The Last Wilding Story, I DREAM OF YOU, by Sarah J. McNeal #TheWildings

This was the last story I wrote in my Wildings series and one of my favorites in that series. Kyle shows up in many of the stories and, when he does, it's usually to help someone. He is part Lakota on his father's side, and English on his mother's side. I wrote  story about Jane and Teekonka's story in A Husband for Christmas. 

I still miss the Wildings, but I'm working on a new project that involves some interesting history from my own state of North Carolina with the settlement of Salem.

Today's gray skies have caused me to reminisce about my Wildings. 

  I Dream of You

A Wilding Western Romance by Sarah J. McNeal

Fire Star Press/Prairie Rose Publications

 A Dream…A Kiss… And Deadly Secrets

Blurb:

Kyle Red Sky dreamed of the woman with fire in her hair, but when she comes to town, something dark and dangerous follows her. He wants to help her, but she is reclusive, avoids men, and the scarf she always wears around her neck tells him she harbors a dark secret.

Mia Beckett is a survivor. Finally, she has found sanctuary in a small western town far from danger where no one knows her or her past and she intends to keep it that way. But she can’t forget the man she saw once in a dream who told her the paths they walked were destined to meet. However, when she meets Kyle Red Sky and realizes he is the man from her dream, she knows, if the dream becomes a reality, he may die.

Excerpt:

Kyle kicked open the door of his mother’s former dress shop despite the sign that read, No Men Allowed. The raging fire upstairs in the private quarters made this an emergency, certainly enough to ignore that sign. Smoke began to fill the shop as he raced up the stairs calling out the name of the new shop owner. “Miss Beckett! Miss Mia Beckett, where are you?”

As he reached the landing of the second floor, he heard someone cough nearby. With the wet blanket wrapped around him he rushed toward the direction of the cough until he found the woman lying on the floor almost unconscious from smoke inhalation. As soon as he removed the wet blanket he wore and wrapped her in its protective layer, he scooped her up in his arms to carry her away from the flames and smoke. The scarf she wore fell away from her neck and her head lolled back against his chest to reveal a thin, straight scar that ran all the way across her throat from her left ear to her right. It wasn’t an old scar, most likely no more than two or three months in the past. She attempted to raise a hand as if to cover her throat and replace the silk scarf. He’d always seen her wear a scarf of some description or another around her neck since her arrival in town. Now he knew all those scarves were not her unique sense of fashion, but her desire to hide the scar. She was a woman attempting to keep a secret.

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Never Trust a Memory! by J. Arlene Culiner

Never Trust a Memory

  Once upon a time (many years ago), I briefly found myself in a clapboard, rusty trailer, semi-ghost town in Nevada. The hotel I stayed in was a rundown has-been, where ceilings soared high, and the lumpy, almost colorless wallpaper was surely a century old. Outside, an ever-buffeting wind dragged dust across the frozen ground, rattled low-lying grasses, set the wooden doors of abandoned shacks tapping. The only warmth to be found was in the hotel’s shabby bar room where, under an ancient tin ceiling, a talentless band whined out bad country music, and eccentric locals dished up tall tales, wry humor, and suspicion. It was a singular place, that community, eerie, even magical, and I’d give anything to be able to go back to it…

But where was it?

Believe me, I’ve searched for it over and over, traveling back and forth across Nevada, peeking into shabby trailer communities, fading towns, boom towns, ghost towns, and I’ve never found it. What was it called? Was it the way I remember it? Perhaps my recollection has so distorted the place, I would never recognize it today. Even more troubling, has memory played me a trick, created a place that never existed?

Aha. So the culprit is memory.

Certainly, we’ve all had the experience of meeting up with someone we haven’t seen in years, and discovering that a shared experience has been remembered in quite a different way. In fact, a memory is rather like a color photo taken at a special moment in life; pull out that photo years later, and look how those once-bright colors have faded with time.

We like to think we’ve kept a memory accurately, that it stays the same no matter how many times we go over it. But the sad fact is, it’s impossible to remember something without changing it each time we turn it over in our mind or bring it up in conversation. We always alter it in some slight, even imperceptible, way, add a detail, a scent, a sound, an atmosphere, an intensity that never existed. And, constantly updating the memory in this unconscious way, the newer version replaces the older. Which means it ceases to be a memory and becomes an anecdote.

So how can we recover the true, original memory? We can’t. Sure, sometimes returning to a place can trigger a certain amount of recall, but not all of it. To reconstruct a memory — even if that reconstruction is imperfect and will always remain so — we depend on available information stored in our brain, on the coordinated activity between the hippocampus and the frontal cortex. The hippocampus is the brain’s director, and it tells the cortex which particular neurons it should activate. Frequently activated neurons become part of a permanent memory in the cortex; rarely activated neurons are lost. And that means that some — or all — of the real information we’re looking for, has probably vanished, along with the telephone number of a long-lost lover, an old password, the first and last names of people who once meant something, faces, birthdays, and once-important, deeply intense conversations.

