Mary Connealy

The EXCITING conclusion to the Wyoming Sunrise Series…coming in October

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Marshaling Her Heart

Why does it seem to take

FOREVER

for the third book in a series to release?

Is that my imagination?

But even though all three books release at the same pace, the third one seems to SLOW!!!

 

But it’s here, next month, but so so soon.

Today I’m giving away a signed copy of Marshaling Her Heart. If I move FAST, the winner will get a copy before it’s released!

Marshaling Her Heart

This is my wheelhouse. This is my HAPPY PLACE!!!

The Feisty Lady Rancher rides again.

I’ve had a lot of fun with this series. My lady blacksmith, and lady justice of the peace were really interesting and fun and I loved writing them.

I love the research, the fresh take on writing that a new career brings, and finding a character who fits that career is part of what I love about being an author.

But ah, Lady Ranchers. I have to fight every instinct in my body to not make every single heroine in every single book a lady rancher.

For Marshaling Her Heart I didn’t have to fight it. Becky Pruitt is tough and smart and capable and in charge.

And with her tyrant of a pa, who as good as drove her off his ranch…with his ceaseless unkindness, she’s not that interested in a husband and giving up control of the life she’s finally made for herself.

And along comes trouble and there stands her foreman to step right between that trouble and Becky.

Well, she doesn’t need any man’s help…and yet, she finds herself surprised and deeply touched that he’ll take care of her when her pa never would.

Have you got a preference for heroines? Tough, meek, damsels in distress? School marms, whip cracking girl bosses?

Leave a comment about your favorite type of heroine, or even just your favorite heroine in any book, it’s not just about me, right?

 

Marshaling Her Heart

by Mary Connealy

Coming in October!

Will their lives and romance survive the trouble coming their way?

Becky Pruitt has always prided herself on knowing everything that’s happening on her successful ranch, so an unexpected admission from her foreman, Nate Paxton, comes as quite a surprise. With the notorious Deadeye Gang on the loose, Nate–a former U.S. Marshal–believes Becky’s ranch is the best spot for a group of Marshals to use as a base to hunt them down.

The timing couldn’t be more crucial for the town of Pine Valley, and Becky feels obligated to help. But after escaping the grasp of her harsh father, she’s never liked giving up control, of her life or her ranch. If there’s anyone she can trust with her ranch, and her heart, it might be Nate. But the outlaws won’t go away quietly, and as danger draws ever nearer, Becky and Nate are faced with impossible choices that will test their growing bond.

Welcome | Mary Connealy, author of romantic comedies with cowboys

And sign up for my newsletter here: Newsletter | Mary Connealy

 

 

 

Favorite Things~~~Coffee on the Porch~~~Leave a comment for a chance at a prize!

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This is a laid-back post. In fact, if you have a cup of coffee this time of day, go get it and we’ll talk about my morning Hobby? Habit? Obsession? Treat?

My morning habit of drinking a cup of coffee on my back porch.

Is this picture fun and summery? Or the opening scene in a horror movie. Add screeching music and yikes.
Is this picture fun and summery? Or the opening scene in a horror movie. Add screeching music and yikes.

I’m trying to decide how much detail to go into about my porch.

First, just know that, My Cowboys knee jerk reaction to almost anything is NO.

He says NO first, then maybe later he changes his mind. It’s annoying, at the same time, we’ve been married for…46 years? I think? I’ve found I can’t change him (or myself honestly) so I can at least KNOW HIM.

We spent a long weekend in St. Louis just now.

EXAMPLE

So, I said, “Let’s get some new porch furniture.”

My Cowboy says, “No.”

Usually, I just roll with it. Wait him out. A month later he says yes to most things. Sometimes he thinks it’s his own idea.

EXAMPLE

Mary: “You want to spend the night in Omaha after Christmas?”

My Cowboy: “No.”

Later that day, My Cowboy: “Have you gotten hotel reservations yet?”

See? Standard, 46 years. Mary is a patient woman and often gets what she wants, I’ll admit I don’t want much.

Back to Coffee on the Porch.

I have to admire his stubbornness. And I pride myself on not nagging. I also pride myself on being very kind, and I’ll slap anybody who says I’m not.

So, this time I nag. I REALLY want new porch furniture. Our current porch furniture was two swings. One we bought about 15 years ago. One we got when MCs Mom died, about 14 years ago. They weren’t nice when they were new and now they’re just plain BORING. Plain wood. Scratchy…splintery even.

If I could have done it myself I’d have just bought the furniture. One of those instances when it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right?

