It May Surprise You That...is Literarily Speaking's latest feature. Here we have authors give us 10 things that would surprise us about themselves and/or their book. Today we have J. Arlene Culiner, author of Blake's Folly Romance Trilogy. Writer, photographer, social critical artist, and storyteller, Arlene was born in New York and raised in Toronto. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, on a Dutch canal, and in a haunted house on the English moors. She now resides in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village of no interest and, much to local dismay, protects all creatures, especially spiders and snakes. She particularly enjoys incorporating into short stories, mysteries, narrative non-fiction, and romances, her experiences in out-of-the-way communities, and her conversations with strange characters.
Website:
http://www.j-arleneculiner.com
Blog:
http://j-arleneculiner.over-blog.com
All sites: https://linktr.ee/j.arleneculiner
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/jarlene.culiner/
Storytelling Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner
As a romance writer, I adore writing about love—especially when it happens between delightful characters. Mix in hope, humor, much tenderness, and a happy end… that’s what a satisfying romance book brings us. But that’s not all.
I love writing about odd characters and misfits, the sort of people who would never fit into neat houses with tidy gardens. My people are rebels, not by choice, but by character. Sometimes they’re ornery, nosy, or interfering, but I can guarantee they’re the real thing.
For me, a good book is packed with information, and when I’m finish reading it, I have the know more than I did when I began. So it is with the three books in my series, Blake’s Folly Romance.
In A Room in Blake’s Folly, we follow a town from its silver boom beginning to its dusty present semi-ghost town state. In All About Charming Alice, we learn some Nevada history and a bit about reptiles. In Desert Rose, my hero Jonah Livingstone is a geologist who also plays the baroque cello, and the very secretive Rose Badger has quite a few hidden talents, too.
And, as we follow the ups and downs of the many romances in this trilogy, we also discover that:
- In the first half of the 1800s, women were scarce in the West, and husband-hunters, whether ugly or good-looking, mean-tempered, sharp-tongued, or sugar sweet easily found partners. By the 1880s, things had changed. Women fleeing domestic service, millwork and factory toil, arrived in abundance, and men could take their pick.
- Men looking for wives in the Far West usually went for young, fresh, strong women who would raise children, attend to harvests, garden work, laundry, scrounge for firewood, and cook. Love had little to do with second marriages; many men were looking for women to replace wives who had died during childbirth or from sheer exhaustion.
- Without experience in the working world, older women, widows, abandoned or divorced women hoped their grown children would take them in. However, not every couple wanted a mother or mother-in-law in residence unless she was still strong enough to help out with the drudgery. The many who found no home with their children were often reduced to begging.
- Although prohibition effectively cut off Nevada’s much-needed tax revenue, it didn’t reduce social drinking. In one year alone, the 90,000 Nevada residents managed to wangle 10,000 prescriptions for medicinal alcohol.
- The names of old railway companies are still familiar: the Philadelphia and Reading, the Erie, the Northern Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. However all failed during the depression of 1893. Even then, politicians lied, claiming the economy was prospering as 500 banks closed and 16,000 businesses declared bankruptcy.
- Sassy, confident Lucy Barnes, one of my heroines in A Room in Blake’s Folly, loves photographing spiders. Veterinarian Lance Potter is surprised by her interest, but Lucy is quite clear: “What’s definitely true, is that half of all women but only ten percent of men are afraid of spiders. Now try and work that fact into a discussion about sexual equality.”
- Alice Treemont, the heroine of All About Charming Alice, is a herpetologist. She studies snakes, photographs them, writes about them for nature magazines, and protects them. She certainly isn’t afraid of them, and she knows all about the important role snakes play in our environment. As she tells writer Jace Constant: “If most people are instinctively afraid of snakes, snakes aren’t instinctively afraid of people, so they sometimes slide into backyards, innocently passing through on their way to somewhere else. They should be left alone, of course, but people kill them as soon as they notice them.”
- Running alongside the tiny community of Blake’s Folly, Nevada is the faint trace of what was once one of the great pioneer roads to California. When summer temperatures rise to a hundred and ten, pools of water turns into toxic shimmering scum before vanishing, and rivers evaporate. One hundred and fifty years ago, the way pioneers kept to the trail, was by following the abandoned sacks of putrid bacon, the skeletons of animals, and the graves. Out here, place names like Endurance, Desolation, or Last Gap were never more than a stick in the ground where someone was buried.
- As geologist Jonah Livingstone tells the lovely Rose Badger: “Both eastern and southern Nevada were once covered by a warm shallow sea filled with reefs, mollusks, and ammonites. Around 250 million years ago, there were also large marine lizards, ichthyosaurs. They had evolved from a group of unidentified land reptiles who had returned to the sea, like the ancestors of dolphins and whales.”
- What sort of characters do I like to write—and read—about in a romance? For me, intelligence leads to good chemistry. I need people with ideas, who have stimulating conversations. How can you fall in love when you have nothing to learn from the other?
- Another essential for good chemistry is a sense of humor. Being able to laugh together creates a strong and wonderful magic—perhaps one that is stronger and more wonderful than great sex.
Title: Blake’s Folly Romance Trilogy
Author: J. Arlene Culiner
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Pages: App. 214 pp. each
Genre: Historical / Contemporary Romance
By 2023, the silver boomtown of Blake’s Folly, once notorious for saloons, brothels, speakeasies, and divorce ranches, has become a semi-ghost town of abandoned shacks and weedy dirt roads. But unusual settings attract unusual people, those forced to adapt to new circumstances in order to survive, and those who have never really fit into mainstream society. But none are humdrum. All have dreams and a chance to fall in love.
A Room In Blake’s Folly
In 1889, when Blake’s Folly boasted silver mines, saloons, and brothels, the adventurer, Westley Cranston, fell in love with Sookie Lacey a former prostitute. Their romance was doomed but never forgotten, and these six stories tell the tale.
Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/BlakesFollyRomance
Website: https://www.j-arleneculiner.com/a-room-in-blake-s-folly
All About Charming Alice
Alice Treemont cooks vegetarian meals, rescues unwanted dogs, and protects the most unloved creatures on earth: snakes. What man would share those interests?
Jace Constant is in Nevada, doing research, but he won’t be staying long. He hates desert dust, dog hair and snakes terrify him. Even if the air sizzles each time Alice and Jace meet, any romance seems doomed.
Purchase Link : https://books2read.com/Charming-Alice
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l2VyHtsY7A
Website: https://www.j-arleneculiner.com/all-about-charming-alice
Desert Rose
Rose Badger is the local flirt, and settling down is the last thing she intends to do. Geologist Jonah Livingstone is intriguing, but with his complicated life, he’s off limits for anything other than friendship.
Jonah Livingstone is fascinated by the sparkling and lovely Rose Badger, but she doesn’t seem inclined to choose a favorite, so why fret? Jonah’s secret life keeps him busy.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/tHPrIciT0XU
Web: https://www.j-arleneculiner.com/desert-rose
Purchase links: https://books2read.com/RosesDesert
https://mybook.to/RosesDesert
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