With more coronavirus cases reported close to home, grocery shelves stripped bare, and stores and public places closing each day, the pandemic of COVID-19 occupies a large part of my thoughts as it does for everyone these days. No one is free or safe from being affected by this situation, or even from contracting a case of this deadly virus themselves. My thoughts go out to each and every one of you, wherever you may live or however the virus is changing your life right now. Pray for your friends and loved ones, respond to your community’s crisis in a sensitive and wise way, care for those more at risk among you, and never forget to wash your hands!
. . . . "How The Test of Devotion Was Saved,” a little play on words from the classic movie “How the West Was Won,” would be appropriate for talking about my only western story. Very much like the West itself, Devotion’s road hasn’t been easy. It didn’t fit with my other work. Like Victoria: A Tale of Spain it used Spanish-speaking culture as a backdrop, but the stories Devotion most resembled were actually City of the Invaders (with its criminal angle) and Bellevere House (with its use of historical Americana.) These stories already utilized those elements in my work. So I often wondered if Devotion was even necessary. It was a challenging book for me to write. I couldn’t remember Lanmont’s first name. I couldn’t remember the alias he used for the first few chapters until his identity was revealed. In the middle part of the story, where Arabella was rescued, I found my eyes sliding off the page. I couldn’t concentrate. (Not a great mindset to be in when looking to publish a book!) Even this year, when the book pushed forward a notch, I still had more typos than average for my first drafts. Giving it to an editor got rid of that problem. But it sounds like Devotion was a largely merited flop. It was too late to recover it and maligning of the early launch by readers was pretty fair. But then . . . some stories take time. They grow in the telling. Slowly, Devotion slipped into place. It didn’t jar as much, I found the material much easier to work with. The character relationships started to make sense, the errors disappeared, and I could see Lanmont more clearly. In fact, he’s one of the best characters. (Even if he is kind of a jerk.) And so The Test of Devotion is not what it used to be. It’s become a really good story. Even with its many flaws, bumpy launch, and gritty, abrasive tone, there's something to love in this book. It's a story of unlikely friends overcoming differences to help someone else out and that's one thing the world always needs more of. Because it was published fairly recently, I’ll be talking about its characters in posts a little bit down the road. And there will be more updates. It didn’t begin this way in the initial drafts, but by the time The Test of Devotion was completed it had grown into a celebration of old-fashioned storytelling. In fact, I thought it was going to be rather a modern story, a genre-market oriented short western romance (think the now defunct Love Inspired Historical.) Since that didn’t work out, the story drifted for a long while until I was seized with a new idea for it. And I love new ideas because they tend to mean a new audience. I was pleased there might be a new direction for this forgotten story and the rewrite moved pretty far towards describing that new concept—the “Why Don’t They Make Them Like They Used To?” feeling in so many of us.
You’ve read and seen it many times in reviews for classic vintage and retro products, in back-cover copy for classic TV shows, in casual conversations with friends. Someone always laments that “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.” Stories we grew up watching and reading from when we were kids—stories we were raised on by our parents and grandparents. It’s not a feeling of nostalgia, which is rooted in the past, but a respect for something you’d like to continue into the present day. To reboot, to bring again. You regret that new generations can’t be exposed to these classics. For The Test of Devotion two such “good, old-fashioned” ideas merged into one. The vintage television western, like Roy Rogers or Bonanza, with its family-values tone that didn’t scrimp on the action-packed adventure angle. And the classic novels that so many kids find on library shelves alongside modern bestsellers like The Lightning Thief. Tucked into any kids or young adult section of the library you’ll find older stories like Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, and Ivanhoe—and, in the case of influences for this book, Kenilworth by the same author as Ivanhoe. Books that certainly inspired me to read and write more when I was growing up. Why don’t they make them like they used to? Well, the answer is simple. Because they DO make them. The minute someone says that, it means they’d like to see something old-fashioned repeated again. People have been saying that since the dawn of time, harking back to a perennial yearning for Eden. And once they express that wish, a new old-fashioned story pops up again. And there will be more updates. Jenny Forsythe was for a long time one of my most neglected heroines. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I put the whole book in which she appears aside for years and pretty much gave up on it. But this year saw a resurgence for The Test of Devotion. I’d almost label 2019 as the Year of the Western for the sudden re-existence of this book in my little writosphere. (Yep, I just coined that word.) A rewrite sent attention for Jenny’s 1850s adventure story soaring and it’s now comparable to the top books in views each month.
So . . . I’d never bothered to do a spotlight on little Jenny Forsythe before (especially since in the past she was grownup Jenny Forsythe and now she’s a teenager.) But it’s a necessity now, so let me introduce you to Jenny. She’s the companion to another girl in the story, Arabella Monston, a 19-year-old from back East who’s run away to Texas with a cold-hearted and manipulative man who turns out to love political power far more than he loves her. Arabella lodges at a hotel in a remote town on the Mexican border. Jenny’s father owns this hotel, so Jenny spends a lot of time helping Arabella with this and that. This and that turns into Saving Arabella’s Life. The more Jenny gets involved, the deeper it gets until she’s orchestrating an escape from that now deadly hotel and a personal consultation with the imposing Governor of Texas. And to do that, resourceful Jenny (who doesn’t put herself forward very much, look I spent most of HER spotlight post talking about Arabella) will need an outlaw. Jenny’s humility is what really shines through about her, as you can see by how much descriptions of her are dictated by the fact she helps others. And there will be more updates. |
Young Adult Fiction Author
Sarah ScheeleJoin the newsletter below! This signup has no reader magnets attached but I am preparing a freebie to be offered as part of the welcome email in the near future.
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