Before I go into the post, I want to let everyone know The Bargain Mail Order Bride is now on pre-order on Amazon.
This is due out January 7!
(This is the final book in the Chance at Love Series. Book 1: The Convenient Mail Order Bride; Book 2: The Mistaken Mail Order Bride; Book 3: The Accidental Mail Order Bride)
(If there is an Amazon country you buy from that I didn’t list, please let me know, and I’ll add it.)
If you haven’t pre-ordered it on the other channels yet but want to, here are the links:
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That aside, let’s get started on the two series I’m working on…
Pioneer Series
This series contains the following books: Wagon Trail Bride (Book 1), The Marriage Agreement (Book 2), Groom For Hire (Book 3), and Forced Into Marriage (Book 4)
I’m in the last chapter of Groom For Hire
Yay! I don’t know if I’ll finish the book this week or next, but I plan to go through my initial edits during the full week my kids are all off for Christmas break. After that, I’ll send it out to my awesome editing and beta reading team.
This turned into a cute romance where the battle of the sexes was at play. It took some rewriting to keep things light and fun. The main characters had a tendency to go off into tangents that led to dead ends, so I had to go back and redo key conversations to keep them on track. I had to do the same with Sue and Jake in An Inconvenient Marriage. Some characters need more of a nudge than others. Looking back, however, the banter between the hero and heroine makes me chuckle and is the strength of this particular book. (Not every book I write is meant to be serious. This one isn’t necessarily a comedy, but it is definitely light and fun.)
This is not currently on pre-order but will be soon. I’m estimating this will be out in mid-February, but it’s up to my publisher to set the real date. I need to work around their publishing time table.
I’m going to write Book 4 in the Pioneer Series. It’ll be called Forced Into Marriage.
I don’t have a cover for this yet
I was thinking over this story early this morning, and I pretty much mentally mapped out most of the storyline. Maybe this will be the one book in this series that isn’t going to be difficult to write. Basically, the plot this: a divorced man is forced to marry a pregnant woman because the group of men who’d been abusing her don’t want to deal with the child she’s going to have. The man is divorced because the wife he loved committed adultery and left him. The woman is a Native American who’s the sole survivor after her tribe was raided, and the men had been using her as a sex slave. To get rid of her (because they don’t want to deal with the child she’s about to have), they shove her off on our hero who wants nothing more than to curl up and die somewhere. Needless to say, these two very wounded characters will find a new purpose to live in each other.
I’ll try to work on a better description, but descriptions are the hardest part of the story for me to write.
The Marriage by Bargain Series
This series contains the following books: The Viscount’s Runaway Bride (Book 1), The Rake’s Vow (Book 2)…and the other two are what I’ll discuss below.
I just hit 20,000 words in The Rake’s Vow today
Click here to reserve your copy today!
I’m very happy with the progress this book is taking. Loretta’s showing considerable growth. Celia, however, still has a long way to go, and I suspect that by the end of this book Celia and Loretta are going to have a falling out. I don’t often do that to characters who are friends, but in this case, I can’t see how it can go any other way, especially since this falling out will impact where the series leads.
Which I shall now discuss…
I received some feedback where several people have assumed that Corin would end up with Candace, and Celia would end up with the Captain. My original plan was to actually do the opposite. Pair up Corin with Celia and Candace with the Captain. I then considered the fact that since the people I got feedback from were all seeing a connection I was missing. I discussed this at length with someone because I wanted to see what everyone else was seeing that I wasn’t. I really don’t want to pair up a couple who will turn out to be unpopular with you guys. I want these books to be something you’ll want to read.
So this is where I see the rest of the series going…
Corin will end up with Candace. Neither will want to be married. Candace is a widow who was married to Lord Hedwrett. Now, if you’ll remember Lord Hedwrett was a horrible husband. She hated him because he controlled every aspect of her life. Because of this, all she wants to do is be a widow with freedoms she never had before. Corin has his own reasons not to want to marry (at least not yet), though I have to figure those out. I’m not sure how I’m going to get the two together, but I will.
Celia will end up with the Captain. I know this is a mean thing to do to one of my characters, esp. a captain, but I’m going to injure him so that he’s confined to London. It’s the only way I can get him off the ship and married. Anthony is going to arrange for Celia to marry him. I don’t know the details of how, but the captain will be forced to accept it. Neither the captain nor Celia will be happy with this match. Celia will still be pining for Corin. The captain will see her as a spoiled brat (which she is). This is the book where she will be forced to mature.
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I’m looking forward to where these series are heading. It’s times like this I wish I could write more than three books at a time because I’d love to get to all of these today.
Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog 
I also thought Celia would end up with Corin. But the story lines you’ve just proposed make a lot of sense.
You are the first person who’s said that. Maybe it’s because we saw the book from the viewpoint of authors. You could see that I was setting things up to go in that direction. 🙂 I think the dynamics between Celia and the captain will be a lot of fun. It’ll probably border on comedy, and I haven’t done comedy in a while so that will be a nice break.