Bee: Hi Jamie, Welcome to bookpleasures.com! 

Bee:  How long have you been writing? And second when did you realize this was what you wanted to do professionally?

Jamie: I have been writing since I could write. I had parents and an elementary school teacher who were very encouraging about my writing. I wrote poems and stories throughout my elementary and secondary education. In college, I won the University of Denver Creative Writing Award for a short story. During my thirties I had an article, and two short stories published. I liked to write but was not convinced that I would get beyond what I had achieved until I finished the manuscript that became my first novel, Unbroken. At the time I was consulting with Beverly Swerling Martin, a historical fiction author, may her memory be for a blessing. She directed me on how to put focus and drive into my manuscript and with that, Unbroken became a success, launching my professional writing career.

Bee: Tell us a little about ‘Sunny Gale' and why we should read it.

Jamie: Sunny Gale is based on the history of female rodeo performers of the early twentieth century. For two generations beginning around 1898, dozens of women performed in rodeo doing many of the events now thought of as men’s events, namely saddle bronc riding and steer roping. They also raced, in long skirts, or pants made to look like skirts. Many of them also were trick riders. This is not a niche history. These women performed at all the major rodeos, including Madison Square Garden in New York City. One year when an exhibition rodeo was staged in London for British royalty, women saddle bronc riders were also included.

And I want to remind your readers that most of this history occurred when women had little to no civil rights. Professional women’s rodeo ended in the 1930’s, likely because of two fatalities in women’s bronc riding. Women were allowed to return a decade later, beginning as rodeo queens. Only in the last year has professional rodeo allowed women’s bronc riders back in the arena.

I wanted to spotlight this history, first because it has been elided from narratives about the West for reasons I still don’t know or understand.  The focus of Western narratives has been the exploits, achievements or tragic endings of white men. The fact that women competed and were champions in one of the most dangerous sports of that era demonstrates that brute strength, ambition, grit, determination and resilience are not the province of white men alone.

Then too, when I discovered the extent of this history and learned the stories of some of the participants, for me it changed the conversation about what womanhood is or should be. Assumptions of what women should do with their lives and how they should behave persist on into the current era, even though women have attained the rights they didn’t have a hundred years ago. The question I hope readers take away from Sunny Gale is should we continue to tolerate the existence of these assumptions? In my own investigation, I concluded that gender is not a boundary-line to any human endeavor, nor should any gender be assigned a specific destiny.

Bee: I am sure that you have heard this question before; how do you come up with your ideas?

Jamie: My ideas have arisen in the context of where I was mentally at the time I started the work. In the case of Unbroken, my first award-winning novel, I had been out of Wyoming and ranching for ten years and I wanted to go back, not just to the land, but to the people I loved so much in my ranching years. I originally started Unbroken with the idea that it was a vehicle for going home and as I invented Gwen Swan and the rest of the characters they became as real to me as the people I had known. I will never forget how sad I felt when the last page of the novel had been written because it was the end of going home.

The Widow Smalls, the title story to my award-winning collection of short stories, The Widow Smalls & Other Stories came out of my idea to turn the themes from Unbroken on their head and have a little fun in the process. In the place of women determined to persevere in ranching, I created Leah Smalls, who inherits her ranch but has never been out of her house in decades and knows absolutely nothing about her ranch. To see how Leah would grow, or not, when destiny blew open her front door, was a growing experience for me.

In writing Eden, my second novel, I had become determined to write about North Carolina, my second home, as a challenge because I had none of the background to fall back on the way I had in the first two books. Eden grew out of my travels in the early 2000’s to isolated rural communities in North Carolina and out of what I learned about poor families in this state, both Black and White. I set the novel in the 1950’s when racial bias was overt, but in my own travels, I discovered that the roots of racial and class bias endure. They haven’t been pulled from this earth.

Bee: Is there a favorite scene of yours within ‘Sunny Gale’ or a part you enjoyed writing the most?

Jamie: There were many scenes that I enjoyed writing, but I am going to talk about the one you quoted in your review because that scene touched so deeply on one of my themes.

Much of Sunny Gale asks what the heroine’s relationship is ultimately going to be with horses. By extension, I wanted to explore what the human relationship is with horses. These were wild animals, and in many cases, still are, that we domesticated and molded for our own uses, originally survival uses and then recreation, sport, and entertainment uses. I wanted to spotlight the tension that exists between the wild animal with its own agency and the animal as used for our needs, desires or whims.

In the scene you quoted, the heroine is looking from her upstairs apartment across the railroad tracks to a pen of horses destined for slaughter. She notes their colors, their ages and behaviors. She imagines herself crossing the railroad tracks and unlatching the gate. She imagines the horses running loose through the snowy streets back out into the wild with the one wild horse she had known, Zephira, the horse she thinks of as her own. 

Yes, it was a great pleasure to craft that scene. 

Bee: Tell us your most rewarding experience since being published?

Jamie: That’s hard to answer since my professional writing has been so well rewarded for which I am very grateful. If I could distill the rewards I have received to their essence, I would say that the most rewarding experience is receiving feedback from a reader or readers which tells me that my message resonated. Writing fiction is a form of communication and to hear a reader articulate an idea or emotion that I was trying to invoke is as if someone pulled a message from a bottle that I had set on the ocean. 

Having said that, I am overwhelmed by the reception Sunny Gale has received. To see so many readers connect with this novel is certainly one of the highlights of my career. To read words in reviews such as yours is among the great blessings of my life.

Bee: Can you tell readers that are just coming across you today a little about yourself?

Jamie: I grew up on our family ranch in Laramie, Wyoming. We lived in the Little Laramie River Valley, which was an amazing privilege. Like many ranch children, I spent much of my time outdoors. After I graduated from college and married, my husband and I returned to the ranch where we worked and raised our family for another fifteen years. Although ranching is a difficult occupation, I loved being outside observing and being a part of our changing seasons. My own attachment for horses developed during my ranching years. I rescued a horse that was a little wild and over the years, the two us became quite bonded.

After the ranch was sold in 1993, I moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. I started out as a paralegal and later obtained my law degree and passed the North Carolina bar in 2001. I still live and write in North Carolina. I have two horses, both of whom are very loved. My own relationship with horses has enriched my life. 

Follow Here To Read Bee's Review of Sunny Gale