862. 

1.  What made you write about your period in time?

I love writing about the 1800s. The westward migration freed women in ways never before imagined.  Women abandoned Victorian traditions, rigid manners and confining clothes and that’s not all they did; they brought churches, schools and newspapers to frontier towns, and helped build communities.  The gun might have won the west, but it was the women who tamed it.

2.  How is Christmas celebrated in your family and what effect did it have on your writing this story?

The hero and heroine in my story celebrate Christmas in an abandoned Pony Express station with a mule. If they saw my family Christmas extravaganzas they would have thought we belonged to the royal family.

3.  What research did you do to authenticate Christmas celebrations in your story?

Absolutely none.  I wanted their Christmas celebration to be simple and rustic given the times and conditions.

4.  When you dreamed up your story idea, what came first, the time period, the story, the location?

I’ve always wanted to write a Pony Express story but couldn’t figure out how to make it work. So the first thing that came to mind was why not have them celebrate Christmas in an abandoned Pony Express station? 

5.  What was the "germ" of your story idea and how did you flesh it out?

My heroine is searching for her brother, a former Pony Express rider. I was surprised to discover how little information is available on the Pony Express. It was only in service for 18 months and some station keepers didn’t bother to keep records. As a result little is known about many of the riders.  We don’t even know where all the stations were located.

6.  Would you like to have been there?

I was there or at least it seemed that way when I was writing the story.

7.  What aspects of your characters are reflected in yours?

Determination and stubbornness.  Also, abiding faith.  

8.  Have you been to the locations in which your story is set?

My story takes place in Nebraska and yes, I’ve been there.  Of course, it looks nothing like it did in the 1800s.

9.  What surprised you the most about your story?

The end surprised me the most because I had no idea what would happen until I got there.  (But then of course I never do.)

10. Would you have made a good pioneer?

I would have made a great pioneer providing I had a modern bathroom and good mattress.

11. Were any of your ancestors pioneers? If so, where and when?

Crossing an ocean to get here makes them pioneers, right?

      12.  What spiritual themes did you deliberately incorporate into your story? Which ones did you discover later?  

       The story involves the Chimney Rock in Nebraska and the spiritual theme is God is my rock. But family love and loyalty is also a strong theme.

You can find Margaret at: margaretbrownley.com as well as a contributor to Petticoats & Pistols.

Have you entered the Pioneer Christmas Giveaway yet?
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Plus, each day you have a new opportunity to enter! 
Giveaway Prize: 
Copy of A Pioneer Christmas Collection signed by all 9 authors!

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Come back and visit every day during our 12 Days of Christmas and have another chance each day to enter the Giveaway. Last day to enter is September 1--winner will be announced on September 3. See you tomorrow!

12 Days of a Pioneer Christmas--And A Giveaway!

Greetings, friends!

I want to briefly introduce each of the authors who contributed to a Pioneer Christmas and offer a snapshot of each story included in the collection. Then, at the end of it all, offer you a chance (several chances, actually) to win a copy of the collection signed by all 9 authors!

When Barbour Publishing announced they were looking for novellas for A Pioneer Christmas Collection, they had just a few parameters: the story needed to take place between the 1700s to the late 1800s, have a pioneer experience, and celebrate Christmas in a unique dwelling.

            The stories that appear in A Pioneer Christmas Collection certainly met that criterion.

            Ranging in time slots from Shannon McNear’s lead-off Revolutionary War story, to Michelle Ule’s final tale of the 1897 Alaskan gold rush, the novellas sweep across North American locales both familiar and little known.

            Shannon McNear portrays a surprising romance between a militiaman loyal to the Crown hiding after a battle in which his side lost, and a young woman patriot in charge of her siblings when her father goes to fight in Defending Truth. "People were all just struggling to live their lives, and the politics were as upsetting and confusing as today."

 Celebrating Christmas in the cave where her hero was hiding, seemed a terrific idea, and certainly a unique one.

