Heidi Reads...: Book Tour & Giveaway: The Whispering Winds of Spring by Robin E. Mason

Monday, June 4, 2018

Book Tour & Giveaway: The Whispering Winds of Spring by Robin E. Mason

Synopsis

Amidst the clamor of confusion, can she hear the whisper of her memories?

The southern town of Saisons lies at the crossroads between North and South, progressive and genteel antebellum life. Between East and West, between history and heritage, and new frontiers. Downton Abbey meets Gone With the Wind.

It’s 1912, in a world where slavery is dying and women’s rights are rising, and four young women who once shared a bond—and experienced a tragedy—question their own truths.

Simone Dubois’ life was unraveling. All she had known and held dear was gone from her. At ten, all she wanted was to escape beneath the black waters of the Edisto River. She couldn’t know her whole life would be stolen from her.

When she returns to Saisons sixteen years later, she has no memory of ever having been there. Not even that it was her birthplace. Enlisting the help of her childhood friend, Mercedes—whose name stayed with her, if in shadowy dreams only—Simone encounters misty memories, and stirs up more mystery than she started with.

About the Author

I’ve always had voices—er, stories in my head. I once said I should write them all down so someone could write them someday. I had no idea at the time that someone was me!

I have been writing since 1995, and began working in earnest on my debut novel, Tessa in 2013. Meanwhile, I cranked out a few dozen poems, made countless notes for story ideas, and earned my BFA in Interior Design. I lived with depression for many years, and the inherent feelings of worthlessness and invisibility; I didn’t want to be who I was and struggled with my own identity for many years. My characters face many of these same demons.

I write stories of identity conflict. My characters encounter situations that force the question, “Who am I really?” For all who have ever wondered who you are or why you’re here, my stories will touch you in a very real—maybe too real—and a very deep way. I know, I write from experience.

Excerpt

I had heard, of course, rumors and scuttlebutt of Monsieur Fontaine as I scuttled about town. And as I knew him to be significant somehow to Lissette’s manipulations, I paid special attention whenever I heard his name mentioned.
He gambles, and evidently not very well; he loses more than he wins.
He has lost nearly everything he owned, and has suffered beatings and worse when he had nothing to offer as payment. How he came away with his life—on more than one occasion apparently—was a mystery and a miracle.
But the curiouser bits I heard were of days when he’d not been such the tyrant. When he had been an upstanding person in the community.
The vineyards had thrived then, producing a fine and abundant crop, and LeNuit wine, a wine I had had the pleasure of tasting on many occasions.
I heard the rumors of a ghost in the house, Bastille, and howling in the night. A woman traipsing about in her nightclothes, a woman who drove the horses in the ditch and burned the vineyards.
And I heard of a fire in the house, also at the hand of the woman.
But I never heard the name of the woman—and wondered had it been Lissette.
Was Fontaine the A.F. of her letters? Was he her brother? And what had happened to turn him from a happy man to the monster I now heard tell of?
More importantly, had it been from some deed at Lissette’s hand?

10 Behind the Scenes Facts About the Book

Because of the aforementioned time crunch, and said time running short, I all but suspended my blog for the month of April. (paid off, too!)
I mostly “meet” my characters much as my readers do. When I get to the point in the story that they make their entrance, I see the visual image of them, and usually know their name (unless it’s a minor character, in which I’ll find a name that suits.) I write / include their quirks and characteristics pretty much as I learn them.
There were two topics in this series that I tried (unsuccessfully) to talk with a live person for more info—midwifery and the Catawba / Chicora Indian Nation. Not sure why I couldn’t get a response on either, but Google sufficed and/or I wrote the bare minimum.
Tag to #4, and part of why it wasn’t so critical to have exact information on the Indian heritage—the small village in this series, Quexo, it a band of people who separated from their ancestors for a couple of reasons: a) they were acting as guardians to a white man and his family, and when they fled, so, too did the Indians; and b) they further split when missionaries converted some of the tribe to Christian faith.
The location is a mash-up of geography and topography. I’m not really sure there is so much coastal marshland as far inland as I placed my town. But it’s fictional AND I never specified exactly where it’s located… That’s okay, right???
ALL | THE | NOTES!!! Because the series tells one overarching story and because Whispering Winds is the final story, I had to answer or address all the lingering bits from the first three! Which meant reading (skimming) through all of them to find the loose ends I needed to tie up. Which meant ALL | THE | NOTES!!! There were pages and pages of notes, which I culled through, separating out those on like topics i.e. Lissette, the Colonel, previous conversations, etc. As I pared the list down, I rewrote it til it was down to a single page.
Early in the series, it was revealed that Simone was a) kidnapped; and b) that she had suffered amnesia. It wasn’t until February that I knew what caused the amnesia!
I didn’t know who the villain was for the series until 20 April!!! I mean, seriously!! I was within the last 10K of the end when I made this discovery!!!
When Simone was kidnapped, her captor didn’t call her by her true name—got a little dicey there keeping track of that a few times.
Whispering Winds has three different time lines that show up—when she was kidnapped, current story year, and before she was kidnapped!