"When I run up against that 'How can you, a mere woman, write Westerns?' attitude, I mention that in my youth I owned a number of horses, did some trail riding in Colorado and Wyoming, and once worked as a shill to a horse trader in Kansas. I don't go into details about the trail riding being connected with a stay at a dude ranch, or the job with the horse trader only lasting a couple of weeks (he got arrested)." -- Lee Hoffman