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Blog Tour for Delilah by Kaye Lynn Booth
Hello and Welcome Everyone!
I am happy you stopped by my blog. Today I’m the host at Wordcrafter Book Blog Tours and I want to announce the release of Delilah by Kaye Lynn Booth. Kaye has written a guest post today telling us all about Delilah, Book One in her Women in the West Adventure Series. Delilah sounds like a fascinating and entertaining book.
Thank you Kaye and congratulations on the release of Delilah!
Writing Sarah – strong female characters right out of history
One of the fascinating things about the Women in the West adventure series is the fact that there is a true-life historical female character in a supporting role, along with the strong female protagonist in each book. Life on the American frontier was filled with hardship which many believed did not fit well with the female constitution. Women on the frontier were few, and most of those were included in a family unit. Single and widowed women did exist on the frontier, as did those whose husbands just never came home for whatever reason, went back to the family unit in most cases. Women who chose to go it alone, defying societal expectations were rare. Those who did, chose a hard life and had to have backbone to survive. In Sarah, the supporting character will be Kate Elder (Big Nose Kate), who was the consort of the infamous dentist, gambler, and gunfighter, John (Doc) Henry Holliday. In this case, our character was the woman behind the man, and is little known for her own merit.
Mary Katherine Horony-Cummings a.k.a. Big Nose Kate Elder – the woman behind the man
Mary Katherine Horony was born in Budapest, Hungary on November 7, 1850. It is said that her father was a skilled surgeon, appointed the personal physician for the Mexican emperor, Maximillian I, and they came to the U.S. when the regime fell, and settled in Davenport, Iowa when Kate was ten. It is said that Kate was educated and could speak several languages, and as the daughter of a prominent surgeon this could be true. Perhaps it is what drew her the well-educated Holliday when they crossed paths in Texas.
Both of her parents died within a few months of each other, leaving Kate and her siblings orphaned when she was 15, and they were moved around to different foster homes. She ran away with her sister from foster placement within a year, and they jumped a ship to St. Louis. It took tremendous courage for a girl of that age to set out on her own to take up the often unforgiving life of the American frontier, or perhaps just desperation. I’m not sure what happened to the sister, but Kate was working as a prostitute by 1869.
Kate was a tough cookie of her own accord. In 1887, in Fort Griffith, Kate was almost in a gunfight herself, when she accused another woman of setting her sights on Doc, and the other woman drew a gun, forcing Kate to draw her own. Doc was able to break up the altercation before shots were fired, but Kate was not one to back down from a fight. Certainly, she had a wicked temper and a hard drinker, which might lead us to believe that she was the type of woman who thrived on excitement and enjoyed the wildness of the frontier.Kate & Doc – True love on the frontier: the real story
In Texas, in 1877, she met John ‘Doc’ Henry Holliday, who worked as a dentist during the day, and spent his evenings in the saloons and gambling houses. In their travels through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Arizona, Kate worked as a dance hall and saloon girl, as well as a prostitute. Unlike most prostitutes in the old west, Kate paid tribute to no madam or ‘mac’, but instead acted as her own handler. Kate’s occupation may have been a sore spot in her relationship with Doc.
Doc and Kate were known to have a volatile relationship, at times marked with drunken arguments which often turned violent, and the pair parted ways more than once, only to be reunited later. The registered in Dodge City, Kansas as Mr. and Mrs. John H. Holliday, but there is no evidence that the couple were ever actually wed. Despite behaviors brought about by drink and hot tempers, and the ups and downs which made their relationship a rollercoaster ride, Kate always remained loyal to Doc.
Their departure from Fort Griffin, has become one of legend in the history books. With little supporting evidence, the story goes that Doc knifed a man named Ed Bailey, when Bailey pulled a pistol over a poker game. Although it was self-defense, Doc and was placed under arrest, held in a hotel room with sentries posted outside the door until the magistrate showed up to hold court. Magistrates and judges presided over vast territories in those days, and in many towns court was only held once a month, so waiting for trial was not unusual. Kate caught wind of a lynch mob forming, unwilling to wait for Doc to go to trial, so she set a small shed on fire to draw everyone’s attention and then held his guard at gunpoint and aided Doc in his escape, before the mob could hang him.
