LAST EDITED ON Mar-24-10 AT 03:30 PM (EST)
At the request of Lighthouse Lady!COMANCHE MOON
Native American "half breed" heroes or full-blooded Native American heroes were extremely popular then. I was an avid reader as well as a writer, and after reading countless "Indian" love stories, I developed a distaste for the way the Native American hero was always "sold down the white man's river" at the end.
Invariably, it seemed, the hero was, to all appearances, a real Native American man at the start of the story, and the heroine was terrified to have been taken hostage by a savage. In these stories, most writers practiced what I christened "selective omission" in these tales. That essentially means that even though the hero had his own viewpoint in the story, i.e., that the reader was made aware of his personal thoughts, the hero never hinted the truth about himself until the ending.
In the endings of these stories, it was discovered that the hero was only a half-breed who had been raised in the white world, usually in wealthy environs with every opportunity for a first-class white man's college education. I remember one NA hero who'd even attended Harvard! These heritage twists were usualy accomplished by giving the NA hero a white father and a Native American mother. Annually, the hero would return to visit his mother's people and immerse himself in their society, becoming pure Native American in appearance and mannerisms. At the end of the story, he discarded his costume, swept the heroine into his arms, and carted her back to the affluent white world from which he'd come.
Well, I'm sure not every Indian romance was like this, but a huge percentage of them were, and it bugged me, possibly because I have a lot of Native American in my heritage. It seemed to me that the popular mindset was that Native Americans actually were savages and thus unappealing as heroes. For them to court the heart of the romance market, there had to be a "white" catch at the end, if you will.
I decided to write about a Native American man who was actually a "savage," by the romance market's definition of the word--a man who had been raised exclusively in a Native American society, a man who was fighting for his people and had in the process killed, scalped, and mutilated his enemy, a man who was, in every sense of the word, truly intimidating.
In order to start, I had to pick a tribal affiliation for my hero, and since it was my aim to prove a point in my book, namely that Native Americans weren't savages, but just people with a different societal outlook, I settled on the Comanche tribe because they were the fiercest and most feared, on equal ground with the Apache.
Thus began four years of research!
As I began to delve into the societal mindsets of the Comanche people, I developed a deep sense of affinity with them. I tried to remain true to their culture as I wrote Comanche Moon, not selling them down the "white man's river" at any point in the story. The same held true for Hunter. I didn't want to sell him out. Hunter is a good man with a wonderful sense of humor and a kind heart, but he is purely Comanche in his mindset, and he remains purely Comanche, even at the end of the story.
Comanche Moon was rejected by every house in New York! It did not follow the "formula" for heart-of-the-market romance. The hero was a killer of white people! He couldn't speak good English. He had no education. Loretta is mute at the beginning of the story. A mute heroine was a huge no-no. I was asked by a couple of houses to alter the book to suit the market. I thought about it and refused, preferring to put Comanche Moon on a shelf and never sell it. I had to keep my promise to myself that I would not betray The People. I also believed, deep in my heart, that publishers were selling the female reading population way short! I felt that women readers were far more sophisticated than they were believed to be and that they would embrace and love Comanche Moon.
Eventually the book sold with only the usual revisions. The story and characterizations weren't altered. And I was right about the female readership. Women who read Comanche Moon mostly gave it rave reviews, and that began the true launch of my writing career.
After Comanche Moon was published, my sister read it. She said, "I had the eeriest feeling that I knew Hunter personally." I laughed and said that I had felt such an affinity with him and his people that before the book was over I felt as if I were part Comanche! My mother was listening, and she said, "Well, you are dear. You're part Shoshone, and the Comanches broke off from the mother tribe of Shoshones to become known as "the snakes who come back." The reason the Comanches called themselves that is because the mother tribe of Shoshones lived around the Snake River and called themselves the Snake Indians. The Comanches often returned to Idaho, which means in Shoshone and Comanche, "The Land that is so very, horribly cold." When the Comanches visited their mother tribe, they were indeed the "Snakes who came back."
I now live in an area where the Shoshone often hunted during the summer. From my ridge, I look out over the land that they considered to be their summer home. The first time I came to this area, I felt drawn to it in a way I couldn't fathom, and so did my son, John. We both said, "I feel like I finally came home." Months after we moved here, John found a book on the history of this area, called Thunder Over The Ochocos. In that book, we learned that the Shoshone tribe summered here. Mystery solved. We truly had come home.
