Next Excerpt: Rebecca Has An Embarrassing Request

My American historical romance What Mends the Heart comes out in less than a month, so here's another excerpt! This encounter, seen first from Rebecca's point of view and then from Stephen's, grows out of Rebecca's surprising friendship with Madam Mamie, the proprietor of the town's parlor house (an upscale brothel). Mamie has asked Rebecca, as a favor, to pass on a request for her.

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Approaching Mr. Millory about dresses for Mamie’s girls would be tricky, as she’d known from the start. Even visiting the tailor shop again might cause comment, but she could take him some of the molasses cookies she’d made as an excuse. If questioned, she could say that she wouldn’t put it past him to get so caught up in his work that he would miss supper.

She’d put the cookies in an embossed tin, and held it out as she entered. The excuse seemed feeble to her now, and Mr. Millory’s raised eyebrow made her feel utterly transparent. Instead of saying what she’d rehearsed, she set the tin on the table and said, “I come with a request you may find . . . surprising.” She gulped. “Even inappropriate.” Could she possibly feel any more like a child confessing naughtiness?

He had been bending over to examine the tin, but her words brought him bolt upright. “Has some problem arisen at the boarding house? Something with which I could assist?”

His generous response only made her feel worse. But it also gave her an opening. “No, nothing like that. But there is someone else with a dilemma. I came to speak for her, as you and she . . . have not been introduced, and any such introduction might . . . might not be something you would choose.”

Mr. Millory stood patiently, if in obvious puzzlement, waiting for her to start making sense. She had better simply get to the point. “I don’t know whether it has come to your attention that we have a parlor house in town. Its proprietor is a Madam Mamie. It may surprise you to learn that Mamie and I are acquainted. Are, in fact, on friendly terms.” And he could guess what he liked about how such a friendship had come to pass.

* * * * *

Stephen stood in a tailor shop far better equipped than his own, in a town that was not his own, trying not to stare at the kindly, respectable woman who had just declared herself friends with a brothel keeper, and considered the possibility that he was lying in bed delirious with fever. That was far more likely than any other explanation.

But if he were suffering from so severe an illness, where was Mary? She could not be the woman whose bizarre statement he had just hallucinated. Even in a fever dream, he could not be transforming Mary’s ethereal grace, the deceptively slight build that contained such force of will, into this lushly curved figure with hair the color of honey.

And Mary was dead.

Even in delirium, he could not forget for long. Mary was gone, eternally beyond his reach, his touch. And his hunger for her, never to be satisfied again, must have led him to conjure not just this vision of fleshly allure, this embodiment of carnal desire, but her talk of the most extreme indulgence. He could only wonder why he had not imagined her to be the madam herself.

“Mr. Millory? Are you well?”

The pleasing feminine voice sounded uncertain. If a nurse was speaking, surely she would know he was ill.

A hand, a woman’s hand, touched his shoulder. “You’re swaying. Let me help you sit down.”

He had been standing, still was standing. So he was not lying feverish in bed. And everything around him was real. Including the woman about whom he had been thinking such lecherous thoughts, and who was now touching him, pulling him to lean against her, guiding him to the padded bench.

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Something's brewing!

You can preorder the book on Amazon, Bookshop (which can benefit your favorite indie bookstore), and other bookseller sites. I'd be delighted if you do! But I'll be publishing more excerpts to try to pique your interest.

Introduction to Rebecca, Heroine of My Upcoming Historical Romance

With the release of What Mends the Heart coming in six weeks, and now that we've met male protagonist Stephen Millory, it's time to meet its female protagonist. Here are the opening paragraphs of the book, which introduce the reader to Rebecca Wheeler, proprietor of Cowbird Creek's boarding house.

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Rebecca Wheeler looked out the window at a chilly day and gave thanks for her warm kitchen. On fresh spring days when the breeze blew the scent of flowers and new grass her way, or when summer sun invited her to raise her face to it and bask in the warmth, the many tasks to be done indoors could make her restless. On days like today, the kitchen and the whole boarding house felt like a warm refuge, a hug in the form of a building.