Of course, as a writer, I do embrace a certain amount of memory loss. Perhaps if I remembered that nameless semi-ghost town as it really was, it wouldn’t seem so romantic now. It might well be an ugly place, a hostile community of dullards, one that, after a lifetime of rich experiences, would seem banal, without charm, without mystery. But because my memory has played me tricks, I’ve been able to turn it into a delightful fictional community — Blake’s Folly, the setting for my romance, Desert Rose.

Here’s how my heroine, Rose Badger, sees Blake’s Folly:

Even if Blake’s Folly was a wash-out now, it had been jumpy and nervous enough back in the old Gold Rush days. Today’s residents were the descendants of the wild gun-slingers and goodtime girls, those who’d hung around too long, gotten so caught in the gluey languor of this place, they’d been unable to move off.

Today, this place was a rusty trailer, scrapyard, abandoned car, clapboard shack, sagging old house community: a dead end if there ever was one. This was nowhere. This was the end of the line, socially speaking. This was a has-been. This was home.

And that terrible country band I remember so well, has now become the pride and joy of Blake's Folly, and it's still playing away:

The Old Boy’s Band had, so far, destroyed the Tennessee Waltz, bungled Oh Suzanna in a hopelessly sadistic way, was now going for a full kamikaze hit at I Remember You. Even worse than the horrendous noise level, was the local idea of party togs: better-dressed ancestors were probably spinning at high velocity in their graves at this very moment.

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#NewRelease -- PRINCE CHARMING WORE SPURS by Nan O'Berry -- #Giveaway!

Growing up, I remember sitting for long hours watching the line up of cowboy shows that were in their hayday in the 60's. So when I was looking around for an idea, it accured to me, that cowboys were the American fairytale. They were, and still are, our knights in shinning armor. Therefore, it wasn't a stretch of the imagination to come up with Logan Malone. The trick was coming up with a twist. Something timely, that my readers might enjoy.

Sitting around with my fellow plot buddy, we were talking about music and I mentioned growing up how I loved Rodgers and Hammerstien's, Cinderella, with Stuart Damon and Leslie Ann Warren. We laughed about it, but I think the kernel was sown. That night in my dreams, I saw Gillian, all that riot of curls and her charming smile. The story seemed to take over and almost write itself.

As you are reading, I hope you invision Miss Celeste Holmes as Celeste Tate, the matchmaker, fairy godmother. Its always fun to see who people see as the hero and heroine. I can't wait to hear who your choices are. Please, enjoy Prince Charming Wore Spurs and come meet the Malones of the Bar M, Logan, Jason, and Troy as they navigate the sometimes wild ride to find their true loves.  -- Nan O'Berry  http://oberrynan.wix.com/nanoberryauthor

BLURB

Fairy tales do exist—just ask Gillian Malone!

When rancher Logan Malone drags his feet on finding love, his five-year-old daughter, Gillian, persuades a local matchmaker to help her find a new mother.

Enter Delaney Holmes, a Washington socialite fleeing from the press after being left at the altar. Swearing off men, she takes the job as a nanny to a precocious five-year-old in a backwoods Texas town called Indigo Springs.

But Logan Malone is a six-foot cowboy hero complete with white hat and a swagger that puts John Wayne to shame. Can he put away the ghost of Gillian's mother to follow the rules of the Fairy Tale Code in order to win Delaney's heart? Or will Delaney's secret past keep him from proposing?

With true love at stake, there’s only one thing for sure—in this real life fairy tale, PRINCE CHARMING WORE SPURS—and it’s going to take some powerful magic to ensure a “happily ever after” ending!

EXCERPT

     “So, Gillian, do you mind telling me why you asked me to come?”

Gillian Malone placed her cake fork beside the plate. “You always tell my daddy you will do anything for us.”

     “Yes, I do. Your granddaddy and I are good friends,” Celeste said.

     Gillian swallowed and pressed her hands down the front of her pink dress. “Well, I need something badly…very badly.”

     Celeste held up a finger to silence the little girl while the waiter served them a bowl of fresh homemade ice cream. When he was out of earshot, she said, “Continue.”

     “I’m going to be this many this summer.”

     Celeste watched her hold up six fingers.

     “And I don’t have a mother. Daddy is too busy to bring one home.” She took a deep breath and looked straight into Celeste’s face. “I would like to hire you to find me one.”

     Celeste Tate blinked. Her hand paused over the bowl, and she stared at the child. 

Be sure and leave a comment to enter the giveaway.  Nan will be giving away a free ebook to one lucky winner.

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