It took me an extra day to get everything together, so that’s why this post is a day late.
This time around, I wanted to do something more fun than just giving the description. I made a couple of graphics to sum up the different things you’ll find in The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride. Hopefully, this will be more entertaining. 😀
Graphic 1:
Graphic 2 (this is the one I enjoyed the most):
Graphic 3:
If this sounds interesting to you, you can find the book at these places:
I will not be doing my monthly post on everything I’m working on next month. Instead, I will just make the announcement when The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride is available. That way, I won’t clutter up people’s inboxes. 🙂
I am looking at September 17, but I probably won’t announce it until a day or two later when I have had time to get all the links together. This time around, I’m not going to put it on pre-order. I’ll just release it. I want to see how things go. Then I’ll decide if I want to keep doing it this way or if I want to do more pre-orders in the future. To be honest, I don’t see the benefit of a pre-order. Maybe if I did them far out, I would have some benefit, but since I have trouble knowing when I can release a new book, I’m not keen on setting up dates far out in advance.
I am hoping this is the halfway point. The last couple of books have been longer than I anticipated and because of that, I haven’t been able to get as many books out a year as I’d like. At this rate, this book won’t be out until 2026. I had hoped to get four books out this year, but The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride only put me at three.
I don’t get a lot of people telling me they are anticipating my next book, but there are a couple who have expressed an interest in more books. It’s frustrating to work at a slower pace than what I used to manage. I used to manage six books a year (sometimes even eight) without missing a beat. I wish I could write faster. Since I can’t, I am trying not to let the books run on for too long, but I also realize I need to fully flesh out the story so I don’t rush things, either. It’s not an easy balancing act.
I am keeping all of this story in the heroine’s point of view. I typically don’t do that, but for this setup, it’s required I do it this way. I might include the hero’s point of view at the very end. To be honest, I didn’t know exactly WHO the hero would be until about 20,000 words into the story, but I’m sure everyone will feel that the hero was obvious. It might be obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me. When I began the book, I figured it could go in any direction. 🙂
I will probably end up putting this on hold. I am happy with the progress up to this point, but I’ve hit a snag where I am not sure how to connect the beginning to the midway point. I need to transition from the hero and heroine to being “awkward and developing a friendship” to becoming romantically attached to each other. This book has a three-prong setup. One is awkward to friendship. Then I bounce to love, but that love needs to be unconditional. So the third part is where the love becomes unconditional. We’ll get there. It’s just a matter of doing it the right way.
This book will follow The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride. I don’t have a cover or a title yet, I was going to originally call this “The Virgin Widow”, but that no longer fits since the heroine’s first marriage will be annulled. So I need another title. I’m bouncing ideas around.
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That’s about it to report for this month. My next post will come out around September 18 after I get all my links together. Hope everyone has a great August!
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series.
I am currently on the last chapter of this book. I purposely slowed my writing down so I don’t rush the ending. I want to make sure I get the ending just right. I expect to be done with it in another week or two, and then I’ll have it edited. I am currently expecting this book to be out until about September or October.
A Glimpse at My Publishing Schedule
I’m surprised, to be honest, because I thought I could have The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride out in August back when I was planning out my publishing schedule in January. Back then, I also thought I could easily manage four books out in a year. It might be more like three. I’m not sure at this point. 😦 It sucks to have to work so slow after coming back from burnout, but I keep telling myself that having a good quality book is a lot more important than getting more books out in a year. I have so many ideas, and I wish I could write more.
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Holiday Series.
I was hoping to get Masquerade Bride out in October. It has a Halloween theme to go with it. I am probably halfway into the story. I’m sure I can have the first draft done before October. The problem is that I need time to edit it myself and then send it out to people who help me find stuff that I missed (because I always miss something).
I’ve already decided that I’m going to publish this when it’s ready, so we might have a Halloween-themed story in January. It’s not ideal, but I don’t feel like sitting on this until September/October 2026. I’m not that patient.
This is Book 2 in the Oregon Series.
This is a slowburn romance. I’m getting close to 30,000 words, and the couple hasn’t even kissed. They aren’t ready to kiss, even though they are definitely emotionally moving closer toward each other. The pacing is surprisingly smooth considering how little I’m seeing actually happening. The focus has been pretty much more on the hero’s emotional journey. His mother was a prostitute, and his father was one of her customers. He was sent to an orphanage run by a priest in another town. He has no idea who his parents are, and he’s always had this longing to be part of a family, though he doesn’t know how to make that longing transition into the marriage he has with the heroine. Finding that transition has been the focus of this book so far. I have a secondary focus, but that needs to come later.
This book won’t be ready until maybe summer of next year. I can tell there is so much more to do with it, and I want to honor the story by playing it out the way it’s meant to.
About Rumble:
Maybe Rumble has an option to put videos into a playlist like YouTube does, but if it does, I don’t know how to do it. But here is my Rumble channel if you want to go there.
