Western WIP update

Saddle up, boys and girls. It's revision time on my western historical WIP, Nobody's Bride. I've finished my first draft and have been working on revisions for the last couple of days. After I finish that, I'll send it out to some beta readers and possibly make revisions based on that feedback. I hope to have it ready for submission in a month or two. (If you're interested in being a beta reader, DM me on Twitter at LMorrisWriter, or leave a comment on this post.) After that, I'm considering writing a contemporary for a New Years' Eve-themed anthology.
Happy trails, everybody!

Six Sentence Sunday, Apr. 29th

Another snippet from my western WIP, Nobody's Bride. I'm finally reaching near the end of my first draft on this one. 

This is my hero getting a gash stitched up after they've been attacked by bandits: 

Liquid warmth trickled down his temple and he realized the stitches had made fresh blood well. He heard a moan from the other side of the fire and wondered at it, but didn’t have the strength to look up. He felt the sustained tug of the thread being pulled through the hole in his skin. Finally the pressure stopped, leaving him just the agony.

Hopefully Maddy had knotted her thread good and tight. He’d hate for his head to come unraveled like the toe of an old sock.

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Six Sentence Sunday, Apr. 22nd

From my historical western WIP, Nobody's Bride. I'll leave you to figure out what the H/h are doing: 

He gripped her hand and wouldn’t let her pull away.

“No!” she said in a panic. “It’s a sin!”

“I hate to tell you, honey, but everything we’ve done tonight is a sin. What’s one more?”

“But that’s an especially bad one.”

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Six Sentence Sunday, April 15

Another snippet from my historical western WIP, Nobody's Bride. 

He eased his mouth from hers, thinking he’d slow things down by trailing a line of kisses along the weft of her jaw, but that only led to her ear: her beautiful, shell-like ear, pinkened by long days in the sun, beckoning his tongue to explore each whorl and hollow. He gave into the temptation, smiling slightly at her gasp when his tongue slipped deep into the opening. Hmmm, she liked that, if the way she tilted her head to give him better access meant anything. He let the roughness of his morning stubble graze against her cheek, savoring the contrast between her silky softness and his sandpaper rasp.
He took the lobe of her ear gently between his teeth, letting them scrape all the way down, and then pulling the tender skin back in his mouth to suck it.
Regretfully, he let it go, and then tipped his head against hers, taking a few deep breaths as he tried to calm his body.

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Six Sentence Sunday, Apr 8

Another tidbit from my western historical WIP, Nobody's Bride. I've been working on this love scene between William and Maddy all week, so I might as well include an excerpt from it. Not much setup needed here:

“I’m not a virgin, you know,” she blurted, and then instantly wished she could call the words back.

"I didn’t think you were,” he said, the flatness of his tone wounding her.

“Still, I haven’t done it very many times,” she said, feeling an unaccountable need to explain. After a moment, his hands resumed stroking her thighs, drifting from knee to apex and back again.

“I didn’t think you had,” he said, and the simple sentence soothed the hurt he’d caused, just like that.

She let her eyes drift shut and leaned back, savoring the solidity of his chest, deciding to let him do things his way. . . for a while, anyway. 

For more Six Sunday fun, go here. 

For other excerpts from Nobody's Bride, see here, here and here.

Six Sentence Sunday, Apr. 2nd

Okay, we had some heavy stuff last week. This week, a little fun. Here's another snippet from my western WIP, Nobody's Bride. Our heroine, Maddy, notices that William, our troubled Civil War vet, has a button missing from his shirt:

“Let me fix it,” she heard herself saying. “Rufus had a sewing kit in the wagon.”

“Don’t worry about it—some things, you just can’t fix.” 

Her eyes swerved away from the enticing sight of his bare belly up to his face.

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try,” she said softly. 

“As long as you don’t get your hopes dashed when the fix doesn’t take.”

For more Six Sentence Sunday fun, check out the other entries here.

Six Sentence Sunday, March 25

A snippet from my WIP, a historical western, Nobody's Bride. My hero is a tortured Civil War vet who has moved to Texas to work in the cattle business. The inescapable violence of the world he lives in often triggers flashbacks to his worst combat experiences. In this scene, after he's shot a deer for venison and now must butcher it, my heroine Maddy starts to realize the extent of his problem. I'll be interested in your honest reaction. Does this kind of "weakness," for lack of a better word, make you think less of a hero?

"From the wagon, Maddy watched him walk toward the deer, knowing somehow he was in trouble. Reluctance had been etched in every line of his body as he'd prepared to drop the deer. He'd done it efficiently and without delay, but after the shot rang out, she realized what it had cost him.

Now that he'd done the deed, she could see the dread in him as he slowly made his way to the dead doe. And when he bent over and emptied the contents of his stomach, her heart ached for him.

Something awful had happened to him during the war. "

For more Six Sunday snippets, go here. 

First Excerpt from the WIP, "Nobody's Bride"

Here's the first excerpt from my current WIP, a western romance set on the 1870 Chisholm trail:

"Lord, have mercy among the sinners among us, and allow us to walk in your holy light, free from the flames of damnation that lick at us daily. And as the Bible says, 'Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.'"

"Amen." The woman's soft voice sounded in counterpoint to her husband's rasp.

Maddy Lassiter squeezed shut her eyes and tried to ignore the pious intonings of the Rev. Burrows and his wife. Even on her deathbed, they aggravated her beyond all reason.

"As the Holy Book says in Romans 7:5, 'For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit to death.'"

The cholera might have addled her wits, but even so, it sounded to her like the Reverend took pleasure in emphasizing the word "death." The Reverend had been praying over her and quoting Bible verses at her ever since the unfortunate situation with his son six months ago. Now, no doubt, he saw her deathly illness as the well-deserved wages of sin.

Hot, thirsty, and enervated by days of vomiting and flux, Maddy tried not to agree that she was being punished by the Lord, but it was hard. She had never thought she'd lived a sheltered life by any means, but the suffering she'd endured in the last few days made her doubt that. The wagon they'd been traveling in all the way from Indiana had become a torture chamber. Hands clasped above her makeshift berth, the Burrows wouldn't quit praying over her. It made passing on seem like a reasonable alternative to their endless disapproval.

Six Sentence Sunday, Mar. 6

Here's something from the WIP. The heroine, Ivy Smithson, is an uptight heiress who's just gotten a call from Daisy, her wild child younger sister. Daisy announces that she and her inappropriate (to Ivy) boyfriend are getting married:

"Have you set a date yet?" Ivy asked, stalling as her mind raced. How long she would have to convince her sister to come to her senses? It took at least a year to plan a wedding of the size and scope that would be expected for a family of their social prominence. That would be plenty of time to talk her out of this, Ivy realized with relief.

"Yep. The wedding's the day after tomorrow."

"What?" Ivy practically squawked.

Now, you don't think Ivy is going to take this lying down, is she? 

See more author excerpts at www.sixsunday.blogspot.com.