Cat Johnson 💋

There are usually certain elements of truth behind fiction and that is true for my Wilder Brother series, right down to the basic concept– the BAM Bus. What’s that? Let me explain…

Well over a year ago I was flipping channels and stumbled upon a talk show segment about three girls who’d accidentally discovered they were all dating (live and in-person dating, not just online) the same guy. When one figured it out (after a deep dive into the internet and his social) she contacted the others– up to six of them! From that touchy situation arose what I predict will be a lifelong friendship. Four of the girls became good friends. Three of them bought an old school bus, refurbished it, and road trip together across the country on the BAM Bus (named after their initials).

They and their story were written up in the Washington Post. They have an Insta account for their bus and post pics and vids of their trips. And I knew from that first five-minute segment I saw on the Ellen Show that I wanted to base a book on this idea of a cheating man who, instead of pitting the women against each other, brought them together. That’s was the first kernel that I built upon when plotting the Wilder Brothers series.

What took me so long to finally write it? The delay was because I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to use the story of the three friends. There needed to be something else. Something more. And what that something was eluded me. Maybe sitting in my house in NY on lockdown for two years stifled my creativity a bit. But I attended a writers’ conference in Vegas in November of 2021, and I took everything I learned to heart. I came home and dedicated a week to rewatching recordings and reviewing my notes of the sessions. Then I used what I learned to zero in on a concept for a new series. And so the Wilder Brothers were born…

My series is loosely, very loosely, based on the real story. For instance, the real-life friends are young, college-aged. I made my characters older. There are other differences, things that I fictionalized, but you can see all that in CITY GIRL SEEKS COWBOY. It’s in eBook and paperback at all the usual places.

If you want to read about the real girls’ adventures, check out their Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bam.bus/. And you can read their story in the Washington Post HERE or by clicking on the image below.