By 2023, the silver boomtown of Blake’s Folly, once notorious
for saloons, brothels, speakeasies, and divorce ranches, has become a
semi-ghost town of abandoned shacks and weedy dirt roads. But unusual settings
attract unusual people, those forced to adapt to new circumstances in order to
survive, and those who have never really fit into mainstream society. But none
are humdrum. All have dreams and a chance to fall in love.
A Room In Blake’s Folly
In 1889, when Blake’s Folly boasted silver mines, saloons, and
brothels, the adventurer, Westley Cranston, fell in love with Sookie Lacey a
former prostitute. Their romance was doomed but never forgotten, and these six
stories tell the tale.
All About Charming Alice
Alice Treemont cooks vegetarian meals, rescues
unwanted dogs, and protects the most unloved creatures on earth: snakes. What
man would share those interests?
Jace Constant is in Nevada, doing research, but
he won’t be staying long. He hates desert dust, dog hair and snakes terrify
him. Even if the air sizzles each time Alice and Jace meet, any romance seems
doomed.
Desert Rose
Rose Badger is the local flirt, and settling down
is the last thing she intends to do. Geologist Jonah Livingstone is intriguing,
but with his complicated life, he’s off limits for anything other than
friendship.
Jonah Livingstone is fascinated by the sparkling
and lovely Rose Badger, but she doesn’t seem inclined to choose a favorite, so
why fret? Jonah’s secret life keeps him busy.
Excerpt Desert Rose
When the bell above the shop door
tinkled, Rose’s well-practiced welcome smile was almost in place. Almost…then
it stopped in mid-stretch. Stunned, she stared, swallowed, stared some more. My
goodness: wasn’t he gorgeous. Her interest increased, and her heart did
a pitter-patter tippy-toe dance as she took him in: tallish—but anyone would be
tall when compared to her tiny size—rangy, with tousled hair so black it
appeared blue under the lights, an explorer’s bone structure and weather-honed
skin, deep brown eyes. And here she was, acting like a complete idiot, frozen
into place, gawking at him as if he were of another species, or something
totally new-fangled dropped down from a distant stretch of the Milky Way.
Not that he seemed to be faring any
better, not moving, staring at her, his gaze unwavering, the wide-open door
letting in frosty air and plump snowflakes. What was that gaze of his telling
her? That he was surprised? Pleased? Oh yes. He liked what he saw, all
right—and men did like her, she knew that. She was used to their admiration.
They liked naturally golden curls, slanting blue eyes, and the broad, flat
cheekbones of the Russian steppe. But wasn’t it especially nice to be admired
by such a gorgeous specimen? Yes, indeed.
Mentally, Rose shook herself, forced
herself out of her stupor—somebody had to do something. This was a store, a
business, not a blind date. If a man suddenly showed up in a ladies’ dress
shop, that meant there was already a woman in his life. Unless he was a
cross-dresser. Or was lost and needed directions out of this half-a-horse
hellhole.
“Hello.” She forced the formerly
incomplete smile into something more fulsome and professional.
“Hello,” he answered. Smiled back.
Not a forced smile, though. A wonderful one that softened the craggy angles of
his face, crinkled into deep lines around his mouth and eyes.
Rose swallowed. Stared for another
few seconds, then ordered herself to stop thinking about his smile, his lips,
the bristly, salty way his skin would taste if she licked it, right there, at
the corner of his mouth. The thought made her knees tremble. A bad case of lust
at first sight? With a great effort of willpower, she corralled the lusty
thoughts until they were more manageable, somewhat closer to normality. Heard
her own voice, calm, practical: “Can I help you with something?”
He blinked, once, twice, as if waking
from a trance. Then, laugh lines and crinkles disappeared, gave way to a more
business-like expression. “Yes, of course.” Stepping into what was left of the
warmth in the shop, he turned, closed the door behind him. Stared at her again.
Cleared his throat. “I’m looking for a present.”
“For your wife?” Rose held her
breath.
His mouth tightened. “Not quite.”
“Ah.” Hope faded. Not quite a wife wasn’t nearly as bad as a
snuggled-in official wife, but it was close enough.
Buy A Room in Blake's Folly
Buy All About Charming Alice
Buy Desert Rose
10 Things You Might Not Know from the Blake's
Folly Romance Trilogy
Blake’s Folly,
Nevada, once a silver boomtown, is now a backwoods community
of clapboard shacks and scraggly vegetation. The local saloon is a leftover
from another century and, inside country music whines, while eccentrics dish up
tall tales, and suspicion.
