Snark & Sensibility

PLEASE WELCOME

DONNA SCHLACHTER

TO

FICTION FRIDAY

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Have you ever had a project with a seemingly far-off due date? And then you diddle and dawdle until suddenly you’re pressed to complete it? That happened to me with this book. I finally figured out that I do better with shorter times before due dates. If I know I have 75 days to write, I wait until I have 45, and then I buckle down.

The other problem is that so much fun stuff happened within the time I spent writing this book. For example, my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and coming into Christmas, with all the parties and social events. While I am an introvert at heart, I like to get out for air once in a while, and if food is included, you can count me in.

In that way, I’m a lot like my heroine, Kinsella Jackson. A new widow, with four young children, she receives a marriage proposal before she leaves the cemetery, fresh from burying her husband. What’s a gal to do? But then her children take the situation in hand, and they submit an advertisement for a group that’s seeking men to come west. When Kingston Marchmont, a prison escapee down on his luck in Australia, sees the notice, he replies, hoping for a fresh start.

The book releases tomorrow, December 30th, but don’t wait! You can preorder the ebook here: https://www.amazon.com/King-Kinsella-Mail-Order-Papa-ebook/dp/B0CDFK6LYV and check out the rest of the series here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5F246HT

Question for readers: Leave a comment to enter a random drawing for an ebook copy of A King for Kinsella by answering the following question

What’s your favorite setting for a historical novel?

About Donna:

A hybrid author, Donna writes squeaky-clean historical and contemporary suspense. She has been published more than 60 times in books; is a member of several writers groups; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; ghostwrites; edits; and judges in writing contests. She loves history and research, traveling extensively for both, and is an avid oil painter. She is taking all the information she’s learned along the way about the writing and publishing process and is coaching committed career writers. Learn more at https://www.donnaschlachter.com/the-purpose-full-writer-coaching-programs Check out her coaching group on FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/604220861766651 or website:www.DonnaSchlachter.com Stay connected so you learn about new releases, preorders, and presales, as well as check out featured authors, book reviews, and a little corner of peace. Plus: Receive 2 free ebooks simply for signing up for our free newsletter!

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EXCERPT FROM A KING FOR KINSELLA  

Chapter 1

Whistler’s Gulch Ranch near Loveland, CO

March 14, 1878

Kinsella Jackson stared out over the dry and barren landscape from where she stood in the church cemetery. Winter grass crunched under foot. Snow-capped the mountains in the distance. A chill breeze careened off the foothills, raced along the valley, and rattled around her insides as though she had no skin or substance holding her together.

She pulled her shawl around her shoulders, wishing for a warmer covering. But she’d cut up her winter coat to make ponchos for her two youngest. And Abe’s overcoat? Worn even now as cloaks by her two oldest.

And why not? Abe had no need for it. Not now. Not since three days past.

She sniffled, holding back the tears as the preacher read Psalm Twenty-Three. Yay, though I travel through the valley of death, I will fear no evil.

Beside her, hers and Abe’s children. Stoic, broad-shouldered like their father, stood her eldest. Thomas, at fifteen, had already assumed the role of head of the house by taking on his father’s chores. But she knew him better than he knew himself. He looked tough and strong on the outside, yet the yearning to be her little boy and avoid this heartbreak was evident in his eyes.

Next in line as well as in age, Emily. At thirteen, caught in that alien space between child and adult. Temper tantrums one day, kind and nurturing the next. Kinsella never quite knew that to expect from her daughter any longer. Yet she, too, had been most helpful these past days once the shock of Abe’s death had passed.

Or had it? Emily seemed to spend far more time staring out the windows, her head tilted to one side as though listening. For what? Her father’s step? Well, that wouldn’t come again, would it?

Sometimes Kinsella wanted to shake the child back to reality. Then she remembered that Em was still a child.

Sarah, at nine, believed everything she was told. When Kinsella had told her children that their father had fallen to his death in the barn and was now with Jesus, Sarah cried. “Mama, I want to be with Papa and Jesus, too.”

At that moment, Kinsela would gladly have joined the pair of them.

