The Birth and Rebirth of the Brands

Maggie Shayne
5 minutes ago
10 min read

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Text Edition below.

How it started: "Okay, I'll write one western romance."

How it's going: "I just started my 25th western romance."

Here's how that began, how it spawned, and how it's still going!

These are the 9 books of the original Texas Brand series

Each book in each series is a complete romance with a satisfying conclusion.
Each book features a different couple.
While the books within each series are best read in order, the series themselves do not have to be read in any particular order. However, if you prefer to read them chronologically, the order given here is correct.

Well, folks, by the time I started my very first western romance, I already had a little career going. I'd published a handful of paranormal romances, and a couple of romantic suspense novels. And that was when my smart and savvy editor back then, Melissa Senate, said to me, "You should write a western."

And I said, "That's not what I write."

"But you could," she replied.

"But I won't," I insisted.

Then she said, "Everyone knows you can write paranormals and you've proven yourself in suspense. But westerns are the hottest sellers we have, and I think you should try one. It'll expose you to a whole new group of readers, and they'll cross over and try the paranormals you love best, boosting them and your career all at once."

To which I replied, "Okay, I'll write a western. But just one!"

And I meant it.

Here's what happened...

I began doing research. Not on ranching or Texas or anything logical like that. Those things could wait. Besides, I lived on a farm, my neighbors raised beef cattle, how different could it be? (Quite a lot, it turns out.) What I needed to research first, was the feeling of western romances, the spiritual essence of them.

So I did two things. I binge-read Louis L'Amour's Sackett books and I watched In the Heat of the Night. (The series.)

Now, I know that technically, Heat of the Night wasn't a western or even a ranch-set series, being set in the deep south of Sparta, Mississippi. I realized that straight off. But by that point, I had already seen Bubba Skinner.

Captain Skinner, played by Allan Autry, was a lawman, big, gentle, handsome, and awkward as hell with women. That combination melted my heart into a gooey puddle in my chest.

From the first time I noticed him I knew those were going to be character traits for my fist (and only! I meant it!) western romance hero.

While reading the Louis L'Amour books, the Sackett stories especially struck me. The Sacketts were a huge family in the old west, and they were spread far and wide. I remember Louis making up branches of the family and naming them for where they came from. "The Clinch Mountain Sacketts" was one of those that stuck in my mind, but there were several geographically named clans.

The Sacketts were loyal to one another, above all else, and when one Sacket got into trouble, other Sacketts would come from far and wide to help. This was the underlying theme of those stories, the family loyalty, the worthy bloodline, a long tradition of decency and honor, that bond. I've never seen it done as well as L'Amour did it. What a writer he was.

The Sackett Books by Louis L'Amour

I loved that aspect, the blood really being thicker than water aspect. I also loved that there were so many of them, and no matter what, they'd come together when trouble was afoot. I realized I wasn't going to be able to write "just one western." I was going to need multiple characters to capture that big, broad, expansive family vibe.

So those were the two main inputs into the beginnings of the Brands. I wanted to create a big family that was super close and loyal, with powerful good guy ethics, and I wanted the head of that family to be a big, bashful, hot-but-doesn't-know-it Bubba Skinner type lawman.

Enter Garrett Brand, a big, cowboy and sheriff of Quinn County, Texas. He lived on his family's cattle ranch near the town of Quinn (for which the county was named) The Texas Brand. Being the oldest, he had single-handedly completed the raising of his five teenage siblings after their parents, Orrin and Maria, were killed in a car wreck, and he kept their ranch running too.

All young adults now, as book 1 opens, they still live together in the ranchhouse when they wake to find a baby on their doorstep. Garrett immediately demands to know which of his younger brothers is responsible, but Jessi says the note's addressed to him, and when the baby's beautiful, heartbroken aunt, Chelsea shows up saying her sister was murdered and the baby stolen, well Garrett can't do much besides take them both in and try to help. That's what he does.