It is said that Kate was running a bordello when Doc reunited with her in Tombstone, Arizona. Later, Kate implicated Doc in a stagecoach robbery, that he, in all likelihood, had no part in, after Sherriff Johnny Behan and the cowboy faction which opposed the Earps and Holliday, found her drunk after one of she and Doc’s spats, while she was still angry with him. They plied her with liquor until she made the claim against Doc. Once sober and level-headed once more, she recanted her story, but the damage had been done and she and Doc parted ways once more.
But as Doc lay dying in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, sick and destitute, a friend of his contacted her and Kate came to Glenwood Springs to help care for him and pay the bills, so he wouldn’t be turned out into the street. She collected firewood from the rough terrain of Glenwood Canyon and sold it to help to pay Doc’s expenses. And after he passed, she packed up his dentist equipment and the tools of his gambling trade, and shipped them back east, to whatever family he had there. True to the very end.Kate – the woman in the west
In a time when most women were a part of a family unit and were not allowed to make a living, a time when there were few opportunities for a woman to make a living, Kate was four-leaf clover in a field of green. Acceptable vocations for women were limited to seamstress, laundress, domestic servant, milliner, teacher, wait staff, or prostitute. She was an independent woman, and a survivor, who did what she could and what she had to do with whatever was available to her.
Following Doc’s death, as she reached an age when working as a prostitute was no longer profitable, Big Nose Kate Elder hung up her garters and became Mary Katherine Horony once more. Becoming respectable, she married a blacksmith and worked as a cook and shop operator, until she left him eleven years later. She died as a ward of the state, at the Arizona Pioneers Home, in Prescott, Arizona, in 1940.
In the words of Patrick A. Bowmaster, in his article “A Fresh Look at Big Nose Kate”
“Kate was a survivor. But more than that she was a woman who survived on her own term at a time when few of her gender did likewise.”
Resources
Carla Jean Whitley (3/10/2017) To Doc From Kate – But Who Was Kate? Post Independent. Retrieved from https://www.postindependent.com/news/local/to-doc-from-kate/Patrick A. Bowmaster. A Fresh Look at “Big Nose Kate”. Tombstone History Archives. Retrieved from http://www.tombstonehistoryarchives.com/a-fresh-look-at-big-nose-kate.html
Maggie Van Ostrand (2017) Katie Elder a.k.a. Big Nose Kate, Her True Story. Goose Flats Graphics & Publishing. Retrieved from Southern Arizona Guide: https://southernarizonaguide.com/katie-elder-her-true-story-by-maggie-van-ostrand/
Joseph A. Williams. The Real Story of Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate. Old West. Retrieved from https://www.oldwest.org/doc-holliday-big-nose-kate/
Big Nose Kate – Doc Holliday’s Sidekick. Legends of America. Retrieved from https://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-bignosekate/
(2/28/2022). Couples with History: Glewood Springs Loves Stories. Glenwood Springs Blog. Retrieved from https://visitglenwood.com/blog/2022/02/couples-with-history-glenwood-springs-love-stories/
The True Story of Katie Elder. Notes from the Frontier. Retrieved from https://www.notesfromthefrontier.com/post/the-true-story-of-katie-elderAbout the author
Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.
Her latest release is the re-release of Delilah, as Book 1 in the Women in the West adventure series. She has short stories featured in the following anthologies: The Collapsar Directive (“If You’re Happy and You Know It”); Relationship Add Vice (“The Devil Made Her Do It”); Nightmareland (“The Haunting in Carol’s Woods”); Whispers of the Past (“The Woman in the Water”); Spirits of the West (“Don’t Eat the Pickled Eggs”); and Where Spirits Linger (“The People Upstairs”). Her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, and her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, are both available in both digital and print editions at most of your favorite book distributors.
In addition, she keeps up her authors’ blog, Writing to be Read, where she posts reflections on her own writing, author interviews and book reviews, along with writing tips and inspirational posts from fellow writers. Kaye Lynne has also created her own very small publishing house in WordCrafter Press, and WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services, where she offers quality author services, such as publishing, editing, and book blog tours. She has served as a judge for the Western Writers of America and sitting on the editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press for the Gilded Glass anthology and editing Weird Tales: The Best of the Early Years 1926-27, under Kevin J. Anderson & Jonathan Maberry.
In her spare time, she is bird watching, or gardening, or just soaking up some of that Colorado sunshine.Link to buy a copy of Delilah.
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Welcome! I am pleased to send this newsletter/blog to you. I intend to send out monthly letters with news and updates. Watch the emails for contests and freebies. Everyone loves something free. I do!
