A Coffin To Lie On-Western Novella

Have a problem with your computer and find out how much you miss it when you have it in the shop getting worked on. I picked up over 600 pesky adware problems that slowed the speed down and interrupted every site I wanted to use. Finally, I said enough is enough, turned in my latest book and headed for the computer repairman. Now I’m back in business.

I’ve been turning short stories I entered in contests into novellas. Some books will be from one short stories and others will be two short stories combined. I spent a lot of time crafting the short stories to get them the word limit allowed and as well edited as I could. With all the effort I put into the short stories I felt as if I should go ahead and expand them now into books. In the title A Coffin To Lie On readers might wonder if I used the correct form of laying on a coffin. Believe me when I tell you once you start reading the book you will see that I did mean to use the word lie in the title. Miranda didn’t just use the coffin for a resting place in the covered wagon. On the advice of her mother, she used lies to keep from working hard on the farm along side her husband that loved her dearly. He believed she was in frail health.

A Coffin To Lie On does sound like a strange title. This western novella came from short stories I entered in writing contests. The foundation is one short story and two chapters were originally Lonesome Whippoorwill another short story.

Here is the synopsis for the story. Miranda Tollifson had an easy life after she married Minnesota farmer, Anselm Tollifson. Her husband put up with her imaginary ailments and even brought in a woman to do the housework for her. Her life was so good that other farmers’ wives in the area were jealous. They wouldn’t associate with Miranda unless it was unavoidable. Miranda didn’t care what they thought of her as long as her husband, Anselm, pampered her. All that changed. Right after the Civil War, Oregon land opened up for homesteading. There was a rush to go west and claim the free land before it was all gone. Anselm wanted to go, but he left it up to Miranda to decided if she was healthy enough to travel. She couldn’t disappoint this man that had been so good to her. She told him they could sell the farm and travel four long months over rough country to the Willamette Valley in Oregon in a wagon train. When Miranda said yes to the trip that made Anselm happy, but the decision was not what she wanted. There were so many reasons why she should have said no. Leaving her nice home and her elderly parents, her preference for her pampered lifestyle, fear of the unknown over thousands of miles, and the most important worry of all, she was pregnant for the first time in her twenty year marriage. Now on to the next book and with the sights of spring I’m already planning our garden and my flower beds. After five weeks in the deep freeze, it feels so good to see the sun and melting snow. Soon I’ll be walking around all the flower beds looking for emerging tulips, hyacinths and daffodils. While we sit on our front porch drinking our morning coffee in the sun, we will watch for the first returning robins.

I hope you enjoy reading A Coffin To Lie On

Fay Risner