cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

I haven't posted for many weeks, but here, at last, is some news: My new book, The Bride and the Bandit , is out in digital form, with the print version to follow in November. Here's a brief description: When Frank Burkett steps off the train from Colorado, he sets up a portrait photography studio. But he's no photographer. Frank is actually an undercover detective sent to Maple Falls, Oregon, to capture the mysterious Black Bandit who has been boldly robbing the townspeople. But the town librarian, Geneva Stanton, snares him into performing Antony to her Cleopatra in her summer theatrical, The Trials of Cleopatra , and that turns out to be the ultimate challenge for them both. This comic tale was wonderful fun to write! The novel deals with photography in the 1870s, the struggles of librarians, the unorthodox battle to reinstate a "disgraced" schoolteacher, and the production of a small-town summer theatrical using a collection of amateurs and uniqu...

In January 2012, my novella - Gauchos & Gumption: My Argentine Honeymoon – will be published by Turquoise Morning Press. This is a fictionalized memoir by my grandmother, Leora Maria Banning (see photo at left), about her trip to South America in 1910. Accompanying the journal are actual photographs she took on the Argentine plains with a simple box camera. Writing this work has been something of a struggle. All writers struggle, I know. We go through periods of “ohmigod how do I do this?” And we wish for hope to sustain us - a sort of church for writers. For me, that “church” is other writers’ work. While working on Gauchos I have been buoyed up by four novels in my genre – western historicals – which I found inspiring. Naturally, I can’t resist talking about them. Settler’s Law , by Doris H. Eraldi (Berkley, 2010). This isn’t a romance, exactly, but it does portray one of those really special unspoken-bond relationships that I find moving and believable. The hero (...