So began the series with The Littlest Cowboy. (Book 1)

Second oldest was Ben, still grieving his late wife, Penny. Then he starts seeing her, once near her grave, and again outside his bedroom window, gazing up at the ranchhouse. He wonders if the grief has driven him insane in Long Gone Lonesome Blues (Book 4)

Next by age is Wes, the brother by another mother. Their dad had an affair with a Native woman who passed away when Wes was still a baby, so their father brought him home. Trying to get in touch with his native roots he winds up opposing the gorgeous Navajo archaeologist Taylor, who wants to excavate a local site in Badlands Bad Boy. (Book 3)

Adam is the black sheep of the family. Left at the altar by the woman he adored, he left town to lick his wounds and to avoid having to see Kirsten with the rich old man she'd married instead. But now the rich old man is dead, and it looks like Kirsten did it in Lone Star Lonely. (Book 6)

Elliot is the youngest brother, an aspiring rodeo star with a side-splitting sense of humor. A knock on the head sends him into hallucinations of the past where meets his family's bad-guy ancestors and saves the beauitful Mexican woman they were trying to hang. When he wakes up from the delusion, Esmeralda is still with him, in The Outlaw Bride (Book 7).

And Jessi is their baby sister, chafing under the watchful eyes of her big brothers while lusting after ranch foreman Lash. Lash has no interest in having his ass kicked by the Brand men, but Jessi isn't taking no for an answer, in The Baddest Virgin in Texas (book 2)

As soon as I created all those characters for the first book, I knew there were going to be at least six in the series. What I didn't know was that that I'd scare up a handful of long lost relatives who show up in books 5, 8 and 9, The Lone Cowboy, Texas Angel, and Texas Homecoming.

The Oklahoma Brands: The Spark

One day while I was writing a scene in one of the Texas Brand books–I don't remember which one–Wes Brand was speaking, and out popped this line.

"You think we're bad, just wait 'til you meet the rowdy Okahoma branch of the family."

I remember stopping after I typed the line, looking at it, and saying, "What the hell is that about?" I had no idea.

But I'd been at this gig long enough to know better than to question the muse. If she gave me the line, I would use it. It would all become clear in time, and if it didn't, it was just a throw-away line that need never mean much of anything.

It had to have been three or four books later, as I was wrapping up the Texas Brand series, knowing I wanted to write more books in this universe, when that line floated back into my mind, and I decided it was time to go to Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma Brands

I called the series, The Oklahoma All-Girl Brands, because it was about the five daughters of the notorious widow, Vidalia Brand. The notion there was a play on "all-girl band," a common enough phrase. Once. But it turns out not too many people have heard it these days, so the play on words was lost. We dropped the all-girl, and simplified it to The Oklahoma Brands.

Vidalia was married to Orrin Brand's brother John. (Orrin was the late father of the Texas Brand family.) But John was not a good or honorable man like his brother. He already had a wife and two kids when he married Vidalia. What he didn't have was a divorce. So all five Brand girls are illegitimate, and their mother owns a salloon.

I intended for it to be a five-book series, one for each of the daughters. Maya, the good girl who gets pregnant her first time by a drifter who didn't leave his real name, (1. The Brands Who Came for Christmas,) Edie the lingerie model, home to evade a stalker and the bad boy mechanic she's been crushing on since high school, (2. Brand New Heartache.) Mel, the bad ass who has to impersonate a missing princess to help a sexy PI who knows way too much about her (3. Secrets and Lies,) Kara, who thinks she's a jinx and the former high school hunk seeking a mom for his little boy (4. A Mommy For Christmas,) and Selene, who's been practicing witchcraft in secret and was holding her ceremonial dagger when a man stumbled out of the woods and fell at her feet with a knife wound in his chest. (5. One Magic Summer.)

Later, I realized that the mom of the five sisters really needed a story of her own, and it turned out there was a whole lot about Vidalia's past that she hadn't revealed to her daughters, a secret long ago affair that had repercussions echoing through her life even now. And when that secret walks into her bar, looking like a lonely woman's dream, she knows the past is back to stay.

