Tag: #GabrielHawke #Novel

Thankful

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

It’s November the month when we have a small thing called Thanksgiving. Whether you sit down with family, friends, or just yourself it seems to be the day when we think about all we are thankful for.

Of course, Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that has been spun to make us be grateful for what we have. Which is wonderful, but we, well I know I wouldn’t be here, if it hadn’t been for the Native Americans who back in 1621 helped the pilgrims make it through that first winter in North America. According to my grandmother, I have an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower. If they hadn’t lived, who knows who I would have turned out to be. Which makes me grateful that the people who lived here were willing to share with the ones who invaded their land.

I’m thankful to have been born in the decade where we have lived through so many good inventions. But lately a few too many that I’m not so excited about. I feel their need to “help us or make things easier” is making use dumber.

Being a kid in the 60’s & 70’s was like being a feral animal. LOL During the summer, I could do my chores, saddle up my horse and be gone all day riding on the mountainside. As long as I made it home to do my afternoon chores and have dinner ready when my parents got home from work, they didn’t care what I did all day. And they didn’t worry harm would come to me or my brothers as we rode cardboard boxes down a long, steep hill, fished in the stream in the cow pasture, swam in the river, and sat out at the county road trying to sell lemonade to the summer tourists.

What I’m the most thankful for is my husband who early in our marriage realized that I needed to write to not be grouchy. There were times he’d come into the house and say, “When was the last time you wrote something?” When I’d say, “A few days ago.” He’d tell me to go write. I’d drop whatever household chore I was doing and write. It is my happy place and my therapy.

I finished the 9th book in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series, Santa’s Beard, last week. It’s with my editor while I’m on a short vacation with hubby. I hadn’t planned on working on the next book in the Gabriel Hawke series until after the first of the year because I have a lot of “marketing” things I need to deal with. But not writing isn’t in me. While I was walking my dog the other day, the beginning of the next book came to me and I’ve written it down. I know it will change several times before I actually start the book, but that’s how my mind works.

Now that the starting point for the next book came to me, I’ll be running things over in my head to find the best beginning and figure out suspects. 😉 One of my favorite parts is putting together the cast of characters who might be the killer. I like to have 4 options for the killer and yet, many times it ends up being someone who I pluck out of the air and don’t realize they are the murderer until I get near the end of the book. I love it when I surprise myself! Especially, when I go back to add in the clues and realize I had added them already. That’s when I’m thankful for my subconscious!

One of the things I’m the most thankful for are the Ladies of Mystery. The authors who post on the blog monthly and share about our guest spots with other authors. Without all their wonderful posts about writing and life, this would be a boring place. Our guest bloggers are mystery and thriller writers from all over and different careers. I love learning about other writers and picking up some good reads.

What I am thankful for the most are the people who follow and read this blog and who purchase our books. Our fans are what keep us writing. Thank you to everyone out there who reads and purchases books whether they are print, ebook, or audio.

If you’d like to stay up to date with my writing or learn about how I became a write, you can subscribe to my Substack. I post all the blog posts from the Ladies of Mystery there, share author friends and their books, and of course, my newest books and sales. https://substack.com/@patyjag

Have a wonderful month and fabulous Thanksgiving!

Finding Ideas in Odd Places

~ patyjag ~ 8 Comments

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.

I HATE to miss deadlines.

~ patyjag ~ 6 Comments

I’m an Indie author. That means I make all the decisions from characters to plot to the endings of my books and when they will be published. I have a whiteboard that I use to keep track of a year’s work/publishing schedule. When I get behind or have to erase and change the dates, it makes me edgy and angry. I like to stay on schedule.

I knew the move I made in March would mess up my schedule. I made concessions for it on my whiteboard. Fast forward to June when I had expected to have a good chunk of the next Cuddle Farm book written and I was slogging in indecision.

Sorry about the reflections in the middle of the photo.

From the moment I finished book 1, Merry Merry Merry Murder, I knew what book 2 would be about. I’d run some scenes in my head and had already researched what I needed to know. I started the book, but it wasn’t flowing. Things didn’t feel right.

