TRIED AND TRUE - Mary Connealy - One Free Book

Welcome back, Mary. Where do you write?

I’m a really low maintenance writer, Lena. So anywhere is fine. I’ve written in a restaurant, a library, an airport, a hotel room, besides in my office at home. I can tune out the whole world, which isn’t really very nice of me.

When deciding on how to publish, what directed you to the route you took?

I got published before there were so many options, or at least the other options has some serious drawbacks. So I just took the direct route, pitching to agents and editors until I finally found one who took a chance on me.

Me, too, Mary. What kinds of things do you like to do outside of writing?

Um….reading. My family likes to boat on the Missouri River and they ski and ride on tubes and swim.

I like to go but mainly I just sit and watch them and enjoy the show.

What kinds of advice would you give to someone who wants to start writing?

I’d say write. Whatever else you do, write. Get a book finished. If you can’t finish a book, you just aren’t ever going to get a book published so that’s the first test. Finish.

What is your favorite book? Favorite author? Do you have an author that inspired/inspires you to write?

Favorite book of all time is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Second is A Lantern in her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich. Favorite author? That’s tough because I love so many authors, both their work and them personally. Let’s just go ahead and pick YOU Lena. There I’ve done well, I think. You inspire me, too, darlin’.

Thanks, Mary. You inspire me, too, and we have fun when we get together. Where did you get the idea for Tried and True?  

I have completely handed the job of titles over to Bethany House. They always just delight me with what they choose so I trust them completely and just help all I can and wait to be charmed.

From idea to final revision, how long did it take to write?

I’d say four months. I revise as I write so when I am finished it’s by no means a rough draft. But I still go through it a couple of times to sharpen it up. But I’ve been doing that all along.

Are you working on anything now?

I have a second book coming in this new series. Tried and True is book #1 of the Wild at Heart series. Book #2 is Now and Forever. More love, more laughs, more fun in the Wild West.

Please tell us about the story.

Kylie Wilde is the youngest sister—and the most civilized. Her older sisters might be happy dressing in trousers and posing as men, but Kylie has grown her hair long and wears skirts every chance she gets. It's a risk—they are homesteading using the special exemptions they earned serving in the Civil War as boys—but Kylie plans to make the most of the years before she can sell her property and return to the luxuries of life back East.

Local land agent Aaron Masterson is fascinated with Kylie from the moment her long hair falls from her cap. But now that he knows her secret, can he in good conscience defraud the U.S. government? And when someone tries to force Kylie off her land, does he have any hope of convincing her that marrying him and settling on the frontier is the better option for her future?

Please give us a peek at the first page of the book.

Aspen Ridge

Idaho Territory

July 1866

Kylie Wilde’s right hand tightened on the hammer as she stared at her roof. A shingle flapped in the endless summer wind. A storm was blowing in over the Rocky Mountains, blast it. She was going to have to go up there and nail that board down or sleep under a downpour.

           

She’d slept in the rain before. Nasty. About as nasty as crawling across a steeply pitched roof. Her hand clenched. The hammer rose and her attitude fell.

The sky was as sullen as her mood with its scudding gray clouds. Rain was coming. She had to fix that roof.

It was a fight to keep from saddling her gray mustang and riding to Shannon’s house. Shannon, a year older and soft-hearted, would help—probably. Kylie had just coaxed her into building a corral around the barn, and a week earlier she’d built the porch. And that was after Shannon and Bailey, the oldest of the three Wilde sisters, built the whole house.

Carpentry wasn’t Kylie’s greatest gift.

           

Truth be told, the roof was about the only thing Kylie had done herself—which explained why it wasn’t holding together.

Her sisters had hoped she couldn’t get in much trouble just nailing boards in place.

Of course Kylie’s nailing was more like trying to scare the nails into the wood than pound them in. Her sisters were just plain better at it, and Kylie didn’t mind admitting that.

Since the house and barn were done, and with her own homestead to run, kindhearted Shannon had started showing signs of botheration when Kylie tried to wheedle help out of her.

And Bailey, the oldest of the Wilde women, wasn’t a tractable woman on her best day. Kylie shuddered at the thought of going to her for something this simple.

The shudder flapped and Kylie could swear the clatter sounded like mockery. Her cabin was laughing at her. The wind was blowing for the very purpose of tormenting her. The branches in the forest around her seemed to clap, jeering at the trouble she faced. The mountains stood in judgment and that judgment was, Kylie Wilde was a miserable failure as a homesteader. Kylie could hear all of that as she stood, hammer in hand, scowling at her roof.

It would be fair to say Kylie Wilde wasn’t a woman happy with the life that had been shoved like an anvil onto her shoulders.

But whether she was happy or not didn’t matter one whit. That flapping board had to be nailed. Not only was the wind going to rip it all the way off, but it was right over Kylie’s bed. She was in for a miserable, soggy night if she didn’t act fast.

She could just drag the bed to the side and put a bucket under that hole, but if she didn’t go up and fix it now, she’d have it to do tomorrow. Putting it off did no good.

Gritting her teeth, Kylie tried to think of all the ridiculous manly skills her sisters had taught her. Of course mostly, Kylie could think of the manly skills they’d tried to teach her and how good she’d always been at avoiding their lessons.

And now she needed to dredge up a few of them or sleep under a deluge.

Ladder.

She needed a ladder. Except the one they’d used to build had been borrowed from cranky old pa. Talk about someone Kylie didn’t want to ask for help! Cudgel Wilde would scold and snarl and in the end make Kylie want to jump on her horse and ride off and never come back.

Thunder sounded in the distance. She had to get on with this.

“How do I get up there without a ladder?” Kylie studied the house, the porch roof wasn’t real high but it was steep. Bailey said the Rockies had heavy snow and the roof needed a steep pitch or it would collapse under the weight.

There was a chimney on the south, but it climbed up the outside wall right to the peak of the house.

Her gaze slid down to the stovepipe. She’d managed to fetch a real pot-bellied stove out to her house. Her family thought that was foolishness but Kylie hated cooking in a fire place.

That stovepipe was fairly solid. It came out of the house through the wall, then curved up through the porch roof. Bailey had done it in that strange way instead of having it go straight up. She’d said something about retaining heat and preventing sparks and keeping rain out of the stove.

Kylie hadn’t really been listening.

Where can my readers find you on the Internet?

Seekerville
Petticoats and Pistols
My Blog
My Website
My Newsletter
And I’m on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maryconnealy
And Twitter: http://twitter.com/maryconnealy

Thank you for stopping by, Mary. It's always fun to visit with you.

Readers, here are links to the book. By using one when you order, you help support this blog.
Tried and True - Christianbook.com
Tried and True (Wild at Heart) - Amazon
Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) - Kindle

Christian Book Store

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