Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 50 + novels, novellas, and short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.
Can you believe it is the third month of the year already? This year is flying by and I’m feeling behind. I’m starting off the year with some packed months and that’s why it goes so fast. I am working on a short story for another Windtree Press Anthology. This one ties into the Spotted Pony Casino mystery books. I’m also working on the next book in that series- Crap Shoot. I love figuring out stories that go with the gambling terms I picked to use as titles for this series.
This month you can find me at the Left Coast Crime Conference in Denver, CO from the 13th-15th. I’ll be on two panels: Thursday 3:34-4:30 the panel is Animal Sidekicks and Friday 2:45-3:30 it’s Crime in Small Towns: settings, secrets, scandals. I’m also hosting a coffee and tea gathering at the coffee bar Friday afternoon from 4:00-4:45 and hosting a table at the banquet on Saturday night with author Sheri Lewis Wohl.
The conference is always a fun time to connect with author friends and readers.
I am also part of a book signing at And Books, Too! in Clarkston, WA with author Carmen Peone on March 22nd from 1-3 pm.
Today is the last day to get Stolen Butterfly, book 7 in the Gabriel Hawke novels in audiobook for $2.99.
Missing or Murdered
When the local authorities tell State Trooper Gabriel Hawke’s mother to wait 72 hours before reporting a missing Umatilla woman, she calls her son and rallies members of the community to search.
Hawke arrives at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation and learns the single mother of a boy his mom watches would never leave her son. Angered over how the local officials respond to his investigating, Hawke teams up with a security guard at the Indian casino and an FBI agent. Following the leads, they discover the woman was targeted by a human trafficking ring at the Spotted Pony Casino.
Hawke, Dela Alvaro, and FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce join forces to bring the woman home and close down the trafficking operation before someone else goes missing.
Later this month at this URL IndieAudiobookDeals.com you can also purchase the first three audiobooks of the Shandra Higheagle Mysteries for $4.99. That starts March 20th and runs through April 2nd.
I’ve finished Merry Merry Merry Murder book 1 in the Cuddle Farm Mysteries. I’m planning a big Christmas in July event on my author Facebook page. Follow me there so you can win prizes and free copies of the book. Author Paty Jager
And if you want to keep up with my writing and the specials I have along with getting your name in the drawing for a free mug you can join my newsletter: https://bit.ly/2IhmWcm
We arrived in Santander and my niece, Izzy picked us up from the airport. We drove to her house and settled in.
The next day another niece, Emmy and her daughter Loreto drove us to the beach at Somo. The day wasn’t warm enough to strip down, but we enjoyed walking along the beach with a few other beachgoers and surfers.
We saw an old capsized boat out in the surf and watched a few boats go by. On the other side of the bay sat Santander.
I was fascinated by the tractors driving on the beach using a rock picker to pick up trash.
After an hour or so on the beach, we loaded back up and drove to Santander.
We walked the promenade, saw an old church and abbey, then strolled around the town.
This pool was along the promenade
This carousel was in the middle of a small park along the waterfront.
We had lunch at a restaurant inside an old marketplace. In the front of the restaurant, they had this case of tapas.
My niece ordered croquetas (a bechamel sauce with ham rolled in crumbs and fried) for us to try. They were delicious.
croquetas
tomato salad with tuna
I thought I’d ordered a salad with tomatoes and ham. It turned out to be a plate full of sliced tomatoes with tuna and pickled onions. It was delicious but it was a while before I could eat another tomato!
After walking through two more plazas, we headed to the car and drove to a mall. It was Izzy’s birthday and we wanted to purchase a birthday gift for her. She had mentioned she was down on wine glasses from people breaking them at barbeques and dinners, so we purchased some for her gift.
I noticed two National Police standing outside of a store in the mall. They were intimidating. Later when I told my niece and her husband, they said something must have been happening for there to have been to National Police in the mall. I’m glad we made our purchase and left!
We ended the day with a nice meal and visit with my niece and her family.
The next day Izzy and her husband took us to a couple of older villages around Santander. The first village had cobbled streets and small stores full of souvenirs.
We watched a bride arrive for a traditional wedding at the church. Bagpipes played as the bride and groom stood facing the church with their families and friends all around them. I was surprised to hear bagpipes but my niece’s husband told us that the northern part of Spain has a Celtic heritage from the people arriving from the Atlantic Ocean down from the United Kingdom. That was interesting to learn.
The backside of the church.
We walked the streets waiting for a magic show to start in the village square. My niece’s daughters were enthralled with the performance. While they watched the show, Angie, Rietta, and I walked through a free museum that had centuries-old tools, and photos from the time the first camera captured images to now.