But there is the HASSLE FACTOR. I’m going to need help carrying this furniture onto the porch. He’s bound to notice while he’s toting a chair up the sidewalk.

I conspired with my children, who are good little co-conspirators, they also know their father.

Mary: “You give me porch furniture for my birthday, I’ll slip you cash…no money trail.”

They were game. Still the HASSEL FACTOR. They offered to come and carry it up but they are busy, it’s kinda hard to plan just when the delivery truck will show up.

He was going to notice, maybe. He walks through the back porch multiple times a day.

Anyway, after about a YEAR, he finally caves. I was more forceful than usual, which is to say I kept ASKING. (okay, nagging, shut up)

So, now he wants to be involved.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

sigh

We shopped. Porch furniture is EXPENSIVE. (although mine wasn’t overly) but it was good to shop. I developed something of a callus on my cheapskate gene. I mean MY GOSH! I found porch furniture with like NINE PIECES for six thousand dollars. Good grief. I have a small porch.

anyway

Every morning, weather permitting, I sit on my back porch with a cup of coffee. I listen to birds chirp. I try to leave my phone inside. If there is a breeze I listen to my windchimes…a gift when my mom died and I think of her with genuine love while I sip my coffee. It’s been a while and the worst of that sadness is past.

I enjoy the flowers. The bouquet (above) sitting on the table is from my daughters when I was sick this spring. The hanging baskets is my usual Mother’s Day gift. Seven hanging baskets of begonias. Every year. For the porch. They have been blooming like mad this year. I like to think it’s because they enjoy my company, but maybe it’s because I’m out there and notice if they need water???

It’s a week for talking about favorite things.

Do you have a favorite spot for drinking coffee? Do you have special morning habits when you don’t have to run in the morning? Do you have tips for handling stubborn cowboys?

Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a $25 Amazon gift card.

And brace yourselves cause a new book is coming in October. The exciting conclusion to the Wyoming Sunrise series.

Marshaling Her Heart.

Click to Pre-order…coming October 17

 

 

Here Comes the Judge–and a giveaway!

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The original inspiration for this book series appears in book #2 of The Wyoming Sunrise Series.

A woman justice of the peace.

I read a biography of Esther Hobart Morris, the first woman justice of the peace in America…possibly in the world.

Such a fun read. It’s full of the struggle for women’s suffrage and Esther was a champion of that cause.

Very soon, just days after women were given the right to vote in Wyoming, the current justice of the peace in South Pass City, Wyoming, when told he’d have to swear in women on a jury, quit. He didn’t just quit, he stole the record book containing precious legal records in South Pass City. It was never recovered.

When he quit, Esther was appointed to his old job. He just threw such a fit, the old Judge that is, that Esther could have arrested him.

But she didn’t. She said, “We’ll just start this new era with a fresh book and forget the past.”

So I decided my pretty little seamstress, a good friend of the heroine in book #1 Forged in Love, should be the second justice of the peace. (or anyway, real early on).

Nell Armstrong just wants to sew pretty dresses. She likes to put ribbons and lace and ruffles on flowery dresses.

Mary Connealy

The only trouble is, there aren’t that many women in Wyoming and those there are, make their own clothes. So she made the mistake of making a pair of chaps for one cowboy (she had to take an old pair of his and learn to copy it, he even brought her in a nice piece of leather). And now the orders flood in and there is no escape. She’s got a booming business and is making a lot of money and she hates it.

 

She is also the widow of a lawman. So when the DeadEye Gang leaves several dead men at the sight of a stagecoach hold-up near her home for Pine Valley, Wyoming, she helps investigate. She asks the sheriff insightful questions. She knows the law and she insists they check the bodies which have been brought to town.

When the old justice of the peace announces plans to move to Nebraska, she gets offered the job.

Newcomer to the area Brandon Nolte and his three daughters are in desperate need of dresses. Brand can’t sew and his daughters refuse to come to town wearing their ramshackle trousers and boots. Nell is thrilled to help, but Brand had no cash money for such frivolity as dresses.

And then there’s another stagecoach holdup and Nell finds herself in the crossfire of the dangerous gang.

Leave a comment…how about how desperately YOU want it to be SPRING!!! To get your name in a drawing for a signed copy of Forged in Love.

The Laws of Attraction

Book #2 Wyoming Sunrise Series

If widowed town seamstress Nell Armstrong has to make one more pair of boring chaps for the cowboys in her tiny Wyoming town, she might lose her mind. So meeting Brand Nolte, a widower father struggling to raise three girls, seems like her dream come true. Brand has no idea how to dress the girls, and Nell finally has a chance to both create beautiful dresses and teach the girls to sew.

