Historical Suspense, Western
Romance
To write this historical romance, the author drew from her experiences as a journalist covering the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo, a former asylum; and from working during her teens on a peach and horse ranch in Palisade, Colorado.
Although the fictional asylum is in Boston, the author says you wouldn’t believe the types of diagnoses that could get you committed in the early 1900s. She took the information from historical lists compiled by the Colorado Board of Lunacy Commissioners on the supposed cause of insanity of those held in 1899 to 1910, when asylums were young. Many of those diagnoses are identified in PEACH BLOSSOM RANCHER.
The leading man, rancher John Lincoln Parks, yearns for a wife to help rebuild the ranch he inherited. He eyes Valerie MacDougal, a young widow who homesteaded, but she is an attorney who hopes to help three people wrongly held in the asylum, one a brilliant physician.
Will the doctor ever be set free? Will John marry Valerie or Edwina Jorgenson, the feisty rancher-neighbor he fusses with? Will John even marry, or be hanged for a murder after he finds a body in his barn?
AUTHOR INTERVIEW:
TIP: Tell us something topical, interesting, funny, or something we would not expect about the writing of this novel.
Ada: I didn't expect to use my experience covering the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo in a romantic story, but here I was with a beautiful attorney who desired to make a difference in the world and three wonderful people wrongly confined to an asylum in the early 1900s. One is Pete, a precious boy about age 12, born with Down’s Syndrome. Then there is Jimmy Cook, a gifted teacher paralyzed in a logging accident. Another tragedy is the physician, Dr. Dillon Haskill who had one seizure after hitting his head on a post when he was bucked off a horse. Because of the seizure, some thought he had become an imbecile or demon possessed. Of course it's all fiction, but I had facts that showed these types of people were thought to be insane when asylums were young.
TIP: Do you have a presence on social media? If so, where do you interact with readers the most? [Give the link to the one where you want readers to contact you.] Any amusing social media stories?
Ada: I didn't expect to use my experience covering the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo in a romantic story, but here I was with a beautiful attorney who desired to make a difference in the world and three wonderful people wrongly confined to an asylum in the early 1900s. One is Pete, a precious boy about age 12, born with Down’s Syndrome. Then there is Jimmy Cook, a gifted teacher paralyzed in a logging accident. Another tragedy is the physician, Dr. Dillon Haskill who had one seizure after hitting his head on a post when he was bucked off a horse. Because of the seizure, some thought he had become an imbecile or demon possessed. Of course it's all fiction, but I had facts that showed these types of people were thought to be insane when asylums were young.
TIP: If this novel is part of a series, tell us about the series.
Ada: Peach Blossom Rancher is the second in the Peaches and Dreams series. The first is THELADY FUGITIVE. The third book’s working title is RITAH.
THE LADY FUGITIVE summary: A suspenseful historical romance set in 1908. How does a respected elocutionist become a face on a wanted poster?
Jenny Louise Parks, 17, escapes from the coal bin, and her abusive uncle offers a handsome reward for her return. Because he is a judge, he will find her or he won’t inherit her parents’ ranch.
Determination to remain free grips Jenny, especially after she meets William O’Casey and there’s a hint of romance. But while traveling around the country peddling household goods and showing one of the first Passion of the Christ moving pictures, Then William discovers his father’s brutal murder.
Will Jenny avoid the bounty hunters? Can she forgive the person who turns her in?
· 2015 Laurel Award runner-up. Published by Elk Lake Publishing.
#Review The Lady Fugitive. You’ll laugh, bite your nails; wish you had a gun to help. http://ow.ly/QzlIP Available from Amazon in paper or e-book.
TIP: Do you write exclusively in one genre, or do you "cross-over" to other genres? What draws you to the genre(s) you write in?
Ada: My other books include CONFESSIONS OF A PENTECOSTAL, a story of her spiritual journey and listed many years by The Library Thing among the top-10 books on Pentecostalism.
After we lost a daughter to cancer, I wrote SWALLOWED BY LIFE: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the eternal, a book of evidence that you’re more than a body based on my experience as a medical writer, common sense, and from scripture.
IMAGINE THE FUTURE YOU: a book for youth or family Bible study on how to become the best you can be and includes evidence for faith in God, in an era when public schools and universities make atheists out of our children and grandchildrden,
Another is FACTS, FAITH & PROPAGANDA, nonfiction to strengthen faith in God, written from the author’s wide studies and experience. Available only as an e-book and always 99 cents.
JOE THE DREAMER a novel enjoyed by youth and adults. Joe’s parents are missing and an organization is trying to eliminate Christianity from America. A reader said recently it’s the best books she’s read in years.
TIP: When did you start writing for publication? And why? What drives you to write?
