You might have realized by now that I’m struggling with book 7 in the Madeleine series. It should have been published by now as I’d finished writing it and I should be on to book 8. But in the last week or so I’ve realized what the problem is.
I’ve always seen Ryder and Madeleine dressed in buckskin living near a forest with horses nearby, along with their children and the Bannock. That’s basically been their life since book 4, When the Wolf Dreams, which I wrote back in 2015/2016. But now they’re back in St Louis and life is completely different and like me, they’re struggling to adjust. They have to form new relationships with family and friends they left behind four years earlier, like Julia Corrigan, Monigue and Josette, Jeremiah and Esmeralda, let alone their friends and family waiting for them in England.
But I’ve finally made sense of it all. I’ve deleted a lot but added a lot and finally got over that hurdle of how to put them back into that other life away from what they knew and loved with esa and the Bannock. As from yesterday, this book is now 522 pages long, but I’ll keep trying to get that page number down so it’s not such a big read.
This book is set entirely in the frontier town of St Louis in 1808/1809 and unlike the others there’s not much adventure in this story, it’s all about relationships, with Madeleine facing a future away from her Bannock family and Ryder once more having to face the difficulties of his childhood.
So not too much longer to wait! I’ll let you know when it’s ready.
Sadie Conall 