Now, in Vidalia's story, the hero is Robert "Bobby Joe" McIntyre, and as their story unfolded, his three gorgeous adult sons show up in town. They were so amazing, that

I decided to keep them, and spun off yet another series, The McIntyre Men.

Having given stories to all Vidalia's daughters, I now turned my attention to Bobby Joe's sons.

The McIntyre Men

This time I started out with just three main characters. So one would think, a trilogy, right? Wrong.

I started the tale with an extra character right away, in a short Christmas novel to kick things off. Cousin Sophie was a doctor in crisis, never expecting to find love with a wounded vet. She meets Darryl while tending bar for her cousins in Oklahoma Christmas Blues (Book 1)

Robert falls for a con-artist who thinks she's fooling him, and goes along willingly hoping he he can convince her change her bad-girl ways and settle down in Oklahoma Moonshine (Book 2) and his best friend Dax winds up entangeled with Kiley's twin sister, Kelly, who's supposed to be dead in Shine On Oklahoma, (Book 4)

Joey, the youngest, never knew his summer romance had resulted in a little girl until a rare illness threatens her life in Oklahoma Starshine (Book 3,) a Christmas miracle story that'll have you sobbing in the very BEST way.

Jason, the nice guy who's been making swords on the side, learns that his sweet girlfriend Sunny has a dark secret past just before it turns up in the present in Oklahoma Sunshine (Book 6.)

Within this series there's buried another, a tale of Brand neighbors and dear friends, the Wakelands, a military family who will have three books in this series. The first of these is Allie's story, Baby By Christmas (Book 5,) in which a lonely soldier comes home with his CO for the holidays to a surprise. His pre-deployment one-night-stand was his commanding officer's baby sister, and she's due to give birth to his child any minute!

Two Wakeland sequels are in progress. These are written with a co-writer who doesn't do this full time like I do, so it's long process. It is happening.

The Texas Brand: Generations

And then just last year, a bunch of new characters started talking in my head, dragging me back to Texas. Turned out the babies born to the Texas Brands in that very first series were all grown up and wanting a series of their own.

In the first, Jessi and Lash's daughter Maria-Michelle ditches her own wedding and hops a ride with a handsome nerd of a stranger in Harrison Hyde and the Runaway Bride.

In the second, Honky Tonk Cowboy, the baby on the doorstep from the very first book, Ethan "Bubba" Brand must finally find a way to fit into his adopted family, while trying not to ruin it all. But Lily Hyde, his cousin's new sister-in-law has it in her head that they belong together and he's danged if he can say no.

And in book 3, Deputy Brand Gets Her Man, rookie deputy and aspiring future sheriff Willow Brand, daughter of Wes and Taylor, can't seem to stay away from the ex-con her cousins dragged home. A crook raised by crooks, Jeremiah doesn't trust anyone, especially the law.

Book 4 has no title just yet and if I tell you anything about it it might ruin the shock ending of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man––so get that one read, because once I finish this one, I'm going to have to spill. As soon as you see that cover, you're gonna be all, "I knew it! I knew it!" (And the cover art forms have been submitted, so it won't be long!)

I have 8 books planned for this series, and I'm writing number 4. Almost halfway done!

To Sum it Up

My "just one western," has become 24 small-town, western romances. When complete, there will be 29. Assuming no unattached relatives show up.

The books rock the rom-com and a lot of them have suspensy subplots. They run about the length of the category romances I used to write for Harlequin and Silhouette, and in fact, the first series was originally published by Silhouette Intimate Moments.

There's intimacy but not erotica. These are about the storytelling, and too, the power of love, family, goodness and home.

So that's the tale of the Brands past, present, and future. Round a few up and let me know what you think! Just pick a series and dive in.

*Again, the series do not have to be read in order, but the ebooks within each series should.

The TeXas Brand

The Oklahoma Brands

The McIntyre Men

TeXas Brand: Generations