VBT# Under a Prairie Moon - Krista Kedrick

Today's VBT# is author Krista Kedrick and is touring with her novel "Under a Prairie Moon" , this tour is on behalf of Sizzling PR.

Synopsis: Under a Prairie Moon - Krista Kedrick-2011

Lincoln photographer Andrea Jameson finds passion and much more in the arms of a young cowboy, who just happens to be the brother of her traitorous ex-boyfriend.  Will they accept the life changing journey and realize the love they captured one night, under a praire moon?  Or will doubt and circumstance drive them apart?

About The Author: Krista Kedrick

Krista was born and raised in Nebraska. Her first years were spent on a ranch near the Stinkin' Water Creek in Chase County with her family raising cattle, lambs and chickens and stirring up trouble. After spending several childhood years in Colorado and Kansas her family returned to make Nebraska their home.She graduating from high school in 1998 she went on to Northeastern Junior College where she played volleyball and earned a degree in Horticulture.Second only to volleyball is her love of plants and the outdoors. She is forever working in her yard, which explains her vivid descriptions of settings in her novels.She has many interests, enjoys many activities, and finds it almost impossible to remain idle for more than an hour. Krista has tried her hat at a wide range of occupations from landscaper to pet store owner, not to mention several in-home businesses, but continued to pursue writing during all those years, taking courses, writing whenever possible and researching topics and the business.It has been Krista's ambition to become a published author since her freshman year of high school when a literature class changed how she looked at writing. She discovered it could be more than an outlet for feelings or simply a hobby.She married her high-school sweetheart in 2000. He has been a wealth of information for her western/agriculture style novels. And living in small communities has given her the inside view of small town people -their wholesomeness, kindness and appreciation of the little things in life. These one-of-a-kind people are the heart of her characters.Her light-hearted take on the world splashes the pages of her novel creating a wonderful mix of seriousness and humor.Krista makes her home in Nebraska with her husband, two daughters and basset hound.Her debut novel Under a Prairie Moon by Krista Kedrick is available in both paperback and ebook on http://www.createspace.com/ , http://www.amazon.com/ , http://www.smashwords.com/  and for the nook at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ .

Author Guest Post:

Reinventing Harvest By Krista Kedrick

I usually write about ranching because my novel is set on a ranch, but us agriculture people are all one big family so I’m going to deviate a little.

A couple nights ago it had snowed on the Plains of Nebraska, so I got a rare opportunity to remind myself what my husband looks like. It’s corn harvest here so that means eighteen hour days, seven days a week for two months (at least) that my husband is gone, unless it snows or rains. So we sat down for a quiet moment on the couch, tuned into the History Channel and watched their program entitled none other that Harvest. Yes, I know he really is that much of a farmer, if he isn’t out in the field then he’s watching something about it..

So there we were, as the host of the show introduces it and the three harvesting crew families they used for filming in his most serious business like tone. Now I’m usually a diplomatic thinker, I realize there are two sides to every story and that truth is all about perspective, but those traits took a back seat when my husband kept chuckling as the announcer made every little thing seem like a world ending, life-threatening, daring feat of super-human powers.

Now I think that about my husband everyday and mostly because of what he has chosen to do for a living. Farming is definitely a lifestyle choice and not for the weak minded, weak spirited or weak bodied person. But this completely commercialized, dramatized show about three harvest crews was almost pathetic. And they most certainly cannot read a map because they placed the town of Imperial, NE in the panhandle something like 200 miles from where it actually resides, which is not too far from the Colorado and Kansas borders. Anyway…

They chose the wrong things to focus on. Instead of regular old folks, who deal with the same things that everyone else does except from behind the wheel of a $500,000 machine that can and has been know to chop off parts of the body, they chose to hype it up, slap on some drama and sell it as reality T.V. I spose they do that with all their shows or people wouldn’t watch them. And at least we got some laughs out of it.