About YouTube:
I do, however, know how to put videos together into a playlist on YouTube. If you start at Chapter 1 of the book, then you should be able to go directly into the following chapters if you have the autoplay feature selected on YouTube.
PLEASE NOTE: These are the PG rated versions of these books. I had to remove the sex scenes in order to comply with the guidelines on these platforms. I don’t want to go through all the work of narrating them only to have them removed because of the spicy content.
The next book starts up on July 2.
The next book I’m putting up is The Hero Least Likely since my sister requested that one. She’s a trucker on the road, and she listens to my books to help pass the time while on the road. 🙂
The assistant I have to help me with BookFunnel is currently booked up, so I have nothing going over there this month. I also don’t have time to deal with that right now. There’s been some medical stuff going on with a my husband and one of my sons. It’s nothing serious, but it has been time consuming. This has required me to spend some time going to the doctor with them to offer moral support.
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That’s all I have for this month. I hope everyone has a wonderful July!
Welcome to June, everyone! It’s hard to believe we’re coming up to half of 2025 already. I swear, the older I get, the faster time zooms by. Would you believe I published my first ebook on Amazon and Smashwords all the way back in 2009?
I have had the pleasure of getting to know some of you since my early days, and I just want to take a moment to thank you for sticking with me through everything. It’s because of your encouragement that I’m still writing books today. (There was a time when I almost quit because of some negative feedback, and it was only the kind correspondence from you guys that kept me going.)
Alright, with that personal note aside, here is what’s going on in the world of “Ruth the writer”.
This is Book 2 in the Love Under Desert Skies Series. (Book 1 is Tagalong Bride.)
Here is the description:
She’s a proper lady. He’s the lawman least likely to succeed. Tossed into the same adventure, can they find everlasting love?
Arizona, 1885. Bernadette Reid longs to be cherished. Delighted to meet a handsome and courageous rancher, the mail-order bride wants nothing more than to marry, settle down, and raise a family. But after her intended ropes her into joining the pursuit of two outlaws, she ends up having to spend time with an inept deputy who has the audacity to think he’s a rival for her affections.
Zeke Ritter tires of all the snickering he’s endured his entire life. Determined to prove worthy of his badge, the young man joins the hunt for a pair of outlaws—only to be shocked at the beauty of a reluctant posse member. And when her rugged fiancé focuses more on wrangling bandits than her heart, he vows to help her find happiness even if it leaves him shattered.
Discovering Zeke’s hidden charm, Bernadette struggles with the realization that her brother’s matched her to the wrong husband. And though Zeke knows the woman he craves deserves someone who truly appreciates her, he refuses to steal another’s fiancée.
Will they defeat their fears and find strength in each other?
In this book you’ll find a virgin hero and heroine, an underdog hero, one sex scene within marriage, an actual gunfight (which held me up for three whole weeks to get right), comedy, and the Red Ghost itself. (And, just for fun, I scared Lucas with another scorpion. You know, just because it’s fun to mess with your characters once you know their weakness.)
If this sounds like your cup of tea, you can find it at these places:
Google Play (ebook)
Google Play (audiobook)
This is the first book in the Marriage by Chemistry Series.
At the moment, I am almost 64,000 words in this book. I have a main portion of the conflict resolved, but I need to do a few more scenes before the book is done. I can’t spoil things at this point, but I’m very happy with the way things have turned out, and it was fun to engage with a different twist on humor than what I typically do. The hero and heroine not knowing the other’s aliases early on in the story did provide some great comedy.
I’m waiting until I finish the first draft before reaching out to my editing team, so I don’t have a release date yet.
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Holiday Series.
I am almost at 20,000 words, but I can see that this is not going to be a novella. Not that I was planning to write a novella when I started this, but the storyline was so simple that I figured it would be on the shorter side. Now that I’m 20,000 words in, I realize I have a lot more to do in order to flesh the story out. This is a really fun story. It’s nice to take on a “fantasy-ish” tale.
I have decided that even if this is not ready by Halloween, I’m going to publish it afterwards. I don’t know how many people will be interested in a post-Halloween “Halloween” story, but it’s too difficult to try to line things up with certain seasonal periods anymore. I used to be able to line a book’s publication date within a certain time period. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that again, but for the time being, I can’t. So I’m just going to publish this book when it’s ready.
This story is still primarily a romance. It just happens to happen in October. I have put in a scene where the characters are making up a story about “Shifty Jack”, which apparently started in Ireland a long time ago, and I am going to feature a masquerade ball. But that’s pretty much it as far as any actual “Halloween” stuff goes. I don’t like to get into occultic stuff. They did actually do fortune telling, etc, in that time period, but I don’t want to go down that path. I would rather keep things light. So I’m limited in what I can do with Halloween in the Regency era. I will be able to play on the holidays of Christmas and Valentine’s more when we get to those books.
Still, the idea of our heroine taking on another life to see if the grass is greener on the other side (in other words, she puts on “another mask”) fits the Halloween season.
This is Book 2 in the Oregon Series. (The Wilderness Bride is Book 1.)
This one comes to me a little at a time. I am struggling with knowing where to go next. I would plot, but every time I plot, the story veers off course, so I’m not going to waste my time. I like how the story has gone so far. This is a slow build, just like The Wilderness Bride was. The hero and heroine start out feeling like strangers, pretty much because they are, for all intents and purposes. But they are currently working on getting to know each other.
We are 20,000 words in, and they are still working on the friendship side of things. They are married at the beginning of the book, though, so the expectation is that they will fall in love. The question is when will they realize it. I see snippets of them starting to, but we aren’t there at the “this is it!” moment yet. I have no idea when that portion will come up.
It’s so weird. I felt that so little happened in The Wilderness Bride, but when I read over it, I never got bored. And I feel like this is the same way for this book. It feels like not much is happening when there really is. I guess the reason for this is that the action is “emotional” rather than “physical”.
That’s all I have for this month.
I would have liked to have gotten more done, but now that we’re in walking season, I’ve had to spend more time working on staying in shape. It took me a long time to get used to walking 3-5 miles at a time, and I don’t want to lose that momentum. I have also been making a lot more meals at home. The weight loss is very slow. I have always been slow in losing weight, so that’s not new, but I’ve been trying to focus more on the “eat better to get healthy” instead of “eat less to lose weight”, if that makes any sense. It’s unbelievable how much time goes into preparing stuff from scratch. I am not a big carb eater, but I do love my protein, veggies, and fruits. So I have a lot of meals that require me to be int he kitchen for a good segment of time on any given day. Add to that the fact that I have my husband and grown sons in the house, and I am pretty much busy. 🙂
This is Book 2 in the Love Under Desert Skies Series. (Book 1 is Tagalong Bride.)
Things are going slower than I originally planned. I was hoping to get The Hero Least Likely out this month, but it’s looking like we’re looking at a June release instead. Right now, it’s still with my editing team.
I am narrating and posting my books, chapter by chapter, on YouTube and Rumble. I am currently working on putting Eye of the Beholder up. (I already finished with Tagalong Bride.) I post a new chapter Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I schedule these chapters in advance so that I don’t get overwhelmed by trying to do too much at once. I’m the kind of person who needs to pace herself. 🙂
The reason I publish more stuff on YouTube is that it’s easier to manage videos there. I have a harder time figuring out Rumble.
If you would like to listen to my books as I post them, here are the links:
Links to books’ playlists on YouTube:
On YouTube, I also post other videos, mostly to do with writing, publishing, marketing, and books I’m working on so here at the links specifically to the books:
To go directly to the Tagalong Bride playlist, click here.
To go directly to the Eye of the Beholder playlist, click here.
Loving Eliza is not available yet, but that book will start on May 14.
After Loving Eliza, I’ll be putting The Hero Least Likely up.
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series.
I still have a way to go before I’m done with this book. The reason writing is so slow for me these days is that I keep on adding to the story. I think I have about 20,000 more words to go before I’m done with this, but we’ll see. I don’t want to rush the book. I’m enjoying it. (I’m enjoying all of these books. It’s so nice that the burnout phase of my life is over.) I want to make this the best story it can be.
At the moment, the hero and heroine both know their secret identities. The heroine isn’t happy with him because in the opening scene, he did reject her play. He’s given her the love potion in an attempt to make amends and have her quickly forget how much he hurt her with that rejection, but the love potion didn’t work. So he’ll have to find another way to work things out.
I have brought in Logan (who was the hero in Ruined by the Earl which was Book 3 in the Marriage by Deceit Series), and it’s been a lot of fun catching up on things with him. I enjoy bringing in past characters if I can squeeze them in.
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Holiday Series.
This is my Halloween romance. The heroine is now in her new life as the “popular” girl. This is a lot of fun. She gets to assume a new identity and find out what life is like on the other side of the fence, so to speak.
I had to make a hard decision. This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Holiday Series. The Christmas book (A Wedding Carol) is next, and the Valentine book (It’s a Wonderful Marriage) is after that. But since I am writing so much slower these days, I don’t have the time to work on the Christmas and Valentine books to get the Christmas one out in November/December 2025 and February 2026. So I am pushing the Christmas book to November/December 2026. Hopefully, I can get the Valentine one out in February 2027.
This is Book 2 in the Oregon Series.
I can’t write in this every week. I find that I am also having to go back and revising scenes before I can move forward. I know where I am heading, but I’m having trouble figuring out the scenes that will connect where I currently am to where I need to be. So I’m letting my mind rest and think about it.
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Since I am pushing the Christmas and Valentine stories back, my immediate plans involve working on Book 3 in the Love Under Desert Skies Series when I finish The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride. I also plan on getting to Book 2 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series, but I don’t have a title for it yet.
Just for the fun of it, I looked up the very first post I made over here on this blog. That was February 2012. Isn’t that crazy? That was over a decade ago! I didn’t realize I’d had this blog for that long. Back then, I was writing To Have and To Hold (Dave and Mary Larson’s second story). I had just started the Regency genre. I was wrapping up the Native American Romance Series with Bound by Honor Bound by Love. If you remember when I was working on those, thank you for sticking with me for all of these years.
Okay, so that really had nothing to do with this post. We’ll get to the subject at hand.
This is Book 2 in the Love Under Desert Skies Series
Finally, after all this time, we have this book moving toward publication. This is longer than I originally anticipated, so it’ll take me longer to go through the initial edits before I can send it out to others. I have about four people total in my editing team. Each person has strengths that help me out a lot, and I want all of their feedback because they make the story way better. I’m thinking that this will be ready in June. I just can’t rush books like I used to. Having gone through burnout, I don’t dare risk it.
A note about my progress in overcoming burnout:
I still don’t know what my average book production will look like per year. I used to publish six books a year without too much issue. Or maybe it was an issue because I did end up in burnout. I just didn’t “feel” it until I hit rock bottom. It’s strange to be in limbo. I have my joy and enthusiasm for writing back, and I am comfortable working on three books. I notice I am better off writing only three days a week, and I need a break between days.
I used to write Monday through Friday. Now I lose a lot of writing steam if I don’t give myself the breaks between writing days. So I do best when I write Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I use Tuesday and Thursday to do more “business” stuff like updating my blog, doing my bookkeeping for the accountant, narrating the audiobooks for YouTube and Rumble, engaging in emails, etc. Sometimes I will do these things on the weekends if I’m bored. I play Mario Party a lot with my family to relax, but I have trouble just sitting and playing the game. I find I need something else to do, and these other tasks are easy enough. The writing and editing are the tasks that require more energy. I find that when I keep the writing and editing to those three days, my work is way better. Like, the words just flow easier, and the ideas are popping all over the place. If I try to write two days in a row, I struggle. So I’m keeping my writing to those three days until/if things improve.
I guess it’s to be expected that recovering from burnout should take years. It took me years to crash. It’ll take years to dig my way completely out. Or maybe this will be the new way of doing things to avoid future burnout. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. I know burnout looks different to each person because each person has different levels of work they can handle. It’s frustrating at times because I have always been geared toward doing a lot, no matter what my life has been like. Making more time to rest does not come easy, but I am doing it because I want this writing thing to keep going. I just found my joy back. I don’t want to lose it again.
I ramble about all of this to say that I no longer know how much time I need to complete my books or how long the editing process will take. I was publishing something every other month for years. Then the last couple of years, things were out of alignment. I’m sure I’ll find a happy medium somewhere, but it’ll probably take a while.
Back the blog post…
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series
The process of getting to the big reveal was a lot of fun. It was so fun, in fact, that I delayed it for as long as possible. I was enjoying how we (those of us outside the book) know what is going on while the characters had no clue! So I chose to play around in this “sandbox” for a while. But, like all good things, it had to eventually come to an end.
The heroine found out the hero hates her play, and she has moved back in with her brother. The hero is scrambling around to make things up to her, and he has come to visit her with the first trial of the love potion. This is also fun. Just in a different way. 😉
This is Book 1 of the Holiday Series.
I want this out in late September/early October for Halloween. The theme is putting on a different face. Literally. But not in a gruesome way. This is a romance, not a horror novel. I had to think over this plot quite a bit to figure out how it will work. Originally, I was going to use the “trading places” trope, but there really is no one this heroine can trade places with. Her big thing is to be “popular”. I still have not come up with a term that seems to fit exactly what I’m going for. Suffice it to say, that she wants to be charming and witty. She wants friends. She wants gentlemen lining up to be her suitor. In other words, she doesn’t want to be a wallflower anymore.
This Halloween, she will get her wish. I did play around with the idea of there being some magical medallion that will grant wishes. That kind of works in this book, but it doesn’t work for Books 2 or 3 of the series. So I discarded that idea. I finally settled on there being a character who acts as a “fairy godmother/Christmas spirit/guardian angel” across all three books. That character will be my main constant to connect this series. After some brainstorming, I have decided this character will be from the future. Maybe the year 2500. This character is looking for a job promotion, and the only way this character will get that promotion is by setting the main characters in Books 1, 2, and 3 on the right course. I got this idea from “It’s a Wonderful Life” movie where the angel got his wings after convincing Jimmy Stuart’s character that he wanted to live. (See how other people’s stories can eventually inspire other writers?)
I am currently on Chapter 2, but I think I need to back up and do some light revisions to make this a Halloween story. I was originally going to start it on October 31, but something tells me, I’d be better off moving the date up and perhaps making October 31st in the middle of the story instead.
Book 2 should be easy enough. Most of the stuff will happen on Christmas Eve. Book 3 all takes place on Valentine’s Day. Book 1 is the only one that’s been tricky, and since it’s Book 1, I need to get that straight before I can do anything else.
Since I am working on Masquerade Bride…
I am happy with how this story is progressing so far, but I don’t want to take on too much. I have to know my limits and work with them, even though it is frustrating. Believe me, I wish I could write MORE books at a time than what I can do.
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Speaking of not taking on too much, I totally forgot to go to BookFunnel to join a promo for this month. I am currently working with someone to help me with these since I have been trouble getting to these. They aren’t hard to do, but they do take up time, and it’s not easy to remember when I have all of these other things to do.
And I am enjoying the whole YouTube and Rumble thing more than I anticipated. So I might as well hand the stuff that isn’t as fun to do to someone else at this point. I know I have some people who are BookFunnel readers, and it is a great way to give out ebooks, so I do want to keep using it.
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I’m going to end things here. I hope everyone has a great April!
Hi, everyone! I have a lot of exciting stuff going on. I’ll begin with what I’m working on at the moment. Then I’ll share the BookFunnel Promo I’m in this month. After that, I’ll share the YouTube and Rumble links where you can listen to Tagalong Bride. Ready for a long post? Here we go. 🙂
This is Book 2 in the Love Under Desert Skies Series.
Book 1: Tagalong Bride
Book 2: The Hero Least Likely
Book 3: To be announced
I’m happy with the way this turned out. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure how things were going to play out early on. I even rewrote a couple of portions of it because it wasn’t going in the direction that would make it the best story possible.
I don’t have an official release date yet. I need to get my editing team together and find out what their schedules look like first. Right now, I’m planning on May because it’s been my experience that things take longer than one expects.
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series.
The hero and heroine are just about to find out who the other is. In case you don’t know, the hero is an actor who rejected an aspiring playwright’s work. The playwright is really the heroine. She is pissed off at this “actor” but is completely in love with the hero. It’ll be fun when she finds out he is the actor and he learns she is the playwright. Sparks are going to fly. Those sparks won’t be good for them, but they’ll be good for those of us who enjoy tension and conflict within a relationship. Don’t worry. This is a romance. There will be a happy ending for these two, though I don’t know how the hero is going to make things up to her yet.
I think we are looking at July for this one to be out, but I’ll know for sure as we get closer to the release date.
This is Book 2 in the Oregon Series.
Book 1: The Wilderness Bride
Book 2: The Preacher’s Wife
Book 3: To be announced
I think I got a good handle on the preacher now from Book 1 in this series. His backstory was vague before, and I had to figure out why he was so eager to marry Corrine and to take on the role of helping her family. Now that I have it, I have the conflict that will be at play for this book. Most of the time, I start a story without knowing much of anything about the plot. I wing it as I go along. It’s more fun this way. I like being surprised.
I’m expecting to get this out before the end of the year, but I have a holiday series (Regency) that will cover Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine. Since the holiday books will be the priority, I might end up shoving this off to 2026. We’ll have to see how things go. The writing isn’t necessarily slow, but these books I’m writing these days are longer than I expect when I start them. I refuse to rush a story to get it done. I want to honor your time by giving you the best I can.
This month, I have two books I put into the March Free Historical Romance BookFunnel promotion.
One is a Regency, and the other is a historical western. I know some people prefer the Regency and others a historical western. So I thought I’d do one of each.
For the Regency, I picked out The Rake’s Vow.
I had someone request a romance where the hero has a broken past and the heroine makes him whole with her love. The heroine is a virgin. The hero used to be a rake, so he isn’t. However, he is reformed and has taken a vow of celibacy. Given that this is a romance, and I write spicy content, we all know there’s going to be some spice.
For the historical western, I picked The Convenient Mail Order Bride.
Someone else requested a mail-order bride story. The hero and heroine in this one are both virgins. The hero’s half-brother posts the mail-order bride ad on the hero’s behalf–something the hero did NOT want. When the heroine shows up, the hero doesn’t know what to do with her. This is a spicy book. There are a couple of sex scenes.
To check out these books, and the others great ones in this promo, click here or go directly to this url: https://books.bookfunnel.com/marchfreehistrom/ob04m6bwvu.
I finally figured out how to use the programs on my computer to cheaply and easily make videos to post on YouTube and Rumble. I want to see my books put into audio format in many places. I already have all of them in audio on Google Play using digital narration. I have a couple of them across all retailers with a human narrator. (I could not afford to keep paying her, unfortunately, though she was top notch.) I have my newer books on Apple in digital form since they are allowing it Draft2Digital (the place I upload to for this perk).
YouTube and Rumble will be two more places I can use now that I know how to get this done. I am not worrying about making “professional” files. I am simply reading the book. Right now, I am working on Tagalong Bride.
After this is done, I will read Eye of the Beholder since most people seem to like that one. Tagalong Bride was requested, so I chose this to do first. If there is a book you’d like me to put on YouTube and Rumble, just let me know, and I’ll put it on my list.
The days I have new chapters coming out are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I need to space these out so I have time to work on them.
Here is the YouTube Channel Link
Here is the Rumble Channel Link
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That’s it for now. I hope everyone has a great March!
Hi, Everyone! I decided to wait until today to post this because The Wilderness Bride is now available. I didn’t want to clutter people’s inboxes by emailing twice this month. 🙂
I’m happy to say I have another historical western romance out. I know some of you were looking forward to more westerns, and it was fun to get back into that setting. I love Regencies and historical westerns. It’s hard to pick one that I enjoy more. I just go where the story ideas take me. In this case, I felt led to write a story set in the Oregon hillside. This is Book 1 in the Oregon Series.
Here’s what it’s about:
She came to the forest to die. His solitary life is the only thing that brings him peace.
1894. Lisa Foxhorn has nothing left. Rejected and humiliated by wealthy Eastern society over an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the grieving heiress surrenders her baby for adoption and flees to the Oregon coast to end it all. But when her suicide attempt fails, she’s stunned to be taken in by a brooding man whose wild appearance is contradicted by his compassionate touch.
Ashley Carver has chosen isolation. Yet he can’t turn away from the frail redheaded beauty he finds above the oceanside cliffs. And though the routine-loving recluse avoids all close relationships, his emotional walls waver when a traveling preacher makes assumptions about their situation and demands they marry.
Struggling to keep up the lies that conceal her tainted past, Lisa wonders if consummating their union could heal her raw wounds, specifically the need for another child to replace the one she had to give up. Though Ashely hates being vulnerable, their kisses tempt him into opening up to her. Will their deepening bond turn an unwanted marriage into a fiery love match?
The Wilderness Bride is the steamy first book in the Oregon historical western romance series. The hero is a virgin.
If this sound like your kind of book, you can find it at these places:
This is Book 2 in the Love Under Desert Skies Series:
Book 1: Tagalong Bride
Book 2: The Hero Least Likely
Book 3: To Be Announced
I’m really happy with how this book has turned out. I have a couple more chapters to go, but it won’t be long before it’s done. The nice thing is we’ll be seeing the main cast of characters (Lucas, Gail, Zeke, Bernadette, Blaze, and another woman who showed up in this one) in Book 3. Since I am going to be working on the holiday romance series that will be coming out between September and February, I don’t expect Book 3 to come out until 2026. So we will be saying goodbye to the Arizona desert for a while after this book is finished.
This is Book 1 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series.
Things are still going along really well in this one. It’s definitely a cute, romantic comedy. The hero and heroine still don’t know the truth of their identities yet, but they are about to get married. It won’t be too long after they say, “I do,” the heroine is going to realize who the hero is and will wish she had said, “I don’t.” Don’t worry, though. It’s a romance. Everything will work out. Eventually.
This is Book 2 in the Oregon Series.
Book 1: The Wilderness Bride
Book 2: The Preacher’s Wife
Book 3: To Be Announced
After you read The Wilderness Bride, this whole thing about the preacher will make a lot more sense. In The Wilderness Bride, he comes across more as a villain than a hero, but that’s because the main characters in The Wilderness Bride didn’t like him. Since the preacher is the main character in this book, we get to see him in a different light. We get to view his perspective on things. I am fascinated by the way different characters feel about events that are happening around them. So it’s fun to take a character who was unlikable in one book and turn him into someone who is likable in another book.
At the moment, the hero and heroine are getting along, but both of them are unsure of how to proceed with their marriage. So there is a lot of awkwardness. I’m not sure how they will start feeling comfortable with each other enough to fall in love. The fun part in writing this book is that we’ll get to find out soon enough.
This is going to be the Marriage by Holiday Series, and I’m tucking this into a Regency category. The reason I’m placing it in the Regency world is because I want Mr. Christopher Robinson to be the hero in Book 3. (He’s one of my favorites.) Don’t worry, Agatha is still going to be the heroine. I’m not getting rid of her.
I don’t have covers for these books yet. I only have the title to Book 1, which is Masquerade. But I do have the basic setup for this series.
Book 1 (Masquerade) is going to have a Halloween theme to it. It is the eve of the heroine’s wedding night, and she’s worried that her marriage will not result in a love match. She barely knows the gentleman. Their parents arranged the marriage. She is a wallflower. She is not all that pretty, though to be fair, she doesn’t take the time to pretty herself up because she’d rather be reading a book than socializing. She makes a wish that she could be “popular”. I’m not sure what the term would be for the Regency era on this, so I need to look that up. Anyway, in this book, our heroine will get her wish. She is going to get to live the life of a lady who is beautiful, charming, and the center of attention. And, since it is a romance, she’ll get to come across the gentleman she is supposed to marry, but she’ll get to see him from a different vantage point since he doesn’t know her real identity.
Book 2 is going to have a Christmas theme to it. In this one, the heroine is the “popular” lady in Book 1. She is going to be a spoiled brat. That’s the only way this rendition of A Christmas Carol is going to work. I need someone who needs to change for the better by the end of this story. And since someone requested the heroine is the one who is the “Scrooge”, I thought I’d run with it. That person also likes the names Diana and Richard. So that will be the names of our main characters. I haven’t thought too much on this one. We know there will be the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, but I haven’t yet decided who the hero is as a person, nor do I yet know his role in this story.
Book 3, as I mentioned above, involves Mr. Christopher Robinson and his wife, Agatha. This will be their second book. The first was His Reluctant Lady. Okay, so this setup is going to be based off the idea, “What if I had never been born?” The book opens with Christopher having a crisis (of sorts). I haven’t laid out the details, but I think it will involve Christopher’s daughter kissing Lord Roderick’s son at a dinner party. The kids are going to be like 12 or 13, so these two are not set to elope yet. (Though in the future, they will end up doing that. I’ve known for years that Roderick’s oldest son and Christopher’s oldest daughter will fall in love. I’m just not ready to get to their story at this time because I feel there are more other Regency stories to tell first.) Okay, so the kiss occurs, and this begins a lot of fretting and agonizing. Christopher is going to run into other problems, I’m sure. And he’ll come to a moment where he thinks everyone would have been better off if he just hadn’t been born. That’s when he gets a visit from a “guardian angel” who will show him how things would have been different without him. We’ll get to see how Lord Roderick (Nate) and Claire would have ended up, how Lilly and Roger would have ended up, how Lord Edon would have ended up, how Agatha would have ended up, and others Christopher has managed to impact in some way have ended up. I need to start making a list of people to put in this one. Christopher has been a pretty busy guy in these Regency books.
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Alright, I’m going to end this post here. I am going to be looking into joining some BookFunnel Promos. Thankfully, I had a couple requests, so now I know what books to run. The problem with having 100 books is that it’s hard to narrow down which to offer in promos.
I was going to do a regular blog post like usual, but my husband asked, “Are you going to mention what you’re working on for the year?” And I thought, “Why not do that instead?” So today, I’m going to share the books that I plan to publish this year and a rough estimation on when they’ll be out.
(Oregon Series: Book 1)
Anticipated publishing month: January or February (One of my the ladies on my editing team has the flu, so I’m waiting. She does a wonderful job helping me, and she’s always been very kind to me. I’m fortunate to be surrounded by such supportive people.)
Genre: historical western romance.
Tone: tender, serious, you might cry, but there is a happy ending
Heat level: high (there are a few sex scenes; sex is a key component to the romance)
Description: Our heroine had to give up her baby because she had an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and couldn’t afford to raise the child herself. She arrives in Oregon with the plan to commit suicide. She can’t go through with it. (Nor did I want her to because this is a story about finding hope despite one’s circumstances.) So anyway, she has nowhere to go and ends up falling asleep amid the trees along the hillside of the Pacific Coast. The hero finds her and takes her to his cabin to nurse back to health. Then a preacher comes along, assumes the worst, and makes them get married. The rest is all about how the two fall in love.
Books comparable to this one: His Redeeming Bride and Loving Eliza
(Love Under Desert Skies Series: Book 2)
Anticipated publishing month: April *fingers crossed*
Genre: historical western romance
Tone: cute, funny, and sweet
Heat level: medium (there is one sex scene)
Description: Our heroine is betrothed to a brave, courageous man who looks danger in the face and laughs. However, he’s not exactly the most inclined toward romance. His main concern is catching the dangerous outlaws they’re chasing. There is another man in the group, however, who has a secret longing to be with her. The downside is that her brother didn’t arrange for him to marry her, and he’s not the bravest or most attractive of men. This is an underdog gets the girl kind of romance.
Books comparable to this one: Groom for Hire, A Bride for Tom, and The Wrong Husband
(Marriage by Chemistry Series: Book 1)
Anticipated release month: May or June
Genre: Regency Romance
Tone: romantic and comedic
Heat level: medium to high (2-3 sex scenes)
Description: This is a fun romance full of “hidden identities”. Adam, the hero, is a gentleman of multiple personas. One alias is an actor. This actor goes by the name Jefferson Crowdy. Emma, the heroine, is a playwright who wants to get her plays into the theatre, but since she’s a lady, she uses her brother’s name on the plays. Her brother’s name is Percy. The book starts out with Adam reading the play “Percy” wrote and rejecting it. Word gets to Emma that “Jefferson” thought the play was awful. So Emma doesn’t like “Jefferson”. But when she meets Adam at a dinner party, she falls in love with him. Adam immediately falls in love with her and starts a courtship with her. Then Adam meets Percy and thinks it’s “the playwright” he rejected. So he starts scrambling around to help Percy write well enough in order to get approval for the owner of the theatre. It’s this back-and-forth where neither Emma nor Adam know who the other is that’s fun to work with, but there is going to be that moment where they discover who they really are. And at that point, the fireworks are going to take off.
