My window into other worlds

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

I don’t know how many of you get giddy when you can visit or see the settings from books you’ve read. But as a reader, I have always enjoyed being taken to settings or worlds I haven’t been and may never be able to see. Books have always been my window into other worlds.

A few weeks ago, my hubby and I made a trip from SE Oregon to Killeen, TX to see his sister and her husband and deliver boxes of belongings to our oldest granddaughter now living in Arkansas. On the way over we drove through the four corners and the towns of Flagstaff, Tuba City, Windowrock, and Gallup. The settings of author Tony Hillerman’s novels.

My husband just shook his head as I said the names of places that I’d read about in those novels. I could envision Leaphorn, Chee, and Bernie Manuelito driving around on the dirt roads I saw from the freeway.  Seeing First Mesa on Hopi land and the hogans on the Navajo land… It stalled my breath to see places and things I’d envisioned as I read or listened to Mr. Hillerman’s books but had used my imagination at what it would look like.

In case you haven’t figured it out already, I have been a huge fan of Tony Hillerman’s books since reading the first one. While he has more Native American life, traditions, and legends in his stories than I have in mine, he was my inspiration to have a Native American character as the main protagonist in my three mystery series. 

He lived on or near the four corners area where the Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo tribes live. He had many contacts among these tribes to help him show more of the culture than I’ve been able to cultivate living a distance from the reservations and tribes I write about in my Gabriel Hawke novels, Shandra Higheagle Mysteries, and Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries.

I aspire to write as intriguing and thrilling reads even though they aren’t as steeped in the culture and lives of the people.

The next Gabriel Hawke book, I’m having Hawke and Dani, his significant other, attend Tamkaliks. A powwow held every July in Wallowa, Oregon. I attended it this past year for the third time and am now feeling confident I can give my two Nez Perce characters the experience they would undergo having been away from their culture for decades due to their careers and trying to fit into a culture other than their own.

However, with the return of Hawke’s sister to his life, she is showing him how good their culture is for their wellbeing. That will be a subplot in the book to his investigation into a decades-old body he discovers while patrolling the Snake River in the Hells Canyon.

I‘m hoping my contact within the Nez Perce community and the Fish and Wildlife Trooper helping me with the patrol of the river will give my story more realism.

Speaking of realism, I took a trip to the Oregon Coast last Spring to research for my newest release, The Pinch, book 5 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series. In this book Dela Alvaro, head of security for the Spotted Pony Casino is at a tribal-run casino on the Oregon Coast helping them beef up their security. While there a child is kidnapped and she runs into an old friend.

The Pinch

Dela Alvaro, head of security for the Spotted Pony Casino, is asked to do a security check of a casino on the Oregon Coast. She no sooner starts her rounds at the casino and a child of a dubious couple is kidnapped. Special Agent Quinn Pierce of the FBI has been out to get the father for some time.

One of Dela’s best friends from the Army is also at the casino and they catch up. The next morning, Dela finds her friend strangled. As Dela struggles with the violent death of yet another best friend, Tribal Officer Heath Seaver arrives and the two begin untangling the lies, kidnapping, and murder.

As Heath carries the kidnapped child to safety, Dela must face a cunning killer alone.

Pre-order now, releases on February 22nd. https://books2read.com/u/38Y787

I hope you enjoy this latest book and follow my books to learn more about the Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Cayuse tribes as my characters, Hawke and Dela begin to, in Hawke’s case become reacquainted with his roots and Dela is just beginning to learn she may have a Umatilla heritage.

I purchased this seed holder pot from a Pueblo woman in front of a market on the reservation. She told me she was Acoma (Ah-kuh-muh) Pueblo with the Bear Clan. She showed me her name and a bear paw on the bottom of the pot. She then told me the solid black on the pot represents mountains and land, the orange sun, and the thin lines rain. I enjoyed my visit with her.

That is the thing I love most about reading, writing, and traveling. I learn new things and broaden my horizons.  

In Defense of Procrastination

~ Margaret Lucke ~ 8 Comments

By Margaret Lucke

“I used to just crastinate, but I got so good, I went pro.”
~ Seen on a T-shirt

My name is Margaret, and I am a procrastinator.

It’s 11:27 a.m. on Friday, and right now I am typing the first sentence of my post on time management for the Ladies of Mystery blog. The post is due to go live tonight at midnight. So I have twelve hours in which to get it written — and to accomplish all of the other items on my long to-do list for today.

