Tag: Hannah True series

REPUTATION: Almost There

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Setting Up the Pre-order

Putting Reputation on pre-order on Amazon is more about giving myself a deadline I have to meet than it is about selling books. If I were not such a procrastinator, I could probably have written another dozen books by now.

The Final Cover

Notepad Contents

Deciding what items to list on the notepad and in what order of each Hannah True book is always a challenge. Now, as I look at what I have designated as “the final cover,” I’m wondering if it is. The current order is

  • poisoned pastry
  • hotel thefts
  • a dead owner
  • cave explosion
  • a missing detective

As I examine the list, I realize hotel thefts should come before poisoned pastry. The thefts come first in the novel and should on the notepad. Just when I think something is done, I find something else to fix. Make the above the next to final cover. Or maybe the next, next to final cover. The good news: I have until August 1 to upload the final book documents.

The Book Description

Reputation is everything to a woman and her team of detectives
in 1861 St. Louis.

From the top floor of the Gates Hotel to the caves beneath it, the search to find a murderer takes Hannah True and her team into situations that compromise their reputations as women and as novice detectives. Meeting a man alone might be enough to ruin a reputation and meeting him in a saloon would definitely destroy it. Besides, Hannah has the reputation of her employer, the Hollandar Detective Agency, to think about.

When the owner of the Gates Hotel hires the Agency to find the person who has been stealing from guests, it appears to be a low danger job suitable for training three new female investigators. But upon discovering the man who hired them has been murdered, the stakes rise.

When the widow of the hotel owner hires a Pinkerton to crack the case, Hannah and her team have to rise to the challenge and show they can outshine the Pinkerton. They must reveal the murderer first, as well avoid becoming targets themselves.

The Formatted Novel

Here is the biggest challenge, and I am still tearing my hair out over getting both the eBook and paperback pages to conform with publishing requirements. However, I am determined to meet the deadline for the eBook pre-order. The paperback will be available on August 16.

The eBook preorder page is live now, and the publication date is August 5. Check it out here.

Researching St. Louis

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St. Louis has been a stopover on the journeys of many members of the Pierce family and of Hannah True. They caught steamboats going west or trains going east, but St. Louis was never their destination, the place where the story happened, until Book 4 of Hannah’s adventures.

In Book 4, now a rough draft in progress, Hannah joins the Hollandar Detective Agency and goes on her first official case. She is joined by agency owners, Vance Hollandar and his mother Victoria Nelson. Additional new investigators are Benita Walton and Aaron Jackson. The owner of an upscale St. Louis hotel has hired Vance to investigate a series of thefts that have been carried out over several weeks. Because Vance and his team arrive undercover, and because I had read and seen so many buildings with so-called false fronts in old western towns, I decided a perfect name for the novel would be False Fronts. I even envisioned a book cover with that image.

One Big Problem

Buildings with false fronts were a few hundred miles west and half a dozen or more years later than the St. Louis setting of my story. So now I am working on a new title and cover and researching to find out what more I need to know before I make a decision. A recent Emporia Rec Center tour allowed me to visit the city and its museums. The trip gave me a start toward building the crime scenes and the backstory of the characters involved in committing those crimes while also searching for a fitting title.

1849 Was a Bad Year for St. Louis

In 1849, the population of St. Louis was about 63,000. On May 17, fire destroyed the waterfront business district. In the summer of 1849, a cholera outbreak killed approximately 4,500 St. Louis residents. Main characters in my novel lost family members in these two events, and those losses shaped their lives.

Within a year of the fire, new buildings made of brick, some five stories high, were built to replace what was destroyed. By January 1861, the year my novel takes place, St. Louis had a population of nearly 161,000. Brick buildings, not the false fronts of frontier towns that I had imagined, lined the streets.

What’s Next?

As I explore the setting for my now unnamed novel, I’ll be researching the caves beneath St. Louis and the nefarious things that might happen in them. Maybe I’ll find a title buried there.

Opinions of Hannah True: Aunt Gertrude Speaks

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Author: I am here today with Mrs. Gertrude Oaks, Hannah’s aunt, who has opened her heart and home to Hannah since her displacement by her brothers-in-law. Good morning, Mrs. Oaks, and thank you for joining me today. I know that since your sister, Hannah’s mother, passed away in November of 1859, you have been concerned about Hannah’s future. Can you tell me in one word how you see Hannah handling this change in her life?

Gertrude: Recklessly.

Author: Why do you say that?

Gertrude: Many things, some little, some not so small, that have added up over time. You mentioned my sister’s, Hannah’s mother, passing almost a year ago now. When the new owners took over the hotel Hannah had managed, she was supposed to come immediately to stay with me, but was delayed in Chicago for some weeks. I didn’t think anything of that since she was staying with a friend.

Author: So what was the first thing that caused you concern?

Gertrude: Her taking that position at the Spirit Seekers colony. Something didn’t seem quite right from the very beginning, but when I met Josiah, the founder of the colony, he was such a nice man that I put my doubts aside. At least, I did until Josiah became alarmed at what was happening. His investigation led to his murder, and then we learned…Well, you know what we learned. Thankfully, Hannah escaped with her life. But this latest escapade is beyond what anyone with a shred of common sense would become involved in. I think it is all related to the losses she has suffered because of her sisters’ horrible husbands.

Author: I spoke with her brothers-in-law in a previous interview, so I know something of their attitudes toward Hannah. How have their opinions negatively affected her?

Gertrude: They learned of her connection to the Spirit Seekers and took that as evidence that she was somehow in league with demons and unfit to see her nieces. She had been raising those girls since their mother died five years ago. They were her life. When she received Graham Russell’s letter forbidding her to ever see or contact them again, Hannah lost all concern for herself and became reckless.

Author: Reckless, how?

Gertrude: She got herself arrested for interfering with the police when they were arresting that girl who tried to vote fraudulently. Luckily, we were able to get the charges against her dismissed. But then, she decided she must ensure the girl’s safety by being admitted to the Brookdale Lunatic Asylum where the girl’s father admitted her to avoid a prison sentence.

Author: That does seem extreme.

Gertrude: That’s just the beginning. Once I had her admitted, Hannah learned that the girl had been moved to the violent ward for fighting with another inmate, so Hannah took it upon herself to also act in such a manner as to be moved there. That seems truly insane to me. I don’t know what will become of her. Do you?

Author: I’m working on it.

The projected publication date for Overcoming, book 3 in The Adventures of Hannah True is December 2023

In the meantime, if you haven’t read the first two books, check them out on Amazon.