My Writing Corner : Uncovering a Family Mystery

It's always great to welcome back a former guest to My Writing Corner. My guest is Colleen L Donnelly, who has allowed me to feature a number of her books in the past. Today, she joins us to tell us about her newest book, Katie Walsh which tells the story of a young girl forced to solve the mystery of a family history no one warned her about, in order to create a shameless future of her own. We will find out more about Katie Walsh but first let's learn about Colleen.

Colleen was born and raised in the US Midwest but says she ventured to other parts of the country as an adult to experience life from other perspectives. Besides writing, she spends time outdoors, antique hunting, reading, or watching a good movie. Even though she retired from a career in laboratory science, she says she is never bored and always keeping busy at something.

What is the book that you are featuring today and how did you come up with the idea to write it?

Katie Walsh is the book I almost didn’t publish. It wasn’t an idea. It was an experience.

Every other novel I have written exploded from sudden inspiration, but this historical romantic fiction evolved. My first seven books poured out one after the other, a creative flow I expected to continue, but it suddenly stopped after a life-changing family event. I went from writing about life to living it. And like Job scraping his boils, I merely pecked at my keyboard, lost and confused.

With time, a “new normal” began to develop in my family, after which my pecking began to take form. Several false starts that resembled stories made it to the Recycle Bin, until one day my creativity returned, inspiration struck, and Katie Walsh was born. As—me! A writer with a lot of living to do before their story could come out.

Once finished, Katie Walsh was different enough from my other novels, I hesitated to submit it to my publisher. As it went through the contracting and editing process, I kept thinking this book isn’t me; I should withdraw it. But it was indeed me, and it took hindsight’s 20-20 vision to see that Katie was me staying alive when life as I knew it turned upside down and stopped. She and I each had a story inside. But both of our worlds collapsed. Our families were no longer the same, our hearts became broken, and enemies rose up around us. With time we muddled our way through. We survived. We overcame, we found ourselves, and in the end, we lived and wrote our stories. I now love Katie Walsh and her painstaking journey--because she is the character who lived my life on the page.

Let's get a blurb:

Katie Walsh expects to write a love story someday. The hero resembles her father, and the heroine the deceased mother she never knew but imagines from the longing on her father’s face.

Katie doesn’t expect her father to be murdered, or his will to leave their farm to Guy Knowles, the man she hoped to marry, and order her to another state. Betrayed by the men she trusted, what should have become a love like no other withers and dies.

Until Ted Howard, who doesn’t fit the hole Guy left in her heart. Instead, he fits himself into what she needs—someone who will stay, protect her, and break his own heart for her if needed.

Let's get an excerpt:

When our neighbor, Guy Knowles, began to drop by and take me for long but mostly silent walks across Papa’s pasture, I wondered if my parents had done the same thing and if my excitement mirrored what my mother’s might have been. Did she, like me, translate every quiet step into tender words? Did she see lifelong devotion on Papa’s face then, like I watched for it now on Guy’s?

I expected my love story—the one I would write and the one I would live—to be like theirs. What I didn’t expect was that both stories would begin the day a stranger came to my door and told me my father had just been killed. Killed, not died.

Nor did I expect this tale of “A Love Like No Other” to reach full bloom in a tiny jail cell far away.

Intrigued and want to read on? You'll have to buy the book. Here are the buy links as well as Colleen's social contacts and links to some of her other novels.

Buy Links:

Amazon link: https://amzn.to/45pYv4q

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/katie-walsh-colleen-l-donnelly/1145663844?ean=9781509257096

Prior Books & Links by Colleen L Donnelly:

“Mine to Tell” Amazon #1 Bestseller: http://amzn.to/1PNJo4S

“Letters and Lies” Amazon: https://amzn.to/2yNFGNv

“Love on a Train” Amazon: http://amzn.to/1m9eYCx

“Asked For” Amazon: http://amzn.to/1TyflEu

“Sonata Contineo” Amazon: https://amzn.to/2I0zzYi

“Out of Splinters and Ashes” Amazon: http://amzn.to/2K0WTHt

“The Lady’s Arrangement” Amazon: http://amzn.to/2qj7DE2

Social Media: