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!