I took a break and went to a play with my daughter in an opera house built in 1912. I fell in love with the building and the ambiance, and then my height-conscious daughter walked along the balcony railing and was scared. The railing didn’t come to her knees, and the balcony felt as if it were pitching you forward onto the stage.

After that visit, I couldn’t stop thinking about that opera house. A story was forming in my mind and I had to go back. I bought tickets to the next play and dragged my daughter along again. The play was good, I paid more attention to the stage, the exits, and the short railing. When the play finished, we waited for everyone to leave the balcony and I did some experimenting and then we went down and I took pictures of the balcony from the stage. I wanted one for the cover the next Cuddle Farm book.

Yes, I set the book I’d been working on aside, realizing I needed more time (another book) in between book 1 and the book I’d been writing. It has to do with the discord between the main character and her sister. I wanted to show a bit of a change there before, what is now book 3, is written since it deals with the reason for the discord.

Back to my switching books. Because what had started out as book 2 was now book 3, and I had been brewing that story in my head for almost a year, I was switching to a book I hadn’t even thought of until 4 months ago. As I’d glance up at my whiteboard and see the looming date for the release of book 2 in the Cuddle Farm mysteries and I was still trying to pull all the suspects, the motive, and everything else into place so I could start writing it, my tension grew that I was going to miss the publish date and it would throw off all of the release dates through the rest of this year.

When I was complaining to a friend, she asked me, “But will it be a better book for the series if you write it now?”

My answer was yes.

“Then that’s the book you need to write and move the other publish dates out. They aren’t made in stone.”

Oh, but they are chiseled in my head. My greatest flaw is my greatest strength. I don’t like to be late for ANYTHING. It makes me nervous when I think I’m going to be late. I purposely give myself extra time for everything. And I had for book 2 in the Cuddle Farm Mysteries. But I had to wipe off my whiteboard and redesignate publish dates for this book, the next Spotted Pony Casino book, and the next Gabriel Hawke book. I wasn’t happy, and it made my stomach twist as I erased the dates and reset them.

However, this is going to be a good book and will hopefully pull more readers into this series. It also gives me more time to decide the direction I’m going with the next Spotted Pony Casino book. I’ve been back and forth on how to approach it, and hopefully by the time I am ready to start, I’ll have that story ready to rock and roll.

Transitioning

~ patyjag ~ 12 Comments

Life has chapters, just like books.

Right now I’m transitioning from rural life to town life. We purchased the house in town the fall of 2024 because we were putting our farm up for sale and wanted to know where we would be going when it sold. That chapter was exciting and full of wistfulness of finding the right home.

We did. I love the view from all of my windows. We are isolated enough that we aren’t looking into any neighbors’ windows and we have a gorgeous view of the Eagle Cap Mountains that I write about in my Gabriel Hawke books and the Elkhorns which will be referred to in my Cuddle Farm Mystery series. Out the dining room window we see a couple of rooftops and a hill my hubby knows elk are going to come over when there is a bad winter. 😉

Eagle Caps from my living room window.

It’s an older house so there has been painting, fixing, and soon a remodel because the kitchen and dining room are too small. But first I will be moved into the house by April 1st. That’s when we are to be off of our farm. Hubby will stay on helping the dairy that he’s been managing hay fields for the last twelve years. Just for this summer to help the person taking over. He’ll stay there in a mobile home on the hay ranch and come help make out new place the way we want on long weekends.

I’m excited about a smaller house to clean, I can run to the store whenever I want, not make a list when I run out of things and have to wait until someone goes to town. I’m excited for the things I can attend without having an hour drive to and from the event. I’m also close to all the areas I write about in my mystery series. That is a real plus. I hope to get to more Native American events and culture a few more connections.

Hiking a wash in Hurricane, UT.

This is not the last chapter in my life but it is certainly one of the most looked forward to. I’ll continue to write, but we also hope to do a bit more traveling around the U.S.

