Long line of ranchers

Dawn Nelson is a true fourth generation cowgirl. She was born and raised on a cattle ranch in North-Eastern Washington state. Married to a cattle rancher, she now calls their ranch in Creston, Washington home. When you are born to a cattle rancher, you take what you get. For example, when Dawn was born, even though she lived south of the Canadian border, her mother went north to deliver her. "It was the closest hospital, my dad didn't want to leave the cows because he was calving and he didn't want to leave long enough to take mom to a US hospital so I went 7 miles to the Canadian hospital."

So you come from a long line of real cowboys and cowgirls. Yup. My grandpa and great grandpa so, they were all into the cattle and every generation made the ranch a little bigger. We never got to huge up in that area, between 150 and 200 head of cattle is called a big ranch. It's kind of a six or seven month feeding season up there. It seems like you're feeding cattle more than you're not feeding cattle so it's a lot harder to be a big rancher up in that region.

Dawn has turned her real life experiences into a successful writing career. She says that she wants to write 40 novels by the time she is 40 years old. Pretty ambitious goal.