Courting Trouble (39 page)

And before I get emails from all those snake lovers out there who know that snakes can go for quite some time without eating—please forgive my rush to release Colonel. I just couldn’t bear to leave him at Katherine Crook’s mercy, and it would have been too cumbersome to the story for Essie to take him home with her.

I look forward to spending another year with Essie in Corsicana as I write
Deep in the Heart of Trouble
, the sequel to
Courting Trouble
.

It will take place four years later (1898) and in that time, Corsicana’s population exploded—becoming the first oil boomtown in Texas, complete with derricks in almost everyone’s backyard.