And her boarders seemed to feel the same way.

The load of wood in the big cast-iron stove’s firebox was still putting out plenty of heat, and would for hours yet. She opened the oven and took a sniff of the meat loaf they would have for dinner. Mmm, just right, rich and meaty with a hint of browning. She hadn’t had to use too much filler — almost all her rooms were full, and the boarders had been diligent about paying on time. The butcher had smiled at her this week when she’d given him her order for pork and beef. She closed the oven and checked on the carrots simmering on the cook top, poking them with the tip of the knife she’d used to chop them into slices. They needed a little more time, what with several of her boarders having bad teeth or few of them or both. They’d be nice and sweet, with almost all of them newly harvested from the winter crop. She unwrapped the dish cloth around the biscuits just enough to check whether they were still warm. They could have been warmer — it was tricky to get everything ready to serve at the same time — but they’d do, and the fresh butter would help.

It was one of the days when she enjoyed cooking. There were times when all the choosing and chopping and dishing out and cleaning up would weary her, and she’d promise herself to find another cook to take on trial. But the first one she’d tried always undercooked the vegetables, and her fried chicken was greasy. And the second did a better job, but turned out to be a gossip, and a nasty one at that. She’d almost lost two boarders over hurt feelings before she gave up on breaking the woman of that habit.

Besides, she liked keeping people fed. Taking care of people. The minister liked to tease her about being a hen with her chicks. And she did feel sorry when any of them left.

Well, she wasn’t a hen, so enough of this brooding! She moved the carrots off the boiler hole and got busy dishing up the food.

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And here, two chapters later, is the moment Rebecca meets Stephen.

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She offered him her hand to shake, reaching up on account of his height. His clasp was strong and warm, his palm firm. He struck her as looking rather like the late President Lincoln, though not as homely — not homely at all, exactly — and with red-brown hair instead of dark. Any woman who kept a boarding house had to acquire the skill of summing people up quickly. On first impression, he seemed sad and defeated, underfed and underslept, with the haunted look some widowers had. That usually meant either a good marriage, or one that had been less happy and had left the man with regrets.

“Good afternoon, Miss Wheeler,” he replied in a low, pleasant voice, stooping enough to look her in the eye. “Thank you for your kind welcome. I do indeed come in search of room and board." He had large brown eyes, with a hint of gold around the iris. She rather thought it would be hard to look away from those eyes, if one spent too long looking into them.

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And what does Stephen think of Rebecca on first meeting her? She reminds him of a bright-eyed bird, a meadowlark.

You can preorder What Mends the Heart on Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere.

Next time: a sewing lesson!

The Promised Scene from What Mends the Heart, now available for preorder

 Actually, to make up for having waited so long to post again, I'm including two scenes, both from the POV of protagonist Stephen Millory. But first, you may wish to reread Stephen's character sketch.

And now, here's the first excerpt. Stephen arrives at the tailor shop he'll be using until Cowbird Creek's tailor comes back to town.

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In the middle of the room, the light from the window falling golden upon it, was a sewing machine. A sewing machine, shiny black, metal parts glistening, with an open-work metal plate almost spanning its width suspended between the metal legs, and a maroon padded bench behind it. Stephen had never seen one, only the pictures in the catalogue. He and Mary had talked about what it would take to acquire one, but it had always been out of reach. How excited she’d be when he went home and told her! —

The bolt of memory struck and staggered him, as it always did. He could not seem to keep in mind that he now lived in a world without her. No, his mind insisted on inhabiting the world where he belonged, the world when he could go home and see her, hear her, hold her, tell her all the unimportant things no one else would want to hear.

He fought to keep breathing. One of these days, the stroke would be too powerful, and he would stop. But until then, he had to keep living in this poorer, drab world in which he was left behind.

At least, for now, it contained a sewing machine.

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The next excerpt comes a little later, after Stephen has moved into Rebecca Wheeler's boarding house. He's the only male boarder, and most of the other boarders are middle-aged or older. Supper is over, and Stephen has gone to his room to settle in.

