Comanche raids and saloon gals: Gather The Children

FROM THE AUTHOR:
Gather The Children, Book 2 of the Chronicles of the Maca, has a long, convoluted history. I started writing the basic story when I was eleven years old. I killed off everyone in the Comanche raid on a small ranch in Texas but Lorenz and Margareatha. I even knew what Lorenz and Margareatha would look like as adults, and what Lorenz’s wife would look like when he was old enough to marry. I even knew his name would be Lorenz, I just wasn’t adult enough to give him the German spelling.

I cut pictures out of the old Saturday Evening Post magazine to illustrate what Margareatha and Antoinette (Lorenz’s wife) would look like. Unfortunately, Margareatha, the saloon gal, was dressed as a lady and Antoinette, the perfect Southern lady, was dressed as a saloon gal.  It was the features, I wanted to illustrate, not the clothes.  I gave it all to my near-genius, University of Iowa, English Major student to review.  He burst into loud guffaws. “You killed off all your characters. You can’t do that.” I was so hurt I put it all away; except the story wouldn’t leave my head.

A year later I started again, and went from the Comanche raid to when Lorenz was a violent teenager. His scholarly, gentle Uncle would give him a home. Then I realized the Uncle wasn’t strong enough to control him. After a few months, there was this huge, lumbering strongman that could, but to have a valid standing as a step-father, I had to resurrect the mother, Anna.  The story hit another snag when I hit fourteen and was too ill to do anything. Mother took me to Arizona.

My teen years were a blur of schooling, work, dates, college, and then marriage to a tall, handsome man with the gray eyes, dark wavy curling at the sides hair, broad shoulders, and dead shot abilities of Lorenz. There was even the cleft in the chin.

The story wouldn’t stay buried, so I took a correspondence course in writing. It was fits and starts for years as more characters appeared and told me their stories and life. The final pieces fell into place when different planets, beings, and wars were there. The Maca’s mother who had destroyed the Justine planet was there, and refused to be ignored. Still I could not put it all down. I had written short stories and even sold one to Jack and Jill, but I feared writing a novel.

One day my husband saw me sitting there gazing off into space and asked what I was doing. I explained the story running through my mind. “Why aren’t you writing it down? I always liked your stories. For some reason that was the catalyst.  Gather The Children was flowing. Lanny was able to read through page one hundred and ten. “I want to know what happens to that young man.” My beloved husband never found out, but the one that looks like him will live for hundreds of years with his Justine genes.

It took a while longer to complete as the anger that consumed me after Lanny’s death meant that I sat down and wrote the most violent novel of the entire series.  Gather The Children was finished later, but became my first published novel about the family with alien genes, their barroom brawls, their gun fights, and their struggle to survive in a land devastated by Civil War. Creativia has republished the novel and given the story new life.

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