The Captain’s Rose, Volume V in The Buchanan Saga

The Captain’s Rose, Volume V in The Buchanan Saga


First a note on this saga: I self-published it because of complicated issues I shall not endeavor to explain. Doing so was a great learning experience and an utter disaster. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life, and I made no profit, but rather went into a great deal of debt which I’m still trying to conquer. Spiritually, I have learned that this was a Zion’s Camp experience for me. It didn’t accomplish what I had hoped for, but apparently I learned what God wanted to teach me.


Anyway, some years later a friend who is also a writer called me and suggested I get these four volumes available as e-books on Amazon. (Technology had taken publishing into places I’d not imagined when I’d originally published the books.) This would solve the problem of some of them being out of print, and all of them being impossible to distribute. At least readers could have access to the story, and perhaps it would generate some much-needed income, since this came to pass when my writing hiatus had taken me off guard. I protested in response to her offer, not emotionally or physically capable of taking on all that I would need to learn. I’m a writer, but I’m lousy with business anything and everything. However, my friend was very good at both. She’d been doing the same with some of her own books, had figured it out, and she was offering to do this for me out of the goodness of her heart. Voila! I sent her the cover art and final Word documents for the books, and she got them on Amazon. A slow trickle of income has continued from these books ever since, and I am SOOO grateful! It has helped keep the bills paid every month. Then I realized there was still another volume of this series not yet published because my resources had dried up. So we decided to get it on Amazon as well. We didn’t have the ability to get it into print form at that time, but it could be released as an e-book, my readers would have access to it, and I could hopefully generate some more income. My daughter did a painting for the cover, while I went through the aging manuscript and polished it up.


I’ve received more than a few complaints about this not being in print form. I understand readers want to have the actual book, and it’s a compliment to me that they care enough about my stories to want that. But I doubt that anyone who hasn’t been in the business has any idea what it takes to put a book in print. The good news is that print on demand is becoming easier due to ever-improving advances in technology, and one of these days I have plans to re-release the whole series the same way we’ve done with The Horstberg Saga (written under the pen name Elizabeth D. Michaels). This same friend eventually created an actual publishing company and has helped me get Horstberg in print and in several versions of electronic format.


As for the story of The Captain’s Rose, it’s jumping ahead to the next generation following the four previous books that focus on Ritcherd and Garrett and the women they love. This is a dual love story about two cousins who both have broken hearts, both sail the world to try and cope, and both eventually find love and fulfillment—but not without a lot of life-threatening adventure, drama, poignancy, and dilemma. All the stuff of a good novel. There are certain facets of this book that make it one of my favorites.


When I wrote the first draft of this book, I left it unfinished because life happened, as it often does. But in my mind I believed I had written notes to tell me how it would end. When I went back years later to finish it, there were no notes anywhere, and I had no idea how I’d intended to
conclude the story. It was my own story and I had no idea what was supposed to happen. Eventually I figured it out and it turned out to have a great ending, so I’m grateful once again for the inspiration that guides me. But writing about this adventure had some adventure of my own. It usually does.