I was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. I wrote a novel called Emmie of Indianapolis, about a very sensitive, emotional, smart, opinionated, friendly, strong fighting young girl in a small Midwestern city. Who does that sound like? My husband and I have been married forty-two years and we recently retired to Mexico. We live with our son Richard and our two dogs, Buddy and Whitey. https://www.amazon.com/Emmie-Indianapolis-Kay-Castaneda-ebook/dp/B07G2S9MTP/Emmie O’Brien is the main character in my first novel. One reviewer says “Emmie, the main character, is a brave, caring and hard working young lady destined to rise about her circumstances due to her simple faith and hope in her heart.” Another reviewer says “Emmie is speaking directly to us, simply, succinctly, sometimes without understanding, and other times with deep understanding; but more often than not a sense of wonder.” Read more about Emmie. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13851635.Kay_Castaneda
Emmie watches her sisters at night while Mom’s at work. Windows shut, hot, dark, no air, door locked, evil all around.
“I just kept sweeping and sweeping the bad things out the back door. Took a hot steaming mop and pushed it back and forth till there were no more black shiny pills on our kitchen floor.”
Emmie O’Brien
New Project
I hope you’ll find Emmie’s story interesting because she is going to be featured in my next project-a series of novels starring Emmie as a teenage amateur sleuth. Emmie’s dream of being a detective AND a newspaper reporter becomes true when she…..Oh, I can’t tell you just now.
The next book which I plan to complete by September 2023 will be named Go Find Iris Rose: An Emmie O’Brien Mystery Novel. I know you’ll like the story. The outline, plot, characters and chapter mapping is finished, ready to fill in the blanks. It’s not easy, as you know.My Blog BOOKPLACES
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Should Your Character Give A Soliloquy?
Hamlet Flower Quotes: Ophelia’s Mad Scene
In Act 4 ofHamlet,Ophelia has gone mad. In her distress, she has a speech that seems to ramble, but actually has a great deal of flower symbolism. She says, in part:
“There’s fennel for you, and columbines. There’s rue for you; and here’s some
for me: we may call it herb of grace a’ Sundays. You may wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.”–Ophelia, in Hamlet, Act IV scene v Lines 180-185 William Shakespeare
Should you have your main character speak a soliloquy? This literary device adds depth and richness for the reader by “getting inside the character’s head.” An author can follow that old piece of writing advice, to show not tell, by using a soliloquy in their story.
Soliloquy is the act of speaking alone or to oneself. The classical Latin definition of soliloquy comes from solus, or alone, and loqui, to speak. It is a passage in a drama in which a character expresses his thoughts or feelings aloud, while alone upon the stage, or with the other actors keeping silent. The audience hears the character during the soliloquy, but the speech is not directed to them or other characters in the play. The soliloquy is a monologue of the character’s internal dialogue of thoughts and feelings, but is spoken aloud, while a monologue is a character’s speech that is directed to the audience or another character. Soliloquy moves the story along, summing up what occurred thus far, reveals or analyzes other characters’ motives, or foreshadowing events to come. A soliloquy allows the audience to identify with a character and gives the playwright an opportunity to explore themes within the drama.
Literature, history, culture and religion are replete with soliloquies. Shakespeare wrote some of the best-known soliloquies, in which various characters speak to themselves within the plays. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, contains the most famous soliloquy in English literature. Hamlet asked himself, “To be or not to be: that is the question…” as he considered suicide.
Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury, struggled with the existence of God in his 1077 AD Monologium, when he proclaimed “It is easy then for one to say to himself…to ruminate…” in his internal dialogue. In the Old Testament, the prophet Job voices in his opening soliloquy about his suffering over the loss of his children, health and land, “Oh, that I were as in the months past, as in the days when God watched over me.” The words are spoken with the stylistic structure of a literary composition. Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in 386-400 AD, conducted a dialogue between himself and “Reason” concerning the nature of evil, and on order, faith and the ego in his Soliloquies. Peter Abelard, 12th Century philosopher and poet, in Soliloquiem, contemplates the relation of Christian faith and philosophy when he reveals that he, “…cannot doubt my own existence and will not trust my senses.” Thomas A ’Kempis, the 15th Century German monk, wrote that The Soliloquy of the Soul was “…a discourse with myself and the mind which longs to meditate on things both inner and Divine.”