Ada: I had a burning desire to share the gospel, and I did much of that with interviews with people who have amazing testimonies of God’s miraculous work in their lives. In addition to my other writing, I am compiling a book with reprints from The Pentecostal Evangel of those true stories.
TIP: How did you go about researching for this novel? Did you go anywhere outside your usual locale, or experience anything of note in the researching of this novel?
Ada: Many authors ask me about the research for Peach Blossom Rancher. I did do research on horses, peach ranching and historical treatment of the insane to be sure little points here and there were correct, but I had worked on a peach/horse ranch in my youth and interviewed experts on mental illness, talked to patients, was in almost all of the mental health institute except the forensics division and even witnessed some parts of that.
I didn’t need much research. I’d written about the museum, seen the strait jackets and other devices. I saw the restraint room and learned how a team of guards can control a patient in moments. I talked to the doctor who determined whether a criminal was insane. I saw patients handcuffed to a wall and those whose hands were cuffed to a wide belt. I interviewed executives, psychiatrists, psychologists, patients, nurses, psych techs, guards, looked at the kitchen, spent several hours in juvenile units, visited their school, and went on an outing with them. I visited community treatment homes, and attended seminars on the new medications and learned about other things they do. I also interviewed a psychiatrist who was shot by a patient, and I dug into the police report about the case.
TIP: Can you give us a sneak peek or preview into the next work in progress (WIP) you're working on? When do you expect to release it?
Ada: I have about 15,000 words written on RITAH, the third book in the Peaches and Dreams series. I expect to have it completed by December 2017.
Tentative Book summary: Ritah heads off to college, one of the few women who attends college in 1916. She hopes to fulfill her dream of becoming an outstanding teacher of youth, especially women who don’t think they need an education. Ritah wants to see women succeed in the marketplace in case they need to support their children and keep them out of orphanages if something should happen to their father. Ritah’s mother had to live with a wicked uncle when her parents died (she’s the fugitive in The Lady Fugitive). Ritah also wants to learn things that help a wife and mother, like health prevention and treatments. As Ritah prepares to go to college, a young friend who is an orphan is being dragged into a brothel, and Ritah intervenes at the risk of her own life. But she leaves the orphan in the care of a hopefully capable woman and the sheriff has been notified. Ritah goes to college despite the protests of the man who wants to marry her. War, trouble back home, sickness, and two men who propose marriage stand between Ritah and the life she hopes to live. Will she marry one of these men? Will she achieve her goals?
TIP: Do you have a presence on social media? If so, where do you interact with readers the most? [Give the link to the one where you want readers to contact you.] Any amusing social media stories?
Ada: I interact with friends most on Facebook and I’d love to connect with more readers at Book Fun Network http://www.bookfun.org Just connect with me there. It’s free, easy to join, and readers can not only connect with me, but with other favorite Christian writers and readers in chat rooms and frequently receive free books to review! Plus Book Fun Magazine is free Also they can join my mailing list at ada@adabrownell.com
EXCERPT FROM PEACH BLOSSOM RANCHER CHAPTER ONE:
Edwina wrinkled her little turned-up nose. “What’s that terrible odor?”
John stepped to the fence. “Might be coming from my prize pigs. See the big one over there I call Gertie?”
Gertie trotted close and rubbed her prickly mud-covered back on the hog wire.
“I expect to make big money from pork while I rebuild the horse herd and work in the peach orchards. You ought to try a few pigs. You get a quicker turnover with your money than with horses. Your papa used to raise them. Besides, it’s always nice to have smoked ham and bacon available.”
Edwina leaned over the fence. The pigs wrestled with each other over the slop, snorting and grunting.
“I might get some. The little ones are cute. Since my papa is in the wheelchair, I’m running everything. How is the pork market doing?”
“It sounded great to me. It …” Gertie stuck her snout through the fence and sucked Edwina’s lacy pink dress. Edwina jerked the skirt out of the slimy jaws and then, stringy pig saliva slid down her pretty legs.
“Eeeeewwww!” she squealed, holding her dress out away from her. “I didn’t know pigs would eat clothing.”
Laughter almost escaped John’s lips. He pressed his fist over his mouth until his insides quit quaking in case she was mad enough to use the gun strapped on her slim middle.
“Gertie probably smelled the cornstarch you used to starch your dress. I’d guess for her it was quite tasty. I’ll get you a towel.”
“Don’t bother.” She grabbed a big blue handkerchief from the buggy, wiped at her legs and jumped in the driver’s seat. “You probably wanted me to stand over by the fence so that would happen. You are incorrigible, John Parks. Get someone else to go to the church picnic with you!”
As the dust rose from her departure, she almost ran into the mailman.
John meandered to the mailbox. Strange. He hadn’t asked her to the picnic. He never intended to.
LINKS:
Twitter: @AdaBrownell
