why we write

Naturally, I cannot speak for all writers but will say where it comes to me, every time I bring out a new book, I am uneasy. Is now the right time? How will it be seen by others? That was never more true than with this last one, Round the Bend. It is the book of my heart. How objective can you even be with something that close to you? 

My edginess, where it came to this book, was why I had waited so long. I have mentioned that it took finding the right image for the hero, who had so long been in my imagination. It took something more-- my recognition that win or lose, the book deserved its chance. Books come from so many things. They aren't just created out of the writer but out a whole host of experiences, people, and yes the muses (which might not be the same through a creator's lifetime). I decided I could not stand in its way out of my own fears. This book deserved its chance, these characters deserved their chance, this story of the Oregon Trail deserved its. 

This might be hard to understand, but, as I see it, the story is always more than the writer. Once an artist creates something, painting, photograph, poem, it has an existence also. I don't mean I see it as human, but it is real. I had created a story that had a right to be seen-- rejected or liked.

There are writers where every single book goes into the stratosphere, as they have street teams and fans eager to read every word they write. I am not in that league. I have no street team. It's not that I'd object to giving out a lot of copies ahead of a book's release for reviews. It's that I don't know who would even want them. In view of that, I did all I knew in the way of getting the word out to those most likely to want such a book. Previously, I had joined two writer/reader groups oriented to the type of book I write. It's not easy for me to go out with a blurb, but I did it. I tweeted, blogged, commented, and posted everywhere I had the right. 

When the book came out the 21st, I started editing the book which will come next (Where Dreams Go will be out June 21st). It takes the story of some of these characters farther into Oregon's development as a Territory on its way to statehood. Communities were growing into towns and the people were trying to decide what they wanted them to look like. Working on it was a way to distract myself from worrying about how Matt and Amy were being seen by readers.

With happiness, from the start, the sales were the best of any of my books since I stopped offering them for free days. The only one that had come close was Arizona Sunset. Now these results weren't the spectacular ones of some authors, but for me, they were good. Book One was not immediately falling into Amazon's black hole.

Then I became uneasy when no reviews showed up. Now, I've had some books that never got a review... not one. But I was hoping that this one would get a few. Reviews are supposed to be for the readers, but they mean an awful lot to writers-- even those who have had a ton of them. For me, it would be my first chance to see how readers felt about a book that probably is as dear to me as any I ever wrote-- given the length of time it's been in my life.

Then the first review showed up. Nervously I looked down to read it.

"This is my first experience in reading one of Ms. Trueax's books and I wasn't disappointed. The story was exciting and never got boring. Amy and her family were traveling to Oregon along with Matt, his brother Morey, and father. It was a large wagon train so the storyline had many characters. I just loved St. Louis the Wagonmaster. He was the salt of the earth with so much experience in leading and understanding people. St. Louis had healing experience which was invaluable to those who traveled with him. I've never read a book like this with so many avenues that kept me fascinated. Amy and Matt were lifelong friends but he started feeling more than mere friendship. Amy actually began being courted by Adam, the Wagontrain Scout, but found out "the feeling" just wasn't there and soon realized her love for Matt was more than being a friend. Matt's brother, Morey, was disturbing in this book and led to the violence in Matt's life. The father was also part of the lies and deception that led Morey to hate his brother, Matt. I don't want to spoil this story for you so I won't go on. However, if you want an exciting, adventuresome and mysterious book, this historical western genre is for you. There is some violence and sexual content but the author did a great job in making all actions part of the story itself. I loved it!"

Wow, I was so happy-- a new reader and she loved the book. She saw the things I had hoped others would see in it. I've read how some resent it when a writer calls their book their baby, but it does feel like you sent off your kid into the world, hoping the world will appreciate all their qualities but worried it won't work out that way.

After that, there was another review from a longtime reader. Again I hoped the reader had liked it. Nobody wants to disappoint those who have been reading all you wrote.

"Rain Trueax is at her best from the first sentence. Each phase of the plot and characters are richly developed.
The Oregon Trail experience, physically and mentally grueling, either built character in the hero Matt or caused dangerous psychopathic mental breakdown in Matt's brother Morey. The wagon master St. Louis Jones' experience went beyond previous trips on the Oregon Trail. He had lived with Indians and trappers. He had a depth of understanding of humanity. He was a believable mentor for Matt's amazing growth. Through him Trueax revealed insights to the Indian and emigrants' points of view and their conflicting interests. Obviously Trueax's writing reveals extensive research with exact details of folk and Indian medicine, cooking, weapons, and geography. On fly fishing I thought didn't exist until after the civil war but I was wrong and Trueax was correct to have dry flies and a bamboo rod. I am eager to read more of the series to find out if Loraine finds her true love and the destiny of Scout Adam Stone. Will they eventually get together?"

Her in depth review doubled my happiness. I never know what people will think of my work until they tell me through an email, comment somewhere, or best of all, a review. Writing is pretty much a lonely game, but promoting and talking to readers about what they thought, that's where it becomes less so. This was a book that I knew some might not know what to think. So the fact that it got a pretty good launch made my week brighter.

The map at the top was drawn years ago by my archaeologist daughter when she was still in college. She gave it to me as a gift because she knew I had been writing this book. I appreciated it then and now when I can finally share it with others.

living with history

For my once a month blog for Smart Girls Read Romance, I wrote about the Oregon Trail and setting a romance on it. For anyone interested in the trek west, my piece there may be of interest.

An Oregon Trail Romance 

Pretty much, I grew up with history as a physical part of my life-- a lot of that due to my age and the years in which I grew up. The farm my parents bought in Washington got its water from a spring that was piped almost a mile to our home. Anytime the water stopped, my father had to go back and find where a deer had kicked out the pipe. The spring was partly protected by a cover and partly open, which means I probably had pretty good immunity to giardia-- at least back then. Fortunately, there were no homes above it and so cholera or e coli were not a risk.

Walking to the back of that property had two possible dirt roads to an orchard of plum trees, where we competed with the bears to get the fruit. My first school required walking off our hill and a mile and a half on a gravel road. The school was two rooms and my first grade teacher taught three grades in hers. It enabled students to proceed at their own pace-- which meant when the school consolidated, with a larger town school, I had to reread all the readers I'd read the year before.

The home I grew up in had been two smaller houses that were pushed together and made into one. In the winter, we would close off that other part with a curtain because it was too expensive to heat the whole house. That wasn't unusual back then and neither were phones where you dialed an operator to make a phone call.

Fern Prairie, yes, that's what it was called, was a pioneer kind of community with a grange hall a few miles from the house where there were country dances and potlucks. There were two country stores not too far from our home and one had a locker (for those younger or who never lived in the country, it was a large room kept at freezing temperatures with rental lockers for nearby families to keep their deer or bear meat through the winter-- nobody had home freezers big enough in those days.

I grew up with history as part of daily living. I grew up with the freedom to run over hills, to get my first .22 when I was twelve, to see some things a person would rather not have seen but also live a life that isn't so commonly lived today.

My parents sold the farm, and we moved to the suburbs of Portland where I went to college and met my husband. He had grown up pretty similarly to me. As soon as we could, we set out to find the kind of land and life, which we had experienced. Moving out here came danged close. The original house was gone, but the owners had themselves built the home in which we live today.

The property had the original harness shed, which we have maintained with a lot of old tools in it. In front of our home here was the crossing for the community as the sandstone was hard enough to bring a wagon across it. Years before that, this was one of the locations the Luckiamute Indians used for some of their seasonal migratory living. Finding grinding stones and arrowheads didn't used to be unusual.

This area was not too far from what had been Fort Hoskins. Moving here, we again had a country store where the wood floors were cleaned with kerosene, yep it's how they did it. It burned from a probable arson (some rough folks live out in these hills). In what used to be a nearby community, there had been a popular dance hall. I met people when we first lived here who had gone to dances in it. It had been burned many years earlier because the locals weren't happy that the soldiers from the fort were coming down to whoop it up. Easy to solve problems if someone doesn't mind a little violence.
 

 summer 1978

When we first bought this farm, there was a barn, which had been built in 1904 by that homesteading family. Walking into it was like walking into history with handhewn beams and big handmade nails. Unfortunately, the kind of barn needed then with milk stanchions and feed bins, hay storage in a loft above was not the kind of barn that worked with ranching today where hay bales weigh nearly a thousand pounds and need a tractor to feed them out. Through the years, we put some money into maintaining the barn purely based on its beauty, history and aura. To keep it standing simply was not feasible (even if we had had it) considering the level of expenditure that would have been required. Tall, as it was, it was dangerous to work on it or around it as it was set on big stones and the beams below were slowly rotting from the moisture.

summer in 2003

In 2006, it just collapsed. I heard the sound from the house, like a big sigh. There had not even been any wind. When we went out to look at the damage, we learned it had served its farm one last time as the sheep had tended to be under it for coolness. One had been there, but lying between heavy beams, it was protected in the collapse. Farm Boss got it out, and it ran off.

