Writer’s Showcase: Caron Allan

Genre: Mystery (Friendship Can Be Murder series), Romantic Historical Mystery (Dottie Manderson series).

Background: I wrote my first novel Ghosts! Ghosts! Ghosts! in 1970 and unfortunately it is now lost because my mum kept it in a drawer with my drawings, a knitted bookmark and a tea-cozy I made. I started reading adventures at age seven or eight and was reading Agatha Christie by age nine. [Eventually] I remember sitting on my bed in Aldershot, Hampshire, UK, and thinking, I want to write a new story, but what shall I write about? Then I thought, what is it I am afraid of?

Writing Highlight: I had to overcome [close] people telling me that a) I was no good as a writer, b) it was wicked thing to want to write fiction, and c) who did I think I was anyway, thinking I could be a writer? So I destroyed a large amount of my writing, which I now regret.

I have spent years working on books: the first draft of Easy Living was written in 1997 and I was finally ready to share it with the world in March 2019. In my historical mysteries, I am trying to give the reader a fairly authentic yet accessible experience (books written in the 1930s are ‘wordy’ and formal for modern readers.) While I modernize compared to the way things would have been written, I keep manners and lifestyle quite close to how they would really have been.

I also like to encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to write.

Next Project: I am currently working on book five of the Dottie Manderson series; it will probably be out in the beginning of September. I have loosely planned at least five more books in that series.

I’m also working on another stand-alone book, set in the mid-1940s, right after the war, (yes, a mystery.) On top of those, next year I plan to embark on another series called the Runaway Writer.

To keep up with Caron Allan: https://caronallanfiction.com/

Book page with links for purchasing in different countries: https://caronallanfiction.com/my-books/

A note about Caron is that not only has she overcome the disparaging remarks of previous critics of writers and her writing, she has a wicked-good sense of humor. I knew she and I would hit it off when I read that when she “isn’t plotting how to kill people” she spends time in the local shops looking for everyday items that have “lethal potential.”

Now that’s my kind of shopping and my kind of creative writer.

Book Two: Deadman’s Daughters

 

Doc Johnson, friend of siblings Annie and Luke Hunter, is happily, if nervously, awaiting the arrival of his daughter, Caroline. Doc hasn’t seen Caroline since he moved to Fort Laramie four years earlier. When Doc is attacked, Annie and Luke are worried but believe it must be a case of mistaken identity. While caring for Doc, the siblings are shocked when the attacker returns to try and finish him off.

 

As if keeping Doc alive isn’t challenge enough, Luke and Annie’s foster brother, Joseph Peopeo, has unexpected news that threatens to turn their lives upside-down. While the siblings juggle the tribulations they face, their hired hand, Henry Little Light, has his own struggle – trying to keep the ranch running among all the chaos. Henry feels forced to accept help from a neighbor the Hunters do not want to be indebted to. In addition, add a new would-be suitor for Annie and the family has their hands more than full.

 

Once again, the Hunters are involved in a face-off that could have deadly consequences.

 

Deadman’s Daughters: order

 

 

Book One: Deadman’s Stagecoach

 

 

Collie Dog Press is proud to release our first book in the Historical, Western-Mystery, Deadman’s Series!

Book One

 Siblings Annie and Luke Hunter run a cattle ranch they’ve inherited from their parents, in what is known as The Territories and will soon become the Wyoming Territories. Their father was a fur trapper who settled the land before it was officially opened to settlement. When they were young children, their father traded cattle for Nez Perce horses and along with the horses came their foster-brother, Joseph Peopeo. Joseph now raises highly prized, well trained horses on the ranch – horses which often feature the colors that will become synonymous with the  Appaloosa breed.

The ranch has grown to be too much for the three of them to manage alone, so a childhood friend who has been out to the gold fields at Sutter’s Landing is ready to return home and help them. Everyone expects that along with helping to run the ranch, he’ll be asking for Annie’s hand in marriage. When the stage he’s returning on is attacked, the question becomes – did the bandits plan to rob the stage or hurt their friend? What item(s) of value did they believe to be available? Did their friend make enemies he hasn’t told them about?

The stage brings another unexpected guest who stays on to help out at the ranch.

Henry Little Light has spent his life divided among people. His mother was a slave, taken from her white owners during a Kiowa raid. She was then traded to Henry’s father, a Crow warrior. Once his father died, Henry’s mother took him to a Fort and finished raising him among the white folk there. Since the Crow are matrilineal she thought his best chance for a future was learning to read and write, then picking up a trade. She even married a freeman cabinetmaker who started training Henry. Henry seems like a nice fella, he volunteers to help, but does he have a hidden agenda? Or is he just another lost soul looking to reinvent himself in the ever changing West?

 

Available to order now as a paperback or e-text.

Amazon page