It could be worse. If I had really perfected procrastination to a fine art, I’d be typing this at 11:27 p.m. on Friday instead of shortly before noon.

On the other hand, if I were any good at time management, I’d have written this post yesterday. Or last week. Or, hey, two months ago, like some of my fellow Ladies of Mystery, who are much more on top of their time than I am.

“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
~ Spanish Proverb

Getting things done is simple, I’m told. You set priorities. You make lists. You break down a project into easily accomplished action steps. When I’ve tried doing that, I find it really works. As soon as I’ve finished my list, I make sure to take action on my next priority, which is to do a Sudoku puzzle, or take a walk in the fresh air, or make myself another cup of tea.  

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”
~ Mark Twain

I used to feel bad about being a procrastinator. That’s because procrastination is usually talked about as if it’s a bad thing – a sure road to missed opportunities, a certain sign of laziness and sloth. Those annoying people who are on top of all of their tasks sneer at the rest of us with disdain and disgust. Their intent is to make us feel guilty and anxious, and too often they succeed.

But I think that when I’m confronted with an important project, it’s a good thing to take some time for mental preparation and to approach the work with judicious care. It saves me from slapdash results. And sometimes, if I procrastinate long enough, it saves me from having to do the work at all. The situation changes, and the need is no longer there.

Calvin: “You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.”
Hobbes: “What mood is that?”
Calvin: “Last-minute panic.”
~ Bill Watterson

I was gratified not long ago when I heard a radio interview with Berkeley psychologist Mary Lamia, about her book What Motivates Getting Things Done: Procrastination, Emotions, and Success. Lamia explains that there are two types of people: task-driven types who feel uneasy and anxious when pending work is going undone, and deadline-driven folks who are not motivated to act until they “feel the heart-pounding terror of an imminent deadline.” And she contends that both types are equally capable of doing quality work and achieving success.

So there.

“Procrastinate now. Don’t put it off.”
~ Ellen De Generes

Noise Levels and Other Considerations

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

This is a noisy world. There are sirens and neighbors and families and appliances… and not even noise-cancelling headphones can guarantee total silence. At least, not at my home with a house reconstruction going on to the west and the neighbor to the east – though a wonderful man in many ways – owning every gasoline-powered piece of lawn equipment ever made. His lawn is beautiful, though.

Now all writers are different. Some like lots of noise, claiming it is a stimulant, while others like pure silence as they say it frees their creativity. Depending on the time and our mood of the moment I daresay most of us fall somewhere in between.

Some writers swear by writing in different places – cafes, car parks, just about any place you can think of. Now when we have to be someplace besides our office, a writer can work almost anywhere, especially a writer under deadline. Have to take your child to ballet practice? Need to get the car worked on? Have a lunch hour at work? You can take a laptop or one of those keyboards that feeds  into your phone (I keep meaning to get one of these, just as soon as I get a phone which can handle it), or even a humble pen and paper, then make use of the time to up your word count.

Other writers believe in total silence – or as total as one can achieve short of moving to an uninhabited mountaintop in some third world country. Noise-cancelling headphones help, as sometimes does a white noise machine, but nothing can truly drown out the noise of the modern world.

As I usually do, I stand firmly in both camps. There are times I write happily in front of the blaring television while listening to The Husband tell me about his day, and other times I have on my headphones, my office drapes drawn and a sign on the door threatening a dire fate to anyone who disturbs me.

So what is the best way to write? I can only speak for myself, but as always my practice varies. If I had to choose just one atmosphere, it would be classical music (either full orchestra or piano only – no screechy strings, please) playing softly in the background, preferably of an emotion and tempo appropriate to whatever I was working on at the moment. After that, as pure a silence as could be achieved. Of course, I would – and have – made do with whatever had to be undergone at the moment.

By contrast, I have a friend – an excellent writer – who is addicted to writing in cafés. Now I admit there are advantages to writing in a café, foremost of all being to command endless cappuccinos by the mere raising of a hand! On the other hand, there is a constant swirl of people and babble of conversation, to say nothing of being the object of curiosity by the customers (“They’re real writers? And they’re working on books?”) for all as if we were some sort of exhibit in a raree show. I am no shrinking violet when it comes to being in the public eye – far from it – but not while I’m trying to concentrate on work.

However – being a fair individual and willing to experiment, I have joined my friend on occasion, and yes, despite being interrupted by spectators telling me about how they have always wanted to write a book, or have a sure-fire idea for a best seller, both broadly implying that I should stop and either teach or co-write with them (grrr) I managed to get a fair amount of writing done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really writing – just lots of typing that, on a cool-headed reading the next day, was barely one baby step away from garbage. I didn’t try to save any of it, but I did go put on some Chopin, close the drapes and the door and try to salvage the underlying idea.

