I started writing a post on here about Indigenous People Day. Which is today. It was made a federal holiday alongside Columbus Day in 2021. But by the time I was at the end of writing the post, I decided someone might take my post as political and moved it to my personal blog. If you’re interested, you can read it here: https://writingintothesunset.net/
But today is why I write the mysteries I write. I have been fascinated and in awe of the Indigenous people since I was old enough to understand all that they have gone through. And to see how some of the tribes have grown along with technology and have raised their people up in knowledge, living conditions, and being heard. I know there are some that are still struggling with being heard and seen as productive part of society, but there are others who are thriving. Getting back their culture and language and being economically sound and successful for their tribe.
Their resiliency, belief in their culture, and their desire to give each generation the best life inspires me to write about them. To bring their horrors and their determination to readers. That’s why I have Native American characters in my three mystery stories, to show readers that while they live a different culture, they are just like everyone else with the same dreams, goals, and desires.
I hope that my stories, while they aren’t as full of the culture as some other writers, still portray the culture and the real people who live each day not only with similar struggles but also with more. They are still labeled and seen as different by many.
The theme of my books all deal with injustice. Whether it is someone who is killed, someone who is believed to be the suspect, or it is the characters dealing with prejudice.
My newest release, Damning Firefly, deals with a completely different injustice. One that I tried hard to portray with empathy and from the first reviews, I did my job.
Damning Firefly
Book 11 in the Gabriel Hawke Series
A church fire.
An unconscious woman on Starvation Ridge.
Gabriel Hawke, fish and wildlife officer with the Oregon State Police, helps with a fire at the Lighted Path church before heading out to check turkey hunters. He discovers a car wedged between two trees and a woman with a head injury reeking of smoke. Is she the arsonist?
Hawke encounters the county midwife gloating over the burnt church and learns she and the victim in the car know one another.
My summer has been busy! More so than usual. The only upside is I have been gone so much I didn’t have to help with as much hay harvesting. 😉 However that running around has drained me and made it take longer to get my next book out.
I told myself when I planned my 10 day trip to Hawaii that I would still work on my writing for half of the day. Well, I didn’t. And that put a book that I was already struggling with too much of a lag between starting and finishing it. Thank goodness my beta readers and editor found the places where I changed someone’s name or had a character looking at something they couldn’t have seen because the other character hadn’t been home to leave it. Little timeline things that I was sure I’d written but obviously only in my head.
Turtles on the rocks in Hawaii
As a writer, do you have instances like that? I have on several books known I’d written a scene that led up to something and neither I nor a beta reader can find it. It was a scene I’d played over in my mind while I was walking or driving and then when I sat down at the computer I started with the scene after it and was sure I’d written the one that was still in my brain. That’s frustrating. At least the scene is there, and usually, I can write it better than it played out in my mind.
In the book that is off to my final proofreader, I had many spots that I had to “fix” after the beta readers read it. I also had more scenes and paragraphs that I took out or manipulated to make my character more sympathetic to the victims in the story. I have never had so many saved documents of partial scenes that don’t make it in the book. I sure hope my readers like this one. It’s a true Hawke story but it does delve into something more controversial than his other books.
I spent Labor Day Weekend at a Flea Market where I and another writer friend usually have brisk sales. This year there were so few people who wandered by our trailer, it was kind of eerie. I only sold about a third of what I normally sell. Most of those were to my return readers.
This week, I’m headed to Mt. Angel, Oregon to sell my first in series books along with books by other NIWA (Northwest Independent Writers Association) members. It should be a fun weekend.
As soon as I return from there, I’m diving into a Shandra Higheagle Christmas mystery. I’ve had a multitude of Shandra fans ask me for one more book. I’m writing a Christmas novella to hopefully give the readers closure. I hope I can get it out before Christmas!
Right now you can pre-order Damning Firefly. It will release on September 25th.
Book 11 in the Gabriel Hawke Series
A church fire.
An unconscious woman on Starvation Ridge.
Gabriel Hawke, fish and wildlife officer with the Oregon State Police, helps with a fire at The Lighted Path church before heading out to check turkey hunters. He discovers a car wedged between two trees and a woman with a head injury reeking of smoke. Is she the arsonist?
Hawke encounters the county midwife gloating over the burnt church and learns she and the victim in the car know one another.
Two seemingly separate events lead Hawke to a serial rapist and a county full of secrets.
I don’t know about other authors but there are times my husband and family give me a look that says, they wonder about my sanity. 😉
Last month, I drove to Wallowa County where I set most of my Gabriel Hawke Novels. He is an Oregon State Trooper with the Fish and Wildlife division. The reason for my trip was to:
1) Do reconnaissance of the area where Hawke finds an unconscious woman in the wilderness.