Classical literature, for instance, uses soliloquy in dramas. Medea’s protagonist wrestles with her decision to murder her children in order to avenge her husband’s infidelity. “Farewell my resolve…what shall I do?” In Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy, the final chapter of the novel Ulysses, Molly rues her marriage to Leopold Bloom, the main character, “…I thought well as him well as another…” Jean Valjean utters his Soliloquy, in the novel Les Miserables, to unburden himself from his suffering and guilt with the words “…What have I done, Become a thief in the night…” Abraham Lincoln’s 1834 poem, The Suicide’s Soliloquy, recounts his struggles with mental anguish “…this heart I’ll rush a dagger through…” In Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the heroine delivers a long soliloquy before her suicide in which she laments about her adultery and relinquishing her children to their father. “Why not put out the light” she questions, “…when it’s sickening to look at it all?”
Linguist Yoko Hasagawa discusses the ways soliloquy allows the mind to form a better understanding of the person’s mental abilities. She writes that language is necessary to manage ideas within the mind. A soliloquy has speech patterns such as accent, pronunciation and voice. Soliloquy can be written, spoken, or internal. Peter Brooks’ research into the melodramatic mind found that emphatic verbal gestures and outbursts of emotion are evident within soliloquies. Brian Stock examined how soliloquy aids the narrative identity whereby an individual constructs a continually developing story of the self with characters, plot, and imagery. Furthermore, Stock researched the narrative self and the exploration of theoretical issues in Augustine’s The Soliloquys, in the sections De Ordine, or On Order, and De Libero Arbitrio, or On the Choice of Free Will. The 19th Century poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, makes use of a type of voice, call and response, a literary device, within his soliloquies. Stream of consciousness, audience, purpose, and motivation, in both verbal and written soliloquies, may create foreshadowing, or hints about what will occur later in the story or drama. Self-dialogue can be classified as silent, or inner speech, and speech that is possible for others to hear as private speech.
The field of psychology perceives soliloquy as originating from culture or illness, expressed as a communication and linguistic disorder. Schizophrenic patients often have bedtime soliloquies, episodes of creative, artistic speech and song, thus the art versus illness debate, according to Michael B. Scherr’s Soliloquy or Psychosis: A Cultural Look at Schizophrenia. Such patients express both inner and private speech during the bedtime soliloquies. Since the patient’s private speech is at times able to be heard by others, and is often spoken in a type of code or language that only the person understands, those listening perceive the soliloquies as nonsensical or disordered and proof of the patient’s mental status. On the other hand, various soliloquies originate in bedtime settings or late at night in works of literature. When Juliet speaks to the moon, the night, the wind, to the sky and to unseen horses, in Romeo and Juliet, debate centers on the treatment of soliloquy as a symptom using the psychodrama technique of the same name. Soliloquy, the treatment, occurs when group members speak to themselves, but loudly enough for members to hear, during a group therapy session, the same as the dramatic device found in Shakespearean plays and other works of literature. Terms for soliloquy, such as introspection and soul-searching, are common in contemporary culture.
Soliloquy is not limited to those with normal speech. Deaf people speak soliloquies in sign language. All cultures and languages have soliloquy, although an alternate word may be used. Other communicative and expressive methods employ soliloquy. Music, art, dance are a few examples. Prayers and meditations often can be expressed in soliloquy. Soliloquy can take the form of self-talk to manage negative emotions, to conquer an addiction, to face stressful situations or to learn new tasks.
Kay CastanedaBibliography
Adler, Ben. “Streams of Consciousness.” Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review, 1 May, 2013. Web. 13 August 2014.
Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995. Print.
Conklin, Abari, Suzanne, et al. Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: Norton, 2012. Print.
Hasegawa, Yoko. “Soliloquy in Japanese and English.” Studies in Language 35.1: 1-40. (2001). Print.
Kenny, Anthony. A New History of Western Philosophy. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.
Larker, Peter. Wordsworth and Coleridge: Promising Losses. Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print. Wordsworth Library Collection.
Scherr, Michael B. “Soliloquy or Psychosis : A Cultural Look at Schizophrenia” Oikos.org, n.d. Web. 12 Aug. 2014.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2007. Print. Wordsworth Library Collection.
Stock, Brian. Augustine’s Inner Dialogue: The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Print.
Zimmerman, Katherine and Peter Brugger. “Signed soliloquy: Visible private speech.” Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 18.2: 261-270. (2010). - Book Launch, Feel-good summer read, fiction, New Books, Reading, Romance novels, Romantic Relationships
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