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It took him a while to notice that something distracting was happening. Was someone knocking on the door to his room? No, not knocking, but there were sounds coming from the hallway, footsteps that came closer and paused and left again, followed by others doing the same; and voices, almost as quiet as whispers, then louder, then followed by urgent hushing sounds and the almost-whispers again.

He could easily guess what was going on. At supper, the boarders had peppered him with all the questions he had feared, but Miss Wheeler had managed to politely interrupt almost every time, deftly changing the subject to less painful ones, asking him about the tailor shop and what he hoped to do during his visit. A couple of the bolder ladies had offered to show him this or that highlight of Cowbird Creek, offers he had (he hoped) politely deflected. All those unanswered questions and invitations must now have followed him upstairs, the ladies finding or making excuses to traipse up and down the hall, collecting in little clusters to gossip and exclaim and compare notes.

What would they do if he suddenly flung open the door and shouted “Boo!”? Picturing their startled expressions and flustered gestures made him actually laugh. The noises outside the door fell silent, and then started up again, more fast-paced than ever.

Another notion took him, less outrageous than the first, and practical to boot. He stripped down to undershirt and drawers, put on his dressing gown, picked up the towel Miss Wheeler had left in the room, and opened the door. “Oh, excuse me!” he exclaimed, pretending to be surprised at the ladies who gasped and gaped and flattened themselves against the hallway. “I was heading down to the washroom. I hope I haven’t interrupted anything.” They scattered and tittered and clucked as he made his way down the hall. When he reached the washroom, he closed the door and leaned against it, as he had done at the tailor shop, but this time he smiled as he got ready for bed.

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If you want to make sure you don't have to wait longer than necessary for the actual book, you can (as of today) preorder it! Here are the links for Amazon (currently ebook only, but the paperback should pop up soon); for Bookshop.org (paperback only); and for Barnes & Noble (ditto). Any of them should send you the book on October 15, 2026. 

Next time, I'll give you a scene or two from Rebecca's point of view.

Checking Back In, Finally -- With a Character Sketch

I haven't been living under a rock in a cave on a mountain. I swear! I've been writing and editing, working with my cover designer, fumbling around at promotion, failing to solve a Word formatting problem, and writing my monthly newsletter and my weekly Substack. But I reread (well, re-skimmed) an article about keeping my "brand" alive and was reminded that I should do more than that -- including, for example, posting character sketches and quotations from time to time.

Plugging in a quotation is easy enough. All I have to do is overcome my chronic indecisiveness and pick one. But I have a historical romance coming out this fall -- What Mends the Heart (Cowbird Creek 5) -- and as I start telling people about it, it might be useful to have done a sketch of the male protagonist. So here we go. Meet Stephen Millory of Green Pond, Nebraska, who will shortly be spending some time in Cowbird Creek.

Stephen is a tailor, with more training and skill than his little shop allows him to exercise. He is both fundamentally decent and fundamentally serious. Life has given him one great gift: the love of his wife Mary. He has not forgotten to be glad and grateful for that gift, despite the sorrow of their inability to have children, and to cherish Mary all the days of their life.

And then that gift is taken away. Mary dies of consumption (tuberculosis), and what remains is emptiness. His work is some small consolation, but no more.

Then Cowbird Creek's tailor Mr. Sherman asks Stephen to come to town and take over his well-appointed shop for a while, as Sherman must attend to urgent family business back east. And Stephen ends up staying at Rebecca Wheeler's boarding house. . . .

I hope this is enough to make you wish Stephen well, and possibly to intrigue you. Next time: a passage from Stephen's point of view. Until then!

Back to Cowbird Creek, With a Corrected Excerpt

As I'll say in today's Substack post, now that I've survived Release Day for my paranormal horror-adjacent novel, I'm returning to my historical romance series Cowbird Creek.  Looking up some character details in earlier books, I came upon an excerpt involving chicken soup (not in any way related to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series) and decided to read it just for the fun of it. Except when I did so, I noticed some format weirdness. Why were a few words in bold and a sentence in the wrong size font? I anxiously turned to the actual book and was relieved, if mystified, that it didn't include the same errors.

