Today we welcome Lexi Post to the blog to answer a few questions in honor of the release of her new novel, Between a Rock and a Cowboy, book 1 of the Rocky Road Ranch series.

Welcome! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what got you into writing?

Thank you for having me 😊 Let’s see, I’m married to my soulmate, my very own Air Force Veteran/Fire Chief/ Coast Guardsman hero who is an excellent cook. I have two cats, Bailey and Whiskey, and I move a lot, but I’m currently living in Florida on the Gulf.

As for what got me into writing, I always enjoyed telling stories, but since I didn’t learn how to type, I never expected to become a writer. Of course, I was an avid romance reader. After reading romances for over ten years, one day the story I was reading went in a different direction than I wanted and that’s when I decided I wanted to write romance. I promptly enrolled in a creative writing class while in grad school. That’s when I realized exactly how much there is to writing a story!

Are there any books that have really influenced you as a writer?

Actually, the books that have influenced me the most are classic literature. In fact, all my stories are inspired by classic literature. They aren’t a re-telling though. I take elements from the classic and create a new story. For example, I have a Scottish Christmas Carol Series that takes the same premise, but uses a young widow as the one helped by the spirits, and the spirits are assigned in pairs so they must learn something as well before they get their happily ever after. With most of my cowboy stories, I use Bret Harte’s short stories of nineteenth-century California for inspiration, but with the Rocky Road Ranch series, I’m doing something different. I’m using ancient Greek plays for my inspiration. I know, weird, but that’s how my brain works 😜

What do you enjoy most about writing Romances?

For me it’s that good always wins over evil and love conquers all. After studying and teaching classic literature, I noticed a distinct pattern, and one I wasn’t excited about. It appears that 90% of all classic stories end tragically, which makes it seem like that is a requirement for it to be a good story. That doesn’t work for me, so I set about writing stories that ended in happily ever after. I believe that should be a value in literature as well.

What inspired this series in particular?

It’s complicated. But then again, isn’t all writing? The easy answer would be the Greek tragedy titled “The Persians.” I’ve always been fascinated by that play because the purpose of the play was very unusual in that it was written about the defeat of an enemy but in a sympathetic light to bring forth empathy in the victors – the audience. In my story, Between a Rock and a Cowboy, I have two ranching families who hate each other and my heroine must help the patriarch of the opposing family recover from a stroke. She’s naturally empathetic as a healthcare professional, so it gets interesting fast. The series name itself was inspired by one of my readers in my reader group, Lexi’s Legends. I was looking for names for the ranch and she suggested “Rocky Road” since she knows how much I love ice cream (I make it every weekend). That sprouted all kinds of ideas from a mile long rocky road into the ranch, to the rocky road toward love, to, of course, ice cream.

Why cowboys and ranches?

Well, cowboys are hot, in my opinion. 😍 Also, to me, cowboys are the modern-day Knights in Shinning Armor with a few chinks and scratches. They work hard, play hard, and are respectful. They can also be stubborn, driven, and opinionated, which makes for a well-rounded character. Why ranches? Because I LOVE animals. Whether I’m writing about my horse-rescue ranch in my Last Chance Ranch series or Lulubelle in the Rocky Road series, I enjoy having animals. In fact, there will be more animals my readers will get to meet at Rocky Road and not all of them are what you’d expect on a cattle ranch in Arizona. Just sayin’.

How do you go about creating large families that are bound by business as well as blood?

There’s something about a family business that brings forth a close connection between members, but also adds stress, conflict, and uncertainty because everyone has their own opinion and varying degrees of control. Then you throw in an outsider and stories pop! For Rocky Road Ranch, I wanted the house to be dominated by men, but well-run. You’ll never find a male character in my books who thinks the women should do the cooking and cleaning unless he’s the villain. He’d have to be to have such an archaic outlook.

What do you like most about the grumpy/sunshine trope featured in this book? What do you like most about the relationship between Tanner Dunn and Amanda Hayden Davis?

What I like about this trope is how the sunshine character wears down the grump. That was me and my husband when we first met. It makes me smile just thinking about it 😊 I mean really, how can you get mad at sunshine? With Tanner and Amanda’s relationship, I like that despite their distrust and arguments, they become comfortable being themselves around each other, which allows them to see beyond the family feud. It doesn’t hurt that they are very attracted to each other physically, which comes out in the steamy scenes.

What can we expect next in this series? Are they connected, or standalone titles?

Each book in this series stands on its own with a happily ever after, but they are all connected. There are strong themes about family in each. The next book, Hard as a Rock Cowboy, is Brody Dunn’s story. He’s the youngest brother and is anxious to pursue a career as a wildlife manager, but he’s held to the ranch by a promise to his father. When his father offers to release him from that promise if he can get the absentee neighbors to sell them their land, he’s on it. Unfortunately, he suffers from tunnel vision and is going to come up against a major obstacle in his path and he has no idea how to move her.

Your bio says that you make ice cream every weekend, which you’ve already mentioned a little, and that we’ll never see you without a hat. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Oh, I could tell you a lot about that, but I’ll try to keep it short. I do make ice cream every weekend. That started about 14 years ago when I moved to a Caribbean island and discovered that the ice cream in the grocery stores had melted and frozen so many times, it tasted like sand. As an ice cream lover, I was desperate. Then I saw an electric ice cream maker in the only hardware store. I bought it and immediately started experimenting. Since I don’t cook, my recipes can be a bit…different. Readers will often find my ice cream flavors in my stories.

As for my hats, that started in sixth grade when I found one in a storage room in my grandmother’s house. I put it on and liked how it looked, so I was always on the look out for a new hat. After all these years, I have well over a hundred, so I never leave the house without one on. Luckily, with that many, no matter what I’m wearing, I can always find one to match. 🤠

Lexi Post is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of sensuous romance inspired by the classics. She spent years in higher education taking and teaching courses about the classical literature she loved. From Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, she’s read, studied, and taught wonderful classics.

But Lexi’s first love is romance novels. So she decided to marry her two first loves by using the classics as a springboard for her romances. From hot paranormals to sizzling cowboys to hunks from out of this world, Lexi provides a sensuous experience with a “whole lotta story.”

Lexi is living her own happily ever after with her husband and her cat in Florida. She makes her own ice cream every weekend, loves bright colors, and you will never see her without a hat.