Lauren Smith | Cowboy Meets City Girl: Reverse Stereotypes in Romance

Since I’m born and bred in Oklahoma, Cowboys are a bit of a natural occurrence in my neck of the woods. Wranglers that hug fine manly hips, boots that thud as they stride purposely around, and those heavenly plaid shirts that cut their lean figures in a sexy silhouette against the sunset while they’re working the land. Yes…those kind of cowboys are my kind of men. Now cowboys don’t always have to include the horse riding, rodeo-going types for me when it comes to reading about cowboy type heroes. I like to include simple country guy heroes in that camp too.

Some of my favorite heroes in this vein are ones that don’t exactly conform to type. Lori Foster in her Buckhorn series flips stereotypes of what you think of as cowboy heroes on its head. Without making her drop dead gorgeous men swagger about in boots and wave Stetson hats, she still taps into that mythical obsession readers like me have for that hunky man in jeans who knows just how to woo a girl with a little two-step. How does Lori do it? She created realistic men with soft sides, and genuine feelings that we see on the page when they interact with one another as brothers and with the women they fall in love with. I’ve never read a better series when it comes to what I call reverse stereotypes for cowboys. I still get all warm and melty inside just thinking about those great Buckhorn heroes. They are on my permanent desert island list for must bring along romance novels.

When I set out to write my own reverse stereotype cowboy, I knew I wanted to try to do what Lori did and give the readers something they could really hold onto. A man worth reading about. In my book THE GILDED CAGE, Fenn Lockwood, the hero, is a professional bull- rider and works on a cattle ranch in Colorado. That’s pretty darn cowboyish, so I wanted to make Fenn have something unexpected about him. What if he weren’t born to be a cowboy? What if he’d been born into a rich family from the east coast, born to ride polo ponies and live in a glorious old oil money mansion rather than to a seasoned cattle rancher and his wife. For Fenn, who was kidnapped as a child and raised from age eight by the rancher’s family, he doesn’t know what it means to be part of his East Coast world or the Midwest life style. In a sense, he doesn’t belong to either world fully and this puts him in a unique situation. He feels he must always prove himself to everyone and everything even when he feels off balance. It’s a great struggle for a hero to have. And what better way than to throw a girl into the mix who was facing a similar reverse situation.

I love city girl heroines who learn to get their feet wet in a different type of world and explore something outside their comfort zones. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to read about women who aren’t those sort of cliché heroines who complain about living the city and getting stuck on a farm where they can’t wear cute shoes and go shopping. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love shoes and shopping, but if I ended up on a farm and knew I needed to pitch in and help I wouldn’t be fussing about clothes and hard work. When I wrote Fenn’s heroine, named Hayden, I made her a rich socialite from the East Coast, born into the same lifestyle Fenn was born into. However, unlike him, she wasn’t raised on the farm, but born to attend fundraisers, wear thousand dollar shoes and look pretty for her father’s golfing buddies. But that isn’t what Hayden wants out of life.

When I read romances, I want to fall in love with the hero, but I also want to sympathize with the heroine. It was really important to me that Hayden was realistic, and that other women could identify with her. So when Hayden shows up to find Fenn and bring him home to Long Island she has to prove to herself and to him that she can be more than just a pampered city girl. She helps him build a fence and gets blisters from it, which she hides and he discovers and kisses away her hurt. That’s the sort of couple I want to share with my readers. A pair of reverse stereotypes that still gives you a wonderful, sexy Cowboy Meets City Girl feel.

GIVEAWAY

I’m offering 1 copy of THE GILDED CUFF to one lucky reader who comments on this post and tells me what your favorite Cowboy Meets City Girl romance?

About Lauren Smith

Lauren Smith is an attorney by day, author by night, who pens adventurous and edgy romance stories by the light of her smart phone flashlight app. She’s a native Oklahoman who lives with her three pets: a feisty chinchilla, sophisticated cat and dapper little schnauzer. She’s won multiple awards in several romance subgenres including being an Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award Quarter-Finalist and a Semi-Finalist for the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Award.

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About THE GILDED CAGE

Passion that takes no prisoners, and love that tests the limits of ecstasy . . .

Fenn Lockwood comes alive in the shadows. Though he might have physically survived the kidnapping that stole his childhood, the trauma and pain he lived through have marked him forever. Now the only place where Fenn can be himself is within the walls of his private BDSM world-a place of erotic obsession, where desire isn't just captured . . . it's bound.

Hayden Thorne knows that behind Fenn's hardened exterior is a man worth fighting for. Yet to save him from the past that still haunts him, Hayden will have to abandon every inhibition she's ever had and venture into Fenn's intoxicatingly sensual world. Each tantalizing second she spends in Fenn's searing embrace is more delicious than the last and soon Hayden begins to think that she may never want to leave such torturous bliss.