Touting The Central Pacific Railroad website

My post this month is an announcement of my early September release that hasn’t had its day in the sun. With this story set in 1878, I wanted to play with several tropes: secret identity, opposites attract, mistaken identity, woman in jeopardy, across the tracks and figure out how to fit them all in one heartwarming story. Of course, including children in the plot always helps with the cuteness factor.

I always do the research to find the actual train schedules so I can figure out if my characters have lots of choices of departures or if they have to jump through hoops to get to the depot in time. In this instance, I needed the names of several stops before the train reached Denver, and I was lucky to find such a schedule. I have used the website for the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum so many times that I feel I must give it a shout out. http://cprr.org. Click on the History link and you’ll find pictures of what the inside of a car looked like, how the beds folded down, tons of stuff about the Transcontinental Railroad construction and completion, testimonies of people who rode on the first trains, recommendations on how to pack and what people would expect to see, the actual advertisements that enticed people to travel cross-country, including side trips to new attractions like Yellowstone and Yosemite Parks. In the mid-19th century, trips were either coast also included ship connections to other continents. If any of you have train enthusiasts in your family, I can’t say enough about this website. 

The title is Sabrina, and the novella is book 5 in the Runaway Brides of the West multi-author series. Sabrina Whitmore, daughter of a wealthy railroad investor, has finally found a man who accepts her suffragist work. On the night before her wedding, she overhears her fiancé bragging that if he can’t get her to toe the line after their marriage, he’ll just have her committed to an asylum and take charge of her inheritance. Sabrina escapes the family mansion with her maid and rushes to the Kansas City train station headed toward an aunt in Denver. When she awakens the morning before her arrival, she discovers her maid is nowhere to be found and has stolen her clothes and most of her money. While hunting for her maid, she sees Maeve spirited away by two burly men and is scared her fiancé is hunting her.

Derrick Burkhardt bumps into a woman matching the description of the governess he hired from a St. Louis agency. Needing to get her settled at the ranch before he leaves for the spring roundup, he does all the talking during the buggy ride. When he returns a week later, the ranch is in an uproar over the governess’s unorthodox teaching methods. All Derrick sees are his children at the happiest they’ve been in two years. Will he feel the same when he learns the governess is not who she claims to be? 

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Release Day—Taming A Scandal

Today is release day for my second book in the multi-author “Lockets and Lace series by the authors of the Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog. Taking place from 1820-1920, these stories are linked by a visit to The Bavarian Watch and Jewelry Shop in St. Joseph, Missouri.

BLURB:

Socialite Mercia Saunders got evicted due to a touchy situation--which she feels was justified because it was for the sake of her art. Now her Philadelphia landlady has shipped her belongings to the family’s Newport, Rhode Island, home. Her father is livid and demands she choose between being courted by the hand-picked sons of prominent Newport business owners or live scandal-free with her oldest brother on a Texas cattle ranch. To a young woman raised with society, the ranch sounds like boring banishment, but she refuses to let her father choose her beau.

Pinkerton Agent Dominic Prentice is on the trail of a jewelry thief when he first meets the enticing Mercia—too bad he’s wearing the disguise of an elderly Southern gentleman. Then he’s assigned the task of keeping the art student under surveillance on a west-bound train to Texas. He can’t resist a railroad flirtation as himself, and the two draw closer than Mercia’s chaperones know. His allegiance to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency is tested when Dominic is forced to decide between tracking the jewelry or wooing the maiden.

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If you didn’t catch my first entry in this series, Tending Troubles, I put it on sale for only 99 cents through April 6^th. Both novellas, clean and wholesome romances, are stand-alone stories and have connections with my “Dorado, Texas” series.

BLURB

Traveling west to become a mail-order bride is the most adventurous act Bostonian Imogene Franklin ever did. Unfortunately, the groom chose another so now Imogene must make her way on her own. Dreading the idea of returning home to continue raising her siblings, she is reduced to waiting tables in the Dorado café. 
Guilt hangs heavy over Reggie Othmann—ever since he brought home a childhood illness that claimed both his parents’ lives. The ink is barely dry on Reggie’s degree when he arrives home in Dorado to establish a medical practice. All he’s wanted since he was ten years old is to help people, but the townspeople have been without a doctor for so long, they don’t flock through his doors as expected.
An illness sweeps the town, and Reggie is overwhelmed, fearing   he’s not qualified to heal them. Imogene steps in and together, they work hard to prevent anyone from dying, spending days together. Is their emotional tie born of the closeness of the ordeal or perhaps something more?

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