I’m incredibly excited to include a guest post by our Romance Book Author of the Month Elaine Levine as the final part of our series of articles on her. As you know, Elaine’s latest book in her Men of Defiance series, Logan’s  Outlaw, has just been published. In her guest post, Elaine shares a fascinating story about how a mysterious stranger helped her write her book.

Elaine has also generously agreed to a have two copies of Logan’s Outlaw for a special giveaway, so please enjoy Elaine’s guest post, then scroll down to the bottom to see how you can win a copy!

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Let me tell you a story about telling a story. Who knows if this actually happened or if it’s just some undiagnosed psychosis of a creative mind.

I didn’t write Logan’s Outlaw by myself. I had a collaborator — the ghost of a Sioux warrior.

I don’t know his name. I can’t swear that he was Sioux, nor do I know which tribe within the Sioux nation he called his own. The Comanches used to make fun of Sioux warriors for being as fussy as girls about their appearance. My ghostly friend certainly had taken great pains with his hair, arranging it in complex whirls and spikes. It felt as if he were Sioux.

You may wonder how it was that I came to have a ghost collaborator. Well, I asked for him. Or more specifically, I asked for a spirit who could show me the truth of the Plains people at the peak of the Indian Wars, a truth that was poorly documented in contemporary sources of 1860-1880.

You see, when I started to work on Logan’s story, I had no idea what kind of man he became. We met him as a young man in his early twenties in Rachel and the Hired Gun, the first story in my Men of Defiance series. He’s Sager’s stepbrother. He left to go find his fortune at the end of that story. In order for me to figure out what became of him, I had to understand what was happening — in the world and in America — when he would have been thirty-ish. I wasn’t sure he would have stayed in the West. I thought he might have become a great industrialist or an explorer. Maybe he became an artist or an author. Without a doubt, the second half of the 19th century was an exciting time to be alive… for privileged, young, white men.

What I discovered was that he cashed out his inheritance to establish a string of trading forts on the Plains — right at the peak of Indian Wars. Talk about guts. Or stupidity, I’m not sure which. I didn’t know much about that time period, and so I began a journey of discovery. There is a substantial body of work documenting the 19th Century Indian Wars from the perspective of white captives, pioneers, soldiers who protected settlers, sportsmen who hunted hundreds of thousands of buffaloes for their hides. But there’s very little written from a true Native American perspective (and not a white person’s interpretation of those events on behalf of Indians).

So there I was at an impasse. The information had to exist — I knew it did — but I wasn’t asking the right questions. I couldn’t understand how such brave and honorable people, as I believed the Sioux tribes to be, could attack households, killing and maiming men, women and children. How could they abduct and abuse women and children so terribly as was recorded in the history I was reading?

I began to suspect that I was looking back at the events that transpired during the Indian Wars though the filters of my upbringing. The Old West wasn’t a Disney West. It wasn’t an idyllic situation–the land of milk and honey. It was war. The Sioux and all the Plains tribes were losing everything. How far would you go to save your country? What would you do if you were out-manned, out-gunned, and out-supplied? Would you resort to terror?

I had almost quit writing Logan’s story. I can’t build a story around half-truths, and I didn’t like the truth that I was seeing. At this point in my desperation, I begged for guidance. So in comes my ghostly Sioux warrior, who whispered to me stories of what he’d seen, giving me clues as to what I should research. He explained to me what the geometric shapes and patterns the native artists used meant. He told me of sitting with other men in a tipi on a cold, still winter’s night, smoking and listening to the women in the next tipi over tell stories while they worked their intricate pieces of art. He sang songs that painted pictures of a life so exquisitely beautiful and so quickly lost that you could hear his soul weep.

I learned so much through his visit that I can honestly say he changed my life. Was he real? I don’t know. My husband, my sister, my dog and I all saw him. And he gave me the nuances that Logan’s Outlaw needed so that it could become a rich story. Logan is truly a man who stands in two worlds–one white, one Indian. He is not blessed with the peace of living in a black and white world, but cursed to see things in infinite shades of gray.

I loved writing Logan and Sarah’s story. I hope it honors my Sioux visitor. And I hope that you enjoy it as well!!

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Giveaway!

Here’s a chance to win a copy of Logan’s Outlaw! Elaine has very kindly agreed to give away two copies of her book. To enter, simply comment on this guest post and let us know what you though about Elaine’s encounter with her mysterious Sioux collaborator, and two lucky commenters will be selected to receive their personal copies of Logan and Sarrah’s story. The contest ends Tuesday, April 3, at midnight (EST). The two winners will be randomly chosen the next day using the Random Integer Generator software program, and the winners announced soon after. Open to US residents only please. Good luck!