Books, Books and More Books

Two Volumes on a Woman of Independent Means Published in 2024 and 2025

In August 2024, Flights of Fancy launched. With proofing and formatting finished, I am publishing its sequel Gossamer Wings in 2025, completing two volumes about a woman of independent means.

Both books take place in New York and Europe. The main character is pretty famous in Book I and pretty wealthy in the sequel. Like The Monks of Malibu, the story idea came to me on a long flight, in this case, when returning to the United States from France.

Gossamer Wings takes up from Flights of Fancy in this Sage Anthony sequel as she frets out the Covid-19 pandemic, her fear mounting with the death toll. She hunkers down at her estate with her secretive Irish mother, Una Regan, a gossiping staff and champion beagle named Banjo. He is to be the subject of kiddy books the restless Sage wants to pen, though she doesn’t like kids and knows nothing about children’s literature. This will be a mistake.
In the thick of Covid-19, she hires a publishing assistant to handle book production details. Next, Sage endures the Zoom editorial-tongue lashings of a children’s book specialist. Like many housebound Manhattan residents during the pandemic, the editor flings open her window each night at 7 p.m. and joins her neighbors in clanging pots together to cheer nurses, doctors and essential service workers.
The brooding Sage seems stuck in her own childhood. She yearns to know her biological father and gathers the courage (and saliva specimen) to find him via DNA. Her testy relationship with her mother boils over, and the revelation of a family secret sends Sage into a tailspin. Solitary walks and horseback rides on her estate constitute Sage’s waking life. The possibility of an affair amuses.

For Sage, it is time to trust no one while the estate’s working stiffs –– some inhabiting the world of Flights of Fancy––face their own battles:

• Afghanistan combat veteran and kennel manager Ted Squire seems frozen in place by more than a pandemic lockdown. Sage is aloof to him, but Ted’s girlfriend, dog handler Beryl Koveey, exposes what ties him to Sage, and it is not money.
• Russian army deserter Ivan Voronin runs Sage’s estate until he is upstaged by a fellow Russian.
• Nicholai Dostoyevsky, a builder and former banker, knows how to read the dubious account books that Ivan keeps.
• Middle-aged farm stand owner Emma Muller ties her fortune to Ivan and lives with him in a cottages on the grounds but befriends the estate chef.
• Trevor Mandel is a buff, open-hearted Adonis. He envisions keeping Sage healthy, just as she indulges every fancy.
• Petite Croatian Petra Horvak, a Lonely Planet wanderer, lucks onto the estate with a hand from Ivan and another hand from Nicholai, although she detests Russians.

 Staff changes make for strange bedfellows, all waiting on life to change. Even a homeless man who wanders onto estate property will leave transformed. Driven by class biases and prejudice, as adrift in the world as refugees stumbling onto to foreign shores, they all dream of the freedom money buys. When Sage gets the all-clear to escape New York, she must choose between drowning in her family’s drama or living a different life.
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