Please welcome our guest today, DeeDee Lane. Comment and/or share your thoughts with DeeDee for your chance to win a 10 dollar Starbucks Gift Card! Must have a USA mailing Address – Drawing will be held on RELEASE DAY – February 22nd, 2017.
At one point in
writing MY TRAVELING MAN I had to ask myself what Alice (the novella’s heroine)
misses when she goes back in time. What does she most yearn for from her modern
life? Instead of focusing on the HUGE
things like family, electricity, and women’s voting rights I decided to focus
on small everyday things. I brainstormed a large list for Alice and narrowed it
down to: three star Chicken Pad Thai, a blow dryer, and Advil…everyday things
she didn’t miss until she didn’t have them anymore.
Now that I have
some distance from the story I’m asking myself what I would miss if I was
traveling on the Oregon Trail for seven months. I would imagine some of the pioneers
moving WESTWARD HO, missed things like planting a summer garden, making a meal
on the stove, water from a well that was clear, cold, and safe to drink. But what would I miss if I both traveled back
in time and made the long trek to Oregon Territory in a covered wagon? To make it more challenging I took
family/friends, electricity and voting rights OFF the table. I also acknowledged this whole question is
based on a lot of privileged assumptions I am able to imagine because I live in
the United States of America.
I’d miss my
magazine subscriptions – I love getting magazines in the mail! I never remember
when they are coming so they’re always a surprise: Cook’s Illustrated, Smithsonian,
and Romance Writer’s Report. Hmmm…come to think of it, I’d miss the
mail! Wait wait…the little things. Okay,
I’d miss Jiffy Peanut Butter…yes, I’m an adult…and yes I still love peanut
butter toast for breakfast. I’d miss shoes with cushioning and support built
into the foot pad. I really don’t want
to think of life without my Duomax, Floride, IGS Asics!
What about
you? What would you miss? As writers I
think we can all agree our laptops, computers, netbooks but what else?
As I get ready
to release MY TRAVELING MAN that finishes the four part Slip in Time series I
am well into my next writing project. I’m left with one final thought—something
Alice discovered as she did “without.” I can do without an awful lot of stuff,
big or small, if I have love. This love can include; love with an individual, a
family member, or an overall approach to life that includes being loving and
kind to my fellow human beings as we make our life’s journey together.
Book Blurb:
My
Traveling Man
By DeeDee Lane
20,000 Novella – Romance – Subgenre:
Western, Fantasy
My Traveling Man is the fourth installment in the Slip in Time Series
Alice Hanstrom prefers books to people, facts over
feelings, and in her world, “adventure” is just a word in the dictionary. That
is until the night she braves shadowed hallways of the Cowboy and Western Museum
in pursuit of a long-lost diary. Her search of an antique covered wagon halts
abruptly when the museum slips Alice back in time.
Thomas
Bristol is an experienced wagon master. On a daily basis he deals with cholera,
exhausted oxen, and river rapids on the treacherous journey to Oregon
Territory. But he’s completely flummoxed when a mysterious woman appears in Big
Blue River.
On the
trail, Alice and Thomas strive to balance his love of roaming adventure and her
desire for predictable orderliness. As the wagon train reaches Independence
Rock, the sparks between them catch fire. But can such different people become
equal partners in love…and can their love survive the slip in time?
Excerpt:
Alice bent her lanky frame forward to squint at
the notation scratched in the corner of the diary—scribbled in a different
hand, less confident, childish.
I’m
hiding Mama’s last diary in our covered wagon’s secret hidey hole ‘til she’s in
her right mind.
The wagon mentioned was in the museum’s storage
basement, two floors down. Alice’s stomach fluttered and hopped. Every part of
her yearned to find the “hidey hole,” be the one to find the diary not just
write about it afterwards. Before she could talk herself out it, Alice exited
the research library to set off down the darkened corridors of the Cowboy and
Western Museum. Her footsteps made soft thwacks on the marble floor. She, Alice
Hanstrom, intrepid scaredy-cat, was on an adventure. How thrilling, how positively
mind–blowing, how…. Alice flinched away from a creaking noise to her right.
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