Come Back and Update
 |
| Logan, Cole (my baby), Conner, Jacob, Stephen, Zach My son and his buddies, Class Day 2014 |
Graduation season is keeping me busy, so forgive my lack of blog attentiveness.
Tonight I was on Facebook and couldn't even think of clever comments, much less whole coherent posts. Fortunately for everyone, the fabulous Melissa Maygrove is here!
Melissa has a new book, Come Back, that is making Melissa one happy gal with its awesome sales and its hitting the #1 Western Historical Romance spot on Amazon!
Awesome, right? Now let's let Melissa tell us one of the magical ingredients in this awesome story....
Come
Back: Themes & Symbolism
Several
themes emerged in Come
Back
as the story developed.
One
thing the story highlights is: sometimes
things are not as they seem.
Another
closely related theme is: we
should be careful not to make life-changing decisions based on wrong
information.
We
see evidence of this with many characters, but especially with
Rebecca and Seth. Becca assumes things about her abandonment, based
on the evidence she has; but, as she discovers later, her
perception’s not accurate.
Same
with Seth. He assumes things without proof, and it affects his
feelings about himself as well as his choices.
A
third truth that comes through is: it's
the person you spend time with whom you tend to fall in love with.
A
myriad of things play a role in the complicated process of human
sexual attraction, and many of those things rely on physical
proximity—things such as neurotransmitters,
hormones and pheromones, and just plain ol’ senses (e.g.
tactile, olfactory and visual stimuli). You can’t get the full
effect of that by mail or over the phone. It’s why so many
long-distance relationships fail.
In
the past, betrothal (similar to our modern-day engagement) was a
serious and binding thing. Even so, Becca fell deeply in love with
the man who rescued her, not the one she’d promised herself to.
Much of that had to do with proximity and shared experiences.
On
symbolism...
Like
many writers, I often use weather and other setting components to
foreshadow events and set the mood for scenes.
One
symbol I used was Becca's hair. Wearing a braid at such an advanced
age showed her to be a late bloomer. The change of the style into a
bun symbolized her transition to marriage and adulthood. With that,
she also lost her comfort object—the tail of her braid she often
worried with her fingers when she was anxious.
Another
was the weather combined with a wood-burning stove... and a few
little prairie creatures (spoiler :P).
Becca
and Seth find a brand new cookstove sitting by the side of the trail.
They enjoy the modern convenience while they camp, but the next
morning, a winter storm moves in as they leave. I purposely show
Becca looking back, longingly, at the stove and then turning and
facing ‘what was ahead.’ That moment marks a turning point in the
plot—the shift from her false sense of security to harsher travel
conditions and the heartbreak she’ll deal with when she finds her
parents and her betrothed.
Book & author information
 |
| Buy it Here! |
Author: Melissa Maygrove
Genre: Western Historical Romance
Category: Adult / New Adult
Available May 12, 2014 from Truelove Press
Cover design by Carrie Butler,
Forward Authority Design Services
