Great Summer Reads, Day 14, with Zina Abbott

 Carpinello's Writing Pages presents Day 14 of Loving the Book's Great Summer Reads with YA western writer Zina Abbott (aka Robyn Echols). Welcome back Zina and Robyn!

So Enjoy Day 14!

My name is Robyn Echols. Zina Abbott is the pen name I use for my American historical romance novels. I’m a member of Women Writing the West and Western Writers of America, and American Night Writers Association. I currently live with my husband in California’s central valley near the “Gateway to Yosemite.”

I love to read, quilt, work with digital images on my photo editing program, and work on my own family history.

I am a blogger. In addition to my own blog, I blog for several group blogs including the Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog, which I started and administer.

 

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Roslyn Welsh is sent by stagecoach to Junction City to marry a man with whom her aunt and guardian, without Roslyn’s knowledge, had been corresponding. His requirements for a wife were that she must be at least twenty-one years of age with a family Bible for proof, and she must have no children. Only, Roslyn is not quite twenty-one, she has a baby, and her aunt has no intention of sending the family Bible with her. The marriage prospect turns into a disaster. Stuck in a strange town with no money, she is told there is no work for a decent woman with a baby. To allow herself time to figure what to do with her future, Roslyn accepts an offer to ride the stagecoach to the Ellsworth B.O.D. Stagecoach station to help the stationmaster’s wife.

        Elam Stewart survived the American Civil War, but his left leg from above the knee down did not. With no home to return to and realizing there are very few people willing to hire a man with only one good leg, he’s convinced he has no future. While working as a day laborer in the local Junction City livery, he becomes intrigued by a visitor named Ross who is anxious to spend time with the horses. Elam discovers Ross’s secret. Then he learns where Ross intends to seek work. Even though he does not have a future, he does have a Spencer repeating rifle. He can have a purpose.

        Roslyn and Elam ride the same stagecoach to the Ellsworth Station on the Kansas frontier. Between resentments among the stock tenders, difficulties with animals that pass through the station, and the threat of attacks by the Cheyenne Native Americans, is there a future for Roslyn and Elam at the station? Or will their future take them on another stagecoach ride away from Ellsworth?

        Please look for my other two books in the Widows, Brides & Secret Babies series, Mail Order Lorena and Mail Order Penelope, that will be published this summer. The three stories are related and part or all of them involve  the stagecoaches and stations on the Kansas frontier in the late 1860s.

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Top Ten List:

1.  My faith and attending Church
2.  My family
3.  Writing
4.  Reading books
5.  Dark chocolate (There is a symbiotic relationship between 3, 4, & 5)
6.  Road trips with my husband
7.  Attending writing conventions (6 & 7 are also related)
8.  Quilting
9.  Digital photo-editing
10.  Genealogy

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 

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Meet American Historical Author Robyn Echols

My name is Robyn Echols. Zina Abbott is the pen I use for my historical novels. I’m a member of Women Writing the West and Western Writers of America. I currently live with my husband in California’s central valley near the “Gateway to Yosemite.”

I love to read, quilt, work with digital images on my photo editing program, and work on my own family history.

I am a blogger. In addition to my own blog, I blog for several group blogs including the Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog, which I started and administer.

~ Facebook ~ Website ~
~ Amazon ~ Blog ~ 
~ Pinterest ~ Goodreads ~ 
~ Google+ ~  Newsletter ~ Booklinker ~

The daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, Diantha Ames was raised and educated to be a lady. Surviving the Civil War as a child, her family, in a desperate, but ultimately unsuccessful bid to save the property of both her father and her uncle, arranges a marriage between her and her first cousin. Although not a love match, she and Eugene were amiable. As information about her husband comes to light after his death in the Gold King Mine disaster that took so many lives in Wildcat Ridge, she is left with her husband’s hotel and postmaster position to fill—and a lot of questions.

With Diantha’s former laundress gone, she hires Hilaina Dowd, whose family hails from the mountains of Appalachia. Hilaina loyally stays with her mother who wishes to live out her life in Wildcat Ridge and be buried next to her husband who died in the mine disaster.

Henry “Hank” Cauley is branded a failure after refusing to be part of his father’s Salt Lake City brick-making business and then losing his stationary and book store business. To bury him far away, his brother and conniving sister-on-law use their political influence with the territorial Congressional representative to award him the postmaster position in Wildcat Ridge. He arrives in town to take over the position starting the first of September only to discover the postmistress, Diantha, knows nothing about the change, and is not relieved she no longer is obligated to fill this position originally awarded to her deceased husband. Finding himself surrounded by those loyal to the soft-spoken, Southern lady, is he destined to also be a failure in Wildcat Ridge?

