About Me
My descent from Missouri pioneers, childhood camp-outs
in the High Sierras with my two brothers and dozen cousins, and my college days in Nebraska and Colorado turned me into a lifelong fan of the Old West, where freedom reigned and the sky was tall. Although I live in a suburb, I'm definitely a country bumpkin...and our town is surrounded by strawberry fields and lemon groves.
I'm a member of the OCC and LARA chapters of RWA. My latest Western, Marrying Minda, is currently available at The Wild Rose Press. I'm thrilled it placed first in the "Merritt Magic Moment" Contest sponsored by San Antonio Romance Authors as well as placed first in the "Ignite the Flame" contest held at Central Ohio Fiction Writers.
And Marrying Mattie, featuring Minda's younger sister and the handsome schoolteacher Call Hackett has just been acquired by my editor and will be released sometime in 2010. Yee-haw!
Teaching high school English helped me hone my own writing skills, but I'm lucky now to be retired on the California coast with my firefighter husband. Our son and daughter survived my classes and both are recent graduates of the University of Southern California. Best of all, I am the besotted gramma of a toddling baby boy. Cutest kid in the world, hands down.
Read the opening scenes from OUTLAW BRIDE...finalist in the 2009
"Romance Through the Ages" Contest
Verde Valley, Arizona Territory
September 1881
Of all the goddam ways to die!
The thick strips of canvas around her neck wouldn’t give her but a second or two of breathing room. Most times she kept the cloth tight around her bosoms to hide the fact she was a female. But today she wore the only dress she had, and its high collar hid the strips just fine.
Ahab had taught her this trick, and she just might get away with it.
He’d taught her other tricks, too. She dug through the braid twisted atop her head. Grabbing the knife she’d hidden in her hair, she got started hacking at the noose.
Even if the posse turned back and saw her, she’d plumb choose getting shot quick instead of strangling slow. But she figured they were too lily-livered to watch the hanging of an itsy bitsy girl all the way through to the end.
Right now, she kicked like a pouting mule against the air, not caring one whit she might slice up her knuckles and fingertips. At least the posse had let her keep her hands free. For last minute prayers, of course. And she had kept her hands folded, right until the end.
But the rope was thick. She was dying. She truly was. The world was turning black, her throat collapsing, lungs empty.
And she was dying all alone. Ahab had abandoned her, like he did everybody who caused him a bother, letting her hang for the nine years of temptation into which he’d led her.
At last the hemp split, and she tumbled into a heap on the ground. Her ankle twisted, and a rock stabbed her thigh. Blood dripped from a cut on her thumb, but all that was sure better than a broken neck.
For a while, she lay in the dust underneath the hanging tree, grabbing for air and ripping off the loops of canvas. Air tore into her chest while she shook like a diamondback’s rattle. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed a straight razor. But she was alive.
And the posse was gone. Big brave men. Some of the folks in Pioneer Meadows had yammered plenty against the lynching of a female. But Ahab Perkins was her brother, after all. For most, that was guilt enough.
But she had no time to whine. She had work to do. After shaking the pain from her ankle and wiping blood from her thumb, she got to her knees, took her knife and started to dig her own grave.
Right there under the hanging tree. When she was done, sweat soaked her like a sudden rain. For sure Ahab would seek proof of her death. Well, those few folks hereabouts who’d pitied her just might have snuck away to bury her in secret and never tell a soul it was them.
But then she reckoned Ahab might dig her up. No, not for proof, but to get Ma’s pearls, the beauteous strand she’d sewn into the hem of her skirt. After she laid the canvas inside the shallow hole, she relieved herself, both ways, for good measure, letting loose the muscles that almost gave way while she hanged. Filled it up again, quick, and dotted a line around it with rocks. Pain and weariness pushed down hard on her shoulders. But she had one last thing to do.
She set to work carving her marker on two dry juniper branches. After tying them together with a tall weed, she stuck the crude cross where her head ought to be.
Jessy Belle Perkins
Aged 18
Hanged for an outlaw
Hell, it was eerie, seeing her own tombstone. She wanted to weep, but the thirst wouldn’t let her. The Arizona sun sliced into her body, hard and greedy. Like Ahab cut his meat at mealtimes. She knew something of the Havasupai whose lands these were. All she had to do was look for a dragonfly carved on a rock. Then she’d find a hidden spring.
So far, rocks but no dragonfly. All she saw were scrubby thorny plants and alligator juniper just like the hanging tree. Its lowest branch had been strong enough to bear her weight. She wasn’t very big at all.
The good men of Pioneer Meadows hadn’t even found her worthy of a new gallows.
Pioneer Meadows. She almost laughed at the lie. There wasn’t any grass for miles, much less a meadow. Just yucca and cactus and alligator juniper.
So Jessy Belle Perkins took a fallen branch and swept away what footprints she needed to and set off to find water. And after that, to do what she did best.
Steal a horse.
But no. She started to shake worse than before. She’d almost met her Maker just now. Shock was creeping upon her, but so was good sense.
Make that borrow a horse. The girl she’d been was lying now in a fake grave. Her outlaw days were over.
It was time to become Respectable. To stop cussin’.
To become the woman she could have been if Pa hadn’t killed Ma and left her to Ahab.
And right then she burst into tears.
# # #
“Not much longer to the creek, boy,” Cleeland Redd announced to his dog. He might be a full grown man of two dozen years, but he was never one to feel foolish holding conversations with the big black mutt. Renegade was never quarrelsome, never gave him any lip, and always listened to his advice.
All around him, the red rocks of Cold Canyon glowed like flame against the late afternoon sun. Looked like the Creator had tried His hand at sculpture before He was done. No carvings in Italian museums could beat this.
Without a doubt, Cleeland Redd, otherwise known to all as Redd, was a spiritual man. He believed in the Holy Spirit and the Great Spirit, and once in a while righteously celebrated them both with New Testament wine and Navajo peyote. And he sure as hell respected the Good Book in spite of its big, mysterious words.
But right now, he was assisting Sister Adelaide Eugene for one reason only. Money. Salvation was the least of his concerns. Once he delivered this wagonload of supplies to her mission school outside Cathedral Rock, he’d bring in five more of the dollars he needed to stock his new ranch at Whisper Ridge.
Day before last, he’d finished earning all he could assisting at fall round-ups. Now he had time as well as need. For once, he guessed the Lord was on his side, too.
Although Redd had to admit he had long feared Sister Adelaide Eugene. She reminded him too much of his school days, when nuns smacked his knuckles just because the letters on the chalkboard didn’t spell the same way inside his head.
He liked his world better, where an X or a handshake was all a man needed.
Right then, in a clump of chokecherry along the road, he saw it.
A woman’s body.
“Damn. What the hell?” He swallowed hard.
Without meaning to, his mind dizzied and his stomach churned. His years as a Cavalry scout had hardened him to just about anything. But when he shut his eyes, he still saw Tawana. Or what was left of her. He’d been miles away, too far to be of help. Right now, he choked down the memory and settled his disposition quick.
“Whoa,” he yelled to the mule team and “Hold up, boy” to Renegade. As he slowed and braked, the dog jumped down anyway and hightailed it to the scene.
Redd’s heart hammered. Truth was, the nightmares he’d seen during the Apache Campaign had finally convinced him to leave the military and make a new life. Lay Tawana’s ghost to rest. Most of all, be kind as he could to all living things.
Biography
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Serenity Falls, New Hampshire
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