1--What is the title of your latest release?
INTO THE SUNSET, it’s book #3 of the Western Light Series
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Maeve O’Toole gets asked to help babysit while her friend faces her deepest fear-being locked in an insane asylum. Dakota Harlan gets asked to come along to fight on their side. He needs to get away as he’s got a feuding family of hillbillies trying to kill him. He ends up doing a lot of babysitting and she ends up shooting someone.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The book is mostly set in Wyoming because my secondary character needs a place where women’s rights are respected as her tyrant husband wants to lock her in an insane asylum until she agrees to hand over the money her daughter inherited. Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote and give them full legal rights, so she’s hoping that helps protect her.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. Maeve would make a loyal friend. Dakota has learned to be very tough but he’s got a soft heart that he’s waiting to share.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
I’m answering for Maeve, my heroine. She’s brave and sassy, with a heart of gold.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
This whole series has, as a backdrop, the terrible insane asylums of the 19th Century. And the unfair laws that allowed a wife to be lock up in one, just on her husband’s say-so. That drives the whole series forward and I loved learned more about the fight to change the cruel laws.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit as I go. I work back through what I wrote yesterday, often finding typos and other mistakes. Then I take those typos out and add new ones. When I’m totally done, I go through it once or twice more, then it goes through three rounds of editing with my publisher.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Oh, wow. Hmmmm….I didn’t get into this shape by being picky. I suppose I’m a sucker for a vanilla ice cream cone from Dairy Queen.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I write in my recliner in my living room. On a laptop. I haul this laptop around with me and can write anywhere. No special space.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Tough question, wow. Honestly a little mean, considering how many writers I know. I love Karen Witemeyer. Jen Turano. Erica Vetsch. Ruth Logan Herne. Um. I always read CJ Box and Vince Flynn, Lee Child and Mary Balogh…okay I’m stopping
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
I’m a big reader and always have been. The first time I ever finished a book and asked myself, How Did He Do That To Me, drag me through that book so I was really IN it, hearing it, feeling it, was Walter Farley and his Black Stallion books. When I read The Mark of the Lion Trilogy by Francine Rivers, I really got how powerful words could be. How perfectly a world could be created in the hands of a very gifted author.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I have the best ‘the call’ story in the world. I attend the ACFW Conference every year and for many years there was a moment in the conference when Barbour Publishing would stand up and give a contract to an unpublished author. One year, they called my name. Wow, it is a truly peak experience in my life, to go up there, with three hundred authors clapping. I’d been writing for ten years and finally it really happened for me. It was glorious.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I read widely in all genres (well a few exceptions, but I read widely) I really like detective fiction. I love regency romance. Action Adventure in my genres…though I really love a romance. Bottom line, if they’re sassing each other and falling in love while they’re running for their lives, I’m happy. That’s what I like to read so that’s what I write.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
While You Were Sleeping. A very young Sandra Bullock lying about being engaged to a man whose life she saved when he fell in front of an oncoming train. He’s in a coma, she’s pulled into his large, quirky family, and while he’s asleep, she’s falling in love with his brother, a sweet and confused Bill Pullman. Uh oh.
15--What is your favorite season?
I suppose it has to be summer. I hate cold. But I can handle all but the nastiest cold days. I live in Nebraska so I’ve had to make my peace with cold, but I’ve never learned to like it. I’ll pick summer because it’s as far away from cold as I can get.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
My favorite birthday gift from my four daughters is what I call ‘The gift of time.’ I ask for lunch with three of the four…the fourth lives too far away, the brat. I’ll even pay, though they usually do. But sitting there with those three, talking and laughing, is the most precious gift.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I like true crime podcasts. I watch almost no TV or movies. I read the book The Woman they Could Not Silence by Kate Moore which inspired this current series and it’s fascinating, gripping. A biography that reads like a thriller. A woman locked away in an insane asylum and her fight to get out. She loses everything and sets out, step by step, to change the world. Very inspiring.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Again with the food questions??? My husband is a champion griller. I suppose a good steak always wins the day. Is that American food or what? I love Mexican food. The best Chinese restaurant in the world is about twenty miles from me in a small Iowa town. I can eat pizza anytime.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I read. I listen to podcasts. I try and lure pictures of my grandchildren out of my daughters. I know, like it’d kill me to take a walk once in a while!
20--What can readers expect from you next?
The next series begins in February with Whispers of Fortune, book one of the Golden State Treasure Series. https://tinyurl.com/ysc3kjtk
Western Light #3
A Historical Western Romance Set in 1800's Cheyenne, Wyoming
To finally escape the clutches of her controlling husband and the threat of being recommitted to an asylum, Ginny Rutledge enlists the help of her friends, Maeve O'Toole and Dakota Harlan. Fleeing their own tumultuous pasts, the group embarks on a journey to prove Ginny's sanity. However, as they confront the shadows they wish they could forget, danger looms from unexpected places.
Maeve grapples with her mother's impending remarriage and seizes a rare chance to escape her homestead--but that means reuniting with Dakota, the man she holds responsible for her father's death, who is caught in the crosshairs of a vengeful family. As the two of them navigate their shared history and a dangerous mission, Dakota is forced to confront his deepest fears and fight for the woman who has unwittingly captured his heart.
In this action-packed series finale, Mary Connealy delivers a riveting tale of danger, romance, and second chances on the Western frontier.
Romance | Christian Historical [Bethany House Publishers, On Sale: October 15, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780764242670 / eISBN: 9781493448098]
Mary Connealy is an award-winning, bestselling author known for her fun and lively historical romances. An author, teacher, and journalist, Mary lives on an eastern Nebraska ranch with her cowboy husband and has four daughters and two grandchildren.
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