Thursday, December 20, 2018

It's that time of year...



My yuletide letter for 2018...
...showing a few (often mundane but memorable) events in my life:

Started the year right by seeing Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Spent the rest of January working on taxes.

In February the tenth book in my "Behind the Ranges" series, Commoner By Choice, was released. Yay! Have you read it yet?

Planted snow peas and Walla Walla onion sets in March. Yum.

The builders came and replaced my front porch flooring in May, and when they were gone, I repainted all the posts and railings.

A flying trip to Boise in June, to attend a memorial for my first serious boyfriend. Does anyone ever forget that first love?

The Hillsboro Fourth of July Parade is one of those old-fashioned, small-town treats that I really enjoy. Only one of my grandchildren (Amber) marched with the Century High band this year.

After an early August lunch in Dayton, OR, my friend Dick and I discovered a patch of perfectly ripe Himalayan blackberries and made pigs of ourselves. Yum, again.

September was the annual Clan Gathering, this year in Brookings, OR. Lovely setting, perfect weather, but fraught with disasters: one collision, one punctured oil pan, one lost drive shaft, four broken ribs, and a death in a family. Those of us who survived unscathed spent the rest of the month waiting for our disasters to strike.

Another funeral in October, for Tony Schneider, brother-by-choice, best of friends. Sorely missed.

Spent month of being a chauffeur/cook/companion for a friend who'd suffered a stroke, and who didn't have WiFi. What a surprise to realize that the Internet isn't the only source of the daily news.

One invariably looks back at the year's events as it draws to a close. The world is in a mess, our political system is a disaster, and our planet is facing a point of no return. Is it too late to change?

I hope not. I want to believe in happy endings.

Love & joy to you all,
Jude

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

The Latest Story from "Behind the Ranges"


In case you hadn't heard Commoner By Choice, my newest "Behind the Ranges" book, was released on 16 February. I've been making a big noise about it everywhere I could think of, and I hope that means lots of folks will buy it. Or ask their local libraries to get a copy (in print or ebook) so they can read it.

This is the tenth book in the series. There's also a Christmas-themed novella. And the beginnings of an eleventh (or maybe another novella) on my computer. If you've visited my website, you'll know that the series title is from lines in The Explorer, a poem by Kipling: "Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the ranges--/Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go."

When I wrote the first book, The Queen of Cherry Vale, I didn't know I was beginning a series. I just wanted to share a story that had been gestating for a long time. I've spent nearly my whole life within ten miles of the Oregon Trail, and its history has always fascinated me. I've read a bunch of contemporaneous accounts of the journey west, seen several movies depicting it (mostly inaccurately), and walked bits and pieces of it, from Independence, Missouri, all the way to Oregon City, Oregon. Traveling the route, or as much of it as we could get to while towing a trailer that wasn't intended for off-road travel, gave me an appreciation of just how far it was between start and finish.

The Oregon Trail is about two thousand miles long. It took most nineteenth century travelers between four and six months to make the journey. We drove it in the late twentieth century, with frequent stops to visit historical sites or walk still accessible and visible sections. If we could have taken the time off from our jobs, we'd have spent longer on the trail, but even the short two weeks we spent exploring it left us with a sense of awe at the accomplishment of those early travelers.

Only one of the books in the "Behind the Ranges" series is about the trail, though, because the people who followed the trail settled in Cherry Vale, a place that exists only in my imagination and between the pages of my books. It's in the general vicinity of Garden Valley, Idaho, though, if you are curious. I did a little rearranging of geography and topography while I was creating Cherry Vale, because I needed it to be more isolated, more inaccessible, and well off the beaten paths of aboriginal peoples, beaver trappers and gold seekers.

Once my characters, the Lachlans and the Kings, settled there, their adventures--most of them anyway--were over. A peaceful life in an isolated mountain valley isn't very interesting to write about. The trouble was, they kept talking to me about their lives, about their children. More stories for me to tell.

The first three books are about those early settlers. The subsequent ones--all but one--are about their children. That one is only part of the series because characters from the other books appear briefly. Knight in a Black Heart is the book I had to write, the story of a woman plant explorer in a time few women were given credit for their scientific discoveries. Yet there were many women who did significant work in the sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Several of them were botanists, and since I am--or was until I retired--a botanist too, I was compelled to tell a story that celebrated their accomplishments.

