If you’ve been keeping up with Cora Countryman’s doings, the newest Wanee Mystery is a bit of a departure for her and her buddies, and I’m stoked. It takes place on a luxury Mississippi riverboat, The Orleans Lady, over just a few days. How does Cora end up on board?
At the end of “Of Waterworks and Sin”, Sebastian Kanady presents Cora with three riverboat tickets to go in search of her thieving mother, rumored to operate the luxury riverboat, The Orleans Lady. One ticket is for Cora, one for Kanady (her protector?), and one for a chaperone, hand-picked by Kanady. For my readers, let me assure you, Dr. Shaw is not pleased.
I loved writing this book. My hometown in Illinois is just 35 miles east of the mighty river. I’ve crossed the bridge in Burlington, Iowa, when the Mississippi River in flood stage nipped at the edge of town, the port knee-deep in water, as on the Illinois bank, a quarter mile of floodwater drowned the fields. And, of course, I know the lyrics to the Maverick (TV show) theme: “Natchez to New Orleans, living on Jack and Queens”.
Like all the Wanee books, my hometown serves as a model for Wanee. It grew like mad post-Civil War; industry moved in, immigrants moved in, working men moved in, as new stores and bars opened. Like Cora’s “little town”, it grew like mad, a microcosm of many small towns in the prairie Midwest in the 1870s, that bloomed with promise, then didn’t.
For this book, I researched the period, the river, river towns, riverboats, the rich and the famous, and early Chicago gangsters. I built The Orleans Lady board by board in my mind. She’s a sternwheeler with electric arc lights and luxury staterooms that still transports goods downriver on a Main Deck cluttered with travelers who can’t afford a room. While she isn’t a massive showboat pushed by a tug from town to town, The Orleans Lady has a four-piece orchestra, dancing, a chanteuse, and gambling. Oh, my, yes, gambling.
Due to research and life, “The Orleans Lady” took me over a year to write. Long even for me with my “do the research, write the story beginning to end, do more research, fix the first draft, second, third, smooth, check the grammar” method. Then I send it out to my beta readers, attend to their comments, check my research against any changes, fix what my brain threw in that doesn’t work, and finalize the manuscript. None of this AI stuff for me.
Done, I load the manuscript into some story analysis software that tells me, pretty much nothing other than that I’ve written, according to it, another man-in-a-hole book. I really, really, apparently like to introduce my characters, their motivation, then throw stuff at them until they feel like there is no way out, dangling things here and there before giving them the means to grapple out hand over hand. Hmmm.
My beta readers assure me The Orleans Lady is a great, fun, and fulfilling read. So I urge you to embark with Cora, who seeks a life of mystery and adventure anywhere but Wanee, and finds all three on the Mississippi. Before The Orleans Lady docks again, Cora will outwit gamblers, expose a conspiracy, and survive a night that will change her and her “little town” forever.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved writing it. “The Orleans Lady” is available for pre-order April 1 with a publication date of April 15. The first three books are now available as a set: https://www.amazon.com/Wanee-Mysteries-D-Z-Church-ebook/dp/B0GJ7DCPF4.
For more about me and my books, go to https://dzchurch.com, where you can link to each book’s sales page and sign up for my newsletter.
Ladies of Mystery 