But then she remembered her other children. They needed her. Abe was beyond her love or her service, but not their offspring.

And William, the youngest at six, trying so hard to be older than he was. Fretting at Thomas leaving him behind “With the girls”, as he often complained.

He now leaned forward and made eye contact with her, as though making certain she was there. He clung to her much more in recent days. Not that she minded, even welcoming him into her bed. The nights were chilly, and it had been a long time since she’d slept alone.

She smiled, hoping to reassure him, then she glanced along the valley. Their house and ranch lay tucked below in a far corner. Abe had built it into three sections and was saving money to purchase a fourth in a couple of years. Well, that dream died with him, along with many others.

Her teeth chattered, almost blocking out the preacher’s next reading. The one about being absent from the body was better, and that Abe was now present with Jesus.

Well, that was all well and good. Except what did Jesus need with him? She—and his children—needed him here.

When the preacher intoned a solemn Amen, Kinsella turned back to the funeral service. Four stalwart pallbearers lowered the handmade and rough-hewn casket into the ground. Kinsella stepped forward and picked up a frozen clod of dirt, tossing it onto the coffin. The clump thunked on the lid and broke apart, individual grains skittering across the wood like water droplets in a hot skillet.

Like her life. Her thoughts. Her hopes. And her dreams.

Thomas followed, dropping his handful of dirt, as did Emily. Sarah and William held back. Kinsella had explained what would happen today, but the younger ones struggled to remember.

Or perhaps, inside, they didn’t want to participate in this macabre dance.

Well, truth was, neither did she. If only she could roll back the days to the morning when Abe headed to the barn to toss down hay for the cows. Maybe she could have saved him if she’d found him quicker. Perhaps she could have talked him out of—no, she wouldn’t travel that road. There was no evidence he’d taken his own life, the sheriff said. A simple accident.

Except not so simple. One misstep, one moment of mis-attention, and he was gone.

The preacher stood in front of her, offering his condolences. Well, a fat lot of good his words did. A widow at thirty-five, four children to raise and feed and clothe, and a ranch to run.

But instead of voicing her thoughts, she pasted on a tiny smile, thanking him for his kind words.

He gripped her hands in his own. “Perhaps we’ll see you at church more often.”

“Perhaps.”

Abe wasn’t a church-goer. She’d have been there every Sunday, but her husband always found a reason to lollygag, ensuring they would be late.

Maybe she would make more of an effort.

She wrested her hands from his grip and turned to walk back to their wagon, which Thomas had driven here and parked outside the cemetery. She nodded to several people she knew by name but avoided stopping to talk. There was no money to host a reception—not in the church nor in their home.

As she reached the gate, a man hurried toward her. She groaned. Not Albert Walker, who owned the mercantile. At this rate, she could be here all day.

“Widow Jackson? A moment, please.”

She slowed then turned to face the portly, balding man. “Mister Walker.”

“I’m sorry for your trials, ma’am.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I know this may seem like an inopportune time to consider marrying again, and I’m not expecting you to make a decision today.”

Her brow pulled down, and his words chilled her core. “Decision?”

“I would be pleased to take you on as wife, and your children as my own. We’re of the same age, I am unencumbered, and could afford to provide comfort and solace in your distress.”

She stifled a giggle. A most inappropriate giggle, at that, she was certain. “Thank you.”

“Then you accept?” He wrung his hands together. “Oh, that is--”

“No!” Heads turned her way, and heat rushed up her neck and cheeks. “I mean, thank you for the offer, but the children and I need time to work through our grief.”

“More than past tomorrow?”

She smiled and patted his arm. “I’ll let you know. But if you find another in the meantime, please, don’t consider yourself beholden to me.”

He studied her for a long moment. Then he sniffed. “You mock me.”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“You do. You have no intention of settling with me.”

She drew herself up to her full height. “You’re right. I was trying to be civil.”

The man pivoted and stalked away, leaving her free to climb into her wagon, where her children waited.

Thomas glanced over his shoulder as Mister Walker mounted his horse and rode off. “What did he want?”