COMANCHE HEART
COMANCHE HEART is a sequel to COMANCHE MOON, carrying on with the secondary characters, Amy and Swift Antelope. I fell in love with the two characters while writing COMANCHE MOON, and I didn't have any choice but to write their story. Simple as that!
INDIGO BLUE
INDIGO BLUE is a sequel to COMANCHE HEART, the third book in the Comanche series. As a person with a great deal of Native American ancestry, I grew up hearing about the unreasoning racial prejudice directed toward Indians. I know "Indian" is no longer politically correct, but I take license to use it because I have so much Indian blood. In my family, we were proud of that, but my mother told me of people who actually lied about their origins, ashamed of being Indian. As a youngster, I could not imagine why anyone would lie to cover it up. But in my family, we had kids who looked Native American and kids who were either blue-eyed redheads or had a redhead's complexion. I was one of the latter, with such fair skin I cooked if I was in the sun for more than ten minutes. As a result, I was never targeted by racists. I had cousins who were, but I never experienced it, up close and personal.
Since it had been difficult for me to understand what that must be like when I was a child, it was something I wanted to share with my readers--the day-to-day trials some people must endure, simply because of skin color. So that was what inspired me to write Indigo's story of a girl who wasn't of her father's world but not really of her mother's world, either. She was a mixture of both and a truly fascinating character. I fell in love with her, and through her, I experienced and was able to depict racial prejudice.
COMING UP ROSES
COMING UP ROSES is a stand-alone book. If you've ever known someone in an abusive relationship, you have seen into Kate's world, which was laced with dread, fear, and a constant feeling of entrapment. I wanted to write a book about a woman who fought back and then had to live with the consequences. I also wanted to highlight the fact that abuse in a relationship almost always trickles down to the children. An abuser is not fussy about his victims.
Too often, we sit in our safe little worlds and pass judgment on others who are trapped in horrible relationships. I hope that COMING UP ROSES revealed that people don't always have a choice and are truly victims.
CHEYENNE AMBER
CHEYENNE AMBER resulted from my love of the Comanche people. I yearned to research another tribe, and I also wanted to portray the calamitous actions of whites against Native Americans. It wasn't only the Comanche nation that was all but destroyed but almost every tribe of Native Americans. If not destroyed, their culture was forever altered to fit the white man's notion of acceptable and God-fearing. I chose the Cheyennes because of the atrocities committed against them at Sand Creek. In this book, I wanted to show both sides of the hatred, so Deke Sheridan was born, a white captive raised by the Cheyennes. Through him, I was able to take my readers deep into the Cheyenne culture and also reflect the white man's perspective. Deke is, to this day, one of my favorite male leads.
COMANCHE MAGIC
My great-grandmother's husband up and left one day for Australia to make his fortune. I believe he set out to find diamonds, but I'd have to research that to be sure. He left her with several children, promising to send bits of his fortune home to provide for them. She didn't hear from him. Back then, there was little respectable work available for a woman, especially for a woman with children who was more or less tied to home and hearth. My grandmother took in laundry and cleaned for people, but the pickings were slim. She and her children were barely surviving.
Time wore on, and a gentleman in the area lost his wife. He needed to work, and he had no one to care for his kids. He hired my great-grandmother to be his live-in housekeeper. I don't know if she made any actual money in the deal. She was to keep his house, cook, do laundry, and care for his children. In return, he fed and clothed her and her children.
Well, imagine this situation. My great-grandfather was gone for over seven years. It was a scandalous arrangement for my great-grandmother. Her reputation was tanked. Decent women didn't live with men who weren't their husbands.
Eventually, her position became cozy, I suppose you might say. She became pregnant. When my great-grandfather finally decided to come home and appeared on her doorstep, she was in the process of having him proclaimed legally dead so she could marry the widower. She had a brand new baby girl as well. As it stood, she was still married to my great-grandfather, and many of her children were his. I was never made privy to what transpired upon his return, only that she went back to her husband, my great-grandfather, and he raised her illegitimate child, the little girl.
What I was made privy to was the unfairness of it all. My great-grandmother did what she had to do in order to feed her children, but society frowned upon it. I suppose the sanctimonious would have preferred to see her and her children starving and sleeping on doorsteps. Even worse, the little girl, born out of wedlock, was never accepted by the townspeople because she was a bastard child. I believe my great-grandfather even treated her differently than the other children, and she was married off at age twelve to a much older man. My mother told stories of the man coming home from work to find her playing with dolls.
