Wayne's Faithful Sweetheart: or, The Artist’s Beautiful Model
About this ebook
Pioneering undercover journalist Nellie Bly is rightly famous for exposing society's ills. From brutal insane asylums to corrupt politicians, she exposed all manner of frauds and charlatans. She was also a skilled interviewer and reporter. What no one has known was that she was also a novelist. This is because, of the twelve novels Bly wrote between 1889 and 1895, eleven have been lost. Until now.
Newly discovered by author David Blixt (What Girls Are Good For, The Master Of Verona), Nellie Bly's lost works of fiction are now available for the first time! Complete with the original artwork! These are The Lost Novels of Nellie Bly!
Dorette Lover is an artist's model! Having secured employment at last, the beautiful Dorette is in high spirits now that she can support herself and her poor old, blind mother. But no sooner has she she accepted the modeling job for the famous painter Herman Van Dyke than she witnesses a terrible crime—a dead body, with a bloodied man standing over the corpse. Yet she feels certain the man is innocent of murder. As the only witness against him, she promises that she will never testify. In desperation he answers that she will have no choice, unless she becomes—his wife!
So Dorette Lover weds Wayne Webb, scion to an old family and fabulous wealth. Her mother vanished, Dorette has no choice but to join high society, enduring the snubs of the elite. But when Wayne is cleared of the murder charge, Dorette’s misery is compounded. It was not she who saved Wayne, but the beautiful Cora Woodworth, Wayne’s beloved, and now Dorette’s rival for his love.
Unbeknownst to them all, a pair of villains vie for control of Cora’s wealth and Dorette’s secret inheritance. The two women form an unlikely bond, as they both struggle to remain . . .Wayne's Faithful Sweetheart!
Bonus feature: This volume includes Bly's New York World articles that inspired her novels!
About the author
Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth “Pink” Cochran. Her father, a man of considerable wealth, served for many years as judge of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. He lived on a large estate called Cochran’s Mills, which took its name from him.
Being in reduced circumstances after her father’s death, her mother remarried, only to divorce Jack Ford a few years later. The family then moved to Pittsburg, where a twenty-year-old Pink read a column in the Pittsburg Dispatch entitled “What Girls Are Good For.” Enraged at the sexist and classist tone, she wrote a furious letter to the editor. Impressed, the editor engaged her to do special work for the newspaper as a reporter, writing under the name “Nellie Bly.” Her first series of stories, “Our Workshop Girls,” brought life and sympathy to working women in Pittsburgh.
A year later she went as a correspondent to Mexico, where she remained six months, sending back weekly articles. After her return she longed for broader fields, and so moved to New York. The story of her attempt to make a place for herself, or to find an opening, was a long one of disappointment, until at last she gained the attention of the New York World.
Her first achievement for them was the exposure of the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum, in which she spent ten days, and two days in the Bellevue Insane Asylum. The story created a great sensation, making “Nellie Bly” a household name.
After three years of doing work as a “stunt girl” at the World, Bly conceived the idea of making a trip around the world in less time than had been done by Phileas Fogg, the fictitious hero of Jules Verne’s famous novel. In fact, she made it in 72 days. On her return in January 1890 she was greeted by ovations all the way from San Francisco to New York.
She then paused her reporting career to write novels, but returned to the World three years later. In 1895 she married millionaire industrialist Robert Seaman, and a couple years later retired from journalism to take an interest in his factories.
She returned to journalism almost twenty years later, reporting on World War I from behind the Austrian lines. Upon returning to New York, she spent the last years of her life doing both reporting and charity work, finding homes for orphans. She died of pneumonia in 1922.
Robert Kauzlaric is a Chicago-based playwright, actor and director. He has written more than a dozen theatrical adaptations which have been performed in nearly forty states across the U.S., as well as in Australia, Canada, England, and Ireland.
The New York Times called his adaptation of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! “One of the best children’s shows of the year.” His version of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau received five of Chicago’s Non-Equity Jeff Awards, including New Adaptation and Best Production; his adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere received the Non-Equity Jeff Award for New Adaptation; and his version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was nominated for New Adaptation. He was commissioned by the Illinois Shakespeare Festival to produce a new adaptation of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, four of his plays have been published by Playscripts, Inc, and he has been published in Dramatics Magazine.
Robert is a proud Ensemble Member of Lifeline Theatre and Irish Theatre of Chicago, and Artistic Associate of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival.
David Blixt is an author and actor living in Chicago. An Artistic Associate of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, where he serves as the resident Fight Director, he is also co-founder of A Crew Of Patches Theatre Company, a Shakespearean repertory based in Chicago. He has acted and done fight work for the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Steppenwolf, the Shakespeare Theatre of Washington DC, and First Folio Shakespeare, among many others.
As a writer, his Star-Cross’d series of novels place the characters of Shakespeare’s Italian plays in their historical setting, drawing in figures such as Dante, Giotto, and Petrarch to create an epic of warfare, intrigue, and romance. In Her Majesty’s Will, Shakespeare himself becomes a character as Blixt explores Shakespeare’s “Lost Years,” teaming the young Will with the dark and devious Kit Marlowe to hilarious effect. In the Colossus series, Blixt brings first century Rome and Judea to life as he relates the fall of Jerusalem, the building of the Colosseum, and the coming of Christianity to Rome. And in his bestselling Nellie Bly series, he explores the amazing life and adventures of America’s premier undercover reporter.
David continues to write, act, and travel. He has ridden camels around the pyramids at Giza, been thrown out of the Vatican Museum and been blessed by John-Paul II, scaled the Roman ramp at Masada, crashed a hot-air balloon, leapt from cliffs on small Greek islands, dined with Counts and criminals, climbed to the top of Mount Sinai, and sat in the Prince’s chair in Verona’s palace. But David is happiest at his desk, weaving tales of brilliant people in dire and dramatic straits. Living with his wife and two children, David describes himself as “actor, author, father, husband - in reverse order.”