By contrast, my friend actually wrote a short story that same afternoon, one when it was polished, she sold.

How boring life would be if we all worked exactly alike!

Getting To Know Martha

~ Janet Dawson ~ 4 Comments

I’m working on a historical novel set in Colorado and New Mexico in 1877-1878. The book, based in part on real events, is one I’ve been wanting to write for years. I’ve done a lot of plotting, planning, research and thinking about it, as I weave together fact and fiction.

My protagonist, Catriona, is the daughter of an officer in the frontier Army. I’ve gotten to know her well, though on occasion she surprises me. She’s resourceful and independent, as a young woman must be following her father from fort to fort. But she’s also constrained by the strictures of the times and the restrictions put on young unmarried women. She’s particularly annoyed by officers’ wives who keep trying to find her husbands among the unmarried officers.

There’s a secondary character named Martha, who has become more important. She’s every bit as resourceful and independent as Catriona, with a far different back story, though the two women have things in common. They are both young, unmarried, and seeking their own way in the world.

Martha is African American, born enslaved on a plantation in Missouri, five years before the start of the Civil War. How does she get from a Missouri plantation to a frontier fort in Colorado in September 1877? How does she travel? How does she support herself along the way?

Domestic service comes to mind. Martha can cook and clean, and look after children. While doing research, I discovered that that servants were in high demand at frontier forts. An officer’s wife would write to an employment agency and hire a young woman to help out around the house. The maid would arrive and quickly get a marriage proposal from a homesteader or a soldier.

Martha could also be a laundress. The Army employed women who spent their days on what was called Suds Row, washing all those blue wool uniforms. These women were often Black as well as White, and frequently older laundresses were the wives of higher-ranking enlisted soldiers. And Martha can sew–she’s very good with needle and thread. Maybe somewhere along the line she’ll become a dressmaker.

So, Martha has skills and resources, enough to hire on with a family that’s moving out west. How do I bring Catriona and Martha together at that fort? There is a point at which their back stories intersect, and it has to do with the frontier regulars, as the post Civil War Indian-fighting Army was known.

After the Civil War the Army shrank to a fraction of its wartime size. Officers who had higher rank while commanding volunteer troops during the war found themselves stepping back in rank when commissioned in the regular Army. For example, George Armstrong Custer was a brigadier general commanding volunteers during the Civil War. When the war was over, he was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the regular Army, sent off to fight the Plains Indians. We know how that ended at the Little Big Horn.

After the war, promotion was slow. It could take years for an officer to advance. Black troops, many of them former slaves who volunteered to fight for the Union, also joined the regulars and became known as Buffalo Soldiers. Some White officers, with the prejudices of the day, didn’t want to command them. The Army then provided incentives. Officers who agreed to command Buffalo Soldiers got faster rates of promotion.

So, there is the intersection. Martha’s brother is a Buffalo Soldier, Catriona’s father is his commanding officer.

I had a back story in mind for Martha, but it’s currently taking a few detours. She has a mind of her own and other ideas about where she came from and how she got here. She’s taking me in a different direction, and I am paying attention to that, researching her, getting inside her head to see who she is and how she wound up in my story.

It’s a fascinating journey for Martha—and for me. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m getting there. I’m doing my research, happily burrowing down rabbit holes to find answers to questions. With this book, my rabbit holes include life in the post-Civil War Army, Buffalo Soldiers, the Indian Wars, especially related to the Mescalero Apache tribe, and women in the trans-Mississippi west.

I find inspiration for Martha’s story in the colorful history of Black women in the west. Such as Stagecoach Mary Fields, who owned cafes, took in laundry, looked after children—and used a stagecoach to deliver mail in Montana. From all reports, she packed a wallop and didn’t suffer fools gladly. She also like baseball and gardening. She impressed a young Montana boy named Gary Cooper, who met her when he was a child and talked about her years later.

Then there was Cathay Williams. She was from Missouri, too. Born a slave, she worked as an Army cook and laundress. When the war was over, she enlisted in the regulars, under the name of William Cathay. She served for three years as a Buffalo Soldier with the 38th Infantry. When a post surgeon discovered she was a woman, she was honorably discharged and went on to work as a cook at Fort Union, NM.