Books comparable to this one: Kidnapping the Viscount and His Reluctant Lady
Anticipated publishing timeframe: Summer 2025
Genre: historical western romance
Tone: tender, serious, I don’t know if there will be some “you might cry” moments yet, but the book is in the lines of what is in The Wilderness Bride
Heat level: I expect this to be medium to high (so at least 2 sex scenes, and I do expect sex to lead to the growth of the romance to some degree)
Description: I just started this book. The basic setup is the heroine ended up in an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. She was going to marry the father of the baby but found out he had a violent side to him. Her mother and brother fled with her to Oregon to escape him. When they settled into the town, they claimed she was a widow in order to avoid public ridicule for her and her unborn child. The hero is a preacher. Since the heroine’s family is struggling in the town to make ends meet, he marries her. He believes she is a widow. The preacher is the son of a prostitute. He never knew his father. He was raised in an orphanage. The priest and nuns were essentially his “family” growing up. So he doesn’t know how to connect on a personal level with the heroine when he marries her, and he’s not sure how to operate within a real family. There’s a lot of good tension and dynamic within the characters and the marriage to make this something I’m eager to write.
Books comparable to this one: The Fugitive’s Bride and Shotgun Groom
(Marriage by Holiday Series: Book 1)
Cover to be done
Anticipated release timeframe: September/October
Genre: Regency Romance
Tone: not sure yet but it is a Halloween (holiday) type of story
Heat level: medium (there will probably be just one sex scene in this book)
Description: On the eve of her wedding night, the heroine struggles with feeling assurance that she is marrying the right gentleman. One can say this is just a matter of cold feet, but she has other concerns as well. What if she hadn’t been such a wallflower? What if the marriage hadn’t been arranged because her father noticed she had no suitors and was afraid she would be a spinster? For this Halloween season, I thought it would be fun to take a slight fantasy angle to take a look at what our heroine’s life would have been like if she had been the “popular girl” in London. So she will get a chance to be someone else to see if the grass is really greener on the other side.
(Marriage by Holiday: Book 2)
Cover to be done
Anticipated release timeframe: November-December
Genre: Regency Romance
Tone: not sure yet, but this is going to be a Christmas romance. Yes, I’m finally getting around to writing one after all these years 🙂
Heat level: medium (I expect there to only be 1-2 sex scenes)
Description: A couple of people requested a Christmas Carol setup romance but with the lady being the main character, rather than the gentleman. So this is the angle I’m going with. And I think I will make the heroine be the “popular girl” that the heroine of Book 1 in this series will swap lives with.
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A look ahead:
I do plan to wrap up the Marriage by Holiday Series with a Valentine romance in February 2026. Remember Mr. Christopher Robinson from His Reluctant Lady? I am going to give him a scenario where he will get to find out what life would have been like if he had never been born. I expect that to be more on the funny and cute side since he’s not a character who is overly serious.
I don’t have a release date yet, but this book is with the editing team. This is my 101st romance, and this one is one of my top 10 favorites of all the books I’ve written to date. Eye of the Beholder and His Redeeming Bride are up there as well. If you enjoy those books, you’ll like this one, too. It has the same tone and feel as those books. For those who haven’t read those, the tone and feel is tender, romantic, and serious. There are some moments that will make you cry, but there is a happy ending that will make up for it.
I will start writing Book 2 in this series in another week or two, and that book will be called The Preacher’s Wife.
Love Under Desert Skies Series
I had to dedicate the month of November to finishing The Wilderness Bride, so I wasn’t able to write in this book or The Earl’s Bluestocking Bride. I will get to start back up with writing them either this week or the next. I’m eager to get back to them.
I left off this book with an introduction to one of the main characters in Book 3 of this series. That was a fun scene to write. I can’t say what happened because it’d spoil the some of the story. This is a cute and fun story. It’s not necessarily a comedy, but it has its fun moments. Our heroine is in the process of falling in love with the hero, which is fun to see since she started off not liking him in the beginning.
For those of you who read my other blog, I decided to make this book the beginning of a new series instead of Book 6 of the Marriage by Obligation Series. In case you don’t read the other blog, essentially, I didn’t want the books I wrote during my burnout phase to leak into this one. Now that I have my enthusiasm and excitement back for writing, I want a clean slate.
So this will be Book 1 in the Marriage by Chemistry Series.
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Additional notes:
I’ll start writing The Preacher’s Wife this month. That will be Book 2 in the Oregon Series.
I am not participating in a BookFunnel promotion this month. However, I am thinking of joining one for January. If you have a book you’d like me to feature, please let me know. Here is a link to all of my books.
This is a blog where I go more in detail about what I'm working on.
Ruth Ann Nordin's Monthly Newsletter 