“Still not missing that sonic bathhouse thing-y, I take it?”
“Four gods, no.” He leaned in to kiss her. “You’ve converted me to primitive water bathing and there’s no going back.”
“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.”
Author’s Note
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].
Table of Contents
Text copyright © 2014 Cassandra Gannon
Also by Cassandra GannonThe Elemental Phases Series
To road trips with my family in the American West.
Chapter OneCongratulations!
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Cowboy from the Future Page 28