Anyway, to this day, many of us still look down our noses at prostitutes. We don't know what led them into the life they lead, and we don't care. I am as guilty of that as anyone, truth be told, but there is also a part of me that understands women don't always choose that lifestyle. Sometimes there are others who depend upon them for survival, and they sacrifice themselves to save those they love.
So COMANCHE MAGIC was written, featuring Frannie, the little prostitute, who dreamed of fields of daisies to escape from reality while men used her body. Most of the money she made was sent home to her blind mother. Frannie had several younger siblings who would have starved if not for her sacrifices.
It was not my intention in that book to condone fornication or prostitution. I just wanted to say to the world, "Don't judge until you know the whole story." And I wanted people to realize that we "never" know the whole story. Therefore, while we might not approve of someone else's choices in life, and while we might never, ever make that choice for ourselves, perhaps we should refrain from casting stones. When we drive through a large city and see prostitutes displaying their wares on street corners, it is okay to be appalled, but we should always remember that one of those women may be someone like Frannie who has chosen that path out of necessity and may, in many ways, be a finer person than we are.
ANNIE'S SONG
I met a beautiful little deaf girl named Tina when she joined my classroom, and I fell wildly in love with her. Tina, like most deaf children, made odd sounds when she played with certain toys. At those times, she got a rapturous expression on her face. One day I could bear the curiosity no longer and lay on the floor with her, trying to determine why she loved those toys so much. Well, those toys vibrated, and Tina could "hear" the sounds they made through her fingertips.
From that moment forward, I learned something new about Tina every day. She drew me into her world of silence and taught me so very much. Tina's mother was single and had a small income. She was considering putting Tina up for adoption because she feared she would be unable to afford the special help Tina would need as she grew older. I talked with my husband, and he gave me his blessing to stand first in line to adopt Tina if her mother followed through on that decision.
Even though I would have loved to raise Tina, the thought of her growing up apart from her mother and grandmother broke my heart. The three bore a striking resemblance to each other, petite in stature, with elfin faces and gigantic eyes. If Tina didn't know these two women, she would be deprived of such a wonderful sense of connection. I expressed my feelings to Tina's mother and grandmother. There is a lot more to raising a child than providing for its educational needs. They loved that little girl very much.
In the end, Tina's mother decided to keep Tina. I was so glad she made that choice. During the remainder of the time that I worked with Tina, I learned so very much from her about what it's like to live in a world of silence. At that time, I was not yet a published writer, but I promised myself that if I ever became published, I would write a book about a deaf girl and impart to other hearing individuals the wondrous things I'd learned from Tina.
I kept that promise when I wrote Annie's Song. Tina eventually disappeared from my life, but I will never forget her. And one day, I hope she picks up a book titled Annie's Song.
SIMPLY LOVE
I am a cradle Catholic, and I wanted to write a story about a naive girl who was also a cradle Catholic who'd been taught by nuns and sheltered from the darkness of the world, much as I was as a girl. I also wanted to write about a hero who knew the dark side very well, a man who would take an incredible journey to find joy and goodness through the love of a woman. Cassandra and Luke Taggart were born. Luke was a very challenging character, a man who did truly rotten things to get Cassandra in his clutches. He lied. He connived. He got her father and brother, her only protectors, arrested. In the beginning of the book, Luke knew one rule, to take what he wanted regardless of what he had to do to get it. Yet, somehow, I had to make the reader see past that and love the potential for goodness in Luke that only the love of the right woman could bring forth. I believe I managed to do that. 
KEEGAN'S LADY
I wanted to explore a number of things in this book. If we endure horrible abuse as children, how does that affect us as adults? If the abuse become sexual at some point, how does that compound the effect? I also wanted to explore the old adages, "The apple never falls far from the tree," and "Some people are born with bad blood," and "Like father, like son." Are some people really born with bad blood? Or is it more a case of people believing in those adages and creating their own destiny? I don't believe it often happens that people are genetically predisposed to become horrible individuals. In most cases, I think they become horrible because bad examples are set for them.
I did a lot of research to accurately develop Caitlin O'Shannessy's character. With her brother, Patrick, who was well on his way to following in his father's footsteps, I had to rely on my instincts. It is my hope that the story not only entertained but enlightened my readers.
Catherine Anderson
CthrnAndrsn1@aol.com
Printer-friendly copy
LighthouseLady/Lynda 
I am loving it and am going to pass the word that you are doing it....get some of the gals back and some new ones too?? 