I made haste to fix the errors and then went looking online for wherever I'd posted the excerpt originally. I soon learned that the site where that excerpt appeared no longer exists in its original form, and the replacement I found doesn't seem to have the excerpt anywhere. I really do like the scene, so I'm posting it -- in corrected form, of course -- here.

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Joshua closed the door behind the farmer’s boy, holding the empty coffee cup, and leaned against the door. He’d made enough coffee for both of them, but hadn’t ended up drinking any. Bone-tired as he was, he didn’t have the strength to deal with coffee jitters. 

He stumbled over to the dresser where he kept his nightshirt, pulled off his soaked frock coat and shirt and trousers, let them fall in a sodden heap on the floor, and pulled the nightshirt on. He’d take the wet, wrinkled clothes to Li Chang in the morning. Times like this, he was sorely grateful to his sisters back in Pennsylvania, who’d pooled their resources to send him a second set of clothes suitable for a doctor. He used almost his last strength to dig the bone saw in its case out of his bag and shove it out of sight on the shelf where he kept it. 

Scratching at the door heralded Major’s return from wherever he’d been wandering. Joshua grabbed a towel from the hook near the door and let the dog in. Rubbing the dog down warmed him up a little, but the sooner he was in bed with every quilt and comforter he owned on top of him, the happier he’d be. He moved to blow out the oil lamp. 

Were those steps on the stairs up to his rooms? 

And then, the door again, but this time a knock, or maybe a kick, a dull thud, once and then repeated. 

If he’d had the energy, he would have cussed a blue streak. Not now. Oh, God, not now. A knock this late meant an emergency. He would have to somehow find the wit and the strength to save someone, and he had none of either left. 

“Doctor Gibbs!” (“Doh-ktor Kibbs.”) A woman. He knew he should, but didn't, recognize the voice. 

She didn’t sound sick. Could it be one of her neighbors, or worse, a neighbor’s child? But if it were childhood disease, he might be able to treat the fever, at least, or do something for vomiting. He could handle that. He opened the door. 

There stood Mrs. Blum, her fur coat making her look like a friendly mama bear, holding a covered pot in her hands. 

“I saw you come in, looking so wet and tired. I brought enough for the boy who was with you, but I see he’s gone. May I come in? You won’t leave an old woman standing outside on a staircase, will you?” 

He stumbled back dumbly and let her pass, shoving the door shut with a weak thrust as she barreled toward the kitchen table. She put the pot down, dropped her coat in a corner, and pulled out his chair. “Sit, sit!” 

He collapsed into the chair while she rummaged around, seemingly quite at home, finding a bowl and a spoon. She pulled a ladle from some pocket, then whisked the cover off the pot. Fragrant steam rose up out of it. He leaned forward, sniffing, and smiled weakly to see Major coming toward them to do the same. “What is it?” 

“What is it? Chicken soup is what it is! What else, for warming you up and keeping you from catching your death?” She paused, almost coy. “Oh, here I am telling you your business. But if you don’t already know about chicken soup, it’s time you did, no?” (Though the “no” sounded more like “nu.”) 

She dipped the ladle in once, twice, three times, and then stopped and frowned at the bowl in frustration, looking ready to scold it for not having more room before pushing it toward him. “You start with that. I’ll put the rest on the stove to keep warm.” 

The soup had hunks of carrot and big chunks of chicken, and some sort of strange, light dumplings. Joshua barely made himself use the spoon instead of picking up the bowl and pouring it into his mouth. As it was, his hand shook so that he spilled some of the soup on the table. Without missing a beat, Mrs. Blum tossed a dish towel his way before dragging a stool over to the table and perching on it, overflowing it on every side. When he managed to look up from his miraculous meal, he saw her beaming at him, clearly delighted at the way he was slurping the soup down with no sign of table manners. The moment the spoon clinked the bottom of the bowl, she grabbed the bowl and filled it back up to the brim. “Eat, eat!” 

He was feeling full to the brim himself, but he thought it likely that if he dared to stop before the bowl was empty again, she would seize the spoon and feed him like an infant. He made his way manfully through.

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If you don't already know Dr. Joshua Gibbs and widow Freida Blum, you can find them in What Heals the Heart (Cowbird Creek Book 1).

Wish me luck with Book 5!

Ta-da! It's Release Day for THAT THE DEAD MAY REST, and here's one more excerpt

Let the trumpet sound! It's Release Day for That the Dead May Rest. One more time, here's the cover.

And one more time, here's an excerpt. I wasn't sure which one to post today. After yesterday's downbeat selection, I'd like to post something more hopeful, but that would involve spoilers. So I picked an excerpt that at least has some loveliness in it, while continuing to show Millie's emotional struggle.

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The way things were going, it was a relief for Millie to welcome someone who’d died of a heart attack — though he’d been living in a leftover bomb shelter, and his last few days had been spent by himself, fearfully eating canned food. He greeted the news that he had moved on with a mixture of resignation and relief. He had one request, which he made to Millie with a humble air as if it might be unreasonable. “Could I go somewhere with fresh air? Is that something you have here?”

She looked at him, sitting a little hunched over with his hands clasped on his knee and his eyes shy and hopeful, and made her decision. She had never taken anyone there except Sofia, let alone a stranger . . . but it was time to share. “I know just the place. At least, it’s a favorite of mine, and you’ll be able to smell fresh air, and the sea.”

The man couldn’t stop looking at the waves. Crouching just out of their reach, he watched them flow in and out, in and out as if mesmerized. When Millie knelt in the sand next to him, he said softly, “I’ve never seen the ocean. I always wanted to.”

“It isn’t exactly like this,” Millie admitted. “In the real ocean, you get waves building up high and then crashing down, or some places crashing into rocks. You can see that whenever you like. But I wanted something quieter. Softer, if that makes any sense.”

The man looked away from the water and gazed at her in wonder. “You made this place?”

Millie looked down as she said, “I guess you could say that. I had someone — my friend Sofia, you should meet her — help me, tell me how. But all you have to do is sit with yourself for a while and imagine a place you’d like to be. And you can make more than one place, to fit all the different ways you might be feeling.” She glanced up, and the eagerness in his face made her say, “I could help you, if you’d like.”

“That would be wonderful!” He looked back at the water. “Soon, anyway. I’d like to just sit here for a little while and listen to the sea.”

She hadn’t wanted to ask many questions while he was so clearly taking comfort in this escape from care, but in a few minutes he started talking without prompting, in murmured phrases. “We didn’t know what to believe. Who to believe. People were dying in awful ways, but there weren’t any clear photos or videos showing how it happened. And then a few videos did turn up, but they could have been fake. I’ve never believed in Sasquatch or vampires or any of that. But how would wild animals get loose in cities?”

That suggested another question: were the creatures showing up inside cities? Were any security cameras catching them?

But the man was asking Millie something. “Do you know, here? What’s happening?”

There was no good reason to tell him just how much she did know, not the worst of it. It would only shock and frighten him, when he was just now feeling safe again. But she did say, “I’m afraid it really is something like what you said first. Something I never would have believed either, until I heard it from people coming here. It’s, um, it’s more or less zombies.” Now he did look shocked. What could she say? “So you were right to be frightened, and to take shelter.”

Neither of them had any more to say for a while. They listened to the waves, instead, and the faint shushing sound of the breeze bringing them the lightly salted air.

Finally the man spoke again. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, about my making my own special places. I saw redwoods, once. A forest of them, one gigantic tree after another. I could never see the tops of them. I used to think that in heaven, I could see redwoods again, and I’d somehow be able to see the very tops of the trees.” He stopped, and she was about to promise him again that he could create that vision when he went on, “But now, I think about that forest, with all the trees close around in every direction, and I don’t want to be there again. I want to be able to see for a long way on every side.” Another pause. “I know it’s silly, here. There aren’t any of those creatures.” Then he went rigid and wide-eyed, and asked in a tight voice, “There aren’t, are there? Zombies? There aren’t any here?”