Buckley “Buck” Kramer, wrangler on the Grassy Fork Ranch in Colorado, has not been totally satisfied with his lot ever since the trip he took to Wildcat Ridge earlier in the summer with his boss and best friend now he sees the happiness of family life the two men enjoy after they brought back wives. When two trail-worn young brothers stumble onto the ranch looking for a meal and permanent jobs, but are told with winter coming on there is only room for one, Buck insists on leaving in order to keep the brothers together. Is Buck really dissatisfied with his job on the ranch, or is this an excuse to return to Wildcat Ridge and the woman he has not been able to get out of his mind?

  

Diantha, Book 14, is a stand-alone novel. However, you might enjoy it best by reading all the books in the series, The Widows of Wildcat Ridge. Also, my other book in the series, Nissa, Book 3, was written to be a duet with Diantha—a series within a series. You might also enjoy reading Nissa if you have not already done so.

  
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Snippet:

Upon seeing the child’s features for the first time, Diantha’s throat tightened and threatened to close off her breath. Her chest seized. She forced herself to inhale and willed a smile on her face as she stooped down and handed the boy the treat. “There you go, Eddie.” She studied him up close for a few seconds before she stood once more and looked over at Sarah, who wore a stricken expression. “Eddie. Did I hear his name right?”

          “Yes. He was named after his grandfather.”

          Diantha turned to once again study the boy, oblivious to the crumbs now scattered on his cheeks and dropping on her floor, as he happily munched on his cookie. “Edward is a fine name. We have Edwards in my family, also.”

          Her uncle, Eugene’s father, had been named Edward Eugene. The older brother lost in the War Between the States had been named Edward.

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Meet Historical Author Zina Abbott

My name is Robyn Echols. Zina Abbott is the pen I use for my historical novels. I’m a member of Women Writing the West and Western Writers of America. I currently live with my husband in California’s central valley near the “Gateway to Yosemite.”

I love to read, quilt, work with digital images on my photo editing program, and work on my own family history.

I am a blogger. In addition to my own blog, I blog for several group blogs including the Sweet Americana Sweethearts blog, which I started and administer.

~ Facebook ~ Website ~
~ Amazon ~ Blog ~ 
~ Pinterest ~ Goodreads ~ 
~ Google+ ~  Newsletter ~ Booklinker ~

Will Virginia’s chosen vocation fill the empty spaces in her heart?

It is 1858. With both parents dead, Virginia Atwell lives with her older brother, Jefferson, and his family in Booneville, Missouri. Under the pseudonym, V. A. Wellington, she secretly has been submitting articles to a well-respected investigative journal about controversial topics. To her dismay, she learns her family plans to buy new farmland in the wilds of central Kansas Territory, making it almost impossible for her to continue her clandestine article submissions. More importantly, Virginia is terrified of the prospect of living so close to hostile Indian tribes and dying by their hands because they resent white Americans moving onto their traditional buffalo hunting grounds.

Virginia persuades her brothers to give her a share of their parents’ inheritance so she may attend one of the few colleges in Ohio that accepts female students. There, she finds Avery Wilson, one of her professors and fellow boarder at Bettina Calloway’s boarding house, resentful of female students, conceited and annoying, especially after his criticism and resentment directed towards the author, V. A. Wellington, whose articles are published while his submissions are rejected.

Virginia’s publisher insists V. A. Wellington meet with him in person in St. Louis to discuss a new assignment. When her landlady insists she cannot travel alone, Avery, curious about Virginia’s secretive meeting and unable to resist his growing attraction to the irritating but brilliant student, offers to escort her.

Once the editor discovers his star contributor is a woman, he refuses to send her to write about conditions on the Kaw reservation and the proposed treaty the government intends to impose on the natives. Hoping to favorably impress the editor, Avery offers to pose as Virginia’s fiancé in order to accompany and protect her on her assignment. Her heart goes out to the Kaw, but what can fill the empty spaces of her heart?

Virginia’s Vocation is also part of the author’s Atwell Kin series

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Snippet:

…He then turned to face her while shaking his head in resignation. “All right. Go try on a few pair to see which fit best. Just be aware, we will expect you to put those gloves to good use.”

            Of course. Virginia could not help the disgruntled directions of her thoughts. Anything to further the achievement of your goals for the future. If you knew mine, you would laugh them into the ground.

To view our blog schedule and follow along with this tour visit our Official Event page 

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