Looking down on the square from the museum.
From there we drove to another village with a traditional restaurant. We had fried calamari, croquetas, and blood sausage (it was made with rice, onions and spices and fried). Then we had bean soup. It’s a soup with white beans, kale, bacon chunks, and spices. It was very good!
After lunch, we went to Comillas. Here we did a tour of the Sobrellano Palace. It was built for the Marquise of Comillas, Antonio Lopez Lopez. From there we spotted a house designed for one of the Marquise’s friends by architect Antoni Gaudi who built the church we saw in Barcelona.
Sobrellano Palace
It was an explosion of sunflower tile; greens and yellows. The outside made me smile. The inside wasn’t as fantastic as the outside. It was inviting and a place I wouldn’t mind living. The rooms weren’t large but they all had great views and plenty of light. The conservatory wasn’t huge either.
Gaudi House
Eating in Spain took some getting used to. There is only a small breakfast of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate with toast, a sweet roll, or cookies. About the time we would normally eat lunch there is a snack of coffee, tea, or milk with a Spanish omelet or bread. Lunch is around 2 pm and around the time of our dinner time they have a light snack then eat dinner at 8pm. We had the hardest time with the 8 pm dinner. It wasn’t large but it was later than I eat. I have dinner at 6 and don’t eat anything else until morning.
On the last day in Santander, we drove to a high hill to take in the vistas around the area. The tree-covered hills (they call mountains) were a gorgeous green and even though it was a day with fog or mist, it was beautiful. From this vantage point we could see Santander and all the villages we’d walked through, even where my niece lived. It was chilly at the top and we had hot chocolate as we chatted.
We returned home and my niece sent us off with her husband while she prepared the Sunday meal we would share with her sister and her family. Oscar took us to a neighboring village that has a natural zoo, I guess you would call it. The animals are all in large fields with high fences to keep them in and people out. You can purchase a ticket to ride a tram over the fields and see the animals. But Oscar knew a road that took us up alongside the fence to see the elephants. The elephant looked red because it had been dusting with the red soil in the area.
We visited with the elephant and took photos before we joined him at a small café for rabats- it’s a two in the afternoon snack of calamari and a drink.
We returned to the house to find Emmy and her family had arrived. We all sat down to a meal of roasted chicken and potatoes (white and sweet), a pasta salad, bread, and olives. The food was delicious. Dessert was zucchini bread and a traditional Spanish dessert her oldest daughter loves. I can’t remember the name of it and I forgot to write it down while on the trip.
Late in the evening, we went to Lierganes where we had churros and chocolate before walking around the town and listening to a live band.
Looking from a bridge in Lierganes.
The next day we boarded a plane early in the day headed for London, England. Where we would spend a night and take the train to Bath.
I’m excited to say that book # 13 in the Gabriel Hawke Novels has been released and you can get it in ebook and print. My narrator Larry Gorman is working on the audio version this month.
This book marks my 60th published novel-length book! I might just make 100 published books by the time I can’t write anymore.
Wolverine Instincts was a book that I found hard to write, only because most of it is up in the Eagle Cap Wilderness and I had to rely on Google Earth and photographs to try and get the setting as realistic as I could.
Here is the cover and blurb:
“In the heart of the wilderness, the hunter becomes the hunted.“
Gunshots shatter the quiet of Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness, drawing Oregon State Trooper Gabriel Hawke into action. Following the sound, he stumbles upon a shredded cage, the sharp musk of a wolverine, and a dead hiker.
Tracking footprints through the rugged terrain, Hawke uncovers a second victim. It’s clear—he’s hunting a killer who’s hunting humans.
With Dog by his side, Hawke’s search leads to two brothers, one gravely injured. Enlisting the help of pilot Dani Singer, he gets the injured man to safety before returning to the wilderness.
Teaming up with a reclusive, disabled veteran who knows the Eagle Cap as well as he does, Hawke pieces together the killer’s twisted game. They suspect a poacher—one as ruthless and elusive as the wolverine he’s still chasing.
In a deadly wilderness where survival is the only rule, Hawke must outsmart a predator who knows no bounds.
Today, 2/5/2025 is the last day you can purchase House Edge in audiobook for the low price of $1.99 at my website or $2.99 at major audiobook vendors as part of the Indie Audiobook Deals that I’ve been participating in. We are a group of Indie Authors with audiobooks that are distributed wide, not only at Audible.