Millie closed her eyes for a moment and then made herself open them. No zombies here. Just the people who became them, whose bodies had hunted down men just like him and torn them apart. People like her. She made herself breathe evenly for a moment, to calm down enough to answer, “No, there are no zombies here.”

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I hope you're ready to learn how Millie and Rosie and Emma find the strength they didn't know they had, and how they and the others work together to counter the zombie threat. Here are some purchase links.

-- Amazon

-- Barnes & Noble

-- Bookshop.org

For those who've already read the book (e.g. via NetGalley) and those who will be reading it now, please consider leaving a review! Reviews make it more likely that the retailer will feature the book more prominently. They can also make the author feel seen and/or appreciated.

Happy reading!

Today's excerpt: the chronicler tells a grim tale

 Only one more day! That the Dead May Rest will be available from multiple retailers tomorrow, October 17th. In the meantime, here's another excerpt. None of the continuing characters are involved, and the voice describing what happens is a narrator I've called "the chronicler."

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The pastor tidied up the church and thought with satisfaction — he hoped it didn’t amount to improper pride — of the funeral the day before, and his counseling session with the new widower after the graveside service. Attendance had been good, with extended family and neighbors and even coworkers from before the deceased retired to fuss over her husband and work in her garden. The husband had made sure there would be flowers growing near the grave, in season, and already several crocuses had popped up, which the pastor had made sure the grave diggers did not disturb. The weather for the burial had been benign, an unusually warm afternoon for March with a gentle breeze, and the grave site would be positively pastoral in the spring, the grass lush and green, the faint sound of water lapping at the manicured shore of the nearby lake.

The bereaved husband had seemed to take some comfort from the irrational, but oh-so-human thought of his beloved wife appreciating the spot and his care in choosing it. Encouraging any thoughts and feelings that helped the man cope, providing a sympathetic listener for his grief, while steering his mind toward the heavenly reward into which his wife had been received . . . it had been a good day’s work, and he was grateful that such work was his lot in life.

He was not prepared for that very man to burst into the sanctuary, wild-haired and wild-eyed, beside himself, shouting, “Where’s my wife!”

Had the man’s grief driven him out of his mind? How had the pastor failed to see some warning sign? He hurried to the widower’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder, steering him toward a pew. But the man shrugged him off, violently, and spun to face him. “I went to the grave! It’s all torn up!”

The casket must have been defective, allowing odors to escape that had attracted some stray dog. It must have been a large dog, to do such damage. “I’m so sorry. That must have been very hard to see. We’ll contact — ”

“You don’t UNDERSTAND! It’s all torn up and EMPTY! She’s gone! Someone stole her body. . . .” He broke down in sobs, groping for something to support him. He might be ready to sit down, now. The pastor reached out —

and froze as something banged into the church door, once, twice, and then burst in.

A lurching nightmare, the essence of desecration, had entered his church. And he recognized it. Recognized her from photographs, even though the husband had chosen a closed casket. And what he saw before him was a hideous mockery.

The pastor had never thought of himself as physically courageous. But he could not let this horror, this evil, go unopposed. He strode up to it and declared, “BEGONE, FOUL THING! THIS IS HOLY GROUND!”

It leaped for him, snarling, biting, clawing. And as it opened his throat, as his thoughts bled away, the last thought he carried into darkness was relief, even gratitude, that he wouldn’t live to see whether the creature attacked the man who had been her husband.

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A word of reassurance: that's about as grim as the book gets, and things do get better. You only have to take my word for it for one more day. . . .

Tomorrow, you can order the book instead of preordering it! All the following preorder links will then become purchase links.

-- Amazon (ebook)

-- Amazon (paperback)

-- Bookshop.org (paperback)

-- Kobo (ebook)

-- Barnes & Noble (ebook)

-- Barnes & Noble (paperback)

See you tomorrow!