Romance writer conjures Burnet County villan
Writing a series of whodunits was the last thing on the mind of bestselling historical romance author Adrienne deWolfe until her computer crashed – and got stolen from the repair shop.
“I was struggling to write my first fantasy when my hard drive blew up,” deWolfe recalled. “The night before the meltdown, I actually had a dream that the manuscript would never get published. Does that make me psychic?”
DeWolfe works by day as a sales rep for Gumdrop Books and counts among her clients Burnet Junior High and Herman Brown Free Library.
While deWolfe can joke now about the computer debacle, she said the loss of a manuscript is every writer’s worst nightmare.
“There must have been some higher plan for me, because my publisher contacted me two days later, asking me to write a Western romance. From the ashes of that lost fantasy rose my favorite heroine: a fiery-haired, gun-slinging ex-bawd with a Pinkerton badge.”
DeWolfe’s fictional firecracker, Sadie Michelson, stars in a new series of historical Western romance / romantic suspense novels. Set in 1883, Book 1, “Devil in Texas,” pits the cagey, street-smart Sadie against her ex-lover, “Coyote Cass,” a smooth-talking gunslinger who’s working for the enemy: fictional Burnet County rancher and state senator, James "Baron" Westerfield.
“Sadie’s a hoot,” deWolfe said. “She has a temper, and she’s not afraid to use it! But what I really love about Sadie is she’s courageous and resourceful — a female action hero that modern women can cheer for. She leaps out of a burning building; she demonstrates steely nerve when bullets are whizzing past her ears; she battles armed foes, who vastly outnumber her, so she can rescue a kidnapped child.
“But to make Sadie really interesting,” deWolfe said, “I turned her into Cass’s long-lost love, the one woman he has never been able to forget — even though he thinks she betrayed him to the Rangers.”
Sadie, who works undercover as a casino singer, refused to exit the stage meekly at the end of the book, deWolfe explained.
“Like any self-respecting diva, Sadie demanded an encore performance. I realized 'Devil in Texas' couldn’t be written as a straight historical romance, as I’d originally planned. Sadie needed me to figure out a way – and fast – to continue her love affair with Cass in a series of romantic suspense novels. And who can blame her? Cass would be a handful to tame in just one book!”
The first full-length novel in the “Lady Law & The Gunslinger” series, “Devil in Texas” has received kudos from the Library Journal, Midwest Book Review, and Affaire de Coeur Magazine, among others. National bestselling Western Romance author, Barbara Ankrum, praised deWolfe for delivering "a rousing adventure that’s sure to please any lover of Western novels (with) laugh-out-loud storytelling and heartfelt emotion."
DeWolfe is the recipient of 48 writing awards, including the Best Historical Romance of the Year. She has written novels for Bantam Books and Avon Books, in addition to ePublishing Works, which is publishing “Devil in Texas” The novel is available in print and ebook formats.
