Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 50 + novels, novellas, and short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.
I’m currently working on the next (#10) Gabriel Hawke Novel. It will be set up in the style of book #2. I have a person who saw a murder in the wilderness and my character Hawke will find them. Just like book #2, I’ll be starting it with a prologue where the character witnesses the killing and then runs in fear for their life.
To me it makes sense to start the book, with a prologue, showing the person watching the act happen and then fleeing, so that will need to be in their point of view. Then as the story progresses, there will be things Hawke (my main character) won’t know or see, but the reader needs to know through the fleeing person’s point of view so I will have the two points of view in the book.
Most of my Gabriel Hawke books are in my main character’s point of view unless there are scenes that the reader needs to see what my character can’t see. That’s when I use a second point of view.
This book, I’m still working on the title, has been brewing and stewing in my head for nearly 6 months. It came to me as I was writing book #9 that released the end of June. That’s how my brain works. While I am working on a current book in a series, my mind is already moving to the next book. It may be the villain creeping around in my brain, or a setting, or a premise. But as I typed the words to the work in progress, the other story is working in the background.
Back to prologues. There has been a book or two I’ve read where the prologue was flat or didn’t feel like it had anything to do with the story that followed. But there have also been books where the prologue drew me into the story, and I couldn’t wait to read more.
As with all writing, it is the execution of the timing, the words, the characters that makes a reader continue or stop. That and a good, as in a mystery book, whodunit. Something to keep the reader turning the pages and reading well past the time they should turn out the lights and sleep.
Unless you can pull them in at the beginning, with a good prologue, first sentence, first paragraph, first page, first chapter, you could possibly lose the reader. And that’s why I ponder the question: To prologue or not to prologue.
What do those of you reading this post think?
Here is info about my newest release: Owl’s Silent Strike
Book 9 in the Gabriel Hawke Novels
Unexpected snowstorm…
Unfortunate accident…
And a body…
What started out as a favor and a leisurely trip into the mountains, soon turns State Trooper Gabriel Hawke’s life upside down. The snowstorm they were trying to beat comes early, a horse accident breaks Dani Singer’s leg, and Hawke finds a body in the barn at Charlie’s Lodge.
Hawke sets Dani’s leg, then follows the bloody trail of a suspect trying to flee the snow-drifted mountains. Hawke is torn between getting the woman he loves medical care and knowing he can’t leave a possible killer on the mountain.
Before the killer is brought to justice, Dani and Hawke will put their relationship to the test and his job on the line.
A SCANCy series takes on Covid: Ghost Fever by Cherie Claire
The last thing I wanted to rehash in my mystery writing was the virus that stole two years of my life. Of course, I’m exaggerating. I’m still here and am grateful my immediate family and friends are healthy and well. But write about Covid? Wasn’t high on my list.
And yet, I had visited an outfitter in a rural area of the Florida Panhandle, just outside Pensacola, and it birthed an idea. Here was a place to zip line, kayak and relax in cabins on a piney woods property with an old schoolhouse from the 1920s and a creepy cemetery — yes, a cemetery! And it got better. Inside my cabin was a book about a rash of UFO sighting in the area in the 1970s. Nearby is a state park named for Ponce de Leon, the Spanish explorer who searched for the Fountain of Youth.
My imagination took off.
The seventh book in my Viola Valentine paranormal mystery series combines all those elements, but adds time travel as well. What other pandemic had Americans been subjected to — the Spanish Influenza of 1918! That’s in the story as well.
Ghost Fever may take place in 2021 amid the Covid scare but there’s a lot of adventure to enjoy.
The series features my main character, Viola Valentine of New Orleans. After a hurricane upends her life, Viola separates from a loveless marriage and becomes a travel writer, her dream profession. But the storm also blew open a psychic door. Now she sees ghosts who have died by water and mysteries to solve everywhere she goes.
She’s what I call a SCANC. But it’s not what you think. SCANC stands for Specific Communication with Apparitions, Non-Entities and the Comatose. And Viola has seen all three!
The key word here is “specific.” Viola repressed her psychic abilities when she was young, tired of being chastised as having a vivid imagination when ghosts would appear. Children of the Paranormal TV show had yet to air so poor Vi had no support system, either. When my mystery series opens, Viola realizes that the trauma of the hurricane opened that door back up, but this time, the ghosts Vi sees are strictly related to water.