So without bashing the show too much (because I talked to a friend from what she calls the “big city” and she enjoyed the program) I just want to give a shout out to all my family in the farming world. And tell you a little about our way of life.

I may be a tiny bit prejudiced about it because I am a fourth generation farm family. My grandfather came from Germany when he was 16 to Nebraska to make a life here. My uncle still lives on and farms the ground that has been in my family for 100 years. To say that farmers are traditionalists is an understatement. It’s Husker football on Saturday - Church on Sunday. And I married into a Swedish farm family that is much like mine. So take that into account when reading this.

Farmers, and ranchers for that matter, are hard workers. A lot of it is physical work, but it is also mental work. To say we are a simple people is to not know us. Farmers have to be accountants, weathermen, agronomists, chemists, salesmen, brokers, mechanics, inventors, heavy lifters, welders, doctors, veterinarians and craftsmen. I have seen my husband, father, and grandfather do all these things before nine o’clock in the morning and then keep doing them until 8 o’clock at night.

They can talk on the phone to a customer who wants hay bales delivered, boss the hired men, make mental notes of the job and answer the question their wife just asked, all while changing a five hundred pound tire on a tractor. They are capable of wearing many hats and are multi-taskers in the extreme. I am yet to find something my husband can’t do, which, as a competitive over-achiever myself, I find irritating. He can fix the garage door, change the oil in my SUV, lay hardwood floor in my kitchen, fix a leaky pipe, balance the books, help decide where to invest our money and rock our baby to sleep.

And yes, they do risk life and limb. Everyday in the back of mind is the knowledge that my husband could be seriously injured or killed. My great uncle lost an arm in a piece of equipment and would have bled to death if his wife hadn’t found him. And we recently had a very good friend need reconstructive surgery on his face after an accident fixing a pivot tire. But we’re tough, we are the type to slice our finger to the bone and say “Whoops”, say a little prayer thanking God we didn’t chop it off, tie it up with a rag and continue on. We have to, the nearest hospital that could sew it back on is 3 and a half hours away.

The show Harvest didn’t do them justice in this. They did not show that these guys have to improvise with baling twine, a pair of pliers and duct tape just to get the job done. That they have to muscle through and figure out how to get out of a jam with the stuff they carry in the back of their diesel trucks.

They did, however, do some things that I liked, for instance the fact that these are family owned businesses. Country people are big on family, even if you’re not blood, if you’re working together you’re family. Or if you’re neighbors, you’re family, or if you’re a member of the community, you’re family. Heck mostly we’re all just family. We band together to help each other, we care about one another and will help anyone who has fallen on hard times. My own grandpa practically adopted every hired man he ever had. They ate supper with the family, they went to church with the family. They were included in almost everything like one of the kids. That’s just how we are. Family is second only to God.

Also, harvesting during the tornado. My husband has been swathing hay in the field and called to tell me that a tornado has touched down and hail is beginning to beat down on the highway, but that it hasn’t reached where he is and it appears to be going in the opposite direction of him so he‘s going to keep going. Now that would scare most people, you would think he was crazy, that’s just normal for us. These boys and girls work in all kinds of weather from blazing heat to negative twenty. If the crops need harvested or the animals need tended to, then they go and do it.

I will admit that farmers and ranchers have a different way of thinking, they work hard and respect others who work hard too, they don’t put too much stock in material things but in the morals and actions of a man/woman. That’s not to say they’re all like that I’ve know my share of complaining farmers and they really have no concept of customer service (being a former business owner I have experienced this first hand), and some have a sense of entitlement, that I want to roll my eyes at, because we provide the food for the nation and other nations too.

But for the most part, the ones I know and love are of the other type, big-hearted, family oriented, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people and I’m happy to call myself one of them. It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it.

Website: http://www.kristakedrick.wordpress.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tinyman#!/pages/Krista-Kedrick-Fans/214174931950086

Links to purchase:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=under+a+prairie+moon+krista+kedrick

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/under-a-prairie-moon-krista-kedrick/1104513126?fb_ref=fbhomepage