Introducing “Bridge to Trouble”

“Well, this is a fine time to tell me,” said Keith, but without rancor. “I suppose it would be too much to hope that she might simply settle into domestic life and not notice the gangsters playing hide-and-go-seek under her window?”

“Who, Mother? Goodness, no, she doesn’t miss a thing. She’ll be onto it sooner than I was.”

If I was a superstitious person, I’d swear that talking about one of my WIPs on social media was as good as jinxing it. I had a great first week working on my new novella, then in a rash moment posted the title and a brief description on Twitter and Facebook—and immediately a combination of household tasks and nasty headaches limited my productivity this week to a handful of hard-won sentences.

However, I am not a superstitious person, and so in pursuance of my original plan, I shall tell you a bit about this new WIP, Bridge to Trouble. It’s a romantic-suspense novella set in Montana in 1920, involving a girl, some guys, gold, gangsters, and a ghost town. And some sheep. (Lest I be guilty of raising hopes only to dash them, I should warn you that the ghost town plays only a small, though key role in the plot.)

What pleases me about this story is that it’s a dramatically made-over version of an old concept that I’d hung onto for years in a binder full of scraps, because I always felt it had a grain of promise in it somewhere. I wanted a new novella for a particular reason (I’ll tell you about that in a moment), and when I realized that this old concept would work, I was thrilled.

What pleases me even more about this story is that it’s turning out to be full of Witty Banter and I am having a ton of fun with that.

The particular reason I wanted a novella? Well, if all goes well this is going to be a free treat for my newsletter subscribers. Since I’m focusing on historical mystery/suspense, I wanted to write something that would be a nice introduction for new readers—and writing it is a nice way to get into the swing of the style and themes I want to explore from henceforth. And yes, current subscribers will get the novella for free too—it’s every bit as much a gift for you as it is a welcome for new readers! I’m not making any promises on the release date, but I want it to be sometime this winter.

Until next time…