It always amazes me when I’m listening to something or see something, and it triggers a book idea.
I just finished book 2 in the Cuddle Farm Mysteries, Monologued to Death. It’s with my beta readers, and I’m gathering the information and doing the research for the next Spotted Pony Casino Mystery book. I’m on the fence with the title. I decided to make it a holiday-time-frame book because it will release in November. If it wasn’t a holiday book, then I’d need to wait until January to release it, or it would get lost in the holiday reads.
So, I’ve been tossing around titles with gambling terms and holiday words. Because the Spotted Pony Casino books all have gambling terms in the titles. Right now, the frontrunner is Santa’s Beard– beard being a term for someone placing a bet for someone else. The premise is I have a person who is high up in the tribe and is known as a “Santa” type of person having someone else buying up allotments on the reservation for him.
Another author I was talking to thought the title sounded like something readers couldn’t figure out. But I’m betting, pun intended, that most readers will get it by the end of the book, and I will make sure the victim is referred to by the title at the end of the book when it is all solved.
The premise for the story came about from an online class I’m taking from a Nez Perce Professor who is teaching us the history of the Nez Perce. It’s a non-credit class I sit in on every Thursday night. It started 6 weeks ago, and we have about 2 more weeks to go.
I’ve learned things I didn’t know, and I’ve had things I’ve read reinforced. I found the information about the allotments given to tribal members on the Lapwai reservation informative. Learning how only 18% of the reservation is actually owned by tribal members because when the Whites wanted more land in the reservation, they bought allotments from tribal members for far less than they were worth. Or the Indian Agents sold to the White people they liked. When the Nez Perce couldn’t get the hang of farming, they leased the land to their White neighbors who eventually purchased it. And through the generations, it isn’t always handed down to the tribal members in the family.
Learning all of this, I started researching the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, where my Spotted Pony Casino books are set. They also had allotments assigned to families through the Slater Act of 1885. They have some similar situations that have made the tribe and tribal members land holdings at 52% of the reservation land. They are better off than the Nez Perce, but there is always ongoing animosity and people who are non-tribal who want the land.
There have been a couple of other points and reactions of the person teaching the class that will end up in either more of the Spotted Pony Casino books or the Gabriel Hawke novels. Because while I enjoy writing murder mysteries, it is the characters and how they live and what they think that I am the most interested in enlightening the reader about. As the professor said at the last class, “I am 60 years old, have multiple BAs and my PHD, I still respond fearfully to law enforcement, even though I have never been in trouble with the law, but they will pull me over because they see I’m Indigenous.”
This class has been helping me learn more about how my Native American characters should feel. It is also giving me more inspiration for stories that I can use to enlighten readers about the culture.
That is why I write indigenous characters and try to shed light on the MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women). For me it is a passion to show the culture and the people who were here before anyone else and treated so poorly.
Ladies of Mystery 
Heather, that sounds like a great idea! There can never be too many books about this. I like that I can enlighten readers. There are two Indigenous authors who have written books that I have tried to read. By tried, I mean I start getting scared when they get too intense, and I have to stop reading. That fear I felt while reading their books is what I try to put into my stories for readers to understand how bad this is. However, I can never write it as well as someone who has lived the experience.
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Paty, I remember seeing the 2017 movie, Wind River, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, about a young indigenous woman who was raped and murdered and how difficult it was to bring those responsible to justice. I saw this movie five years ago and it still haunts me. In fact, I think of it almost daily. I will not write anything of that tenor, but in my books I have covered many subjects in the past, such as child pornography, so I feel I can at least contemplate tackling it on a certain level. And by the way, good on you for bringing this into a conversation.
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Over the years I’ve heard about the missing Indigenous women, the growing numbers, and the impenetrable law enforcement responses. It is indeed horrifying and inconceivable to me but at least more people are reacting and pushing for information and a stronger response. Your books, Paty, reach a lot of people, and your posts are also always informative.
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Thanks, Susan. It is my goal in life to educate through entertainment.
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Even though I am not an indigenous woman, their plight has always horrified me. Until recently, there was never an official count of how many indigenous women went missing or were murdered. Imagine being so ill-considered that you are not even a number? In two of my books, I have featured Native Americans who are — as is your professor — educated, intelligent, and not only law-abiding but members of law enforcement. Your post has given me an idea of another novel in the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries or possibly Snow Lake Romantic Suspense where I can feature a missing indigenous woman. I think I would like to put my pen where my mouth is.
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