But Nell is much more than a seamstress, and the unique legal and investigative skills and knowledge she picked up alongside her late lawman husband soon become critical when a wounded stagecoach-robbery survivor is brought to town. As danger closes in from all sides, Nell and Brand must discover why there seems to be a bull’s-eye on their backs.

Fan favorite Mary Connealy invites you back to 19th-century Wyoming for this adventuresome Western romance, complete with a budding romance, witty banter, and an absorbing mystery.

Click to pre-order from Baker Book House

Click to pre-order from Amazon

 

A New Year: A New Series Begins

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I am SO CLOSE to having a cover for book #3! In fact, I’ve seen it. But I don’t have permission to use it yet! Boo!

Book #1 Forged in Love is coming in February. Late in the month. 

The backdrop of the Wyoming Sunrise series is that Wyoming was the first state in the Union to give women the right to vote. They also gave women and people of color, that is to say Native Americans the right to vote.

Black people–no scratch that–black MEN–had already been given suffrage. Suffrage is a lot more than voting. It’s about property rights, inheritance rights, the right to run for office, serve on a jury, lots of stuff. I wrote more about that HERE. 

Okay, after typing this long, I’ve decided I will share the third cover KEEPING IN MIND that it might change.

No, darn it, I’d better not. TEMPTATION IS GNAWING AT ME!

I decided to be a good girl. Grrrrrr……..

My next post will be AFTER permission so hang in there.

Forged in Love is about a woman blacksmith who has a band of vicious stagecoach robbers trying to kill her.

To find out about blacksmiths, especially historical blacksmiths, I spent a day at a nearby Living History Museum set in a restored frontier fort, Fort Atkinson.

I will tell you this…as a person who sometimes needs odd, tiny details for the setting of my books, and a person who is a natural prairie dog who prefers to spend her time in her own hole…occasionally popping my head up, then ducking away when someone comes too close…I know that talking to experts on specific details in a book is just always fun. They LOVE it.

Really? You want to know more about historical laundry?

Yes, please, tell me more about bluing. And did they have to build their own washboards?

Tears of Joy ensue from said living history reenactor. Followed by allllllllllllllllllllllll they know.

Interspersed with me saying, repeat that again? Slow down. I’m trying to get this all down.

More tears of Joy!

It’s fun.

I guess not that many people have follow up questions to the historical blacksmith ‘cuz I talked to him FOREVER and he was just great. I’ve had similar experiences with Lewis and Clark reenactors, gunsmiths, tinsmiths, a cooper (wooden buckets, butter churns, washtubs, etc), a farrier (horse shoeing and blacksmithing are NOT the same job)…there are others. I talked to a guy in charge of a Western Trails museum about the Oregon Trail. A Trails and Rails museum about railroads. And the thing is, the questions are small. Weird little details I didn’t know. 

I—a person who spends a LOT of time in historical reading and research, had weird little questions. And these experts LOVE ANSWERING THEM. 

It’s a symbiotic relationship. 

And yet Mary the prairie dog, drags her heels about doing these things. Why????

Anyway, Blacksmithing. My heroine is a woman blacksmith. Trained at her widowed father’s knee. Her father the town blacksmith/cooper/farrier/wheelwright–it’s a small town. Many people did things for themselves, they didn’t take their horse to the farrier, they shoed their own horse. There wasn’t enough work to keep a lot of people busy.

So she’s learned all these skills from a father who didn’t think it was right, at the same time he needed the help and she insisted, and he didn’t like her being home alone….and now he’s dead.

The whole town is conflicted. A woman shouldn’t be a blacksmith. On the other hand, can you fix my wheel? I need nails. My hinge broke.

So necessity gives Mariah a rather begrudging acceptance. And in the meantime she’s falling in love with the guy running the town diner, who was trained as a chef in New York City and now slings the very BEST hash in the west. Everyone thinks he’s weird for calling Beef Stew, Beef Bourguignon (man, try spelling THAT word three times fast). I’m trying to play against type. Blacksmith heroine, cook hero. But honestly in the west a lot of diners were run by men. Still, it was fun.

And also, in the stagecoach holdup that killed her father and brother, she survived, left for dead by a gang of outlaws that don’t leave witnesses and now someone’s trying to kill her.