We spent a week last month in southern Utah, hiking in parks and enjoying the weather and scenery. We plan to do that for a couple weeks every winter to get out of the longer, colder (usually) winters than we are used to.

I’m excited to see how the changes, might enhance my stories by living so much closer and being able to do even more trips to locations. I’m only an hour and a half away from the Umatilla Indian Reservation the location of my Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series.

Right now, I’m trying to get all the rooms ready to put the furniture that will fit in and try to keep up with writing on my current book, Captured Hummingbird, book 15 in the Gabriel Hawke novels.

As a reader can you tell when a writer knows the area they are writing about?

Writers, do you like to see places first hand if you write about real places?

Welcome 2026

~ patyjag ~ 9 Comments

I wouldn’t say I’m giddy, but I am excited about 2026. I’m not sure why. In March, I will be living in town, something I only did for about a year when I was 19. I finally talked my hubby into retiring from farming, and we knew the only way he would actually get away from work was to move to town.

What he didn’t tell me, he will be staying on in a house on the farm he’s been managing next to ours for this coming hay season to help the new man taking over and to help the person who bought our place. So I will only see him a couple weekends or for a week a month until September. Not a bad thing, but I had hoped we’d make more progress on the remodeling of the house in town.

Because he will only be coming to the new house once in a while, Nia, my chiweenie, and I won’t have to cook meals, I’ll be able to do day trips to Wallowa County to research for my Gabriel Hawke books and hang out at the Umatilla Reservation, where my Spotted Pony Casino mysteries take place. Not to mention some girls’ weekends with my friends.

Oh! and a fun thing that is happening, both Crapshoot, book 7 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries and Wolverine Instincts in the Gabriel Hawke novels are semi-finalists in the CIBA Award. I’ll let you know if they become finalists. I’m not attending the conference but if one or both are finalists, I may attend the dinner and award ceremony.

But I’m also excited because I’m trying to figure out something to do to celebrate the fact that my first published book came out 20 years ago in May. I want to do something in May to celebrate. I can’t decide whether to offer 20% off all my books on my website or across all vendors. Or do a big social media campaign where I give away prizes for 20 days, or??? Does anyone here have some good suggestions?

I have also booked an event that I attended the first two years the event started. It’s called Wild Deadwood Reads and is in Deadwood, South Dakota. Those years, I hosted games on various trips the participants went on and we all went to the PBR Rodeo and sat in a section together as well as had short stories in an anthology that we sold at the event and gave proceeds to the Western Sports Foundation, an organization that helps injured rodeo athletes.

The event has been streamlined to a couple of learning days, a Saturday breakfast with authors and readers, and a full-day book signing. In the past, I took my niece and sister-in-law because it’s a two-day drive, and I didn’t want to do it alone. This year, I’m hoping a friend will go with me. On the way back, I’ll spend a night or two with a high school friend who lives about halfway between Oregon and South Dakota.

Right now, I am packing boxes for the move, about to publish the next Spotted Pony Casino Mystery, and starting the next Gabriel Hawke novel. There is always something book-related going on in my life, and that makes me happy. As my hubby noticed early in our marriage, I am happiest when I am writing.

Here is a peek at the soon-to-be-on-preorder book, Full House, book 8 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries.

When the past knocks on their door, the future they planned begins to unravel.

On the brink of their wedding, Dela Alvaro and Heath Seaver’s plans shatter when a ten-year-old boy appears, claiming to be Heath’s son. The truth is even darker: the boy’s mother—the woman Heath thought died years ago at Pine Ridge—was an FBI informant hidden under a new identity, left to raise his child alone before dying of addiction.

As Heath wrestles with awe for the son he never knew and fury at the FBI’s deception, the past turns deadly. When the agent who lied to him is found murdered in Pendleton, the FBI shows up on Dela’s doorstep, bringing danger straight to their home.

With their future on the line, Dela and Heath must confront a web of secrets before it destroys the family they’re just beginning to build.

Here’s to looking forward to the future with gusto and exuberance.