Spotlight & Giveaway: A Cowboy Never Quits by Cindi Madsen

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Cindi Madsen to HJ!

Hi Cindi and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, A Cowboy Never Quits!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

A Cowboy Never Quits is about the Dawsons, who run a rehab ranch for teens, and a single mom who had a daughter at sixteen. Jess and her daughter have always been close, but they’ve been drifting apart lately, and when Chloe lands in jail, Jess is desperate to keep her from going down her same path and get her the help she needs. Even if it involves working for slightly grumpy cowboy, Wade, and taking a cooking job she may or may not have exaggerate how qualified she is for.
 

Please share your favorite quote from the book.

I always struggle with picking one favorite, especially since there are two love stories and four POVs in this book. Hopefully you’ll indulge me in picking two, one from the adult side, which is a bit more emotional, and a funny one from the teen side.

“We women are the hardest on ourselves about mistakes,” Kathy added with a kind smile as if she could read Jess’s mind. “Especially mothers. We never feel pretty enough or smart enough or good enough, when the truth is, being a mother is damn hard.”
***

Chloe’s arms ached, each movement taking twice as long as usual with the tired setting in, which meant she might die in here. Yep, she was pretty sure this was going to be the way she croaked. Her tombstone would read: here lies Chloe Cook, an anxious hot mess of a girl who only got to kiss a cute cowboy once before dying next to a pile of horseshit.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

1) There’s a mud fight between Jess and Wade, after she gets her car stuck.
2) The local diner has saddle booth seats.
3) In addition to hot cowboys, there are horses, cats, cows, and dogs, OH MY!

Tell us about the book with this fun little challenge using the title of the book:

C – comedy
O – Ogling
W – Western setting
B – Brothers—Three biological & three that came up through the program.
O – old-fashioned manners
Y – Yearning

N – Nobody left behind
E – entertaining
V – Very bad cooking
E – exasperation as the hero and heroine first clash

R – Relationships, from friendships and romantic couplings and repairing a mother/daughter relationship
Q – quintessential ranch experience
U – Unconditional love
I – Integrity
T – Therapy with horses
S – sanctuary, and how the ranch becomes that place for a mother & her daughter

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

If you could have given your characters one piece of advice before the opening pages of the book, what would it be and why?

Probably to give each other a chance, and let them know that eventually, it’ll all be okay, even though it doesn’t feel like it. But then again, that’s the fun part of reading and seeing them discover that along the way, isn’t it? 

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

Probably the opening scene. It really sets up how desperate Jess is to get her daughter enrolled in the program, how hard she’s willing to work for it, and you get the first hint of a spark between her and Wade.

