I want to avoid as much confusion as possible. I don’t want someone to browse a retailer and think I published brand new books without publicly announcing it on this blog.
My publisher has given me back my rights to the books I had with them. These books are Wagon Trail Bride, The Marriage Agreement, Groom for Hire, Mitch’s Win, Boaz’s Wager, Patty’s Gamble, Shane’s Deal, The Purchased Bride, and The Bride’s Choice.
Now some of you may wonder, “What does she mean? I don’t recognize The Purchased Bride or The Bride’s Choice from her book list.”
These two books were tucked into anthologies.
The Purchased Bride originally appeared in the Bride by Arrangement anthology I did with Janet Syas Nitsick.
The Bride’s Choice originally appeared in the A Groom’s Promise anthology I did with Janet Syas Nitsick.
If you own those two anthologies, you already have The Purchased Bride and The Bride’s Choice.
But, if you haven’t picked up these anthologies and would like The Purchased Bride and The Bride’s Choice, I’ll give the information about them below.
First, since these stories are so closely related, I decided to create a series for them. Since they take place in homesteads in Nebraska, I opted to go with the Nebraska Prairie Series.
The Purchased Bride (Nebraska Prairie Series: Book 1)
Ada Wilcox’s brother sells her off to marry a complete stranger. But the book goes deeper than that.
Here’s the trivia:
The hero in this book is deaf, but his brother assumes he has less than average intelligence. Some people find this hard to believe, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that this is possible. I didn’t hear anything for the first three years of my life, and my parents and doctor assumed I was didn’t have normal intelligence. It wasn’t until a daycare worker pointed out the possibility that I was deaf that my parents went to a hearing specialist. In one ear, I am deaf, but I had fluid built up since birth that prevented me from hearing. Sometimes you can be so close to someone that you miss something an outsider will see. Also, though my son was born deaf, the initial test they did on him when he was born showed that he heard. As a result, we just assumed he could hear until he was a year old when a woman who came out to help my other children with a speech delay picked up on it. My point is that unless you know what to look for, it’s easy to miss something as simple as whether a person is hearing you or not.
I took the above personal experiences in my own life and the lack of accommodations for people with special needs of that time period into consideration to build the plot. If Pete had been allowed to interact with more people, someone might have figured it out before Ada came along, but his family chose to keep him secluded from everyone. Had this been written in a place along the East Coast, Pete’s deafness would have been pointed out early on in his life. But I wanted a scenario where it wasn’t pointed out until he was an adult, so I chose to place him on a remote farm.
You can find out more about it at these places:
The Bride’s Choice (Nebraska Prairie Series: Book 2)
Shy and clumsy Jack Warren has finally found the woman of his dreams, but her father wants her to marry his brother instead.
Here’s the trivia:
I wrote this one closely to match Janet Syas Nitsick’s story, When the Whistle Blows, that was in the same anthology. We had to sit together quite a bit to compare notes so that there were contradictions between our stories. A lot of people have said our two books are so similar, and this is why. So much of our plots relied heavily on what was happening in the other story. I wanted to write a story that could be read as a standalone. I’m sure Janet felt the same way. The nature of anthologies is to eventually take the individual stories and publish them independently of the other authors who contributed stories to that book. So I didn’t want to leave any more loose threads than I had to.
I took one brother, Jack, and she took the other brother, Hugh. My original story idea never made it to the page. I had to discard it in order to go along with Janet’s vision for her book. Originally, I had planned for Maybell’s father to want Jack to marry her, and he was supposed to feel inadequate and run off hiding from her on their wedding night. I had envisioned a romantic comedy. (I later took the idea of the bridegroom hiding and put it in The Reclusive Earl, which is a Regency romance. So the idea did makes it way into another book. I have a weird sense of humor, and the idea of a husband running in fear of having to consummate the marriage just cracks me up.)
All things considered, I think the story worked out better the way it did where her father wanted her to marry Hugh and Jack had to prove himself.
You can find more about this book at these places:
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Book 3: To Be Determined
I have an idea for a book that’s been in the back of my mind for the past few years that I think will fit well with this series. Since my mind’s been blank on what to write next, I’m going to give this third book a try and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.
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On a final note:
All of the other books Wagon Trail Bride, The Marriage Agreement, Groom for Hire, Mitch’s Win, Boaz’s Wager, Patty’s Gamble, and Shane’s Deal are all up again! If anyone wants links, let me know.
I did put all of these books (including The Purchased Bride and The Bride’s Choice) on Google Play, but they haven’t gone live yet.
Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog 