And, by that, I mean it's time for Flora to get to know her newest husband. Yep, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother is finally here.
 
If you signed up for my newsletter, you may already know this. After all, I sent word out to those folks on Monday. Still, I italicized the word "may" because, if you're a subscriber here, my happy little newsletter may have been caught in your gmail "Promotions" filter. That's where the test copy I sent to GW was found lingering, anyway. 
 
I'm not extremely clear on why her gmail has a "Promotions" area, and mine does not. All I know is, the newsletter didn't arrive in her inbox and that's where I wanted the words to fall. So, I have to *sigh*, because I'm fairly certain I did something wrong in a techno-way and the wizards at gmail stepped in. I rarely send out a newsletter -- only two times last year; I don't want to bother people unless there's a new story to share -- and the process remains foreign to me. I almost always forget a few steps along the way. 
 
And, yet, over fifteen percent of the readers who stop by here regularly have taken the time to sign up for the newsletter. Because they are Good and Wise People. If you are one of them, thank you so much.
 
However, if you've been expecting an email/newsletter from me but it never came...caught in your Promotions thingie, or dropped into your Spam box, or who knows what....and now you're feeling a teeny bit grumpy, let me share what I sent. Most of it, anyway, except for the opening pleasantries that I am (at this moment) struggling to remember. The newsletter itself I saved, and it opened like this:
 
It's time for Flora to get to know her newest husband.

Flora has finally decided what to do next in regards to her (too many) husbands. In One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother, she finds herself being courted by the one brother who both frightens and arouses her. When she travels with him to the town of Wetherford for the first time, she sees something that not only upsets and angers her, but also puts her in grave danger.
 
At the novella's end, she'll share some of her own secrets and come to a life-changing decision. Honestly, there's a lot going on!
 
I really like the story. I hope you will, too.
 
The Fifth Brother is my first every sequel-to-a-sequel, and is the longest story in the Mail Order Mischief series. If you have 99-cents in your electronic pocket, or if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can find it here. Like the two stories that preceded it, Fifth Brother can be read as its own tale but you’ll probably enjoy it more if you start at the beginning and learn how everything unfolded up until now.  
 
If you've already read One Bride for Seven Brothers, you know that none of the stories in this series are a sweet romance. They aren’t erotic romances, either. Slowly, so slowly, the series is turning into the saga of how a fairly innocent, somewhat naive, house servant from New York ended up in the wild West of 1870 and married to seven men – and what happens when she tries to correct the situation.
 
And then I thanked the recipient for opening the email because, honestly, what good is a newsletter if no one reads it? I really, truly had fun writing this story in the "One Bride" saga, and I hope it finds an audience.
 
Despite my struggles with Mailchimp, I was feeling pretty good about the mail-out until the Good Witch mentioned she couldn't find the test version I sent her first. Soon, she discovered the notice lodged in her Promotions queue between a Dillards Clearance pitch and an offer for Dell Computer. I would have felt even more sour if she hadn't talked me into going to Dillards, where she drooled over a Brahmin purse and I found a really cute pair of red boots at less than half the retail price.
 
What I'm trying to say is, it could have been worse. Sometimes you have to make lemonade from the lemons, you know?

There’s happy news and weird news. Let me start with the good stuff.
 
Joy of joys, the last of the beta readers reported in on the new novella at the end of last week. For the past three days, Glynn and I have been buffing The Fifth Brother and, now, publication looms. This is lovely news, indeed. As I write this, Glynn is doing the necessary technical stuff, fitting the words and pages to meet Amazon’s requirements. This is the piece of the puzzle that I am delighted to leave in his hands.
 
We should have the story on-line and for sale by next week. Or sooner, fingers crossed, if all goes smoothly. I feel like doing my happy dance.
 
I’ll send out our newsletter once the novella is available. If you’re not a newsletter kind of person, well, I’ll try not to judge you. In that case, swing by here next Thursday and I’ll provide an update on the story’s status. I can already tell you, if publication hasn’t happened or isn’t imminent, I’ll be doing my sad dance.
 
In the midst of rolling up our sleeves and preparing for launch, I received an unusual offer from…well, someone I’ve never met before. This very polite stranger asked if she could post hair care tips on my website.
 
Immediately, I wondered if someone had told her about my hair. On my best day, it resembles Amy Poehler’s on her worst day, so I could certainly benefit from some grooming advice. On the other hand, I mean – what the hell? Why would a hair expert (if she IS an expert) want to post beauty hints on a romance writer’s site? Especially when she’s never met the writer?
 
It was such a random request, I shared the email with the Good Witch. I thought she’d laugh, and then we’d both go to Tuesday Morning to see the discounted Keurig coffeemaker GW is considering. That didn’t happen.
 
She said, “Not the worst idea in the world. Maybe you should consider it.”
 
I was so unprepared for her reaction, I didn’t speak.
 
“Miss X could post hair tips on your blog, say, once a month,” she continued. “For three weeks, you could talk about writing. The fourth week, Miss X could offer a little something on curling hair or whatever. You’d have to post less often and maybe it would draw a new audience to the blog.”
 
I told her, “They’d come for the hair tips, stay for the romance.”
 
“Exactly.”
 
“I was being sarcastic.”
 
But GW wasn’t teasing me, she was serious. The email writer shared her real name – it’s not Miss X, that’s just a clever pseudonym I’m using here – and linked to a few articles she’d done. The pieces weren’t spectacular but they were solid. I just don’t understand why Miss X is knocking on my door and what she hopes to get out of appearing here.
 
At the end of the day, I didn’t reply to her request. It felt a little rude, but the whole thing leaves me uneasy. Somehow, in some way, I worry that this is a massive hair tip scam and Glynn and I will end up sending our life’s savings to someone in Ecuador.
 
But the whole thing left me wishing I had better hair. If you’re feeling the same way, here’s 10 Weird Hair Tips That Really Work.

One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother isn’t out yet. I know, I was confident that it would be available on Amazon by the end of January – at the latest -- but that clearly didn’t happen.
 
It’s not our fault. Not all of it, anyway. Our current story isn’t yet available because, if you must know, we’re waiting to hear from the last of our beta readers before finalizing the manuscript. Taking our e-file as she went on vacation, J. said she’d review our words as she relaxed by the resort’s pool. We’re visualizing her with a Long Island Iced Tea in one hand, the manuscript in the other, as she ponders over the struggles of a mail order bride and the bride’s assortment of oh-so-sexy husbands.
 
As I write this, I’m looking out the office window. There’s snow on the ground and the white and increasingly-crunchy stuff has lingered there for well over a week. The temperature just won’t rise enough to send it away.
 
Yes, I’m feeling a little jealous. And I don’t even drink Long Island Iced Teas.
 
(The photo that accompanies this post? I don't really know what it is. Some kind of cocktail, certainly, but not an iced tea, per the Good Witch, Long Island or otherwise. Bing Images said I could use it, though, so here it is.)
 
Between the Good Witch and the wonderful volunteers who have offered to assist us, our manuscript will have benefited from the feedback of five different beta readers before publication. If you’re not an author you may not know this, but finding five readers for a genre novella is like winning the writer’s Powerball. Usually, I have to send out four or five blind requests (considered “blind”, because I don’t personally know the person I’m approaching and they don’t know me) in order to get a single acceptance. This time, I struck gold with almost everyone I contacted. I honestly don’t know why I was so lucky. At one point, I even thought we’d have six readers for the story, an all-time record for one of our tales, but one of the volunteers went away and I never heard from her again.
 
Glynn worried the reader decided to go missing rather than tell us she didn’t like the novella. We’ve both been in this game too long to fall for those ancient anxieties, but -- it’s cold, Glynn was feeling a little housebound, I believed he subconsciously wanted to worry over something.  (Me, the only thing I’m worried about is whether my honey believed me when I said we shouldn’t exchange Valentine’s Day presents. As if there was any chance that was true.) So I reminded him that it was more likely that A. had accepted one too many beta requests (it happens all the time with me, so why wouldn’t it happen with her?) and she just didn’t know how to tell us. No big deal.
 
That, or she’d been eaten by wolves. I pitched it to him this way: Engrossed in our story, A. wandered into the woods as the sun was setting. She never realized she was being stalked. Too late, she heard the growling….
 
I told Glynn, in those circumstances, it was perfectly understandable that no one had returned our emails. After all, it might be years before the authorities find her bleached, white bones and the tattered remains of our manuscript.
 
Somehow, he found comfort with the wolf theory.
 
Since Valentine’s Day is looming, let me close with a quote from one of Glynn’s favorite writers. It’s something he shared with me about this time last year: “If you haven’t realized by this time that I love you, and always shall love you, and have never loved anybody else, and never shall love anybody else, you’re a fathead.” – P. G. Wodehouse

After Glynn finished The Brothers Bible – look at last week’s blog if this is a mystery to you – we realized that we have some tinkering to do. Little changes only, happily, so the memory hasn’t been all that uncertain despite the time taken between novellas. I’m happy to say, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Fifth Brother is on track to be published soon-ish. We’re just waiting to hear from our two beta readers.
 
I have a beta reader story to share, but that’s for another post. Today, let’s talk about Victorian-era songs, shall we?
 
Before you doze off, let me tell you why this is a topic for discussion. Early on in the Fifth Bro’ writing process, Glynn looked up from his brand new and, therefore, endlessly-aggravating HP-bargain laptop, and asked, “Remember how you used to write songs?”
 
Once upon a time, that was true. I used to write many things for my own amusement, including songs, and poetry, and dark Lovecraftian tales. I didn’t try to sell these efforts, I never had an interest in publishing what I was writing, but I enjoyed the creative process immensely.
 
When Glynn was courting me, I even wrote a song about our relationship at the time. Frankly, it was mostly about him. I was smitten with the boy, to use a Victorian-era term, but you wouldn’t know it from the song’s lyrics. In the song, I made fun of my beau, his car, and the interesting, sometimes-terrible dates we’d shared to that moment.
 
When the song made him smile, I realized, This guy could be worth keeping. So I did.
 
But that was then and this was now. I hadn’t written an original song since…well, the last time Glynn asked the very same question. We know better than to use someone else’s lyrics in our work – here, if you wonder why – so I stepped up and did the job. But that was four years and a different novel ago. Even then, it wasn’t easy.
 
For that book, we needed a contemporary song. Since our current story is set in the 1870’s, a contemporary song was out of the question, and I’d only ever written contemporary songs. It was with a bit of trepidation that I told him, yes, I remembered how I used to write songs. I think I added, “Used to, used to, used to.”
 
“Good,” he told me, oblivious to my subtlety. “What do you think about adding a song to Fifth Brother?”
 
After we talked about it, I saw why a few lyrics might be a positive thing, so I went off to research Victorian-era songs. I did this with the happy confidence that written material published over 140 years ago was well out of copyright. We could publish as little, or as much, of those songs as we wanted. That way, I wouldn’t have to write any lyrics on my own.
 
I discovered songs like I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen – first heard years before the turn of the twentieth century, but recorded not so long ago by the likes of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. Home on the Range was a smash in 1873 and Onward, Christian Soldiers hit the charts in 1871. If they’re not familiar to you, you can find several versions on the ‘net. Many performers have done many, many versions of these songs.
 
I also came across songs that I’d never heard of, such as Come into the Garden, Maud (1857, a bit too early), Carve Dat Possum (1875) and Oh, Ain’t I Got the Blues (1871). With barely any investigation, I found that those tunes, too, are still being performed today. I was surprised. This presented a problem because, in our story, the heroine detests the song she hears. Hates it. She thinks it’s terrible and wishes she could slap the songwriter.
 
This gave us reason, copyright or no, not to use an existing song. It seems that, once written, they never go away. At any moment, some somebody is stepping up to the mic to perform an ancient tune. And we didn’t want a fan of Carve Dat Possum to blister our novella with one-star reviews when it hit the electronic racks.
 
Regardless of copyright issues, we needed to write a new, old song. I was feeling a little blocked until Glynn offered a song title that seemed in keeping with the times: Nelly, Don’t You Cry. I liked it. Feeling inspired, I had a version that pleased us both before the end of the day.
 
Since the pretend song’s words are best read in context of our forthcoming story, I won’t share the lyrics with you now. Instead, courtesy of Wikipedia, let me offer the words to one of the era’s immortal classics:
 
Carve dat possum, carve dat possum, children,
Carve dat possum, carve him to de heart;
Carve dat possum, carve dat possum, children,
Carve dat possum, carve him to de heart.
 
See you next week.