Authorpreneur Dashboard – Velda Brotherton
Wolf Song
Romance
Livie yearns to run with the wolves and Cheyenne shapeshifter Wolf Shadow is there to help her. A mysterious man named Singer could be enemy or friend.
Book Bubbles from Wolf Song
Livie Meets Wolf Shadow
When this book originally came to me, filled with characters to choose from, I envisioned a mountain man from the past dropping into the Museum of the Mountain Man, which we had visited the previous year. But as the story began to flesh out and Olivia became nearer to my heart, I decided that she needed help more than she needed to help some poor soul who had no idea what was going on. Thus, Wolf Shadow, who may still be a bit clumsy when it comes to moving through walls and shifting from his alpha wolf self to his human self, still understands his mission and can carry it out. It's interesting that as the book progressed I realized that I needed another shifter personality because Wolf Shadow was falling in love with Livvie. So entered Singer.
Running With the Wolves
Inspired by the book, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., I knew this book had to begin with Livie's desire to do just that. The cloaked figure was added much later when I decided to include a mystery within this story of a shape shifter sent to assist Livie in releasing Lara's spirit, setting her free from the machines that kept her alive. Someone is killing the wolves and when Livie and her friend Ginnie come too close, their lives are put in danger too. Wolf Shadow became an inexperienced shape shifter to add a bit of humor to an otherwise sad story.
Stone Heart's Woman
Romance
Two worlds collide in this cross/culture historical romance. Cheyenne warrior Stone Heart and Aiden Conner meet under the worst of circumstances, yet they must work together to survive a brutal blizzard and the battle of his people to escape the white soldiers and go home to the land of the Yellowstone.
Book Bubbles from Stone Heart's Woman
A Meeting of Two Worlds
Not one of us can truly imagine what it would be like to come face to face with someone we'd considered an enemy and further, to learn the only way to survive would be to understand each other. As a writer, we must examine something that has happened to us. An event that terrified us almost beyond endurance. Only then can we step into the minds, hearts and souls of characters caught up in such a situation as has occurred here between Aiden and Stone Heart. For the story to work, both must be strong. Both must have goals and motives and the conflict must be unendurable. And so it is with these two as they search for a way to stay alive while trapped together in a shelter where they must remain to survive the brutal cold night.
FINDING A BEGINNING
The battle in which Stone Heart was wounded takes place when the Northern Cheyenne, reduced in numbers, starving and freezing, make a final bid for freedom. They break out of Fort Robinson. Reading the accounts of this battle, and how the soldiers tracked them by following bloody moccasin prints of children in the snow, I was again reminded of the cruelty of men at war. So focused on winning that nothing else mattered. Most of my previous research into the American Indian's plight dealt with the Cherokee and the tragic Trail of Tears. Then I read of the six months the unarmed Northern Cheyenne spent walking 1500 miles while dodging the army, I knew I had to write about this event in our history. Writing western historical romances has always been difficult for me, as I tend to emphasize history rather than romance. This is a no-no in this genre. Perhaps that's why this book was a hard sell in New York. Then I found Wild Rose Press. Their Cactus Rose line embraces stories like mine. I first opened with Aiden, but that scene did not present a true feel to what the reader could expect, thus a tougher first meeting.
