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.
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?
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.
I had a reader ask me how I come up with my characters. Last month I wrote about how I came up with Shandra Higheagle, my main character in the Shandra Higheagle Mysteries.
This month I’ll tell you how I came up with Gabriel Hawke, the main character in the Gabriel Hawke Novels. How I came up with names and secondary characters.
To start with, I wanted to set a series in the county where I grew up. I love the mountains, the valleys, the rivers, and the lakes. Wallowa County is beautiful year-round. Growing up in a small community, you learn the dynamics quickly. There are people whose families homesteaded; they feel the county is theirs. Anyone who moves in is an outsider until they have lived there for several generations It’s just the way it is. That makes for conflicts and misunderstandings. And small communities have secrets. Some are a hundred years old and some aren’t that old, but they are there and you know in a rural area, gossip moves faster than an F-16. Those were part of the reasons I picked this county for my setting. That and I wanted a Game Warden and have deaths in the mountains.
I asked my son-in-law if I could ride along with an Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Trooper. He set it up, and I spent a day riding around the county, learning what the job entailed, and I knew this was my character’s occupation. The trooper I rode with told me about how he could go from one corner of the county to the opposite one in one day, checking hunting tags or doing a callout. The county is 3,152 square miles. So it could take several hours to go from one corner to the other because most of the roads are gravel or logging roads that he navigates.
While riding with him, he told me stories about some incidents that he helped with and told how he not only does his job as a Fish and Wildlife officer, he also has to do the job of a State Trooper because the county is so large yet only has a population of 7,500, so there are few county and state law enforcement officers. In fact, there are four main towns in the county and only one has city police. It is the county seat.
My friend author Carmen Peone took this photo for me.
Now for Hawke. Because Wallowa County was the summer and winter home of the Wallowa band of Nimiipuu, or Nez Perce, I wanted my character to be of that tribe and to protect the land and animals of his ancestors. I gave him a backstory of growing up on the Umatilla Reservation outside of Pendleton- 3 hours from Wallowa County. His mother is Cayuse and his father was from the Nimiipuu Lapwai Reservation in Idaho. He excelled in sports in high school and went on to join the Marines. He was there four years and came back to Oregon and entered the Oregon State Police Academy. His first job was patrolling I-84 between La Grande and Hermiston — that meant he could live on the reservation and work.
He met a woman, married her and then ended up arresting her brother for drugs. She left him and when there was an opening in the Wallowas, he applied and got it. He isn’t a young trooper. He’s actually been a trooper long enough he could retire. He’s in his late fifties, getting closer to sixty, but he loves his job.
This was all the information I knew when I started writing the first book, Murder of Ravens.
I started that book with him being a mature single man living in a studio apartment over an indoor horse arena. He has a horse, a mule, and a dog. Since he isn’t one to get caught up in names, his horse is Jack, the name he had when Hawke purchased him. The mule came without a name, and after Hawke dealt with its cantankerous disposition, he named the mule Horse, hoping it would act more like a horse than a stubborn mule. And Dog is his constant companion when he’s out in the mountains or at home. When the animal came to him when he said, “Come Dog,” Hawke decided the name was good enough.
The horse stable where Hawke lives is part of a farm run by Herb and Darlene Trembley. Over the years, the landlords have become friends and an excellent resource for Hawke when he’s looking into families with history in the county. They grew up here, and their families have been in the county for generations.
While patrolling in the Wallowa Mountains and Eagle Cap Wilderness, Hawke enjoys the freedom of wearing his civilian clothes so poachers won’t take pot shots at him. He takes Dog with him, rides Jack, and packs Horse. They are a smooth-working team when Horse is having a good day. Hawke loves being in the mountains and takes all the patrols that he can.
While in the mountains investigating a death at Charlie’s Hunting Lodge, he butts heads with the new owner, Charlie’s niece, Dani Singer. Initially, they don’t get along and don’t understand one another. Hawke is trying to reconnect with his heritage, and she has run from it her whole life, pretending she wasn’t Indigenous, to not be tossed aside when she applied for the Air Force Academy. She made it in and became a skilled pilot. Since retiring from the Air Force, she uses that skill to fly clients into the Hunting Lodge with her plane and helicopter. As the series progresses, so does their admiration for one another.