But living in an
unusual setting does have advantages. It makes us sit up and take notice of our
environment, and gives us a good knowledge of unusual local history. For
example…
1) Nevada was
once covered by a warm shallow sea filled with reefs, mollusks, and ammonites.
There were also ichthyosaurs — large marine lizards — and they appeared around
250 million years ago, evolving from a group of unidentified land reptiles that
returned to the sea, like the ancestors of modern-day dolphins and whales.
2) In the first
half of the 1800s, women were scarce in the West, and husband-hunters, whether
ugly or good-looking, mean-tempered, sharp-tongued, or sugar sweet easily found
partners. By the 1880s, things had changed. Women fleeing domestic service,
poor farms, millwork, or factory toil, were arriving in abundance and men could
take their pick.
3) Like all
Western boomtowns where the male population outnumbered the female, there were
many brothels. Being out in the wasteland, panning for gold, trudging over
empty space hoping to find silver, working hard in the mines, or ranching on
poor soil and barely surviving, all made for a pretty lonely life, so brothels
and saloons were oases. What could be more appealing than an oasis where
scantily clad women served alcohol and pleasure?
4) Although their
silks, gaudy jewels, and perfumes set them apart from “decent” town women,
brothel madams made certain their “girls” were well behaved and lady-like in
public. In reality, they had no reason to be otherwise: although a few were
tough, gritty women, most were those who, through bad luck, circumstance,
betrayal, or personal choice, had come to work in the sex trade. They were as
sentimental and vital as any woman, crying each Christmas over the memory of
faraway homes, inaccessible families, and a way of life no longer open to them.
5) Local wives
detested the ladies of pleasure, and their disapproval condemned them to the
last row at social events, theatrical performances in the local community hall,
and church services. But these less respectable “ladies” were welcomed by
local shopkeepers, for they spent their hard-earned cash on fans, furs,
clothes, all manner of fluffy and shining gewgaws.
6) Despite all
the lovely stories we hear about western romances, the reality was less
romantic. Men looking for wives in the Far West usually went for young, fresh,
strong women who would raise children, attend to harvests, garden work,
laundry, scrounge for firewood, and cook. Many of the men were looking for
women to replace their previous wives who had died during childbirth or from
sheer exhaustion.
7) Without
experience in the working world, older women who were widows, or who had been
abandoned, or divorced hoped their grown children would take them in. However,
not every couple wanted a mother, or mother-in-law in residence unless she was
still strong enough to help out with the drudgery. The very many who found no
home with their children were often reduced to begging in the towns.
8) Although
prohibition effectively cut off Nevada’s much-needed tax revenue, it didn’t
reduce social drinking. In one year alone, the 90,000 Nevada residents managed
to wangle 10,000 prescriptions for medicinal alcohol.
9) The names of
the old railway companies still sound familiar to us — the Philadelphia and
Reading, the Erie, the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Atchison,
Topeka and Santa Fe. However all those companies failed during the depression
of 1893. Even back then the politicians lied, claiming the
economy was prospering as 500 banks closed and 16,000 businesses declared
bankruptcy.
10) And for those
who want to know about me, the author J. Arlene Culiner, I’ve spent my life
shifting from one country to the other, and I’ve often done it in an original
way: on foot. I also travel on slow trains, get off in out-of-the-way places
where I can’t speak the language and where I don’t know a soul. I
now live in a small, sleepy village in France where there’s nothing going on.
There are no shops. Occasionally a tractor passes through. There is a main
square with a 13th century church and houses that date from the 16th
and 18th centuries. There are many wonderful bats, quirky pigeons,
and other lovely birds that I delight in. That about wraps it up, though.
Writer, photographer, social critical artist, and storyteller, J.
Arlene Culiner, was born in New York and raised in Toronto. She has crossed
much of Europe on foot, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle,
a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, and in a haunted house on the
English moors. She now resides in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village
of no interest and, much to local dismay, protects all creatures, especially
spiders and snakes. She particularly enjoys incorporating into short stories,
mysteries, narrative non-fiction, and romances, her experiences in
out-of-the-way communities, and her conversations with strange characters.
finds Kay Sullivan Lynch returning to the Chicago Police Department, much to the dismay of her family. She's not sure it's the right move for her either, but the widow needs to make a life for her and her children so they can move past their loss. 
is Book #1 of The Cowboys of the Four Aces series by Sherry James.
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