And somehow Clint, who’s loved her from afar for a long time, and was working up the nerve to approach her very tough and intimidating father to ask if he can court her (or ask her if he could ever find her alone…he was going to do it!!!) finds himself in the kill zone between the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen and a gang of cutthroats.

And so the fun begins. Forged in Love. Coming in February.

 

Something to be Thankful For

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I’m part of a Black Friday in October Sale!

Friday October 21-through-28

I put my book, Thankful for the Cowboy on sale a few days early so you can get a copy for 99 cents right now.

I also realized I’d never made this novella into a print book. So if anyone prefers print, go grab a copy, it’s on sale, too, the lowest price Kindle would allow.

 

Tom MacKinnon rides up driving a wagon with a second wagon trailing him. He and his sister builds windmills.

They’ll ask for very little money and, in exchange Lauren Drummond, newly widowed mother of four nearly grown sons, will help them learn to survive in the Sandhills of Nebraska. What to grow, what to hunt, how to build a sod house.

Tom’s windmills will save her ranch during a terrible drought.

Lauren needs three windmills before the oncoming winter freezes her few remaining, extremely shallow, ponds, or her growing herd of cattle is going to die of thirst.

She eagerly agrees to teach him the ways of the Sandhills. She’s not ready to think of another man. But Tom changes her mind. His little sister and one of her sons find love together before Tom and Lauren do.

Click to buy on Amazon

I get a special day!!! YAY!

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To celebrate, I’m keeping this really short and giving away a signed copy of my soon to be released novel

A Model of Devotion.

And I’ve got a recipe.

The fastest, easiest recipe I know.

For ingredients. it’s a crock pot recipe so when I say fast, I mean how much time to you spend preparing it.

It’s gotta cook for a while.

Crock Pot Shredded Barbeque Chicken

One bag boneless, skinless chicken breasts--poured, frozen into a crockpot

One can pineapple chunks drained–poured on top of the chicken breasts

One chopped onion…chopping the onion is the only thing that takes any time.

One bottle of your favorite barbeque sauce…poured over everything.

That’s it. Cook for a bunch of hours, like…five. i usually start on high then turn it down.

Then shred the breasts with two forks, serve with the pineapple and onion and barbeque sauce all mixed together serve on a bun.

Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a copy of A Model of Devotion.

 

She’s finally claimed her independence . . . how far will she go to keep it?

A brilliant engineer, Jilly Stiles has been educated since childhood to help run her father’s lumber dynasty. With the company safe from her stepfather after the marriages of her two sisters, Jilly can now focus on her dream of building a mountaintop railroad–and never marry.

Nick Ryder came into Jilly’s life when he saved her mother from her no-good stepfather, and he’s prepared to protect Jilly from anything that threatens to harm her–as long as he keeps his heart from getting involved.

But when a cruel and powerful man goes to dangerous lengths to make Jilly his own, she must make a decision between her safety and her hard-won independence.

Why Cowboys?

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I have a lot of people ask me if I’m ever going to write books about anything other than cowboys.

I have written other things. So never say never. But mostly no. I’m good with the Stetsons and lariats.

I wrote for ten years before I got my first book published. And, at the end of that ten years, I had twenty finished books on my computer.

Lots of stuff there. Mostly romance, but contemporary, suspense, mysteries. And westerns. The westerns were what finally sold.

I have to ask why.

My best response to why is, maybe I just found a genre that matched my voice. I’ve lived in rural Nebraska all my life. Born and raised. Married a Nebraska cattleman. I suppose I just brought some authenticity to the books because I know what horses and cows…..and cowboys, would say and do.

Or at least what SOME of them would do. ONE of them would do. Maybe this is at the root of the old saying, “Write what you know.”

Let’s just go with that, okay? Because I write all over the map. (the cowboy map) Have all sorts of professions and settings. Mysteries and danger.

I pretty much have to research all of that.

My next release, coming in October, A Model of Devotion, the heroine is a civic engineer. Before that was an actual term. She built bridges and trestles. And blasts holes in mountains. She smoothed the dirt on the way. Calculated the power of a train engine and the slope…up and down….the engine could manage. She knows surveying..

If you’ve ever driven through a hole blasted in a mountain, did you know that they started on opposite ends of the mountain and blasted toward each other? They calculated it and surveyed it and they’d meet in the middle exactly as planned. It’s all very science-y and math-y. Very intelligent stuff

Well, my heroine can do that.

Of course I CAN’T DO THAT. Write what you know? HAH!