Guest Blogger ~ Skye Alexander

~ patyjag ~ 3 Comments

Mystery Stories and Mystery Schools

What comes to mind when you hear the word “occult”? Evil cults that worship the devil? Weird rituals where animals are sacrificed? Wizards with nefarious aims wielding power behind the scenes? If so, you probably got those impressions from Hollywood or from fear-based religious groups. Let’s pull back the dark curtain that shrouds the occult arts to discover how supernatural elements can contribute to a mystery novel’s plot.

What Does “Occult” Mean?

First of all, the word “occult” simply means hidden, as in hidden knowledge. For centuries, people who practiced the occult arts had to hide what they knew and practiced in order to avoid imprisonment, torture, and murder at the hands of misguided authorities. They formed secret societies sometimes known as Mystery Schools, passed down wisdom through symbols and oral tradition, and wrote in secret code.

Yet occult ideas and practices––witchcraft, divination, spellcasting, incantations, and magic potions––continue to fascinate us to this day. Perhaps the most famous scene in literature comes from Shakespeare’s MacBeth where three witches stir a mysterious brew while they prophesy “toil and trouble” for the Scottish king. The Bard’s plays MacBeth and Hamlet also feature ghosts, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream involves faery spells and shapeshifting. More recently, J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter stories have captured the imaginations of millions of young people worldwide and introduced them to some of the tenets of magic work––and its possibilities.

Using the Occult in Plotting a Story

Occult practices involve working with forces beyond the mundane, tapping into reservoirs of hidden power, and sometimes interacting with supernatural beings. Therefore, they let writers and readers step outside the ordinary limitations of a storyline. Ghosts and spirits can also expand readers’ knowledge into realms beyond the physical. In Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, for example, a murdered girl shares a perspective of the crime from her vantage point on the other side.

Oracles such as the tarot, astrology, or runes can give veiled glimpses into the future. Is someone destined to die when the Death card turns up in a tarot reading? In my mystery novels What the Walls Know and The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, a tarot card reader sees trouble lurking ahead for the protagonist Lizzie Crane, which adds to the stories’ suspense.

Authors can incorporate metaphysical ideas into their novels in various ways. For example:

  • Is a character a seasoned witch or wizard, or a novice dabbling with forces she doesn’t understand, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice?
  • Does a character pursue a metaphysical path that leads him to a discovery or danger? How does he grow from this experience?
  • If this is a historical novel, what local customs, religious beliefs, and laws affected occultists at that time? Are historical events, such as the Salem Witch Trials of the early 1690s, worthwhile additions to the book?
  • Do nonphysical entities influence a character’s decisions, aid her in solving a problem, or guide her into a realm beyond the physical one?
  • Does a character conjure a spell that works––or goes wrong––and takes the story in an intriguing direction?

Oh, and by the way, writing is a powerful form of magic. When casting a spell, you envision an outcome you want to create. Then you infuse it with color, action, emotion, intention, and passion. You experience it as if you’re living it right now. In your mind’s eye, you see the result as if it already exists––and you’re the Creator who makes it happen. Sounds like writing a novel, doesn’t it?

The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors

Salem, Massachusetts, Christmas 1925: When the heir to a shipping fortune hires New York jazz singer Lizzie Crane and her band to perform during the Christmas holidays, she has high hopes that the prestigious event will bring them riches and recognition. But the evening the musicians arrive, police discover a body near a tavern owned by Lizzie’s cousin––a cousin she didn’t even know she had. Soon Lizzie becomes a pawn in a deadly game between her cousin and her employer over a mysterious lady with a dangerous past.


Buy links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Shipwrecked-Sailors-Lizzie-Mystery/dp/1685124348

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-goddess-of-shipwrecked-sailors-skye-alexander/1144045510?ean=9781685124342

Author Bio:

Skye Alexander’s historical mystery novels What the Walls Know and The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, the second and third books in her Lizzie Crane mystery series, use tarot cards and other occult ideas to provide clues. Skye is also a recognized authority in the field of metaphysics and the author of fifteen bestselling nonfiction books on the occult arts including The Modern Guide to Witchcraft, The Modern Witchcraft Book of Tarot, and Magickal Astrology.

Facebook link

https://www.facebook.com/skye.alexander.92

Goodreads link

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198671880-the-goddess-of-shipwrecked-sailors

Video trailer

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IjHJjQYpVe35nvBkMD4sMn-o2zt0skA2/view (if you can’t access it here, it’s also on the first page of my website and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgCT41caKrs