Month: October 2023

Fun Writing Things

Last month the 11th book in my Gabriel Hawke Mystery series released. It was a struggle to complete due to the complexity of the story. So far my beta readers and reviewers say I did a good job with a serious and triggering story.

Damning Firefly deals with a person of authority abusing his status and using it to sexually assault young women and teenagers. It went on for decades because no one would listen to the one person trying to stop him and the victims were ashamed or scared.

While Hawke is discovering all the sordid transgressions of the victim, he is still using his tracking and logic to find the real killer and save more lives.

Damning Firefly

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. 

Universal buy link: https://books2read.com/u/bQeBDZ

And releasing November 1st is a novella to hopefully give all my Shandra Higheagle Mystery fans more closure on that series. I released book 16, Vanishing Dream, the last book in that series, two years ago and fans still ask me for more.

Because there has been so many asking for more, I wrote a Christmas novella that is set 10 years after Vanishing Dream.

Christmas Chaos

Check out a super-special Christmas surprise— a continuation of the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series. Ten years later the twins are at college but there’s trouble brewing.

Shandra Higheagle Greer is anxiously awaiting a visit from her twins as they head home from college for Christmas break. After a ten-year absence, her deceased grandmother is back in her dreams and the message seems clear. The twins are in trouble. After giving a young woman a ride to a nearby town, they have become suspects in her murder.

Even though he’s been removed from the case, Shandra and her husband, Weippe County Sheriff Ryan Greer, continue to investigate, determined to dig up proof that the twins had nothing to do with the homicide. Even if that means putting one of the twins in danger to uncover the truth.

I don’t have a pre-order link. If you want to know when it releases, you can follow me on this blog or sign up for my newsletter – https://bit.ly/2IhmWcm

Other fun stuff, I’ll be at an author promotion and marketing conference the second week of November and on November 10th I’ll be part of a 300 author book signing at the Horseshoe Casino in Vegas. There will be door prizes and raffles as well as authors selling and signing books. It is a big party all day long! What else would you expect from an event in Vegas! You can learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ravevegasauthorsigning

And then! I’m home for 4 days and I’ll be at the Portland Holiday Market at the Portland Expo Center from Nov. 17th- 19th at the NIWA (Northwest Independent Writers Association) booth. I’ll have book bundles for gifts or for yourself and freebies. Stop in if you’re in the Portland, OR area.

As soon as I get all my Shandra Higheagle and Gabriel Hawke audiobooks uploaded in box sets, I’ll start writing The Pinch. The next book in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series. This is the book a friend and I went to the Oregon Coast to research. She kept telling everyone we were there for murder and mayhem! Which was kind of true. We talked to casino security guards, checked for security cameras, and skulked about hallways and places that I thought Dela, my character, might need to know about. It was a fun weekend.

Indigenous Peoples Day

As a writer of Native American characters in my books, and not being Native American, I keep abreast of all the ways Indigenous people are being heard and seen. In fact, that is the main reason for my three mystery series. I started the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series with the desire to write about a culture I have been in awe with my whole life. And have felt have been unjustly treated.

My mystery books are not only written with a twisty mystery, but I also deliver a small amount of Indigenous culture and what they deal with from people who don’t care to understand their culture. Shandra Higheagle had a Nez Perce father and a White mother. I had her raised in the white world and brought her back to her Nez Perce family as an adult. Having her learn about her culture as I did.

My Gabriel Hawke books, I have a character with a Nez Perce Father and a Cayuse/Umatilla mother. He grew up on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla reservation but went straight into the Marines from high school and from there straight into the Oregon State Police, living off the reservation. He as he is aging and seeing an end to his career as a trooper is returning to his culture. Which again, allows me to learn more and bring it to my readers through his eyes and emotion.

The third series, Spotted Pony Casino, is set on the Umatilla Reservation in a fictional casino. My main character grew up on the reservation but with a White mother and she believed a Hispanic father. While she was around the culture, they didn’t embrace it in their home. Once again, I can show the reservation life and the culture through this character’s eyes and the secondary characters in her life. For this series I also subscribe to the reservation newspaper as well as I have contacts that I use to help me keep the lifestyle and culture as accurate as I can while not living there or being of the culture.

Today is a day where we recognize and appreciate the Indigenous People of this continent. But it shouldn’t happen on one day. It should be something that is honored and recognized every day. Their beliefs in nature and how they are trying to preserve it along with their family values are something many of us have lost.

I hope you read a book or watch a movie with Native American characters or discuss this day and keep learning about their cultures today.

Special Guest and Friend, Carmen Peone

Carmen Peone’s series Seven Tines Ranch are sweet contemporary romance books that deal with abusive relationships. I’m happy to share my blog space with her and her books and hope they help women in similar situations.

Cowgirls with Grit

You gotta love cowgirls with grit.

They are hardworking, super businesswomen, dedicated, and beautiful – inside and out.

You might hear one saying something like:

A woman who wears spurs gets the job done.

Dwellin’ on lost love leaves no room for future romance.

Ridin’ the gossip wagon is not group therapy.

You might see one of them:

Carrying a flag, turning a can, wearing a crown, or roping a calf.

You might even find one, like my heroine, Rita Runninghorse, roping several calves, giving them shots, tending to bovine and equine wounds and illness, fixing fence, herding cattle, and baking her favorite dessert.

Check out the opening scene of my latest novel, Broken Bondage.

 Early October

Umatilla Indian Reservation, Eastern Oregon

“You dirty bugger, git over here!” Henry, the red-and-white

calf Rita Runninghorse had secretly named,

darted sideways as she winced at the pain in her sides,

gathered her lariat, and tried for another loop.

Her head pounded from when her fiancé, Bowie Dark

Cloud, had slammed her against the door of his pickup

earlier that morning and crushed her against a stall door two

days ago.

Concentration eluded her, and her timing dragged

like the sludge of cold cowboy coffee at day’s end. Dusk’s

chilly breath hovering over the rolling hills of the Columbia

Plateau country on her father’s ranch failed to help matters.

“Come on, Opal, let’s get ’im this time.” She swung her

lasso overhead and spurred her smokey grulla mare into a

gallop, close on the calf ’s tail. With her horse staying on him,

she landed the loop over its head and reined her mare to the

right. Th e jerk of the rope when her horse skidded to a halt

caught her breath.

The calf balked on the other end of the rope as Rita jumped

off, and her backside landed on the wet ground. Could this

day get any worse? She pushed to her feet, wobbled toward

the wide-eyed little one, and flopped him to the ground with

a deep groan. Good grief. Her father could’ve built a smaller

holding pen.

“Sorry, little man,” she said, thankful for the fall calf ’s

small size. “You shouldn’t have run from me.”

Rita pulled a short piggin’ string from her back pocket

and tied the critter’s legs together. Seconds later, he finally

quit fighting her. Th e cut on his leg was nastier than she’d

suspected. She went to one of her saddlebags and retrieved a

syringe and a bottle of penicillin. His round eyes watched her

while she cleaned the crusty wound, a low bellow escaping

his mouth.

Inhaling his earthy scent, she gave him a shot of antibiotic,

massaged the injection site, and untied his legs. “All better

now.”

Carmen’s Latest Book

Broken Bondage

A Road Trip to Redemption

Rita Runninghorse is about to marry the wrong guy. She has to get away from him. Now. She flees to a guest ranch in Eastern Washington State that offers a safe haven for women in need only to find the owner on a month-long speaking tour.

Robert Elliot has one thing on his mind: bronc riding. The Indian National Finals Rodeo is within reach, and he’s not about to let anything ruin his chances of going pro. Not even the woman he finds asleep in the stall of their rankest horse. 

When Rita’s fiancé discovers where she’s hiding out, she takes Robert’s offer to go with him on the road and prays her fiancé gives up the hunt. Saddled together, Rita and Robert must rely on each other as they go on the road to keep her alive.

Grab your copy now!

About Carmen

Carmen Peone is an award-winning author of Young Adult and Inspirational Western Romantic Suspense and lives with her husband in Northeast Washington and on the Colville Confederated Indian Reservation. With the love of history and the Western woman’s lifestyle, she weaves threads of healing, hope, and horses, with threads of love, of course, into her stories.

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