I'm taking a break from my A to Z posts to welcome back a friend who has a new book releasing this month. Alethea Williams writes fabulous historical novels, hers being Western historicals set in the mid-1800s. Walls for the Wind is her latest novel. I love the imagery of the long railroad track of the cover, don't you?
Hi again, Alethea, it's great to have you back as my Welcome Wednesday guest today, but I see you've also brought someone else for my readers to meet. Would you explain, please, who this colourful lady is who has come with you today?
Hello, I’m happy to
be here today. Even though I wrote Walls
for the Wind, I still have a few questions for some of the characters.
Let’s speak with Maud, who runs a bevy of soiled doves out of the infamous Big
Tent of Hell on Wheels.
Alethea:
Hello Maud. Thanks
for talking with us today. It seems to me that you aren’t one of the happier
characters in the book.
Maud the Bawd:
I do all right.
Alethea:
Readers never learn
your last name, or any name at all for your compatriot, who is merely called
the gambler. Is there a reason neither of you wants your name broadcast?
Maud:
Do you have rocks
for brains? Why do you think I don’t advertise my full name, and the gambler
either? You seem like a nice person, but not real smart. Would you like a taste
of this?
Alethea:
What is it?
Maud: I think it’s
called “Magical Pain Extractor.”
Alethea: Hmm.
That’s what the label says, all right. I’ve heard some of those elixirs contain
potent ingredients like coca leaves. I think I’ll pass, thanks anyway.
Maud: Your loss.
Alethea:
Maud, I assume you
do what you do for a living because you make pretty good money. Do you hope one
day to get out of the life?
Maud:
Honey, I feel sorry
for you, you’re so naive and foolish. Do you think maybe I will be able to
retire to a nice town someplace, get a house with a little white picket fence,
with maybe with a nice pension for all my years of service? When the railroad
is finished, if I’m lucky I will find someplace where I can set up shop and the
girls and I will be tolerated. If not, I’ll probably die in harness, like an
old draft horse.
Alethea:
Well, I certainly
hope not. Thank you for talking with us a little bit today, Maud. I wish you
the best.
Maud:
Yeah. Thanks for
the nice sentiment. I won’t take it to the bank to see if it’s worth diddly,
though. Sure you don’t want a little nip of this before you go?
Nancy says: Thanks for coming, Maud...it sounds like it's going to be a pleasure to meet you in Walls for the Wind.
Walls for the Wind buy links:
About Alethea:
Western history has
been the great interest of my adult life. I've lived in Wyoming, Colorado, and
Oregon. Although an amateur historian, I am happiest researching different
times and places in the historical West. And while staying true to history, I
try not to let the facts overwhelm my stories. Story always comes first in my
novels, and plot arises from the relationships between my characters. I'm
always open to your response to my writing.
Website: http://aletheawilliams.weebly.com/
Google+: google.com/+AletheaWilliams
Twitter:
@ActuallyAlethea https://twitter.com/actuallyalethea
LinkedIn: http://lnkd.in/by89znA
Amazon author page:
http://www.amazon.com/Alethea-Williams/e/B0077CD2HW/
The Romance Reviews
author page: http://www.theromancereviews.com/ActuallyAlethea
Title: Walls
for the Wind
Author: Alethea
Williams
Genre: Western
historical
Publisher: Whiskey
Creek Press
Date of
publication: April 2014
Synopsis:
Can an angel survive Hell on Wheels? When
Kit Calhoun leaves New York City with a train
car full of foundlings from the Immigrant Children’s Home, she has no clue she
might end up as adoptive mother to four of them in rip-roaring Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Kit has spent her life in the Children’s Home and now she rides the Orphan Trains,
distributing homeless children to the young nation’s farmers as fast as the
rails are laid.
The first time handsome Patrick Kelley
spies Kit in Julesburg, Colorado Territory, he wants her. But
circumstances, and a spectral-looking demented gambler as well as Kit’s
certainty no one in his right mind would want her cobbled-together family,
conspire to keep them apart. As Patrick and Kit and her brood ride Hell on
Wheels into their destiny, they’re all forced to leave behind everything they knew
and forge new lives in the raw American West.
Here's an excerpt to keep us going, but if you keep checking in to my features blog next week you'll find that Alethea's sharing even more!
Cheyenne, Dakota Territory, January 1868
Panic bloomed, threatening to choke Kit as
she gasped for breath. Where could she be, the small girl brought all the way
out to the wilds of Wyoming from New York City? So certain she could make the
best decisions for the little golden-haired girl, Kit had gone against her own
upbringing as well as the stern advice of those older and wiser in order to
make this journey west. Now here was her little family plunked down in the raw
boomtown of Cheyenne, and she had lost not only her own direction but also the child
entrusted to her care.
Where
could Hannah be? Where?
The streets slimy with melting snow and
horse manure, Kit struggled to keep her footing as she ran frantically up one
and down another, screaming Hannah’s name. Unable to think where to look next,
at last she stood helplessly wringing her hands. Tears made slow, cold tracks
down her face.
A door opened behind her, and a voice full
of concern said, “Kit. As luck would have it, I was just coming to look for
you.”
And wouldn’t you know it? The voice of the
very man who seemed to turn up at every instance of her bad luck. Indeed, he
might be the root cause of her ill luck ever since she left New York City. And
to think he had once promised to be her salvation, did Patrick Kelley of the
dancing Irish green eyes.
But what were his true intentions as he
took hold of her arm? To save her? Or to be her final ruination, as she
suspected?
“Let me go.” She tried to wrench her arm
away. “Hannah is missing. She’s lost. I must find her!”
“Ah, leannán,
don’t take on so,” he said in a soft, cajoling voice. “Hannah is safe and
sound. I have her.”
Kit’s bones suddenly felt soft, as if they
had turned to mush, and her knees started to sag. Ah, God, and wasn’t her luck
running true? Patrick Kelley, the very man! Of all the places in Cheyenne that Hannah
might take refuge, of course it would turn out to be with saloon-keeper, and
the means of the erosion of many a young woman’s morals, Patrick Kelley.
“Come inside, please, Kit,” he insisted,
tugging her arm. Her feet were frozen inside boots soaked with street muck. She
felt herself weakening toward him, the warmth and light of him, and of the
place behind him, beckoning seductively to her.
She had come so far, all the while thinking
she knew what she was doing. Most of a year had passed since setting out. She
had followed a path on a journey of more than two thousand miles, a path of
righteousness that she thought would answer all eventualities.
And then her path, and the paths of the
children, crossed Patrick Kelley’s.
Now once more she must break down and
choose between her lofty principles and a future tied to Patrick Kelley. And
she found, to her utter consternation as she stared into eyes the color of
shamrocks, she…still…couldn’t… decide.
Thank you, Alethea, for coming today. My best wishes for a great launch for Walls for the Wind.
Slainthe!
Thank you so much for having Maud and me here today, Nancy! I hope everyone enjoys her part in Walls for the Wind.
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