Macgregor's Mail Order Bride

Wild Women Authors is pleased to welcome back Susan Payne and Macgregor's Bride, Book 2 in her Sweetwater series. With her is Mac Macgregor who will go first.

Where are you from? I was born on my parent’s homestead about an hour outside Sweetwater, Kansas. It wasn’t even a town back then. Just a feed and seed lumber mill and general store. Nothing changed until the train was deciding on towns to make their stops in. Now things are booming.

Tell us a bit about Macgregor’s Mail Order Bride. Not much to tell besides what the name tells you. I was well over thirty and my brothers thought I needed a woman’s influence to soften me. Said I was too set in my ways. Too hard and I liked the idea of having young children around the place again. After all, my brothers will soon wed, I’m sure, and I could use a wife. Company for my old age so Jamie helped me find this type of newspaper where women put in ads looking for husbands. Not many single women left in Sweetwater so I had to look farther away. Mavis Miller sounded like a good choice. She was a widow who had lost a child and I needed a woman able to have children. Can’t say it was more than that although she did seem to have a head on her shoulders. I don’t hold back my words and couldn’t have married a stupid person. No, Mavis seemed capable and still had a lot of good years in her. Although Emily, her best friend who accompanied her to the ranch was very attractive and smart as well. Things worked out as they were meant to. I don’t have any complaints. I’m sure no one does.

What did you think the first time you saw Emily Johnston? Like I just said. She was attractive and very loyal to Mavis. Tried to smooth things over between Mavis and I as we learned more about one another. It isn’t that Mavis is lovely and dresses like a city wife but we had trouble, um, communicating. I needed Emily’s help to decipher what Mavis was telling me. How to win her for my wife. 

What was your second thought? That perhaps I had chosen the wrong women to be my wife but what could I do? I had written to Mavis and she seemed to want to be married again. Start another family with me and live out her days on the ranch.

Did you feel it was love at first sight? No, but Emily seemed special from the beginning. I was too set on Mavis getting to know me enough to marry me and ignored all the other signs there was more going on inside me. I don’t usually swerve from a set path once I choose one. I was doggedly following the original plan out of ignorance.

What do you like most about Emily? Her loyalty although if she had been less so it would have been so much easier on me. Maybe pushed me into knowing what I wanted sooner. Learned what Mavis wanted sooner, as well.

How would you describe her? Beautiful. Both in appearance and in her heart. She’s been so hurt and then to take the step to change her whole life to help another find happiness. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give up everything I know to travel to another state simply to help another. She is perfect.

How would Emily describe you? Not in so many pretty words I’m sure. I’m cantankerous, set in my way, bossy – I know this because Emily has accused me of them and I agree. I also agree she is the only one who can talk me out of doing anything once I set my mind to it.

What made you choose ranching as a career? I was left to raise three younger brothers and they all had big ideas of what they wanted to become. Architect, lawyer and newspaper publisher. Only Jamie loved the ranch as much as I did but I wanted him to have a choice so I sent him on to university, too. As my father taught me, you have to love the land to be a good rancher. I loved it so it wasn’t a hardship to stay on while the others went their own ways.

What is your biggest fear? That I’d lose Emily. The West isn’t the safest place and for women. No doctors to speak of and so many dangers. I don’t know how I’d go on without her. Not now that I’ve found her.

How do you relax? My wife has talked me into playing the piano again. My father taught all us boys to play but he stopped the day my mother passed. I always thought he died of a broken heart because he just wasn’t the same after. I feared that may happen to me but having Emily at my side is more than worth any pain I’d feel if she were taken from me.

Who is your favorite fictional character? I liked Captain Nemo in that new Jules Vern book. Emily and I read it together and I liked the way he ran things. Had to be pretty smart to design such a thing.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received? From my brother Jamie when he and I were at loggerheads over my fiancée. He would move out rather than live without Mavis. I know he loves the ranch as much as I do so it made me realize that I loved Emily more than the ranch, more than anything. I should have made sure she knew it.

