About the Book

Book: Chase Your Dreams West: A Ginne West Adventure (Book 5)

Authors:Monique Bucheger and G. L. Rasmussen

Genre:Contemporary Upper Middle -Grade

Release date: November 22, 2024

12-year-old best friends, Ginnie West and Tillie Taylor, navigate changes in their family. Tillie’s long-absent birth father reappears and she has to juggle two dads while Ginnie’s mischievous Uncle Jake escalates their prank war. Meanwhile, Tillie desperately wants a horse of her own while Ginnie is determined to follow her late mother’s equestrian legacy as a trick rider, something her dad has forbidden.

Can Ginnie shape her own destiny and persuade her dad to support her ambitions? Get ready for a heartwarming adventure filled with friendship, family, and the power of chasing your dreams!

Click here to get your copy!

About the Authors

Monique is a bestselling author, a certified Farland Fiction Coach, and an empowerment speaker, dedicated to championing the underdog, in both her writing and real-life adventures.

Having a heart for families in crisis, Monique creates stories that capture the essence of real-life challenges and triumphs, with a touch of humor.

Monique’s upper middle-grade series, ‘The Ginnie West Adventures,’ delves into sensitive and weighty themes such as parental loss, abandonment, and overcoming abuse. She delivers stories not only for tween readers, but for those young at heart.

Drawing from her experiences nurturing a dozen of her own children and fostering over a hundred more, Monique’s experiences shape her books, creating novels in a number of genres, including a historical family saga, contemporary family dramas, a fun picture book, and a middle grade series weaving whimsy and heart into her tales.

A country boy by birth and by choice, Gary spent his youth working on the family farm, for local farmers and ranchers, on horseback or playing sports. Offered scholarships in Agriculture and Advertising Design, he opted for the bright lights and big city. Eight years in the advertising field convinced him that wasn’t where he wanted to be.

Gary freelanced in design and illustration, converted his love of writing for advertising to a newspaper column about the country lifestyle. He has also worked as a ranch manager, cowboy, rancher, and horse trainer. An avid painter and author, Gary shares his talents through mentoring others, is a past president of the Western Art Guild and Idaho Writers League and is an active member of Western Writers of America.

Gary and his wife, Margie are the parents of four children and ten grandchildren and have traveled extensively throughout Europe, Great Britain and the United States.

More from Monique

Chase Your Dreams West: A Ginnie West Adventure took me too long to finish. I was working on it when one of my sons was killed in a car accident. I paused writing for a few years as our family adjusted to losing Ryan.

An author friend invited me to a writer’s retreat a few years ago, knowing I was stuck and that week unlocked a lot of things for me. Including deciding to change where I placed what is now the first four chapters. I wrote them two books ago thinking they would make a great denouement, but after my son’s death, I realized they would make a better beginning.

This book is a little different from the first four as Ginnie explores horsemanship training with her mare, Calliope–with her dad’s blessing, and perhaps is given a little help from her mom. Ginnie is given back one of her mom’s journals and gets to know the mom she doesn’t really remember and her dad didn’t really talk about… until recently.

Author Interview

What is your favorite genre of books? Why?

Humor. It helps me deal with the craziness.”

Are you a one project at a time author or do you have multiple projects going at once? At any given time I may come up with ideas for any of my four series: one published, one is on Kindlevella, one has the first book written, one I haven’t started writing yet, as well as other projects.

I am also in two anthologies coming out this year. G.L, and I are collaborating on three series–and he has some standalone books as well as picture books he writes and illustrates.

How has your life experience helped in your writing journey? When I was 12, two of my friends were being abused. I knew, but didn’t know how to help them. I have a lot of guilt about that and I became a foster mom to over 100 kids. Now I write books that deal with all facets of abuse: victims, abusers, and people who want to help kids overcome hard things.

So I write about a family who often makes the hard right choices to help empower others to do the same. The Wests are a close-knit family, but welcome others into it.

What is the funniest thing to happen in the process of writing one of your books?

The funnest thing is the cobwebs on the vaults of my memory get blown away and long forgotten events come back to life.

How do you relax after a long day of writing?

I can’t sit still for very long so I move on to other projects.

Where do you find your greatest inspiration?

Sometimes nature but usually life in general. Haven’t watched TV in 20 years so I draw inspiration from my daily encounters.

Who is your favorite author? Patrick F. McManus. Why? He encouraged me to keep writing and proved that humor sells.
Do you have extensive outlines when writing or do you write a book as you go?

Sometimes a book or short story gets laid out in my head then I flesh it out, but most of the time I have the first chapter written in my head then it’s all seat-off-the-pants from there.