So research. And what I can’t figure out, I skip, hopefully quietly so no one notices. And of course, when there’s trouble, she’s very good at handling it herself. And what it’s more than she can handle…there’s a cowboy

A Model of Devotion

She’s finally claimed her independence . . . how far will she go to keep it?

A brilliant engineer, Jilly Stiles has been educated since childhood to help run her father’s lumber dynasty. With the company safe from her stepfather after the marriages of her two sisters, Jilly can now focus on her dream of building a mountaintop railroad–and never marry.

Nick Ryder came into Jilly’s life when he saved her mother from her no-good stepfather, and he’s prepared to protect Jilly from anything that threatens to harm her–as long as he keeps his heart from getting involved.

But when a cruel and powerful man goes to dangerous lengths to make Jilly his own, she must make a decision between her safety and her hard-won independence.

 

 

Insane Asylums in History

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Okay, kinda creepy title for my post this week!

I’m right now reading a book called

The Woman they Could Not Silence.

I’m nowhere near done so who knows how it’ll all come out…but…

Right now the heroine (it’s non-fiction, but she’s a true hero!) is locked up in an insane asylum…at a time in history when tyrannical husbands could put troublesome wives in an asylum.

Elizabeth Packard has been declared insane…for (mainly) thinking. And daring to have her ideas about right and wrong diverge from her husband’s views

So much is fascinating about this book…and it’s not just for fun, it’s RESEARCH. I am formulating a plan for my next series and I might have my heroine be an escapee from an insane asylum. Or maybe I’ll have her realize she’s going to be committed and she’s on the run? Not settled yet.

In this book, by Kate Moore, I found a chart showing the supposed causes of insanity in 1858-ish. The Civil War is getting ready to explode around Elizabeth Packard as she’s being locked up. Among the reasons for insanity??? :

Domestic trouble

Religious Excitement

Business Anxieties

Death of Friend

Hard Study

Change of Life

Fear

And way down the list is Reading Novels.

Yes, dear Petticoats & Pistols readers, you could be locked up for reading novels.

Another weird thing is … the word Uterus, in ancient Greek, is hysteria. That word, Hysteria was used all the time to declare woman insane.

Other weird, disgusting, fascinating things about this book. Elizabeth’s husband , Theophilis was a pastor. I can’t remember what denomination right now, but they had a NEW DOCTRINE and an OLD DOCTRINE.

So, her husband was a pastor in a church with the New Doctrine. This is all in Illinois. So a northern state as the Civil War is still ahead. A really wealthy man with a lot of investments in businesses profiting from Slavery, didn’t like that churches were becoming increasingly abolitionist. So he went around and offered to build new churches for congregations that would remain pro-slavery. The New Doctrine in Theophilis’ church was abolitionist, quietly, without explaining how they were paying for it, Theophilis changed to the Old Doctrine and took the money.,

Elizabeth was appalled and after working hard to change her husband’s mind, and the minds of his supporters in his church, she quit. She became a Methodist.

That was part of what tipped her husband in the direction of committing her. Only a crazy woman would disagree with her husband about religion after all.

There are just so many weird, fascinating bits and pieces in this book. The man, Dr McFarland, who ran the asylum, encouraged and listened and debated congenially with Elizabeth, all while writing up notes saying she was obviously, deeply insane.

He told her she could send and receive letters but never mailed the ones she wrote and confiscated and destroyed the ones she received. His treatment of her was fine to her face until she got angry that there was no sign of ever being released. At that point he through her into a ward with dangerous inmates and stripping away even the minimal comforts she had, including a private room and freedom to walk around the grounds.

Elizabeth started a Bible study with fellow inmates that she found a great comfort. Intelligent women without a sign of insanity. One of the nurses told her in confidence, “You’ve got to quit having these Bible studies, you will never be released if you continue.”

Elizabeth found women in that asylum who were also parked there by abusive husbands, women she found decent and sensible and all around sane.

And, because her husband had threatened to lock her in an asylum, she had consulted a lawyer who assured her she couldn’t be locked up without a jury trial declaring her insane. The lawyer lied to her. He was a supporter of her husband. But to Elizabeth, he assured her she couldn’t just be locked up. But all the laws he told her about…didn’t apply to wives. There were new laws in place to protect people from being locked away by cruel relatives, but those laws didn’t apply to WIVES!

Wives could be locked up on the word of the husbands and two witnesses. In this case, men in their church who were offended by Elizabeth changing churches and having views other than their own.

I’m going to stop now, before I write the whole book but it’s fascinating. I’m trying NOT to just read it as a good book, but rather read it for research. So I’m making notes and marking pages. Slow going but I love it.

