Abby: Mail Order Bride

Brant Samson has fallen on hard times with the death of his beloved wife a year earlier from lung fever. Left with three children, he's desperate to find a mother for them. Ten year old Jenny does her best to care for two year old Ty, and fourteen year old Luke works the ranch with his father, losing himself in dime novels to ease the pain of his mother's passing. Brant's options are limited since eligible women seldom pass through Two Rivers, much less settle in the small Texas town. In desperation, he places a classified advertisement for a mail order bride. Marrying a woman he'll come to know through a newspaper advertisement scares the bejesus out of him, but at this point, he's out of options.Abigail Mary Vaughn always dreamed of having her own family, but caring for her elderly parents, as well as working as a teacher to help with finances, ended that dream. Her parents are now dead and she's faced with the reality of her lonely existence. After reading Mr. Samson's advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer, she garners enough courage to respond. Since she is considered an old maid at the age of thirty-eight, she'll more than likely spend the rest of her life wondering "what if" unless she does something unconventional.

My perfect day: Laptop; WiFi availability; Java Mocha; characters demanding their stories be told; a plot that comes together; and hours to live in an alternate reality. Afterward, I return home to wash dishes and vacuum. Seriously, I have always loved reading, and now I love writing. As a preteen, I devoured Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Mysteries. When I reached my teen years, the romance genre became my favorite and that has never changed. Several years ago, I decided to try my hand at writing and I’ve been doing so with a passion ever since. I have written around twenty novels and novellas in the genres of contemporary romance, contemporary western romance, historical western romance, and fantasy romance. Because I hate saying goodbye to characters who have lived with me for months, I usually create a series so they can be revisited from book to book. I also have a young adult novel about the coming of age of a physically challenged young woman. I am using the pen name of Colleen Clay for YA novels.