Romance at the Ranch - An article the local paper wrote on my book, "Texas Skye."

Romance at the ranch
Local author pens debut romance novel with ‘Texas Skye’
 By CHRISTINE GRANADOS
 Reporter columnist

Tucked away on a 23-acre heart-shaped ranchette near the Lilac Cemetery a romance novelist was born. Five years ago Vicki King, an avid romance novel reader, thought to herself, “I can do this,” as she read a particularly unsatisfying melodrama. The 1,000-book collection on her shelves gave her all the background and expertise she needed to get started. King may very well have read every romance novel ever written more than once.

“I’ve read so many romance novels that the stories kept repeating themselves,” she said from her office in her Texas-themed home.

Her home decor has been the butt of many jokes between she and her husband, Irven King. Irven has said about the place, “With all the barbed wire and tools attached to the walls in my house, I feel like I live in a Chili’s restaurant,” the restaurant chain known for its abundance of western decor.

The west is what Vicki King knows and  loves, more specifically—Texas. King married her husband on one condition, they both hailed from League City before moving near Rockdale, they stay in Texas.

“I told him I’d marry him but I’m not moving out of Texas,” the Dickinson native laughed recalling the memory. “I just love it here. I’ll go visit anywhere but I want to come home.”

She loves Texas so much that her four boys are all named after cities or counties in the Lone Star State—Austin, Tyler, Travis and Carson. So it comes as no surprise that King’s first novel Texas Skye has a western theme.

She wrote the book in three months about Rusty McCally and Skye Bradley while she was pregnant with her fourth son, Carson. It took her an entire year to edit what she had written in those three notebooks.

The novel, set in the 1870s, is about a family of orphaned brothers who own and operate a ranch in central Texas that they inherited from their parents. The novel opens with a cattle drive and introduces the handsome, pensive, stubborn Rusty McCally, the oldest brother and an unconscious Skye Bradley. A ranch hand sneaks this beaten, broken beauty into the chuck wagon on the cattle drive to keep her away from those who want to hurt her in Austin. When Rusty agrees to take her in and protect her, he gets more than he bargained for—trouble, heartbreak and love.

It’s easy to imagine a cattle drive amid the live oaks and mesquite trees from the porch of King’s home. Watching the guineas scouring for ticks, grasshoppers and scorpions and listening to their squeaky chirps can take a person back in time.

Her four boys were the inspiration for family dynamics set in the novel. “I think everything I write is based on what I observe and know,” she said. “I couldn’t write about four girls growing up.”

Some of the most compelling scenes in the novel dealt with the rivalry and respect these brothers’ had for one another. The scene at the dinner table where Rusty explained that he allowed a woman in his cattle drive is a good example of King’s ability to capture the truth in a situation.

“Quinton dropped his fork and slammed his fist on the table. “I knew it! I knew he was up to something,” he said, as if he’d known everything all along and he’d only been waiting for Rusty to confirm it.

“Shut up, Quinton,” Prescott said, without taking his eyes off Rusty. “What did you just say?” Prescott asked, slowly lowering his fork.

Rusty shrugged his shoulder as if he said nothing out of the ordinary.  “I said I think we got some good cattle this time...”

It was Prescott’s turn to slam his fist on the table, making the dishes rattle. “You know damn well I’m not talking about cattle. You said something about picking up a girl on the way home. What’s that all about?”

Rusty continued to eat as if it was an  everyday occurrence to have a girl on the drive. “Well, I’m not really sure.” He picked up his glass and drank heartily, shrugging his shoulders indifferently.

“What do you mean you’re not really sure? How could you not be sure? Either you brought a girl home or you didn’t. It should be pretty easy to tell if you have girl with you. Where is this girl anyway?” Prescott said through clenched teeth... .

Tense scenes like these are littered throughout the novel but the height of tension comes when Rusty and Skye begin to fall for one another. King’s romantic scenes rival those of best selling novelists, Lorraine Heath and Jodi Thomas.

In fact, another romance novelist, Julie Palella, who writes  Scottish romance novels, said about King’s intimate scenes, “I need a cigarette after reading them.”

“Those are the hardest scenes for me to write,” King said pointedly. 'This one book quotes Elizabeth Lowell (an acclaimed romance novelist) who advised writing “sex scenes like your mother’s dead and no one will ever read it.’ And that’s what I try to do.”

King’s husband, Irven  couldn’t be prouder. He recalled the first time he saw King writing was when he came home from a Boy Scout trip with his three boys.

“She was sitting on the porch writing on a pad. I looked at her and said, ‘you’re writing a book aren’t you?’ “ he said. “Let me see what you’re writing.”

Vicki King was insulted and hurt by her husband because he laughed out loud while he read her notebook.

But Irven said, “I had to explain myself pretty quickly. I was laughing from joy. I kept thinking to myself ‘Holy cow, where did you learn how to write like this?"

Tension ran high in the King household whenever Irven looked over his wife’s work. “One time I read a flashback scene she had written and it was awful. I made the mistake of telling her it was terrible and that I couldn’t understand what was going on,” he said, only his words were a little harsher. “She wouldn’t talk to me for an afternoon or so until I apologized profusely. But she did eventually see where it wasn’t working. I helped her a little bit.”

King has finished writing her second book a sequel to Texas Skye. Another historical romance set in Texas that follows the McCally clan, a family very similar to her own and from the looks of it she won’t be running out of ideas any time soon because as she sees it—“The only difference between contemporary and historical writing is the way people lived but feelings and personalities are still as they are now.”

Those are feelings that draw and root you to a place, much like King’s central Texas ranchette. Where on her heart-shaped spread she writes about affairs of the heart.