The Write Pet: Dorothy Bell || THE REPROBATE

  The Write Pet by Dorothy Bell

Okay, here’s how it goes: Between six A.M. and seven-thirty, I go outside with the doggies. I don’t know why. They have me trained. If I don’t go outside with them, they stand at the back door and look back at me, their eyes asking me, “You have come stand guard so I can do my business. Come on, it’s cold and frosty and I’m hungry.”

Once inside, I’d like to crawl back under the covers and wait for the house to warm up, but the doggies want breakfast. Rocky, the cat is hungry too. Nobody gets to go back to sleep once Heck the dachshund is up and running. As I am well trained, I feed all the pets: two west highland white terriers, Buddy and Corky, Heck and Rocky the cat. Then it’s time for a walk with the doggies. We walk rain, snow, sleet, hail, wind, heat, doesn’t matter. If we don’t walk no one, that is I, am not allowed to sit down. 

After the walk, it’s time for me to get a hustle on to get to the pool, which is one mile and a quarter away. Sometimes I walk, which takes about twenty-five minutes. I spend forty-five to fifty-five minutes working out, by the time I walk home, it’s lunch time. If I don’t eat, I get snarky, and nobody around here wants that to happen.

All exercised, fed, I come into my computer room after lunch with every intention of plowing forward on promo’s, blog posts. With any kind of luck, I get busy on writing a couple chapters of the latest whatever I have cooking. But….first, I have to go with the doggies outside to stand guard while they take a pee, bark at the neighbor kids, hunt down intruders. After fifteen minutes, we troop back inside. I give the three of them a piece of pup-peroni and head back to the office. Heck needs one of his special heart biscuits before he can settle down. The biscuit works like a pacifier. I go get one because I know it’s the only way he’s going to be satisfied and leave me alone.

We’re all good now. Except the cat, a big cat, angora black and white male he wants to crawl up me and hang over my shoulder. This does not work. We maneuver around until he’s settled in my lap with his chin on my wrist as I try to type; works great for the cat, but not so good for me.

Having wasted forty-five minutes getting the animals comfortable, I get to work. All is quiet, I concentrate until it’s time for another pee break outside. On the way back to the computer room, I grab a handful of m and m’s. But Heck thinks we should play tug-a-war now and Buddy and Corky want to get in on the act. Buddy wants to chase the ball and fetch, Corky’s job is to run interference with whatever the other two are doing, consequently a little battle ensues. The cat retreats to a hidey-hole somewhere.

With the afternoon slipping away, everybody finally settles down to take a nap. But wait, it’s three-thirty, the doggies do lunch at three-thirty. The neighbor calls and wants to go for a little walk. I get Heck and we join the neighbor for a walk. Now it’s four, and I haven’t accomplished much of anything, but my doggies are well fed, well loved and exercised. I’d like to take a nap, but it’s too close to dinner time and the news. Maybe I’ll get some work done between the news and Jon Stuart. Nothing much on after the Daily show—I’ll definitely go to work then.

The REPROBATE
A Laura Creek Novel
Publisher: Freya's Bower

Royce O'Bannon plays the fiddle as a man possessed. Unlike his brother Quinn, Royce takes after his whisky-sodden, vengeful old man, Stanley O'Bannon, and defiantly admits to being a reprobate, irredeemable in the eyes of good society, a lost cause bound to hang and burn in hell. He also figures God hadn't made the woman who could tame the beast that lurked deep down in his worthless Irish soul. No woman should have anything to do with him.

Then one frosty night, at a town social, he sees her, the crippled goddess, Cleantha Arnaud, the schoolmaster's daughter, a wounded bird, beautiful, fragile and way above his touch. With Cleantha accompanying him on the piano, keeping up with his unrelenting pace, they play jig after jig, waltz after waltz, schottische after schottische. Cleantha intrigues him as no other woman before, and if he reads the gleam in her river-green eyes correctly, the feeling is mutual.

Even a reprobate like Royce O'Bannon suffers from a twinge of conscience from time to time, and although he despises himself for it, he can't take advantage. But Cleantha, driven by her own needs and desires, puts forth a challenge no reprobate could refuse. In Cleantha, Royce gets a glimpse of what could be. He begins to think he too could have a wife, a real home, love and security, a life he assumed unattainable, beyond his reach. For a few fleeting moments, he believes the dream could become a reality.

But can he do what has to be done to win the woman of his dreams?


Available for Purchase:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Freya's Bower

Author Bio:

Hi, everybody, Dorothy A. Bell here. I would like to thank my host for putting me up on her blog today. As an introduction, I thought I would give visitors a glimpse into my life so far.

I grew up in southern Iowa, moved to Oregon’s Willamette Valley at the age of eleven. I was in the sixth grade when I started school in Oregon. On my first day of school, I encountered the boy I would eventually marry. He kept pestering me, trying to kiss me. I held out until I turned sixteen, then I kind’a got the hang of the kissing thing. We’ve been married for forty-eight years, he’s still a pest, bless him.

I started out writing Regency Romances to entertain myself. I took writing courses, but I think I learned the most by submitting my work to publishers, editors and agents, and getting feedback. Laid low for nearly twenty-five years with arthritis, forced to use a battery-powered cart, I took up aquatic exercise and became an instructor. After two surgeries to replace my knees, I went to work on myself and lost eighty-five pounds, which I have kept off.

My husband and I live in Central Oregon with two West Highland White terriers, an energetic, longhaired Dachshund and one big, angora tuxedo cat. When I need a break from writing Oregon historical western romances, I work in the yard or my garden.

This year I am proud to announce the release of two Laura Creek romances:  THE REPROBATE & THE COST OF REVENGE.