While the five people on the other side of the wooden- walled office all wore kind expressions—save the furrow- browed one in the middle who’d hijacked the meeting about a minute in—Jessica’s nerves stretched tighter, her panic ratcheting up a notch. She couldn’t fail. Just couldn’t.
She cleared her throat again since the last time didn’t take. “Look, I packed a couple of bags, dragged my pissed-off teenage daughter here—thereby ruining her whole life, as she told me multiple times during the two- hour drive. There’s gotta be something I can do. Some deal we can make.”
The leather of her seat creaked as she shifted. “I’m not asking for charity. I…” To her dismay, her voice cracked. “Well, I guess I am asking for a pinch of it. Your place came so highly recommended and has so many amazing reviews. I especially like that it doesn’t seem like a prison.”
Gruff-and-Grumpy’s brow furrowed more, making it clear she wasn’t winning any points. She really should’ve paid attention to names. Their names had all blurred together as they’d introduced themselves, her anxiety making it impossible to focus on anything besides the fact they were western-sounding names.
“What I mean is, it’s more open than I imagined,” she continued. “Admittedly, I was afraid there for a bit that I was driving to some cabin-in-the-woods type thing. An elaborate setup to lure people out here so you could murder them and dump their body in the trees or something…”
Eyebrows raised all around, the offense transferring to the elder Dawsons, who’d been halfway on her side a moment or two ago. Dammit. Her mouth never knew when to stop. Where was her filter when she needed it? Great job, Jess. Insult the people you’re begging to help you. Excellent strategy.
Maybe in this instance, in spite of things not going according to plan, she should’ve made a more solid plan. “Shit, I’m doing this wrong,” she said, dropping all pretense that she had any clue how to go about this. Her heart beat with a thready rhythm as she scooted forward. “I have a teenage daughter who needs help.” She didn’t want to end up as a case study about how rebellious teens who became moms too early had children who repeated the pattern. “It kills me that I don’t know how to help her, but I’ve tried, and it didn’t work, and now I need help.” The squeeze in her chest made the next word come out rougher than the rest and about as desperate as she felt. “Please.”
Gruff-and-Grumpy opened his mouth, but his mom placed her hand on his arm and aimed a kind smile at Jess. “While we’re real sympathetic to your cause, we have a large staff to support, the program isn’t free to run, and even if you had the money, we’re already runnin’ at full capacity.”
As Jess had packed in a wild rage, the scent of the jail cell she’d bailed her daughter out of still lingering, along with the image of her sitting there with that smug teenage boy who’d gotten his hooks into Chloe, she’d been so sure that all she needed to do was drive to Silver Springs. She thought if she could just meet the people who ran Turn Around Ranch, she could get them to take in Chloe. Usually she was pretty good at convincing people in person. The combo of friendly and refuses-to-take-no-for-an-answer was how she’d climbed her way to the top of every job she’d had. Not easy for a girl with nothing more than a GED.
Gruff-and-Grumpy’s flinty-gray eyes were still on her. The way he studied her left her gut churning in a not- altogether-unpleasant way, which made no sense. Every one of them had done a double take when she’d said her daughter was a few months shy of sixteen. It happened a lot.
Comments about how she wasn’t old enough to have a teenage daughter. People asking if Chloe was actually hers— most any time you put “actually” in a sentence, you should rethink it. Jess had been the age Chloe was now when she fell in love with a cute, rebellious boy with a tragic back- story. Her common sense had been left by the wayside, and she’d made bad decisions. Not so much sleeping with the guy, but not seeing through his lines until it was too late. Although, for the record, she was all for being a lot older than fifteen when it came to sex, especially in her daughter’s case.
I want her to have a better life. If this is the only way to keep her from having to go through what I did, it’ll be worth her hating me for a while. Even as she thought it, a raw spot opened up in her chest. She and Chloe used to be so close. Before the boy. Before the promotion that left Jess working extra-long hours, often late into the night.
It’s my fault. Which is why I have to fix it.
Jess eyed the extended clipboard. The guy who offered it didn’t seem to know if he should keep holding it out or not. “By then it might be too late.” By the time the ranch made it through the wait-list, Chloe could be even more entangled in her boyfriend’s web. Even if she didn’t get pregnant— because heaven knew the lectures on birth control had been lengthy—she would end up heartbroken, with nothing to show for it but a criminal record. “I know way too much about regrets and too little, too late.”
Chloe was too young to understand the way a stigma could follow you around your entire life. It hadn’t ended. Jessica still got the looks. The comments. So much judging, which she should be above caring about—and was most days. But that had changed on the night her own now- estranged mother’s words had come back to haunt her. You keep that baby, and all you’ll do is ruin both of your lives…
Jess knew she should stand up, hold her head high, and go and collect her daughter from the porch swing where she was undoubtedly still sulking. But she’d done enough research to know that this was where she wanted her daughter. A friend of a friend had sent their teen here and claimed he came back a different person. Jess didn’t want Chloe to be a different person. She wanted back the girl she’d lost about six months ago.
A hint of sympathy flickered through Gruff-and- Grumpy’s eyes, but then the firmness crept back in. He reached up and readjusted his cowboy hat, which set off some kind of wave that made the other two brothers do the same.
Seriously, why do they have to look like they belong on the cover of Ride a Cowboy Weekly?
Wait. That sounded dirtier than she meant it. Not that she’d exactly take it back.
They practically dripped masculinity, their bodies speaking to hours of manual labor, and the effect kept hijacking her jumbled thoughts. It’d been so long since she’d more than half-heartedly checked out a guy that apparently now she couldn’t even handle being in the presence of handsome men.
Back when she was in her early twenties—before guys discovered she came with baggage and a five-year-old— she used to be fairly decent at flirting her way into getting a guy to help her out with things like clearing that late fee or giving her a few more weeks on the rent. Once she’d even talked her disgruntled landlord into mowing the overgrown lawn he was harping on and on about. Clearly, she’d lost it, because the expressions aimed her way were immovable ones that conveyed disbelief in exceptions or wiggle room. Or the charity she’d shed her pride to ask for.
A spinster failure-of-a-mom at thirty-one. Well, it took fifteen years, but Mom was right. Just when she’d been so cocky about how much she’d accomplished. Now she wanted to Frisbee the employee-of-the month plaque she’d received from her boss last week, for all the good it did her.
“We’re sorry you drove all the way here only to have to turn back,” Mrs. Dawson said, tucking behind her ear the sandy-brown and gray strands of hair that’d fallen from her bun. The woman had a frail sense about her, her skinniness and the dark circles under her eyes speaking to a recent—or possibly even current—health issue. “I can give you some referrals, and I’ll see if my contacts know of a good counselor in your area.”
In a daze, Jess blinked at the woman, defeat weighing against her chest and tugging down her shoulders. She truly had failed. And curse her DNA for passing on traits she wished it would’ve held back. In a lot of ways, her daughter was too much like her: stubborn to a fault, blind when it came to guys, spurred on by the words no and can’t, and turning the word guideline into loose suggestion.
If they simply returned home, it’d be harder and harder to keep Chloe from bad influences. This past year she’d struggled to fit in at school, and her solution had been to find the worst possible group of “friends.” Friends who ditched and smoked pot and encouraged Chloe to sneak out at night so she could go meet a guy like Tyler. He was two years older and a whole mess of bad influences on his own. Rebellious, disrespectful, and mysterious—the same things Jessica had been attracted to at Chloe’s age.
Not that her daughter was blameless. Chloe had made plenty of bad choices. She’d dived fully into the party life- style, snuck out yet again, and gone on the joyride in the stolen car while under the influence. It was a slippery slope, which was why Jess wanted her at the best place in the state.
Even the others were out of her price range. A counselor might be as well. Maybe they’d just move to a different state entirely. Leave it all behind and eat…ramen. Get a nice box hut under a bridge. Really live out the scenarios people had thrown at her when she’d refused to give her baby up for adoption.
Feeling both levels of failure, Jess shakily stood. “Thank you for your time.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Gruff-and-Grumpy said, and she wanted to shout that she didn’t want chivalry. She wanted her daughter enrolled in their program and a way to pay for it.
“It’s fine. I’ve got it. Unless you’re scared I’ll just drive away without my kid, and then you’ll have to take her.”
“Well, I am now.” An almost-smile crossed his face.
She almost returned it, but her lungs constricted more and more as she walked toward the door.
There in the corner, she caught sight of a wall of flyers on a corkboard. Along with a schedule that outlined class time, equine therapy time, and a few other events she couldn’t quite make out, she saw a neon-yellow paper with the words Help Wanted across the top. Even better, it was for a job here at Turn Around Ranch.
“You guys are looking for a cook?” It was as if she’d stepped out of her body and someone else had taken control—someone crazy and reckless, personality traits she’d tried very hard to suppress through the years. When you had a kid who depended on you, impulsiveness went out the window, and recklessness wasn’t an option. Still, even as she told her mouth to hold up before it landed her in trouble, the next words were pushing from her lips. “You’re in luck. I just so happen to be one.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