Thanks for taking time to talk with us, Mac. Now we'd like to spend some time with Susan.

What movies or books have had an impact on your career as a writer? I’ve always read since I was young so no one author made more of an imprint than another. It merely fed my need to set words to paper to tell the stories I hadn’t heard before. Of men and women who find each other in that precise time in that precise way. My stories must end happily-ever-after even if there is tragedy along the way.

What event in your private life were you able to bring to this story and how do you feel it impacted the novel? A loss early in life can make or break a person. How that person reacts to the loss is the difference of living with or through it. I make the most of my life and want others to do so as well.

Tell us a bit about your publisher. An internet friend was being published by The Wild Rose Press so I looked them up to see what they may be interested in my list of finished books. I found that they would help self-publishers with any part of a book they wanted. I contacted RJ and she ‘walked’ me through it. I am pleased with the process and promptness.

What book[s] currently rest on your TBR pile? The Lawless Series by Rosanne Bitner. She is published by Sourcebooks and directly with Amazon.

Lastly, what's up next and when can we expect to see it on the shelves? I will be finishing publishing the other three books of the Sweetwater series and then working on the edits sent back by Literary Wanderlust for Montana Lineman. That one should be released prior to the end of 2020.

Macgregor's Mail Order Bride is available at Amazon: 

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1509230289/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_KTqcEbAF0P1DV

Where can our visitors learn more about you and your work? Please feel free to contact me at: http://authorsusanpayne.com

Susan brought along an excerpt for us:

     “Mac, I’m glad that Emily has been married because she’s going to have to be lead on this one.”

     “She hasn’t.” At Jamie’s questioning look, Mac repeated a little louder, “She hasn’t been married.” Mac said almost sadly, “It’s complicated but Emily is a virgin.”

     “So basically, you’re both going into this blind,” Jamie said just as sadly. “You may as well be a virgin for all the experience you’ve had.”

     “What makes you so much of an expert? Miss Lily’s isn’t all that fancy of a place. It’s still a lot of one hour visits to my thinking,” Mac grouched.

     “When I was in San Francisco for college, I lived with a very modern thinking woman a few years older than me. She had a wild imagination and broadened my tastes in food and drink and everything else. There wasn’t a surface in that house we didn’t make love on, there wasn’t a position that two people could get into that we didn’t try, and then the sex toys and lubricants ….”

     “Stop,” yelled Mac. “I don’t think I can take hearing about all of that let alone remember to do all of it.”

     “I’m not saying you should. You just have to do what you and Emily feel comfortable doing. I will add that since you’re both virgins....” At Mac’s look of denial, he said, “Both practically virgins, you may want to ensure that she ‘enjoy’ herself by using your mouth. It’s very enlightening, I’ve found.”

     “You mean,” pointing downward, “down there?” Mac was making sure he understood before he made a terrible blunder.

     “Exactly. Well, here goes the anatomy class and once I say this we will never speak of it again, right?”       At Mac’s nod, Jamie disclosed some very personal secrets of a woman’s body. Knowledge he had taken years to learn and techniques he practiced to perfection.

     Mac was somewhat stunned when Jamie finally asked, “Do you understand? Did I go too fast for you?”

     His eyes glassed over from too much information, Mac sat staring out the window. He felt foolish in his ignorance of what actually occurred or could occur between a man and a woman. How he understood his body more as well. Why he sought to be close to Emily, why he wanted to take her to his body and never let her go, why he felt alive whenever she was near him. Everything that Jamie had told him, Mac could see himself and Emily doing. Doing all those wonderous things to and with one another.

     Jamie stood and on the way past his big brother patted him on the shoulder saying, “It’ll be all right. The human race has continued for thousands of years so there must be some instinctive mating rituals that will come out once you’ve started.”

     For a morale booster it wasn’t very strong but Mac hoped Jamie was right.