This newsletter gives the behind-the-scenes inspiration for Sage Sweetwater's second lesbian pulp fiction novel FROM THE CONVENT TO THE RAWHIDE: THE SAGA OF SADIE CADE AND VI MONTANA.

Sage Sweetwater is using castable characters and a brilliant background to launch a screen story. A mixture of wild grass up to the horses' hocks, great movie vegetation lashing in the breeze, the windmill in the foreground, and an old Indian paint mine in the background, coloring the Southwest horizon in bold colors.

Sage Sweetwater is good at what she does and her storytelling demonstrates that her artful command of language maintains a strong readership.

In 1978, at the age of twenty, Sage met Jane Fonda. In Sage's small mountain hometown of Wetmore, Colorado, a rancher was commissioned by Hollywood types to use the rancher's expansive property and working ranch with Pikes Peak in the majestic background.

The movie being shot was "Come's a Horseman," starring Jane Fonda and James Caan.

Sage sat on the corrals and watched the filming. Even shook Jane Fonda's friendly hand.

Most actresses have a stunt double to perform scenes that the leading actress either can't or won't. Vividly, Sage remembers Jane Fonda pushing her lovely double aside and boldly stating she was "castrating her own steer." And so she did, and Sage watched the Rocky Mountain Oysters go into a pan for the fry. And so when you read this line in Sage's novel, this is the real-life inspiration. This line is "Before Mercedes leaves this plane of life, she wants to try the life of a cowgirl. It is a trip she wants to make. This very thing incites other women to want to go, especially the younger girls who look up to women who are on top, riding in a saddle with a good fit on feminism. She is a keen-looker, full of reserve and at trail's end, she wants it said that she downed a plate of prairie oysters she harvested from the lead steer in her herd ..."



The Profiles of the Characters FROM THE CONVENT TO THE RAWHIDE: THE SAGA OF SADIE CADE AND VI MONTANA.


SADIE CADE (Mercedes Cade) .......... a woman on a mission, serving time at the Pish Convent in St. George, Utah as a Mormon missionary, coming to Zion, the promised land, to reunite with the church she was raised in, to find her place in life by the time she is 40.

She is not pursuing this missionary work as an occupation, but she is truly here to learn about spiritual happiness, and in going about her daily duties, provides her with enjoyment she will take with her when she leaves the Pish Convent. The wonders of nature are all around her and she has room from the wide range of emotions that the city constricts. She is in search of honest, hard work and finding appreciation in simpler things. These grounds are to remind her of the beauty of God's creation.


VI MONTANA (Violet Mace-Reese) .......... a rebel politician from Montana who is fed up with unwashed politicians and has come to the Pish Convent to ask God for direction, perhaps her political career having played itself out.

She chooses to focus on the landscape because she has always felt a likeness toward it. Her rebel spirit is a part of nature ... the outlaw prairies, the lawless mountains, the physical dynamics of the river ... wild and opinionated as it cuts its own path, neverminding the government, the rogue trees, and even the sky being entertainment for a rebel lawmaker, its cool attitude with colorful exchanges. All of it damn powerful, like a rebel.


SISTER PISH .......... a seventy-year-old Nun who owns the Pish Convent. Her daddy's grandparents, Papa and Granny Pish came here with the first party on the Mormon trail with Brigham Young in 1847. They settled the Convent land.

She is afflicted suddenly with Alzheimer's and has a showdown with the Devil, her "Mad Scene" in "Lucifer."


PAPA MOSES .......... a Mennonite husband and father who operates a school for carriage driving. Along with his wife and son, he has brought the coach to Sadie and Vi to have the coach seat recovered in leather hide. He wants to see the coach completely restored before the good Lord takes away the power lines and the black-topped country roads.


ZEA (pronounced Zay-ah) .......... a Mennonite wife and mother of Jediah. A genteel woman so precious in the kind, thoughtful blue eyes of her son. The kind of woman he will look for those same qualities when he is ready to take a wife.


JEDIAH .......... a seventeen-year-old Mennonite young man who builds carriages with an Amish wheelright looking over his shoulder. He immerses himself in wagon building and restoration. He makes sure the wheels turn, the hand brakes can be set and released, tool boxes can be opened and closed, carriage lanterns flash off and on, and he makes sure the burlap bean sacks are filled to the double-stitched seam and sewn shut as standard equipment and not an option. Only when he's talking about the Lord's quality in his construction, he shows his enthusiasm. Jediah can find a sermon in about anything. He's about turning wheels, not pages.


ANDY SUE .......... Vi Montana's ex lesbian lover. She rides a Harley and owns a trendy women's gym and oxygen parlor. Vi has never gotten over Andy Sue. She has just moved on. All the legislation in the world cannot abolish kissing Andy Sue, but the Pish Convent can. Andy Sue eventually rises above her ego, steps out of her vainglory gym shoes and into cowgirl boots ... but you have to read the novel for all the rest.



The time frame of this novel skips back and forth. Not to confuse my readers, but the intermittance structured as an alliance between contemplation, set-point, and one's mission in life, where it will all take one in the end, integrating it into one's own life, hopefully on a spiritual journey of happiness and wholeness.

FROM THE CONVENT TO THE RAWHIDE: THE SAGA OF SADIE CADE AND VI MONTANA has been written with you women with feminist/lesbian sensibilities in mind, hopefully allowing you to find the better part of yourselves. I certainly have through writing this novel.

Thank you to all my friends and fans. Until we meet again. I love you all!


Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist

Copyright November 10, 2005 Sage Sweetwater
All Rights Reserved.