            Kathleen Fuller has often driven past her setting for The Calling: the Unionville Tavern in northeast Ohio. “Once I found out the tavern was a stagecoach shop [in the early 19^th century], I immediately came up with the idea of a traveler stopping at the tavern on a regular basis.”  In The Calling, the traveler is a young man convinced he’s called to preach to those heading west, rather than the settled east. It’s the tavern keeper’s daughter who catches a vision of who he really is.

How many of you have spent Christmas in a tavern?

            Several writers deliberately sought often over-looked times and places.  Anna Urquhart had seldom heard of pioneers traveling by water and examined the opening of the Erie Canal in the 1830’s which led to settlements in Michigan Territory. A Silent Night actually begins in Edinburgh, Scotland and follows the challenges of making a life in the big woods of the upper Midwest.

The drama of a marriage lost and found is played out over Christmas in a barn beside a smoldering cabin.

          A Pony Express Christmas by Margaret Brownley takes readers to a spot most of us think we know—or do we? When a vigorous young woman goes in search of her long-lost express-riding brother, she saves a man from outlaws and drives him to help her search. Set during the Civil War era, A Pony Express Christmas leads us eventually to Chimney Rock and resolution.

What happened to those Pony Express stopping stations and could they make an abandoned spot a holiday site?

            A Christmas Castle by Cynthia Hickey features a mail order bride who arrives in post-Civil War Arizona to discover her intended dead and a small child needing a mother. With outlaws trying to run her off her “inheritance,” she struggles with the help of a handsome neighbor to keep her land. Somehow she’s able to fashion a Christmas celebration in a virtual hole in the ground.

Who knew it could snow in Arizona in the winter? Have you ever had to cram a too-big Christmas tree into a too-small room?

            Lauraine Snelling returns to an area familiar to her readers in The Cowboy’s Angel, set in 1875 Dakota Territory. With her long-overdue husband miles away seeking supplies, a pregnant woman is forced to give birth with a stranger in attendance. Snow socked them into a half-built claim with the farm animals a thin wall away.

Using meager resources in a rough home, a woman finds cause to be thankful. How often 

have you had to “make do” for Christmas?

            Marcia Gruver takes us to sophisticated 1885 New York City in A Badlands Christmas, though we don’t stay there long. Inspired by the adventures of Theodore Roosevelt in the town of Medora, A Badlands Christmas shows the contrasts between festive scenes in the city and a Christmas spent in a dilapidated sod house in the middle of a brutal Dakota Territory winter.

While you may have dealt with the weather outside being frightful on December 25, did you ever live half under the ground?

            Buckskin Bride by Vickie McDonough introduces us to a capable but desperate young woman who is more comfortable in buckskin than calico. She and her sisters are squatters on land the hero won in the 1889 Oklahoma land run. The handsome Irish landowner is kind but dare she trust him when her father warned her to avoid all men? With Christmas approaching, her father missing, and young sister injured, will she and her sisters spend Christmas alone in their tipi?

Have you ever spent Christmas in a tent?

            In The Gold Rush Christmas, Michelle Ule takes brother-sister twins and the boy-next-door to 1897 Skagway, Alaska where they meant to enjoy the season in the newly-constructed Union Church. Searching for a missionary father, however, lands them in a Tlingit cedar long house for a lesson in how to present the gospel in a way anyone could understand.

Who can beat salmon for Christmas dinner, even if eaten off a plank?

            Interested in Christmas spent in novel ways, surprising settings, heroes and heroines filled with love and pluck? Why not try the nine stories found in A Pioneer Christmas Collection? 

Enter my Pioneer Christmas Giveaway!
You can choose any of the option below to enter (tweet, make a comment, "like" my FB page, follow me on Twitter) or you can do them all! The more you do, the more times you're entered into the Giveaway. Just follow the prompts below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Come back and visit every day during our 12 Days of Christmas and have another chance each day to enter the Giveaway. Winner will be announced on Tuesday, September 3. See you tomorrow!