Along the way, that husband she tried to distance herself from won’t let her go. When I first started writing the series, I envisioned him a goofy distraction at best. He ended up stealing my heart and has become a colorful fun character throughout the series. He has some supernatural talents as well.
Do they get back together? You’ll have to read to find out.
Ghost Fever is the latest book in the Viola Valentine series, but the fun begins with A Ghost of a Chance, when Viola first discovers her ghostly talent. That ebook is free to download at all online bookstores. I also routinely give away copies of other books in the series through my newsletter. You can sign up and enter the contests at chereclaire.net.
Hopefully, Viola won’t have to experience another hurricane or pandemic, although being a New Orleans native she’s bound to see another storm or two. Vi has visited numerous Deep South locations and I’ll be sending my travel writing character to Southern destinations in future books, although an Alaska cruise is floating through my mind these days. Pun intended.
Regardless, there will be more Viola Valentine ghost stories to come.
Ghost Fever
The ghosts of the past never stop haunting.
Viola takes a job at her old summer camp in the Florida Panhandle, hoping for a peaceful place to work after months in Covid lockdown. But old traumas from her time at Camp Secret Spring resurface and Viola’s dream of a quiet getaway quickly turns into a nightmare.
Her best friend disappeared that summer, never to be found. Was it the camp’s mysterious water that Ponce de León searched for? Or can her friend’s vanishing be chalked up to the UFO sightings over the years? And just who were the Utopians who lived there before, many of whom died in the pandemic of 1918?
Book Seven in Cherie Claire’s Viola Valentine mystery series.
Cherie Claire is the award-winning author of a mystery series and several Louisiana romances. New this year is Ghost Fever, part of a paranormal mystery series featuring New Orleans travel writer and ghost sleuth Viola Valentine. A native of New Orleans, Cherie now lives in Georgia where she works as a travel writer, but returns to her home state of Louisiana often. Visit her website at www.cherieclaire.net and follow her on social media.
Some of us are in critique groups, some would like to find one, and still others vow never to come near one. Maybe these resistant writers have a trusted editor at a big-name publisher or maybe they think they’re wonderful without feedback. I’m not that good, so when I moved to the Rogue Valley, Oregon, and gave up academic writing for fiction writing I was grateful to be introduced to my Monday Mayhem group.
I still remember my first meetings with the group. They praised my writing style but told me that I couldn’t wait a hundred pages before I introduced the murder. Although I reject such “rules,” they were right about Tour de Trace. The discovery of the murder in that novel now happens on page twenty.
I’ve now published seven novels with two more scheduled before the end of 2023. I couldn’t have achieved this without Monday Mayhem. The group works because it forces us to submit writing every two weeks. Not that we can’t take a pass now and again or that we can’t stray from writing mysteries that were the original impetus for the group. This isn’t a class where our grades depend on following an assignment and handing it in on time.
There are other reasons besides discipline that makes our group work. We stay on task, drinking water, not wine, and except for an occasional cookie being fed only the manuscripts we’re cooking up, even the cookies on hiatus when Covid drove us to Zoom. A two hour time period also keeps us focused on writing, not small talk. We’re not a stiff group, though. Sometimes we learn things about each other’s lives that surprise us. Who would have thought that one of the women drove race cars or that one of the men was admitted to his college’s Hall of Fame because of his acting career.
When I first joined this group, we were three men and two women. We welcomed a third woman, but when Tim, the group’s founder died, we returned to five members instead of six. Tim was the member who was most insistent about not delaying the murder in Tour de Trace. His criticism was never gentle so when I found a publisher for my short story “24/7” (The Fictional Café), I smiled to remember his rare praise for that story, “Don’t change a word.”
We’ve remained at five members because this seems to be an optimal number for giving full attention to what can amount to a hundred pages that we collectively submit on the Thursday before our Monday meeting. We all bring a different focus, a different strength, and, yes, a different weakness to our writing.
Carole’s work could be classified as regional fiction. All her novels are set in Oregon, often in the horse barns of ranches, and her sleuths are never professionals. I challenge her to omit extraneous detail and she challenges me to bring more emotional depth to my characters.
Clive’s region is as different from Carole’s as congested Los Angeles is to the range land of Oregon. His protagonist is a sometimes private investigator, sometimes actor. His novels are rich in Hollywood detail. I challenge him to eliminate his tendency to use passive voice, and he helps me get out of a clunky paragraph by suggesting that I use dialogue.
