Cowboy from the Future (33 page)

“I
do
pride myself on being a terrible influence on you.”  Addy wound her
arms around his neck.  “Admit it.  Your life was pretty boring before I showed
up.”

“I
had no life at all, before you showed up.”  Cade lifted her into his arms and
carried her towards the house.  “
Nynan
.”

“Mine.” 
Addy agreed.  “And I’m yours, cowboy.  You’re all that matters to me.”  She
would never get enough of this man.  “Hey, after the shower, we should have
exotic sex in exotic ways out by the lake.”  When they’d picked out the
property, she’d insisted that it have a hot spring for occasions just like
this.  “You’ll have to count to five Mississippis before you catch me this
time, though.”

Cade
chuckled at that, his expression more joyful than she’d ever seen it.  “Ask me
and I’ll say yes to anything.”  He teased, using her own words back at her.  It
wasn’t nearly so irritating this time.

“That
easy to convince you, huh?”

“That
easy.”  He lowered lips to hers.  “For you, the answer is
always
yes,
lady.”

I
got the idea for this book at sunset on the Fourth of July, while I was
visiting Mount Rushmore.  The Black Hills are a beautiful place, filled with
color and magic.  They make you think in terms of eons.  I was standing on the roof
of the monument’s parking lot, looking up at the faces of the presidents and
the vivid colors in the sky.  Suddenly, I realized that Jefferson, Washington,
Lincoln and Roosevelt would celebrate America’s birthday
way
more times than
I would and probably more than the country itself.  The idea of some future
civilization trying to decipher those stoic faces gave me the beginnings of
Cade and Addy’s story.

A
little research revealed that granite erodes at about an inch every ten
thousand years.  The heads are sixty feet high.  They will indeed be
recognizable for thousands, if not millions, of years.  No other remnants of
our civilization will last nearly so long.  With this in mind, the monument’s sculptor,
Gutzon Borglum, envisioned a vast room behind the sculpture to explain
America’s story.  Due to lack of funding, his grand vision of a Hall of Records
was never finished, but a seventy foot tunnel remained.

In
1998, the government decided to complete part of the project and placed
enameled tablets there.  These documents include the Declaration of
Independence, biographies of the presidents, and a history of Rushmore itself. 
The purpose of this was to ensure that fifty thousand years from now, people
can understand the point of the sculpture.  As far as I know, there are no
plans to expand the Hall of Records with interactive monitors, but who know
what will happen, right?

The
“travel facts” about Yellowstone, Devils Tower, the inland sea, etc… are all true. 
(I did invent Strickland Geyser, named after the principal from
Back to the
Future
.)  I played a little loose with the landscape and weather of the
region, because sixteen hundred years would make some changes.  Since the
overall geography and basic lifestyle requirements would be the same, though, it
made sense to me that the people would live much like settlers in the
nineteenth century.  …With a little bit of future-tech tossed in.

Likewise,
I altered things like the measurement system of the future and their dialect. 
But, my thinking is the people of that time would still have a lot of the same
characteristics.  For instance, they’d still be using many of the same curses. 
When we swear now, a great many of our words are hundreds of years old.  Since
my characters are speaking some derivation of English, I believe the oaths
would be similar.  I did invent fvred, though.  I’d tell you precisely what it
means, but it’s
far
too shocking to even write.  Also, I’m assuming some
kind of genetic manipulation or other human intervention with beings like the
sanbor and ghaa beast.  They aren’t native to the environment, but, for better
or worse, they’ve been added to it.

I
grew up in the 1990s, reading the scores of Western romance novels available at
the local secondhand bookshop.  (Think Johanna Lindsey’s
Savage Thunder
and pretty much anything by Madeline Baker.)  I was a huge fan, devouring stacks
of stories set on the wilds of the American frontier.  To me, they’re classic
tales of misunderstood heroes with bad reputations, feisty heroines with good
hearts, a few gunfights, plenty of horses, and some sex in the outdoors.  I see
Cowboy from the Future
as my homage to that genre, more than a strict
science-fiction story.

If
you’ve read any of those books, they also speak a lot about racial inequality
and the coming together of different cultures, often using the exploration of the
West as a metaphor for discovering oneself.  I tried to adapt those ideas into
this story, as well.  Cade and Addy spend the book trying to figure out how
their own pieces click together.  In the end, I think they were made for each
other.

I
always care about letting the characters be themselves, more than I care about
hitting particular plot points.  Sometimes that lands me into trouble.  (For
example, I was stuck for months while writing
Magic of the Wood House
,
because of the uncooperative Fire Phases.)  In this case, I didn’t have to
worry about directing my couple, at all.  Addy and Cade understood each other,
right from the beginning.  They took their book exactly where they wanted to go
and I mostly just followed along.  Hopefully, you’re pleased with the result. 
If not, blame those two lunatics.  I just work here.

At
the moment, I don’t have any plans to revisit this world.  But, it’s always
possible I’ll change my mind and write something for Deke or Jake, down the
line.  I love time travel books (it’s another type of romance novel I devoured
as a teenager) and I’ll definitely be writing more of the genre.  Drop me a
line to let me know what you think about this book or any other at
[email protected]
.