2) Discover why Starvation Ridge was named that.
3) Attend a powwow in Wallowa County so I can have Hawke and his partner Dani attend one in the next book. I also wanted to see if I could connect with a Nez Perce tribal member who would help me add more of the culture to my books.
As usual, I dragged my sis-in-law and brother into my hijinks. Thankfully, my brother being an artist, he understands my need to see things for my books. And I’ve taken my sis-in-law along on other research adventures. First, we made the trip out Starvation Ridge so I could see it better. I’d used Google Earth and an Oregon Gazetteer to try and come up with a plausible explanation for the car stuck between two trees in the middle of forest service land. But I wanted to see the terrain better and I’m glad I did! The way I had my character discover the vehicle wouldn’t work for the area. When I came home, I rewrote the scenes where and how the car was found. Not only did I get a good look at the area, but I got a better feel for it too. And my brother added nuances to it because the story is set in April when there would still be some snow and lots of mud. Which I had written into the story, but he explained it a little bit more. Wind can blow the snow off the very top of the ridge and it’s just mud where there is snow in the trees.
Road on Starvation Ridge
Sis-in-law and I went to the museum in Joseph to find out if there was a way to discover why the ridge was named Starvation. And while we saw some great photos of the past and learned a bit more about the county’s history, we came up empty on the reason for the name. Of course, as we were driving around up on the ridge, we came up with all kinds of grisly reasons for the name. But the next day at the suggestion of a local historian, we went to the Wallowa Museum and the woman there found a book and we discovered the reason for the name. And it was nothing like what we had thought. In fact, it was pretty pathetic. According to the book, it was named Starvation Ridge because a man named Billy Smith came up on the ridge and discovered that a large herd of sheep had eaten all the grass off the ridge. He called it Starvation Ridge and it stuck. Kind of lame and not worth putting in my story. I’ll let the readers fantasize about the name as we had.
The Tamkaliks Celebration was as moving and colorful as I remembered. I’d attended this powwow a number of years ago, but after taking a class on writing Native American characters and the teacher suggested attending powwows and taking in the ceremonies and talking to people, I decided I needed to get to this one again. I also plan to have my characters attend the powwow in the next Hawke book. The songs, the welcome they give everyone, the friendship dance (we danced), and the reverence they pay to one another was so worthwhile.
Ceremony of the riderless horse. symbolizing the ancestors and those tribal members lost the past year.
The best part of the whole day was a woman that sat down in front of us. She openly explained what was happening to those around her and taught a young couple how to say her dog’s name which meant, Moose. This isn’t how you write the word, only how you say it, “Sauce Luck.” And she taught us how to say Good Morning. Again, not the way you write it but how you say it, which she explained. “Tots MayWe.” After watching her so enthusiastically sharing her culture, I sat down beside her and thanked her for explaining things and asked if she’d be interested in helping me bring more Nez Perce culture to my books. She was excited to help me! She told me about her education and her B.S. in American Indian Studies and Business and her new job that was basically teaching the Nez Perce culture to those who were interested. We exchanged names, emails, and phone numbers. I have sent her an email and she responded right away. I’m excited to have found another connection to help me make my books true to the Nez Perce culture.
I have a write on wipe-off board that I use to keep track of my “deadlines.” These are self-imposed deadlines, because I am a self-published or Indie author. But I take keeping to my deadlines a big thing. I HATE when I miss deadlines. I, being boss and employee, beat myself up over missing them and I have a hard time when a deadline passes and see it will be at least another month before a project will be finished.
That is what has been happening with Damning Firefly. Each month, I add another month to get it written and move the rest of the projects I set as goals for the year forward.
I’ve discovered that while I believe I have lots of time to write, I find I spend a lot of time researching and promoting. The book also had to go through a tweak which added more time to the finished project. But I am on the downhill side, which means I am wrapping up the clues, tightening the handcuffs on the suspect, and hoping the twist at the end leaves the reader going, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming” or “That was a good twist.”
I want to put this book up for pre-order but with as many times as I’ve extended the writing of the book, I’m afraid I’ll miss the date. But then, I am also anxious to see what readers think of the cover and the premise. It is darker and more controversial than my usual Gabriel Hawke book. But it was an idea that came from things my parents, who have now passed, said to me at different times. And I think it is something that people in small communities will sometimes hide.
Sales and reviews will tell me if the book was a hit or a miss. There are just times when I feel like there is a story that needs to be told. It’s something that burns in my gut and comes out through my fingertips. LOL that makes me think I should write paranormal. The visual is kind of funny!