In a modern day and age when there is such a struggle with finding care for people with mental illness, this has nothing to do with it. In fact, among her extensive writings, Elizabeth came to the conclusion, “I fully believe it was the doctor’s purpose to make a maniac of me by the skillful use of the Asylum tortures.”

One of her fellow patients told her: “Insane Asylum. A place where insanity is made.”

Coming soon, (maybe) in a book I plan to write…with lots of cowboys and comedy of course…that could tricky!

In the meantime, my current release is called

The Element of Love

http://www.maryconnealy.com

The Element of Love–a Giveaway!!!

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The Element of Love

Coming March 1

Click to Pre-order

Click to Enter the Goodreads Giveaway

Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing here

Excerpt

Another gully ahead and Laura felt like she was flying through midair. No ground beneath her for a hundred feet down. Then she swooped around a mountainside and splashed herself as the barrel careened from one side of the flume to another.

And that’s when the rain began falling. Sprinkling at first but they’d planned to stay as dry as possible and she’d forgotten.

Her movements cautious to keep from tipping, Laura got out the oil cloth packed in her satchel. She wrapped it around herself. She kept her arms out, but her satchel, the lantern, the money, all were protected. She couldn’t wrap it around her shoulders, even if they ended up soaked, because this ride would most likely end with her taking a swim. She’d need her arms free.

            Then the curve went away from the mountain, then veered back and for a sickening second she saw she’d be slammed right into the face of a cliff. And then she saw the hole. The tunnel.

            She blasted into the dark.

            The roar of the water and the echo of this tight tunnel made her dizzy. All she knew was noise and motion, no vision. Blindness while the world exploded around her.

            She couldn’t breathe. A scream built in her chest. She fought a violent urge to throw herself out of her barrel, to make contact with something that wasn’t moving, wasn’t roaring. It was irrational and she knew it.

Coming in July — Click to Pre-order

But still, every second she endured was a battle.

Fighting it, she remembered the need for quiet. She had to be quiet. But surely they were far enough from anyone that a single scream, which pushed to tear free from her throat, wouldn’t be noticed. She swallowed it down. Clutched the sides of the barrel, fought the dizzying fear she’d tip over, or be crushed by the dark and speed and roar.

            Then out.

            Flying. Gasping for breath, she went into a sudden descent that was almost a straight drop. And the sky had opened up while she’d been in the tunnel. Rain poured down and hit like needles. She lifted the oil cloth up to cover her face so she could breathe and had to keep her head ducked low because her hands were busy clinging to the barrel.

          The flume gradually leveled a bit to a less terrifying fall. The flume carried logs for nine miles. She knew that. She had to ride nine miles from the mountaintop to the river below. Nine miles and there was no way to figure time because there was no way to figure speed. She’d heard once it took the logs an hour to get from top to bottom. Another time she’d heard half that.

            It all depended on the force of the water. Had they opened it full blast? She wasn’t sure. It was science, force times distance times descent patterns. She should be able to do the math in her head while she careened downward but she was missing key numbers.

Coming in October —- Available for Pre-order Soon

            Mathematical calculations were more Jilly’s thing. In fact, Laura wouldn’t be surprised if Jilly was keeping herself calm by counting in prime numbers or doing calculus problems. Laura did science—her favorite was chemistry. And she’d love like mad to use her smuggled chemicals to blow this flume into a million pieces.

            She couldn’t blow it up. She couldn’t do the mathematical calculations. So, she played guessing games about what would happen when the men discovered the flume running. She ripped around a curve in the flume again, clinging to the barrel sides.

The men, think of the men.

They’d be coming to work in the morning, early, their day started at sunrise. Or the day after if the thunderstorm held on. No one logged mountaintop woodlands if there was lightning. Whenever they came back to work, their men would see the flume open.

            Would they wonder if it hadn’t been turned off at the end of the last shift? She knew one thing, they wouldn’t report it to Edgar. His punishment was always as rapid as the blade of a guillotine. His wrath would fall on the neck of whoever reported it. And they’d be fired.

            No, Edgar would never hear about it. And all of the hard-working lumberjacks were loyal to the Stiles family and held Edgar Beaumont in contempt. So between fear of Edgar’s wrath and disgust with the man, even if he tore the mountain apart looking for runaway daughters, which he just might do, he’d never hear about a flume found running overnight or any suspicions about the mad decision to use that flume to escape.

By the time he quit looking close to home, they would be miles away, and putting more space between them with every minute they were free.