It is interesting to wade up our stream, find broken bits of pottery from earlier kitchens, old tools, and see the heavy metal cables that were once used by the loggers to dam up the stream enough to float logs down to the local sawmill. I think history is wonderful, exciting to read about, and hear the stories of what it was like. I enjoy setting my books into it. Living in it, not so much.

Finally--- there is another good reason to not live with our own history even. I was looking for an old photo of this place. I could probably find it in an album and scan it, but I thought I could find it the lazy way on my hard drive. I didn't, but I came across the first blog I ever did, which incidentally was in 2005. That blog ended up being cancelled by me as I decided to not continue-- but then started another blog with a name slightly altered (when you close down a blog, the name gets grabbed by someone-- do not ask me why because I had deleted everything from it). Anyway, I came across photos of me in 2005 (like the one below)... Talk. About. Depressing. Definitely-- do not even live with your own history! Live right where you are and make the most of it...

Round the Bend

Round the Bend is available as eBook and paperback. 

For the rest of March and all of April, the eBook will be $2.99 before it goes up to $3.99 the first of May.

Amazon

Links to Barnes & Noble; Kobo; iTunes; etc.

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Blurb:

In 1851, Independence, Missouri, a big wagon train waits to begin the 2200 mile trek to Oregon. Seventeen year old Amy Stevens shares her excitement at the journey with her best friend-- only to face disappointment at his less than enthusiastic reaction. When he kisses Amy, who has fancied herself a bluestocking, she angrily tells him he is ruining everything. Changes are coming, but surely not for the two of them.

Three years older, with too many hard experiences, Matt shares none of her illusions as to what lies ahead. He also has seen how the train’s scout, Adam Stone has looked at her-- and it's not as a friend. He’s torn as to what he can do about it. 

Matt has worked hard to earn enough for the supplies needed for the westward trek. His father and brother, both damaged by alcohol and hate, begged him to take them. His brother claimed he wanted a second chance. Except, what exactly does Morey mean by a second chance?

Round the Bend, book one in a series of four, is the story of the way west told through two families-- the Stevens and the Kanes—families as different as light and dark. It is a story of the purest of love and the most driven of hate. Most of all it is the story of how a man’s highest ideals can change his life and that of others. Heat level (with 1 least and 5 most) is ♥♥♥♥.

The Oregon series is four books following the Stevens family through sixteen years, four romances, and the settling of Oregon; each novel stands alone. 

~~~~~~~

The following is a snippet showing the dilemma Amy is facing as she tries to work out what will make her happiest.

    The moon still shone through the narrow opening of the tent, where she and her sisters slept, lighting up the area, making it hard to sleep. At best Amy slept restlessly when the moon was full. Tonight, her thoughts were bursting. She gave up and by moonlight wrote in her journal.

    ‘I left things in Missouri home, friends, all the life I knew but that was nothing to me. What lies ahead will be opportunity, adventure, new ideas, new places, new friends, new freedoms. Leaving my books was hardest when Father said I could only bring four. How does one narrow all beloved books to four? I chose small volumes by Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, and Shelley. Can anything soothe one’s soul better than poetry?’

    Restlessly, she bit on the end of her pen before she added, ‘More than my books, I realize I left my childhood there.’ There was another thing she'd left there, one she refused to write about, as it would make it real. Only in Missouri was her friendship with Matt. The tears the laughter, all gone. He had ruined everything.

    Although her own ambivalence over marriage and the limitations it would entail didn't leave her eager to accept the courtship of any man, if there had been a man, Adam Stone would have been the perfect one. He was Lancelot and Apollo rolled into one. Mentally she listed his qualities-- his confident way of talking, kind manner with people, the square jaw, the black curly hair, the soft buckskins, which emphasized his muscular frame. He was a man who would fit any girl's dreams. He had told her what he wanted. Why did she feel so miserable?

    There was one reason. To be happy, she had to make peace with Matt, make him see their friendship was more important than his silly ideas of... well, something else. She'd grown up believing there was nothing she couldn’t do by confronting it directly. It was intolerable to have someone she loved angry with her.

    She put away the journal and lay back on her cot. She did love Matt-- like a brother. She would talk to him, and it would be all right. After that, she could consider Adam's courtship more seriously... Matt could find a girl to love and— She stopped at that thought, unable to finish it, unable to face her feelings if that did happen.