I have tried to pair humor with a darker tale in Damning Firefly and tried to show the side of the victim’s and the woman who tried to help them.
Hopefully, by my next post I’ll have a pre-order and the book will have come back from my editor and soon to be released.
After two sweet, holiday romances, I decided to dip a toe into the world of cozy mysteries. As a long-time fan of the genre, I’ve enjoyed the thread of sweet romance that is often woven throughout the stories. For me, the genre is the best of both worlds. Readers’ heartstrings are tugged as they are swept along a twisting tale riddled with suspects, clues, and red herrings. They can expect suspense without graphic violence and a nice, tidy ending. Predictable? Maybe. But many genres follow a structure that appeals to a specific audience.
Similar to sweet romance, most cozy mysteries are set in small, close-knit towns. However, I find that I have more freedom to invoke a bit more humor and fun into the story. No character should ever be perfect. Flaws are much easier to relate to. But it often seems that most of the leading ladies in romance novels are gorgeous. My heroine/sleuth, Maeve Cleary, is never described as a great beauty. Much to her mother’s dismay, she’s in desperate need of a trip to the salon to touch up her highlights and lives in worn-to-death shorts and T-shirts. But she came home to mend a broken heart, not to enter The Miss Hampton Beach beauty pageant.
Maeve introduced herself right away. She’s a woman who speaks her mind and acts on instinct. Moving in with her polished and successful mother had all the makings of a critique-laden stay. I enjoy dissecting the dynamic of mother-daughter relationships and hope readers find their back-and-forth barbs entertaining.
A Sour Note also sent me hopping from fictional towns into the real setting of Hampton Beach, NH in July. One might think building a setting from the ground up with only your imagination to depend on would prove far easier than writing about a place you know well. However, when an author creates a story world, no one can dispute what is missing or inaccurate. Writing about a popular vacation destination is filled with pressure I didn’t anticipate. In the end, I chose to invoke a creative license when writing about restaurants and other locations within the town. Readers who know the area might enjoy guessing at which places inspired a few hot spots.
My family makes several trips to Hampton every summer. When the idea for A Sour Note took shape, I couldn’t imagine choosing another setting. The sights, food, entertainment, and people watching along one of the most popular boardwalks in the nation provide everything needed for an endless stream of writing ideas. The next book in the series will require a fair amount of research because it will occur during the off-season. I look forward to a few trips north for more insight into what the town looks like when tourist numbers dwindle and am confident an empty beach has quite a bit to offer to the cozy mystery genre.
A Sour Note (A Music Box Mystery)
When murder provides a welcome distraction…
On the heels of a public, broken engagement, Maeve Cleary returns to her childhood home in Hampton Beach, NH. When a dead body turns up behind her mother’s music school, three old friends land on the suspect list. Licking her wounds soon takes a back seat to outrunning the paparazzi who spin into a frenzy, casting her in a cloud of suspicion. Maeve juggles her high school sweetheart, a cousin with a touch of clairvoyance, a no-nonsense detective, and an apologetic, two-timing ex-fiancé. Will the negative publicity impact business at the Music Box— the very place she’d hoped to make a fresh start?
If anyone else had enough nerve to presume she owed them an explanation, she would respond with a solid mind your own business. Instead, the seventeen-year-old still inside her refused to tell him to get lost. “He was hiding money in his office.” This was one of those times when learning how to wait a few beats before blurting out inflammatory information would come in handy. Each second of passing silence decreased her ability to breathe in the confined space. She turned the ignition and switched on the air conditioner.
“How do you know?” His volume just above a whisper, each dragged-out word hung in the air.
“I found it.”
“When were you in his office?” He swiped at a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his face, then positioned a vent toward him.
“Last night.” When would she learn to bite her tongue? Finn’s switch from rapid-fire scolding to slow, deliberate questioning left her unable to swallow over the sandpaper lump in her throat.
“Where was Vic?”
She stared at the back of the building, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. “He’d left for the night.” If she averted her gaze, she could pretend his eyeballs weren’t bugging out of his head, and his jaw didn’t need a crane to haul it off his chest.
“You were at the town hall after hours? Did anyone see you?”
“A custodian opened his door for me.” She snuck a glance. Sure enough, features contorted in shock and horror replaced his boy-next-door good looks.
Jill Piscitello is a teacher, author, and an avid fan of multiple literary genres. Although she divides her reading hours among several books at a time, a lighthearted story offering an escape from the real world can always be found on her nightstand.
A native of New England, Jill lives with her family and three well-loved cats. When not planning lessons or reading and writing, she can be found spending time with her family, trying out new restaurants, traveling, and going on light hikes.
Ladies of Mystery 
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