PLEASE WELCOME GUEST AUTHOR CATHY HESTER SECKMAN and her new release, RIGHTSIDE/WRONGSIDE!

I wrote my first novel when I was 10. It had at least a dozen pages, and featured a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion.

It’s been a very long time since then, and my writing journey has diverged in multiple directions along the way.

• 1971: a teacher told me I had writing talent
• 1984: a newspaper editor said I was a “very good writer”
• 1984-present: I worked for three different newspapers; won some newswriting awards; wrote more than 150 magazine articles; became a professional indexer with more than 200 to my credit (so far); had a middle-grade novel released; indie-published three novels and an anthology with friends; and had two non-fiction books published.
• 2023: “Rightside/Wrongside,” my dystopian matriarchal fantasy, debuts today from The Wild Rose Press!

“Rightside/Wrongside” developed from a thought about the absurdity of one sex dominating the other. What would happen if the Middle Ages dynamic between the sexes was reversed? What if women had a turn at being in control?

I loved the idea, but the actual writing took more than a dozen years. After several starts and stops, it was finally finished in 2017. Being tired of the indie-publishing slog, I decided to look for an agent. Sixty-seven rejections later, the R/W files got buried and forgotten.

Fast-forward to 2022. I signed up for a pitch appointment at a local writers’ conference, and lightning struck. I signed a contract with Wild Rose, and here we are!

In Rightside, women are in charge of everything. Men live behind a 200-mile Fence in Wrongside, and can only see women when the women feel like having sex. Sounds great so far, doesn’t it?

But there are difficulties (of course). Women keep their daughters, and men never know of them. Sons are sent across the Fence to their fathers, and their mothers never know if they live or die.

Women live in a rigid, stifling society plagued with political strife, smuggling, and sabotage. Men live in a lackluster kind of way, raising their boys and not caring much about the kind of society they live in.

Things start to come to a head. In Rightside, Jessie takes an illegal test to discover the sex of her baby. It’s a boy, and she vows she won’t send him to Wrongside alone. Her friend Tenosha has already sent a son across the Fence, then vows she can’t live without him.

In Wrongside, childless Bud sees a smuggled piece of Rightside art depicting a mother and daughter. For the first time, he vows to find out if he ever fathered a daughter. Doc Medina pines over a woman he met once for sex, and vows to find her somehow.

Things fall apart, trouble escalates, civil war erupts. When the last shot is fired and the last combatant falls, both sides realize their way of life is untenable and they need to begin talking to each other. My next book, “Oceanside,” will continue their story.

EXCERPT

The old man dozed over his paperback. Even in a busy week his job was boring as hell. What made it worthwhile, besides the status and the pay bag, was the free bed. Old Willie lived right in the Transfer Cabin, backed up against the Border Fence in Cody, and that suited him fine. He took his meals at a bar down the street – had a few good friends there – and spent most of his free time nodding over a book or stoking his small stove.

It was a nice quiet life, a safe life. Nobody bothered the man in the Transfer Cabin. Yeah, it suited him fine.

The bell rang, startling him out of his doze. It wasn’t a simple ring, for boxed goods or vehicles through the big Door, but the four-note flourish they used for a baby. It sounded again, signaling two to transfer. “It never rains but it pours,” he mumbled, and limped over to answer the bell.

When the ready light flashed on, Old Willie pulled out the heavy metal Drawer set into the back wall of the cabin. He smiled down at the two sleeping babies.

“Welcome to Wrongside,” he said softly.

The babies didn’t even wake up as Willie started his paperwork. That was good – it would give him time to heat some bottles after he finished.

He puzzled over the babies’ names, rolling possibilities slowly across his tongue. “Trader, Travis, Trevor? Brandon, Bert, Brock, Buford?”

Willie liked naming babies. It was his favorite part of the job. The last few transfer agents had been lackadaisical about it – most folks around here were named Bob or Mike or Tom – but Old Willie tried to be creative. He had an antique pre-Settlement book on baby names, and it was brittle and dog-eared with age and use.

“Henry, Hollis, Hoss, Hud?”

The dark-haired baby let out a wail.

“Okay, Hud, you little asshole, couldn’t wait till I was finished, could you?” Willie scolded. He picked up the crying infant and slung him over one shoulder, cradling the head carefully.

“You’ll just damn well have to ride over here with me till I get you a bottle warmed up,” he said, heading for the kitchen.

The baby, lulled by the warmth of Old Willie’s body and the rumble of his voice, drifted back to sleep.

Willie peeked down at the closed eyes. “Little asshole,” he commented absently.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

www.cathyseckman.com

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