Meet the Characters – An Interview with Logan Bodine from “Claree’s Plan” by Sunny Marie Baker

Hello blog-readers. I’m thrilled to be a guest blogger today on Bonnie Phelps Blog.

I’m author, Sunny Marie Baker and I’ve just released Book Two in the Texas Strong Series, Claree’s Plan.

Claree May Whitney needs a husband and she needs one right now!

My interviewer thought maybe you’d like to get to know a little more about the hero in this book, Logan Bodine. So, she’s put a few questions to Logan and here’s how he answered.

Logan, you’re one of the main characters in Claree’s Plan, Book Two in the Texas Strong Series. How do you feel about that?

Well, ma’am, I was a bit surprised the author would choose me for that role. I’m not a rough and tough old west cowboy, just a simple farmer trying to make enough to keep going from year to year.

What type of farming do you do, Logan?

Corn. I got a sweet deal workin’ with a man out of Houston. He makes a fine corn mash whiskey and sells it to all the fancy hotels around.

What kind of deal are you talking about?

Well, see I don’t have the wagons to tote the harvested corn to Houston, so Luther he brings his teams to me. When the harvest is ready he shows up and we load the corn on his wagons and he transports it back to Houston. I take a bit less money this way, but it works out better for me in the long run.

Sounds like you have everything to your advantage?

It’s best for me and I don’t have to leave Lottie home alone.

Lottie?

That’s my ten year old daughter.

So you’re married?

No, ma’am, well, I mean I wasn’t until Claree showed up.

All right, Logan you’re going to have to explain that comment.

Reckon so. It was a day people write about in them dime novels, ma’am. But it wasn’t only a damsel in distress, which she was for sure, but I was in a bit of distress myself.

Care to elaborate?

(Logan laughs). I’d got into a ruckus over at the Blue Boot Saloon. Me and one of the boys trashed the place pretty good. Malcolm, he’s the sheriff, arrested me on account I’d started the whole thing. And damn, told me if I couldn’t pay for the damage, then I’d be his guest for the next two weeks.

What does this have to do with Claree? I’m not following you.

Well, ma’am, my fine was seven dollars. That was a big chunk of coin, and I didn’t have one penny of it. And I damn-well couldn’t be away from my farm for two weeks. And all the time the charges, over at the Sweet Dreams boarding house, was mounting up for the Montgomery sisters lookin’ after my girl.

Go on, Logan.

I’d been behind bars for two days already and frettin’ ever’ minute about the corn in my fields gettin’ eat up by bugs. Then out of the blue, in walks this lady, covered in dust and lookin’ a bit worn. She’d come in on the stage, she said.

Claree?

Yes, ma’am. She was askin’ the sheriff if there was any eligible men in town, she was needed a husband real quick.

She wanted to marry just any man?

Seems she’d been bartered by her father to marry up with a man Claree deemed completely unsuitable for marriage. She figured if she wed someone else, someone of her own choosing it would make null and void the marriage contract her father signed on her behalf.

That sounds crazy, Logan. Don’t you agree?

It was crazy, all right, but she was wanted a husband and I was spittin’ to get out of jail.

Don’t tell me, you married Claree right then and there?

We agreed she’d pay my fine to the sheriff and the boarding fee for Lottie, and I’d become the husband she was seeking. There was a catch though.

A catch?

It was to be a marriage in name only. An exchange of service in reality. She’d tend to the house chores and give Lottie the woman’s influence she was in desperate need of, and I’d provide her a place to live and the husband to debunk her daddy’s poker deal with this feller, Angus MacGregor.

A marriage in name only? How’d that work out, Logan?

Well, ma’am, at first it worked out fine. We each found our niche with each other and everything ran pretty smooth, except for Lottie’s tricks.

Lottie’s tricks?

Lottie weren’t none too pleased about a new woman in the house. See, she’d been in charge of that since she was five years old . . . when she was left with no mother. Lottie didn’t cotton to some other female comin’ in and takin’ over.

Is that what Claree did?

Oh, not even close. She did her best to make Lottie feel needed and important. In truth Claree depended on Lottie to teach her all there was about livin’ and workin’ on a farm.

Did she win Lottie over?

Not by a long short. Lottie played the worst trick ever on a day Claree when down to the falls to bathe. That was when things began to change for all of us. Yep, that was a monumental day. That one and the day Angus MacGregor showed up mad as a hornet and out for revenge.

Login, please tell us what happened.

Nope, don’t reckon I can share that part of the story with you, ma’am. That’s gotta be left for your readers to find out for themselves when they turn the pages of Claree’s Plan. (Logan grins and winks.)

Well, there you have it, blog-readers; Logan has given us some insights to his and Claree’s story, but left a lot to the imagination. The only way to find out all the twist and turns is to read Book Two in the Texas Strong Series, Claree’s Plan. Oh, and one footnote. Logan has a secret. A secret he must share with Claree knowing it could forever destroy any bond between them.

“Claree’s Plan” is available through:

AMAZON

**Book One in the Texas Strong Series, Cora’s Promise.

Cora keeps her promise to a dying friend and delivers Berta’s most cherish possession to a man she’s never met in Rabbit Glen, Texas. Now what? Cora has no thought. She has no plan. She has nowhere to be.