The other secondary characters who show up in most of the books are Kitree, the girl who outfoxes Hawke in Book 2, Mouse Trail Ends. She ends up an orphan when her parents are killed while camping in the mountains. She is adopted by Tuck and Sage Kimball, Dani’s wrangler and cook at the hunting lodge.
His mother, Mimi Shumack, still lives at the Umatilla Reservation. He visits her often. She is a big part of who he is as an adult. She remarried when Hawke’s father left and had a daughter who is ten years younger than Hawke. The stepfather was a mean drunk. This shaped who Hawke is today.
Then I had to discover how many city police, county officers, and state police are in the county. I gave them all names, and they come and go in each book depending on what is happening.
Hawke’s personality is quiet, reflective. He rarely loses his temper unless he sees an animal or person being mistreated. He believes in taking care of the land and animals to keep nature at peace. He upholds the laws but will bend the law if it will catch a killer. He has tracking skills he uses not only to follow tracks but also to follow the trail of clues he uncovers while investigating. His need to find the truth or evidence can sometimes get him into trouble, but he manages with the help of Dog and friends to get out of it.
If you haven’t had the chance to read one of Hawke’s books, you can find Murder of Ravens at my website in ebook, audiobook, and print.
Murder of Ravens
The ancient art of tracking is his greatest strength…
And his biggest weakness.
Fish and Wildlife State Trooper Gabriel Hawke believes he’s chasing poachers.
However, he encounters a wildlife biologist standing over a body wearing a wolf tracking collar.
He uses master tracker skills taught to him by his Nez Perce grandfather to follow clues on the mountain. Paper trails and the whisper of rumors in the rural community where he works, draws Hawke to a conclusion that he finds bitter.
Arresting his brother-in-law ended his marriage, could solving this murder ruin a friendship?
There’s a bundle of holiday gifts coming your way!
I’m joining eleven other fabulous, award-winning, and best-selling mystery authors for a 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS STORY GIVEAWAY.
Here’s how it will work:
For eleven days starting December 1st, you’ll receive a link for a completely free holiday story–no newsletter signups necessary. Then, on the 12th day, you’ll get a bundle of extra goodies to celebrate the season
When I learned about an event that is held every year in the area where I set my Gabriel Hawke novels, I decided I would write a book around that event. How hard could it be to have my character, who is a Fish and Wildlife State Trooper, become involved with finding a person or a killer during a sled dog race competition?
Well… Let me tell you, now that I’ve been digging into the logistics, the multitude of volunteers, the less than 60 hours for the total of the 200 mile race, and that doesn’t even count the weather conditions, I’m starting to wonder if this was a good idea.
Map of the race
I’ve had my first interview with a person who has volunteered for this event for 20 years. She gave me some good insight into logistics and more people I will need to interview. This book won’t be ready to write for at least two more weeks as I talk to the head of technology, mushers, the race marshal, and judge.
What had started out as a “fun idea” has now blossomed into much more of a project. I can’t even start my suspect chart or decide how someone would be murdered or missing without doing all the research. There are so many uncertainties that I can’t even begin to fathom what the motive would be.
This is so out of the norm for what I normally do when writing a book in this series. By the time I’m ready to start writing the book, I have mulled over every aspect of the death, did the bit of research I needed and am ready to roll.
Now I sit, watching one more video, reading one more blog, and waiting to interview people so I can start this book. The next book my fans are waiting for me to publish. But as I dabble in the research, waiting to do the interviews, I may have to start working on the next Cuddle Farm Mystery book or even the next Spotted Pony Casino Mystery book, because my hands and imagination can’t sit idle for that long.
Depositphoto
I’ve already learned a lot that I didn’t know. Especially, about the dogs. A good mushing dog isn’t big and thick. It’s long and lean, like a marathon runner. They have high energy and stamina. The Alaskan Husky is nothing like the Siberian Husky. The Alaskan has been bred through the centuries to be fast and tough. They have a multitude of breeds in them that make them the marathoners that they are.
Now I need to learn more about the tracking of the participants during the race, the area where they sleep, and why someone, in a sport where you are dependent on one another to survive, would kill.
Ladies of Mystery 
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