Today, we have a guest. Multi-published author Toni V. Sweeney. Because it's Monday morning, I have a dental appointment, and I am facing a very close deadline to finish a book, I'll turn the mic over to Toni and allow her to handle the introduction:
Biographical
Note: Toni V. Sweeney has
lived 30 years in the South, a score in the Middle West, and a decade on the
Pacific Coast and now she’s trying for her second 30 on the Great Plains,
specifically in Lincoln, Nebraska. Since the publication of her first novel in
1989, Toni divides her time between writing SF/Fantasy/Romance and Horror under
her own name a several nom de plumes. She has received numerous Reviewers Choice awards from
the Paranormal Romance Guild’s annual review, the Preditors & Editors
Readers awards and the Maryland Writers Association.
And now,
on with this blog…
~*~
In TV
shows and movies, occasionally the statement will flash across the scene:
“Based on True Events…”. In my novel Bound by Love, that statement would
have read “Based on a True Location…”.
Part of
the setting of my novel is an old house, abandoned by its owners. On my grandfather’s property, there was such
a house. Though as far as I know nothing as violent or grisly as the events in
my novel happened there, it became the place where the disappearance of Dylan
Roth and his neighbor Jules Mercier is finally solved.
The real
house was called the Old Stubbs place. That was the only name we
children ever knew it by. That’s what everyone called it. Nothing about the people who lived there and gave
it their name, however. It was located on the other side of my grandfather’s
220 acres—half farmland, half pulpwood forest and swamp—and we could stand at
the edge of the feedlot in the backyard, look across the cornstalks and
actually see it in the distance, a medium-sized house, its weathered planks devoid
of paint, its two chimneys visible in the distance.
It could
be reached either by following the road in an arc, going across the turn-off
where dirt had been tamped down across a drainage ditch or going across the
field on horseback. Both ways took an equal length of time but it was more fun
to ride there, or for the more hardy of us to actually walk, following the
tractor-trail across the terraces and skirting the pine woods where wild
gooseberries, plum, and the occasionally yucca plant bloomed.
The
entrance road went through a soybean field on one side and pecan grove on the
other, leading directly to the house. There had once been a garden on one side,
with a tiny outhouse perched in a corner. On the other side, a huge and ancient
chinaberry tree grew, with a Cherokee rose twining itself through its branches.
Those roses featured prominently in my bnook. Beyond that, the house was surrounded on three sides by pine
trees, with a fig tree and a stand of sugar cane facing it across the road that
went past the house, meeting the tractor trail on the other side of the barn.
Steps to the
porch were partly missing, partly falling to pieces and one had to climb them
carefully. Overgrown hedges bordered
either side. The porch itself was in
pretty good shape but the roof was only partially there. Inside, two rooms opened into a center foyer
with two rooms behind that. A front room
held trash and junk…newspapers, boxes, you name it. It also had an upright
piano, where mice had taken up housekeeping. This fact give rise to the “mouse
in the cupboard” incident in my novel.
While in
that particular room, we bigger kids would run around raising dust and telling
the smaller ones they were ghosts, but only in that room, probably because of
the piano and the fact that when the mice ran around in it, it made weird jangly
tunes.
Behind the
last room was another, perhaps a storage area, since it was accessible only
from the outside. By the time I knew the
house, this room had steps but no door and no floor.
There were
two springs on the property. One had been made into a well a short distance
from the house; the other was a quarter of a mile away at the end of a field.
It had been shored-up with planks and was filled with deep green water. Some of my uncles used to swim in it but I
wanted no part of that dark stuff. I had
no idea how deep it was and didn’t want to find out.
When my
youngest uncle married, he and his bride lived in the old Stubbs place—very
primitively. They had electricity strung to the house but they also had
lanterns—just in case. There were fireplaces
in the two front rooms but their heat was a large pot-bellied stove set in the
bigger room…and this was in the mid-Sixties!
The kitchen held a set of hot plates attached to a small propane tank.
My uncle plowed the garden and planted it. He lowered himself into the well,
cleaned it out, and installed a pump, sending water to faucets he set up in the
kitchen.
There was
no indoor plumbing, and let me say…I wasn’t particularly enamored of that
outhouse, especially in winter!
They
didn’t stay in the old Stubbs place very long, only until he made enough money
to buy a real house another uncle had built elsewhere on the property.
All my
life whenever we visited my grandfather, we children would range the fields and
woods, and eventually end up at that old house. It was a fixture. Riding my horse, I’d go there, circle it,
climb its pine trees, pick its plums, and ride through its woods. Whether alone
or with my cousins, I always got a frisson when I was there, wondering who the
Stubbses had been and why they’d abandoned the house. No one ever said and for some reason, I never
asked. It was simply there, a
part of the landscape until the day my grandfather died and it was torn down
when the property was sold.
The old
Stubbs place is gone now and a subdivision stands in its place but it, the
house, its dark, deep well, the pecan grove and sugar cane stand live again in
my novel.
Bound
by Love
After a
nasty divorce, Dylan Roth is back home, joining his dad and brother in the
family construction business. He’s assigned to the renovation of the old
Mercier house, which is being filmed for the TV show Dream Homes, Unlimited.
The last thing Dylan wants is to fall for Scarlett “Letty” Mercier, but an
undeniable attraction is making it hard for him to say no to the redheaded
beauty. When he learns the Roths’ and the Merciers’ pasts are entwined, he
starts digging, and family history can no longer stay buried. Dylan and Letty
are bound by a haunting secret that threatens to keep them apart unless they can
break the ties of the past.
EXCERPT:
“Mother, whatever you’re cooking
up, forget it,” I said. “Letty Mercier and I are not going to be
romantically-inclined toward each other any time soon.”
“If you say so, dear.” She went
back to the paper, laying aside the comics and opening Parade magazine.
“Don’t do that,” I warned. She’d
used the same tone she always did when I said something and she refused to
argue because she knew better. “I…no,
never mind. Dad, What’s the deal here?”
“What do you mean, son?” Dad looked
up from the want ads.
“Quit it. You know exactly what I
mean. What’s this thing you and Letty keep hinting at? The bygone you two are
letting go by. The reason her father might worry about her staying with us?”
Dad didn’t answer.
“You may as well tell him.” Mom
looked around the page she was holding. “It’s unfair to keep Dylan in the dark,
especially since Letty obviously knows.”
Dad didn’t answer. Instead, his
mouth tightened into a sudden straight line.
“He has a right,” Mom went on. “So
simply state it plainly…about your great-grandfathers, and the scandal, and
everything.”
“Scandal?” I looked from him to her
and back. “What kind of scandal?”
Dad sighed. “Why bring it up?”
“You already have,” she answered.
“By not bringing it up.”
“So there really is some deep, dark
secret?” I asked. “A skeleton in the Roth closet…and the Mercier one, too?”
“I don’t know why it has to be dug
up at this late date.” Dad folded the newspaper and dropped it onto the lamp
table in a gesture just short of throwing it. “Why can’t we simply ignore it
and—”
“You realize you’re only making me
more curious,” I told him. “What happened?” His expression was so serious I had
to laugh. “Come on, Dad. What could be so bad? Did Great-grandpa Roth run off
with Great-grandpa Mercier’s wife or something?”
Mom drew in a sharp breath.
For a full minute, Dad studied me
silently before he answered.
“On the contrary. He ran off with
Great-grandpa Mercier.”
Bound
by Love is
available from:
http://boroughspublishinggroup.com/books/bound-love
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/924697
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P3917V2
