DONIS CASEY: Write Errant

 Raised on a ranch in isolated eastern Montana, Heidi Thomas has had a penchant for reading and writing since she was a child. Armed with a degree in journalism from the University of Montana, she worked for the Daily Missoulian newspaper, and has had numerous magazine articles published.
A tidbit of family history, that her grandmother rode steers in rodeos during the 1920s and 30s, spurred Heidi to write three award-winning novels based on that grandmother’s life: Cowgirl Dreams, Follow the Dream, andDare to Dream. Heidi’s non-fiction book is Cowgirl Up! A History of Rodeo Women. Seeking the American Dream and Finding True Home are based on the life of her mother, a post WWII German immigrant. Heidi’s “Rescue” series, Rescuing Samantha, Rescuing Hope, and Rescue Ranch Rising, follows the next generation of the Moser family. Goth-girl to Cowgirl tells the “rescue” story from the point of view of a troubled teen from the series. Her newest novel is Saving Her Prairie. Heidi is a freelance editor, teaches community writing classes, and is working on the next book in her “Rescue” series.Heidi is a freelance editor, teaches community writing classes, and is working on the next book in her “Rescue” series. Check out Heidi’s websites at http://www.heidimthomas.com and http://heidiwriter.wordpress.com

Family History Shapes My Story

Heidi M. Thomas

Outside our ranch house in eastern Montana was an old storage shed from the years my parents heated the house with coal.

As it was no longer used for that purpose, when I was around six to eight years old, I took it over for my “office.” I put down cardboard for flooring to cover the coal remnants, found a wooden crate to use for a desk and a log for a chair. Then I pilfered sheets of typing paper from my dad’s desk and settled in.

Mom came to the door one day and peeked in. “What are you doing?”

I looked up from my work, pencil poised. “I’m writing books,” I stated solemnly.

Little did I know how prophetic that statement would be!

I jokingly like to tell people that I was born with ink in my veins. Even before I could write, I would make up stories, and living “in the middle of nowhere” without TV gave me plenty of time to use my imagination to fill my days and act out scenarios.

My parents read to us from early on, and that instilled a love of books in me. I couldn’t wait to start school so I could read, and write my own!

There was only one other kid near my age, but no school, and when that neighbor boy grew to school age, his family moved away. “What are we going to do about school?” was my parents’ dilemma. I constantly hounded them to learn to read. They consulted with the county superintendent of schools, and she recommended the pre-primer series “Mac and Muff.” Thus began home-schooling of sorts. I was learning to read.

Finally, a family with four children moved nearby, so opening a school was justified. I was so excited! Our teacher for three years was a crusty older woman—“just call me Huston”—but she was ahead of her time with her teaching methods. She made a game of learning. We played with dice to learn addition, played “Go Fish” with vocabulary words, and she cut pictures from old magazines and asked us to write sentences, then paragraphs, then stories about them.

Reading and writing were my favorite things to do. All through elementary school, I would quickly finish my schoolwork so I could grab a library book to read. We were blessed with a visit from the Bookmobile once a month, and I would check out thirty books at a time. “I don’t want to run out before you come again!”

The first time Mom and Dad took me to the library in town, thirty-five miles away, I was enthralled by the floor-to-ceiling shelves full of books. I was in heaven! I dropped onto the floor in the children’s section, and when my folks left to run errands, I secretly hoped they would forget about me and leave me there for the weekend!

Growing up on a ranch and being the oldest, I was Dad’s helper. I followed him around doing chores, and later when I got my own horse, I rode with him to gather cattle for branding or shipping.

Visits with my grandmother were special times. She was an avid horsewoman, preferring a saddle to a dustmop, and my grandparents bought me my first horse. It wasn’t until after she died unexpectedly of a brain aneurism when I was twelve, that I learned of her passion. As Dad and I looked through photo albums, he said, “Did you know Grandma used to ride in rodeos?”

I’m sure my eyes widened and my mouth gaped open. “No. Really? Wow!” She had ridden steers and broncs when she was in her teens and early twenties, competing with Marie Gibson, later a national bronc-riding champion. What a cool thing for a grandma to do!

I filed that tidbit of information away in the back of my mind and went on with my life—high school (English my favorite subject and editing the school newspaper my favorite extra-curricular), then to college, where I majored in journalism. I wrote for a newspaper and later freelanced for magazines, always thinking “I’d like to write a novel, but I don’t know what I’d write about.”

In the 1980s and early ’90s, I took a thirteen-year hiatus from creative endeavors, working as a 9-1-1 dispatcher. Finally, craving creativity again, I took a course in writing for children. That’s when I remembered my grandmother’s life as a rodeo cowgirl. Hmm. That might make a good book. But it wasn’t until the mid-90s that I started seriously writing fiction.

My husband and I moved from Montana to Washington state, only a few hundred miles away. But it was a big adjustment. New town, new neighborhood, new doctors, making new friends. I found it difficult.

That made me think about my mother, who emigrated from Germany after WWII. She was a nurse there, and my dad was part of the Army occupation after the war ended, stationed in her town. One day he went to the hospital to visit a friend and met an attractive nurse. They hit it off, he visited her family and brought food (the economy was still bad at the time), and they enjoyed each other’s company. Then he was shipped home, and by the time he got there, he had realized how much he liked this girl. So, he wrote her a letter, asking if she would consider coming to America and marrying him. She wrote back, “Yes!”

But it took two long years of endless paperwork before she was able to make the trip. I thought about the courage that took, to leave her family and friends, and travel alone to a different country. She knew very little English, was from an urban background, and was plunked down in the middle of rural eastern Montana on a ranch with an outhouse and no electricity, living with the in-laws for three years.

Now THAT took adjustment!

I wrote her story first (eventually published as Seeking the American Dream and Finding True Home) and submitted it to numerous agents and publishers. I was fortunate to receive a couple of rejections with comments and suggestions—my characters were flat, and it didn’t seem like I “knew” my characters. What? They’re my family—how could I not know them? How do I fix this?

I took a two-year certification course in fiction writing through the University of Washington’s extension program and learned how. During that time, I began writing my grandmother’s story, and Cowgirl Dreams was the first book published by Treble Heart Press (later picked up by Globe Pequot/Twodot). That was followed by Follow the Dream and Dare to Dream.

Family history not only shaped me as the strong, independent woman I am, but has also given me much fodder for my writing. I recently published my twelfth book and am writing the thirteenth.

Ink still runs through my veins!