“Nothing.”

She hated lying to her children, but how to explain that she’d turned down a marriage proposal before leaving the cemetery where they’d laid their father to rest?

The wagon wheels crunched over the frozen earth as they rode back to their ranch. As they made the last turn from the main road onto their drive, she turned in her seat.

“Children, we need to talk.”

She waited until they quieted, then smiled at the three somber faces staring up at her. “We are on our own. Papa would want us to smile and laugh and play again.”

Emily’s bottom lip jutted out. “But everything has been so dismal since Papa—since he—”

Sarah piped up. “Since Papa went to be with Jesus.”

Kinsella nodded. “I know it’s been difficult for us. But we must continue.”

Thomas swiveled in his seat. “I heard a couple of men talking at the mercantile. One said he’d buy our ranch if you were to sell it.”

Sarah’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “Where would we go, Mama?”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

That seemed to settle their minds and their nerves, and when they reached their house, the children jumped down and headed out to do their chores. Kinsella went inside, stoked the fire in the stove, and pulled meat and bread from the pantry.

They might not have much, but at least they had each other.

~*~

Durbin, Australia

“Get out and stay out.”

Strong hands gripped Kingston Marchmont’s shirt and propelled him out the door and into the alley, where he landed in a lump in the litter.

He grunted and jumped to his feet, fists clenched, but the barkeep had already shut—and locked—the door.

He looked up and down the alley, thankful nobody had seen what just transpired. That was his fourth job in three months. Not a good track record. And it wasn’t his fault. He worked hard. Turned up for his shifts on time. Shaved every other day. Bathed once a week whether he needed to or not.

But life as an ex-convict wasn’t easy. Particularly this transportee to Australia accused of a crime he hadn’t committed. Mayb he should have served his sentence and walked away from the past. Free and clear.

Kingston shook his head. There was no such thing as free and clear for men like him.

As the sun set over the city, he sought a place to sleep. Somewhere safe. Out of the elements.

Shrugging his shoulders down into his thin overcoat, keeping his eyes on the ground—he’d learned early never to attract attention to himself—he eyed his surroundings.

He grunted. So much for remaining invisible.

A lock of hair drooped over his brow. With an impatient if well-practiced twitch of his head, he moved the offending curl aside. A drunk propped in a doorway muttered something unintelligible as he passed. A dream or perhaps even a vision from a wine-induced intoxication.

Thankfully, Kingston had never fallen victim to the lure of alcohol.

One of the few vices he’d avoided in his nearly forty years on this earth.

Because the truth was, although innocent of the crime that resulted in his conviction in a court of law, estrangement from his family and all he knew, transportation to Australia, then languishing for seven and a half years before escaping, would have sent a lesser man over the brink into mind-numbing oblivion.

Just his luck he was convicted in the final year of the transportation to Australia program. Ten years ago. And he’d spent the past two and a half years looking over his shoulder. Expecting a meaty hand halting him in his footsteps.

Or a bullet between his shoulders.

But still he lived free.

Sort of.

A wooden crate the size of a piano loomed in the dusk. That might work for tonight. March heralded the coming of fall in the southern hemisphere, opposite to the clime in England, where spring was making an appearance with warmer temperatures, leaves, and flowers..

Kingston tucked himself into the box, then grabbed at fluttering papers nearby. A couple of newspapers to keep himself warm, and—hey-ho, what was this? A penny magazine. Mystery and Mayhem.

He chuckled. How appropriate. Summed up his life perfectly.

With the light fast dimming, he scanned the pages, then closed the edition and set it beside him, planning to read it in the morning. As he did, an advertisement caught his eye.

AMERICA. THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY. NEED A FRESH START?

Did he. And how.

He picked up the magazine, shoved his makeshift paper blankets aside, and scooted out. Standing beneath the nearest streetlamp, he read more.

Men needed in the West. Looking for adventure? Requirements: white, free, able. Passage paid. Apply here.

Well, he fit all of that.

Sounded like an answer to prayer.

Especially the part about needing a fresh start.