I have teen daughters, and as I’ve talked to several parents of teenagers, we’ve talked about some of the issues they’ve had to face and how many of them are dealing with anxiety. I hope readers get to escape to the ranch for a while with Jess and her daughter, the other teens, and the six cowboy brothers and their parents, who are all about second chances and healing. I poured a lot of my heart and experiences as a mother into it, and I also teared up more than usual. But I also threw a lot of my own cooking disasters in the mix, because I also wanted the book to be funny and uplifting.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A paperback copy of A Cowboy Never Quits: A Turn Around Ranch novel by Cindi Madsen

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Book Info:

These hardworking cowboys give everyone a second chance…

When single mom Jessica Cook is at the end of her rope, she takes her 16-year-old daughter to Turn Around Ranch. The ranch has a great reputation for teen therapy, and Jessica prays there’s room there for her and Chloe.

Wade Dawson’s first priority is to keep the ranch afloat to help teens and their families. But he can’t seem to keep his boundaries when it comes to Jessica—she’s talked her way into a job on the ranch so she can stay near her daughter and her tenacity and courage are truly impressive. Not to mention she’s a natural beauty and sparks fly whenever he’s in her vicinity.

But as one crisis after another befalls the ranch, Wade is going to have to decide whether he can afford to let a woman get under his skin…

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Meet the Author:

Cindi Madsen is a USA Today Bestselling author of contemporary romance and young adult novels. She sits at her computer every chance she gets, plotting, revising, and falling in love with her characters. Sometimes it makes her a crazy person. Without it, she’d be even crazier. She has way too many shoes, but can always find a reason to buy a new pretty pair, especially if they’re sparkly, colorful, or super tall. She loves music, dancing, and wishes summer lasted all year long. She lives in Colorado (where summer is most definitely NOT all year long) with her husband and three children.