SONNY Background

THE WESTFALL SAGA CONTINUES

Stanard Design Partners has wrapped up the lay-out and cover design of Sonny, Cold Slave Cradle, and I’m awaiting a proof of this my third novel. If all goes as well as Kedzie and Master, the proof should be acceptable and the novel ready for readers. Unless there are snafus in the system, Sonny should be on amazon.com by the second week of July and in bookstores shortly thereafter.

Sonny was a surprise to me. In crafting the plot of the first two books, I looked for a way to explain what was happening to Mooey as she ran away from Westfall in the wintry weather of January 1858. Because of point of view (POV) issues, I couldn’t divulge her fate. Kedzie and Master are both written in limited third person POV, (Kedzie told in the POV of Kedzie and Rio; and Master in POV of Tilmon and Georgiana). Mooey isn’t in the presence of any of these four persons after she runs to the woods. None of them knows what has happened to her, so none of them can talk about, debate, or otherwise let us know where she is or what she’s doing. I’m not explaining this well, but take my word for it, if I’d jumped into either of those novels with the story of Mooey, you would have noticed a narrative warp.

When Mooey shows up at the end of Kedzie after months of being lost, or at least gone, I knew you would be scratching your heads. How could you believe that a girl like Mooey had been hanging out in the woods during the coldest months of winter without food or proper clothing and survive? Of course she couldn’t. I was concerned that you would perceive this as a weakness in the plot if not faulty thinking on my part.

To shore up my credibility, I decided I had to write a novella to fill in the blanks. I set out to explain what happened to Mooey and how she managed to survive. In the meantime, I realized how important the baby born to Lovey and fathered by Tilmon is to the story. However innocent he is, the baby’s very existence is a damnation of Tilmon, who has few qualms about sending Sonny’s mother away in payment of a gambling debt. However, even after he loses his mother, Sonny is loved. Mooey falls for him in a big way. And then to my surprise, so does the stableman Wink. Before I know it, Wink and Mooey are cruising along in Sonny and the novella turns into a novel.

I hope you’ll like SONNY, Cold Slave Cradle, but whatever you think, please leave a comment on amazon. My marketing strategy is pretty much limited to amazon comments.