This is my revision of what the marketing people came up with. There will probably be some more changes.
QUEEN OF SWORDS
It is the late summer of 1814 and Hannah Bonner and her half-brother, Luke, have spent more than a year searching the islands of the Caribbean for Luke’s wife and the man who abducted her. But Jennet’s rescue, so long in coming, is not the resolution they hoped for. In the spring Jennet gave birth to Luke’s son, and in the summer she found herself compelled to surrender the infant to a stranger in hope of keeping him safe.
To claim the child, Hannah, Luke, and Jennet must journey first to Pensacola. There they learn a great deal about the family who has the baby: the Poiterins are a very rich, very powerful Creole family, and without scruples. The matriarch of the family has left Pensacola for New Orleans, and taken the child she now claims as her great grandson with her.
New Orleans is a city on the brink of war, where prejudice thrives and where Hannah, half Mohawk, must tread softly. Careful plans are made as the Bonners set out to find and reclaim young Nathaniel Bonner. Plans that go terribly awry, isolating them from each other in a dangerous city at the worst of times.
Sure that all is lost and sick unto death, Hannah finds herself in the care of a family and a friend from her past, Dr. Paul de Guise Savard dit Saint-d’Uzet. It is Dr. Savard and his wife who save Hannah’s life, but Dr. Savard’s half brother who offers her real hope. Jean-Benoit Savard, the great grandson of French settlers, slaves, Choctaw and Seminole Indians, is the one man who knows the city well enough to engineer the miracle that will reunite the Bonners and send them home to Lake in the Clouds. With Ben Savard’s guidance, allies are drawn from every segment of New Orleans’s population, and from Andrew Jackson’s army, now pouring pouring into the city in preparation for what will be the last major battle of the War of 1812.
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Sounds great!
I am so excited and its going to be a long wait. Any chance of a contest so some one can win a copy before Oct 31? Congratulations.
It’s like being pregnant all over again! Nine long months to wait!
Very gripping and tension filled. I wince over the idea of Jennet giving up her child and the danger that seems so prominent for all of them.
Oh my goodness! I’m so excited just reading the blurb, and seeing a date! Can’t wait.
Not to be a negative nellie, but I feel like this gives away too much. It practically tells the whole storyline (unless, of course, everything described happens in the first few chapters). I like to find out what will happen as the author reveals it, and I will often not even read the blurb on the back of a book by an author that I love until I have actually finished the book. (Obviously this isn’t possible for authors I have just discovered). I understand that not everyone has read the previous Wilderness novels and that you have to give them a lot of information to entice them, but I really feel this could be done better- without giving away so much of the story!
That being said, thank you for sharing so much of the process with us- it is interesting AND it will help the time go by faster!
sara g– I tend to agree with you, but then you should have seen the first draft by the marketing people — it had far more information, and gave away everything. I was quite shocked. I think it must have been a new person who took on the task, somebody who erred on the side of being thorough — and I mean, erred.
I know this version looks like it gives away a lot, but it doesn’t really. On the other hand, if you like everything to be a surprise, then I’d agree, you’d be better off ignoring posts about Queen of Swords.
Avoid QOS posts? Not when I have willpower the size of an ant. In all seriousness, I understand that I am taking a calculated risk when I read QOS posts, but since I feel you focus more on characters and the process of writing and publishing, I am comfortable taking that risk. Plus, the willpower thing. I mean, I was checking every few hours to see if you were back up again! I can’t stay away!
Also, I don’t want you to think that I want you to censor yourself for my delicate sensibilites. You are my daily read for a reason.
I am so glad you are back up!
I got a little teary when I saw Jennet had named the baby Nathaniel. *sniff* Can’t wait to read it.
I was thinking the same thing as Sara G. It gives much too much away. Sometimes when I read blurbs I wonder if the writer has even read the book. I think this writer definitely read it, but is missing the point of the “tease”.
I think maybe I need to avoid QOS posts too – I want to be surprised! But then again, I pop by here every day…
I’m so glad to see that Dr. Savard will be back for QOS–he is one of my very favorite characters from the series.
Thanks for the post, even though it does make the wait until October seem even longer…