By Harper St. George (Guest Blogger)
A big thank you to
Lisabet for inviting me to post today. I am Harper St. George and His
Abductor’s Desire is my debut book. With so many Regency
romances out there, I wanted to share with you why I decided to write
a romance set in the Wild West.
I’ve always loved
the Wild West. The westerns that came on TV when I was a kid were
fascinating. But I was really hooked when I read Autumn Dove by
Sylvie F. Sommerfield. It was the first romance novel I ever read.
Until then, I hadn’t realized that people actually wrote stories
like that. I quickly began to read as many romantic westerns as I
could find. They combined that exciting, tempestuous time when men
could get rich overnight and lose it just as quickly, with the
eternal love story.
It’s really a
unique time period in American history. Lawlessness was a way of life
as people struggled to carve out lives for themselves in an
unforgiving land. Outlaws, bank robbers, and cattle rustlers could be
hailed as heroes or criminals depending on who was telling the story.
The men who were charged with bringing order to the land were
sometimes the most corrupted. Black was never black and white was
never white. That’s what makes it such a great era for
storytelling. There are as many stories to tell as there were people
who lived there. When I finally made time to sit down and write a
romance, I naturally wanted to try my hand at writing a western.
My heroine, Charity, was inspired by this gray area in history. She’s a woman who uses the only means available to her – robbing banks – to attempt to right a wrong done against her family. While her methods may have been a little extreme, I think she’s someone we can all identify with. Bad things happen to all of us, often through no fault of our own. Who wouldn’t want to do whatever they could to make things right again. In the Wild West, or at least the fictionalized version, that was possible.
I also like to
explore contrasts and contradictions in my stories. Charity was
originally a Boston aristocrat, though her family fell from grace
when she was younger. She goes from elegant ballrooms and evenings
out at the theater to living a relatively isolated existence in the
mountains. Her gowns are exchanged for pants and buckskins, and her
life becomes obsessing about how to survive the long winters and
planning revenge. It’s quite a drastic change for her that
essentially transforms her into a completely different person.
While I have read
many historical westerns, I’ve never read one that featured a bank
robber as a heroine, so I wanted to explore the idea. What would
provoke a woman to go to that extreme? What would be the
consequences? What would happen if she met the hero during one of the
robberies? It was very interesting to explore the answers to those
questions. Besides, heroes get to have that sort of fun all the time,
so I figured it would be nice to let a heroine have fun for a change!
If you like the Wild
West like I do or just love history and want to read about it, these
are some online resources I’ve used during my research.
Preservation
Directory http://www.preservationdirectory.com
and American Memory from the Library of Congress
http://memory.loc.gov
They are great information depositories that sometimes offer that ever-so-precious primary resource.
Blurb
His Abductor’s
Desire by Harper St. George
Montana Territory, 1887
Heiress-turned-outlaw Charity Blake is
determined to get back the fortune the Davenport banking family took
from her father—even if she has to hold Brent Davenport ransom to
do it! After all, the seductive charmer stole something even more
valuable from her five years ago: her heart. But once she has Brent
in chains, Charity must face the fact that her desire for the man has
grown from the sweet dreams of a young girl to the unquenchable
passion of a woman. And soon it's not clear whether she's the captor,
or the captive….
Excerpt
“Nobody move! Keep
your hands where we can see `em!”
A hush swept over
the room as the bank customers, one by one, began to realize what was
happening. Charity Blake would have smiled at the effectiveness of
her command if she hadn’t been so unsettled to find the place
crowded. It was late Tuesday afternoon. No one was supposed to be
there except the clerks. Even the bank manager should have been two
blocks over at the saloon settling in for a long night of drinking
and gambling, his weekly indulgence when his wife spent Tuesday
evenings with her sewing circle. Yet, there he sat behind his desk,
quivering hands held high in the air, staring wide-eyed back at her.
