I don’t know if it’s luck or fate.
Fate: the principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do: Destiny
Luck: a force that brings good fortune or adversity- the events or circumstance that operate for or against an individual.
Over the weekend I was able to connect with a young woman who is part of the MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) movement. Through a series of emails to first authors I knew in the areas where my next Hawke book will be set, and then people who work in the domestic violence program at the reservation I was able to connect with this woman.
She filled me in on things I didn’t know about the movement. Yes, it is a movement and not an organization.
Movement: a series of organized activities working toward an objective; an organized effort to promote or attain an end.
Organization: an administrative and functional structure
These are family members of missing and murdered Indigenous people across the United States and in Canada. This has become an epidemic.
One of the things I didn’t know was how hard it is for families on Reservations to get law enforcement involved in looking for a missing woman or as they also started to use the acronym MMIP- Missing and Murdered Indigenous Person. There are also children and people of the LGBQT communities who disappear or are murdered.
My conversation with her was to help me get started on my next Gabriel Hawke book. In this book he is called to the reservation by his mother to help find the mother of a child she watches. When Hawke’s mother can’t get the tribal law enforcement or the Pendleton City Police to look for the woman, she calls her son who works for the Oregon State Police who has a dogged determination to always solve things that perplex him.
My contact is willing to help me in every way I need. She even has contacts on the tribal police and assured me she is as excited about my writing about this movement and why it’s needed in my book as I was connecting with someone who is so open and willing to help me make my book the best it can be with real facts.
I’m learning so much by writing this book and I hope I open the eyes of my readers while also entertaining them.
Writing Into The Sunset 