Jenn’s region is also Southern California and she writes with a strong comic voice. Michael’s setting in his thrillers is mostly international. He draws on his knowledge of politics honed from his years of teaching. Jenn inspires me to add a witticism or two to my writing and I challenge her to push on through her manuscript before she goes back to revise for consistency. Michael helps me whenever I get tangled in inaccurate technology and I remind him that even thrillers need to take a break now and again from an escape or a chase or a fight.
As helpful as critique groups can be, they also come with the hazard of someone going rogue. What do you do if a member consistently submits more than the allotted page count or spends valuable time resisting a suggestion? What if someone loses the big picture in favor of arguing about a comma or regularly crushes others with insults rather than constructive suggestions.
Monday Mayhem’s strength comes from our differences. Although our genres and writing styles differ, we have compatible writing skills. We aren’t teaching writing, we’re helping with revising. Neither too bad nor too good might be a mantra for a successful critique group. We can’t help someone with a tin ear any more than we can help a Beethoven.
Discipline, compatibility, variety. Three ingredients for a successful critique group. If you’re looking for one, watch for these qualities. If you are in one, ask yourself why it works or what it needs to work better.
When Deborah Strong accepts an invitation for a reunion with high school friends who will all be turning fifty, she anticipates a lovely Fourth of July weekend in Maine. But soon a murder disturbs the quiet of the summer homes that dot the isolated cove. Deborah’s suspicions follow her like the Maine landscape–plenty of sunshine, plenty of fog, and plenty of evening mosquitoes that arrive like the sparks of fireworks. Where is Brenda’s husband? Where have her caretaker and cook gone? Who is the anorectic young man who keeps appearing? Is one of them a murderer? Or is it the old woman who lives across the street, her son who runs an oyster farm in the face of global warming, her poet-tenant who lives in her apartment? Deborah even suspects each of the friends she grew up with. By the time she finds the answer, she is ready to leave Calderwood Cove where an idyllic summer retreat turned as deadly as contaminated shellfish.
Sharon L. Dean grew up in Massachusetts where she was immersed in the literature of New England. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire, a state she lived and taught in before moving to Oregon. Although she has given up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, she incorporates much of her academic research as background in her mysteries. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries and of a literary novel titled Leaving Freedom. Her Deborah Strong mysteries include The Barn, The Wicked Bible, and Calderwood Cove. Dean continues to write about New England while she is discovering the beauty of the West.
How did I come up with the main character in the series?
The heart of the Dodie O’Dell mystery series is, of course, Dodie herself, restaurant manager and amateur sleuth. I began the first book in the series, Show Time, around 2014, only a couple of years after Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the New Jersey shore area. I’d been toying with the idea of a female amateur detective and I knew I wanted her to reside in northern Jersey, in the general area where I lived. And I wanted her to be new to the location…not born and raised there. So my goal was to find a way to get this character to my fictional small town of Etonville. In the first book, after Hurricane Sandy destroyed the restaurant she managed, as well as her home, Dodie was ready for a new life. When a job opened up in a restaurant owned by a relative of her former boss, she jumped at the chance for a second chapter. As luck would have it, the Windjammer restaurant was located next door to the Etonville Little Theatre, providing an abundance of opportunities to showcase interesting menus and the foibles of small town community theatre in my books!
Dodie became friends with many of the theatre’s members and before long she was helping out on her days off—sewing costumes, hanging lights, assisting at auditions. And then she got a brainstorm, a way to boost the Windjammer’s business while supporting the Etonville Little Theatre: create theme food for every production. For example, seafood for Dames At Sea, Italian fare for Romeo and Juliet, a 1940s Brooklyn food festival for Arsenic and Old Lace. It was a smash success except for one problem…dead bodies started to turn up. Although no one blamed Dodie for the mysterious murders, she had to admit they did begin to appear once she moved to town. She assumed the role of unofficial detective, helping, or sometimes hindering, Etonville’s police chief with her quick-witted, outside-the-box detection skills. Not to mention her ability to navigate the town rumor mill at the local hair salon.
The latest Dodie O’Dell mystery, Killing Time, is set on the eve of Halloween and the theatre is rehearsing Dracula. When a stranger appears in the town cemetery with a stake in his heart, Dodie shifts her attention from the production-themed food—a garlic infused menu from appetizers to entrees—to solving the murder in order to rescue the production.
Every book in the series is focused on a different play paired with theme food served at the Windjammer restaurant…and with a murder related to the theatre’s current production, with victims such as the box office manager, a guest director, a musical accompanist, even a stranger found on the set on an opening night. Dodie has her hands full solving mysteries, managing the restaurant, and supporting her theatre friends. She’s up to the challenge!
With Halloween just around the corner, Dodie O’Dell is making preparations for the town costume party while the Etonville Little Theatre is staging Dracula. But casting the titular Transylvanian is proving challenging. The amateur actors in the company are not shy about chewing the scenery, but who among them can convincingly sink their fangs into a victim’s neck? When a mysterious newcomer with a transfixing Eastern European accent lands the part, rumors that he might be an actual vampire start to take flight—not unlike the bat who’s recently been spotted in the town park. But everyone’s blood really runs cold when a stranger is found in the cemetery with a real stake in his heart. Dodie decides to stick her neck out to bring the killer into the light of day. She’d better keep her wits about her, though—or Dodie may be the next one to go down for the Count . . .
Suzanne Trauth is the author of the Dodie O’Dell mystery series—Show Time, Time Out, Running out of Time, Just in Time, No More Time, and Killing Time—and What Remains of Love, an historical romance, as well as plays and non-fiction books. In her previous career, she spent many years as a university professor of theatre. When she is not writing, she coaches actors and serves as a celebrant performing weddings. She lives in Woodland Park, New Jersey.
As you are reading this, I’m off on a research trip for the next Gabriel Hawke novel. This one is set in Montana. I have an place in the middle of the two areas I need to research.
This story started about 5 years ago, before I had even started writing the Gabriel Hawke series. My husband and I were driving from the south to the north of Montana headed to visit my cousin in near Flathead Lake. As we followed this lake, I looked out and spotted a resort on an island in the lake. My first thought was “what a great place to have a writers retreat!”
A photo from when I was in Montana before. This is south of the lake.
That island and building kept coming back to me and when I decided on the premise of book 10 in the series, I knew that resort would be in the story.
I didn’t know the name of it and hubby and I were of a different opinion of which road we’d been on. One of my oldest daughter’s friends lives and works in Helena, MT. I contacted her and asked if she’d seen the place on her weekend drives. She knew the place and sent me a link to their website. I had been right! It was off the road I had said we’d driven up to my cousin, not the road, hubby had thought. Score one for me! That doesn’t happen often when it comes to driving and roads since hubby was a truck driver for 30 years.
With the website I looked up the island and the resort. I had hoped to stay there one night and get a feel for the place. Not at $2000 a night! So then I emailed and asked if I could just come hang out for a couple of hours (you have to get there by boats that are run by the resort). I explained I was a writer and wanted to use the resort for a couple of scenes in my book.
The person who wrote back to me asked if I was the author who had requested the same a while back. I said no. When I told her when I’d be in the area, she said there would be guest at the resort and no one else was allowed. But she would be happy to answer my questions and send me any photos I might need. You can bet after I go scope it out from the side of the lake, I’ll have more questions for her. Luckily it is only being used as the place where Hawke’s sister is attending a corporate retreat and it is more of a starting point for the story than a main setting.
The other place I’ll be visiting is the Flathead Indian Reservation. I’m debating on where the sister will run to, the reservation or the wilderness. That will depend on what I find out on my trip.
Right now, I’m pleased to say that book 9, Owl’s Silent Strike, is now available in ebook and print. My narrator is working on the audiobook.
Unexpected snowstorm…
Unfortunate accident…
And a body…
What started out as a favor and a leisurely trip into the mountains, soon turns State Trooper Gabriel Hawke’s life upside down. The snowstorm they were trying to beat comes early, a horse accident breaks Dani Singer’s leg, and Hawke finds a body in the barn at Charlie’s Lodge.
Hawke sets Dani’s leg, then follows the bloody trail of a suspect trying to flee the snow drifted mountains. Hawke is torn between getting the woman he loves medical care and knowing he can’t leave a possible killer on the mountain.
Before the killer is brought to justice, Dani and Hawke will put their relationship to the test and his job on the line.
Ladies of Mystery 
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