Just weeks away from Christmas now, yet it feels like yesterday I was putting our tree up with all the lights and decorating the fences and trees outside with solar lights so we don’t let the suburb down – there’s a competition every year where I live, to see who has the best decorated house and believe me, some people go all out. One of our neighbors even put on a light show, with their house pulsating with different lights from the top of the roof to the gardens with rock music. So many people came to watch it, the road was closed with people sitting and standing whereever they could. They’re busy putting lights up again, so I guess we going to have another light show. Anyway, things have been busy here and although I’ve done my best to get the 7th Madeleine book out, gremlins have once again been at work and allowed me to only put in a few hours a day. This is a big book, but its now down to 464 pages so I’ve managed to edit it quite a bit, but there’s more to go. These last four books in the series have a lot of endings and new beginnings, but you asked for it, so I’ve tried to do the best I can for Ryder, Madeleine and everyone in their lives. I can’t wait to finish this series so you can read it. x

I had another cortisone injection in my left shoulder on Friday to help with the discomfort of an old injury that has a habit of slowing me down. I’m four days into it and already it’s feeling so much better. I’ll be taking it easy for a few more days, but I’ll keep working on Book 7. Can’t wait to get this published and out to you!

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.

Hi there, just a quick post to let you know my new admin person inadvertently deleted some of my subscribers from Mailchimp, several thousand in fact, and we won’t be able to retrieve a lot of you. If you miss my newsletter this month, just send me an email at sadieconallauthor@gmail.com and we’ll add you back in. Apologies for this, just one of those things that happens when the gremlins are out and about. My next newsletter will be going out in a few days with some freebies, so hope you get it okay.