It's my pleasure to introduce Alethea Williams. Alethea's Western historical, Walls for the Wind, was released this month from Whiskey Creek Press.
Here are a few of Alethea's thoughts on writing.
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 reader response to my writing.
Check out this tempting synopsis and be sure to scroll down for an excerpt that Alethea has so generously shared.
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.
Excerpt:
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.
Walls of the Wind is available through the following links:
Whiskey Creek Press,
Kindle &
Nook.
To learn more about Alethea, visit the some of these locations