How many more books will there be in the series? I don't know, but I can promise that I haven't used up the whole second generation yet. And there are other characters who’ve appeared here and there in the series. Murphy Creek is one. I've got the beginnings of his story outlined, but he's not cooperating. Not yet. One of these days I'll convince him that it's his turn, though. And there's a young man named E.Z. King who is clamoring for a book of his own. So far, though, he won't tell me how he's related to the families or what year he was born.

Ah, well, I'll pry his story out of him one day. Or maybe another of the Lachlan kids will decide to have an adventure. Only time will tell.

Here's a list of the "Behind the Ranges" stories. I hope you'll read one or all of them.
The Queen of Cherry Vale
Ice Princess
The Duchess of Ophir Creek
Noble Savage
Lord of Misrule (novella)
Knight in a Black Hat
The Lost Baroness
The Imperial Engineer
Undercover Cavaliere
Squire's Quest
Commoner By Choice
And don't forget to drop by my website. You'll find a link there to Coffee Time Romance, where I'm giving away copies of all the series titles.
~~Jude

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Sample COMMONER BY CHOICE

The story until now:
For days they've known someone was following them, someone who wishes them harm. Unable to take the safe route back to the nearest settlement, Micha has chosen the ancient, dangerous trail along the Middle Fork of the Salmon, sometimes known as "The River of No Return" for the violence of its rapids.
She looked tired, he realized. Dust coated her face and turned her dark blue clothing to mottled tan. Sweat stained the sides of her shirt. Suddenly he realized what he hadn't noticed until now.
"What have you got on underneath?"
"What?"
"Under your shirt and britches. What kind of underwear do you have on?"
"I don't think that's any of your business," she snapped, as her cheeks turned rosy.
"It is if you're overheating. Are you wearing wool longjohns?"
She nodded, and got even pinker.
He shook his head, more at his own negligence than at her foolishness. She was a lady, despite the trousers and the shorn hair. Of course she was wearing longjohns. "You'll want to go down to the river after we get camp set up. Get yourself a quick bath, and when you dress, leave off the wool underwear."
She opened her mouth.
"Eliza, it got hot today. Tomorrow's apt to be even hotter, because at least half the time we'll be feeling the full force of the sun. We'll probably have to use the water in the cask, because I don't think getting to the river's going to be easy in the next stretch. Do you want to get heatstroke?"
"No, of course not. But--"
"Please?"
For a moment she gnawed on her lip. "When you said we had to leave as much as we could spare behind... Well, I don't have anything else that's decent. It's all in that bundle you took to Jethro."
Sucking in his cheeks to prevent laughing aloud, he managed to say, "I don't think anyone will notice." You are lying through your teeth, boy. "Those clothes don't fit all that tight. Now, you get done here and head down to the river. I'll keep Jocky busy while you get cleaned up."
She gave a sigh and turned back to the pack she'd been opening. "All right, but it just doesn't seem mannerly, to go around half-dressed."
Micah decided he would be wisest if he kept his mouth shut. He went looking among the trees near the river's edge for game trails. The itch was back, and if possible he'd like to keep their camp hidden. But only if he could avoid the paths made by critters on their way to water.
He also wanted to tether the mules tonight. Reminded, he called, "Eliza, when you go to the river, take Rachel, will you? She can soak her legs while you wash." And if Rachel was with her, he'd worry a lot less while doing his best not to look her way. Mules were nearly as good as watchdogs.
Eliza stripped quickly and shook the dust from her britches and shirt. Her longjohns were damp and stuck to her in the most uncomfortable places. She skinned out of them and started to toss them on top of her other clothing, but then paused and gave them a good look. She wasn't going to put them back on today or tomorrow, was she? She took them into the water with her, and resisted squealing when she squatted. It's cold! Why is it this cold when the air is nice and warm?
Quickly she soaped herself, dunked to rinse. She stayed as low in the shallow water as she could--up to her waist--while soaping the longjohns and squeezing them between her hands. When she submerged them the water turned brown. I didn't realize how filthy I was. A couple more rinses and squeezes and she saw no trace of either brown or soapsuds.
Just then Rachel brayed. She was looking downriver.
Peering in that direction, Eliza saw no motion, nothing that might have caught Rachel's attention. And now the mule was drinking, so she couldn't really be alarmed. Perhaps a coyote, slinking around... They'd seen a couple today.

She splashed to the bank and used her shirt to wipe most of the water away. It would dry quickly, in this heat. When she'd dressed, she realized how much cooler she was without that layer of thin wool next to her skin. But it still felt indecent.
****
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