Apparently their
reconnaissance had been wrong. She vowed to do better next time and
pushed the disappointment from her mind. It was better to concentrate
on not allowing her own hands to shake around the grip of her pistol
than linger on the setback. Besides, she knew from the first two
robberies that she had only seconds to command the attention and thus
the respect of the room before someone tried to be brave. It was time
to get to work.
“Don’t worry,
folks. We ain’t here for yer valuables, just the money in the
vault.” Her contrived accent came out deep and loud to make it past
the muffling barrier of the scarf covering the lower half of her face
and to hide her cultured Bostonian intonation.
As she spoke, her
partners took their appointed positions. Elle had come in through the
back door and quietly made her presence known, while Dew moved to
disarm the men in the room, quickly establishing a stack of revolvers
in the far corner.
“Get up and open
the vault.” Charity barked the order to the manager.
He sputtered for a
moment as if he might argue and looked at the customer sitting across
the desk from him. Had she not been watching so closely, Charity
would have missed the almost imperceptible nod from the man that gave
the manager the courage to get on his feet. Hands still in the air,
he walked his wiry frame to the vault, which sat in plain view behind
the row of clerks, and stopped there, afraid to proceed.
“Th-the key is on
my belt.” He explained, hands still in the air. His gaze went from
her to the customer left sitting at his desk.
Charity followed his
gaze and found herself looking at a broad pair of shoulders encased
in a fine wool coat. The coat was impeccably tailored, not the
roughspun typically found this far outside of the town of Helena. A
banking official was her first thought, but that didn’t explain why
her heart was suddenly threatening to pound out of her chest and the
blood had gone cold in her veins. The girl who had long ago been
banished to areas deep in her subconscious had already recognized the
set of those shoulders. She knew that thick, sable hair brushed back
in a style that had been entirely too long for Boston society but was
a trademark of his contemptuous nature.
“My friend here
can help you.” She managed to sound in control as she nodded to Dew
who then quickly walked over and cut the key free.
After a moment of
hassling with the lock, the bank manager pushed the door and it
opened with an ominous screech that filled the deathly silence of the
bank. Dew motioned him inside with her gun and followed him in to
fill the three saddlebags slung across her shoulders with as much
cash and gold as they could carry.
The moment they were
out of sight Charity walked up behind the mysterious customer sitting
at the desk. It was stupid. Everyone knew you didn’t go begging for
trouble. But the devil who she had long suspected had taken up
residence inside made her do it. The barrel of her pistol parted the
hair at the back of his head.
“What’s yer
name, mister?”
The man did not so
much as flinch when the steel touched his scalp.
“My name is none
of your damned business.” The voice was as hard and cold as the
pistol.
“Turn around,”
she commanded in a controlled, steady voice, but inside her stomach
was in knots.
“The sheriff’s
office is only blocks away. If you shoot, you won’t make it out of
the bank alive.” He did not turn around nor raise his hands from
the desk in surrender.
His refusal to give
in to her command only made her devil beg to be appeased. This man
and his family had taken everything there was to take from her. She
needed to stare him down. Needed him to watch her take something from
him, whether he knew her identity or not.
“Turn around, Mr.
Davenport.”
That got him.
His Abductor’s
Desire is available now!
Author Bio
She lives in
Atlanta, GA with her husband and two young children. Look for her
short story in the first Romance Writers of America anthology. She
would love to hear from you. Please visit her website at
www.harperstgeorge.com.
Follow Harper
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/harperstgeorge
Twitter:
@HarperStGeorge
4 comments:
Greetings, Harper!
I can't believe that this is your first book. You have such a confident voice!
I must say, though, that based on the cover Charity doesn't look much like and outlaw....!
Good luck with this book and all the ones to come!
Interesting excerpt! Thanks for guest blogging.
Thanks so much for inviting me to post, Lisabet! One thing I've learned in writing is that you either go for it or it falls flat. With such a strong heroine, I had to go for it so she could shine. I agree the cover doesn't completely represent her. She doesn't wear dresses and she carries a gun. You also wouldn't know that Brent spends most of the book in chains! Thanks again.
Thanks for reading my post, Kim!
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