Starting tomorrow, Feb. 6th you can purchase book 1 of my Shandra Higheagle mystery series, Double Duplicity in audiobook for $0.99! Either at my website or the Indie Audiobook Deals. Stay tuned for more of these Indie Audiobook deals. I’m thinking about making my Gabriel Hawke audiobook bundles only available through my website at a great price. I’ll have more about that next month.
If you happen to live on the west side of Oregon, I’ll be at the Friends of the Lebanon Library Author Fair on February 22nd. Not only will I have my books there for sale, I’m giving a talk about conjuring up a mystery. Some of the things you need to write a mystery and how I use them in coming up with mystery stories. My talk starts at 2:30pm.
I finished book 1 in the upcoming Cuddle Farm Mysteries that will be released in July. Merry Merry Merry Murder was fun to write. I enjoyed coming up with the therapy animals and the fictional small-town setting. Here’s the logo for the series. The cover isn’t quite fine tuned yet.
We had snow dumped on use yesterday! The winter had been fairly mild other than a couple of weeks below freezing. Now we have 16 inches of snow and they say more is coming. It makes chores a little harder but it is pretty to look at! This snow is so wet that when you look at it, you see blue in the in the indentions. Like you would see looking at a glacier. It’s pretty. I need to try to take a photo of it.
Stay safe and warm and grab a good book to get you through the winter.
Day seven of our trip we rose at 3:30 am and Janneke and Cor took us to the airport. Our flight to Barcelona, Spain left at 6 am. We arrived in Barcelona around 9 am and boarded an airport shuttle bus to get us to the main terminal. At the terminal, we looked for where we would fly out the next day on our way to Santander. Once we felt confident and figured out what time we’d need to arrive at the airport, we took a bus to the hotel.
We were lucky enough to check in early. We deposited our bags and found the closest hop on hop off bus to see the city sights.
At one of the squares we hopped off and ate at the Hard Rock Café. The food was good and it had outdoor seating. We watched the buses filled with tourists like us go by as well as many pedestrians and cars.
We hopped on a different color line bus to see another part of the city. This bus took us to the Sabrado Familia church. The building was an oddity to say the least. The architect Antoni Gaudi designed the church. It has so many things happening it is almost a train wreck but then you also see the beauty in the lines and his genius in pulling it all together.
every side of the church was different
We hopped back on the bus and got off at the Poble Espanyol. It was like walking into a castle only the streets were lined with small shops that depicted various places on the Iberian Peninsula in the 17 and 1800’s.
One lane had colorful umbrellas hanging over the cobblestone street. As we were touring the area it started raining. We popped into a shop to wait the rain out and had a nice conversation with the woman who worked there. The rain let up and moved on, taking a stroll through the museum of modern art.
Leaving the art museum the rain had let up so we ventured up to the Monastery of Saint Miguel.
The rain started up as we began our walk down to our hotel. We were soaked by the time we were halfway back to where we’d planned to eat. We sat in a restaurant in a large mall, soaked and our hair stringy as we ate.
After hot showers, we ended the day happy to be able to sleep in the next day before our afternoon flight to Santander. We rehashed the things we saw and what we each liked the best from our wonderful day of discovering Barcelona.
2025 is here. There was a time when I thought that year was a long way in the future. And now, here it is!
I’m excited to get this year rolling. You can now purchase my books in print, ebook, or audiobook direct from my website! It took a few months at the end of last year for me to get it all set up and my web guy to set it up on my website but you can now purchase any book or version of the book you want direct from me.
If you buy a print book, I will autograph it, add a couple of pieces of swag, and ship it to you for free.
The perk of purchasing the audiobooks from me is the price is lower on my website than on the vendors, unless I’m doing a specific sale. Because I cut out the middleman I can make more by giving you a deal on the audiobooks.
And the ebooks are the same price, but if you subscribe to my newsletter, you will be able to get new releases before anyone who purchases from a store and they will be a dollar cheaper for a limited time.
So if you aren’t already signed up to get my monthly newsletter which by the way, also gets you a free book or short story from an author who writes similar books to my Gabriel Hawke series, and you get a chance to win a mug. Each month I’m giving away a coffee mug. This month it’s a Gabriel Hawke mug. February is one with artwork from a local artist.
This month I am starting a new series and first book. I may be crazy but the idea came to me for a cozy mystery that I haven’t been able to figure out how to bring in the Native American element I have in the other mysteries, but I’m hoping the crazy cast of critters will be enough to draw readers in.
The title of the new series is Cuddle Farm Mysteries. The main character, Andi Clark, is a widow who owns a group of therapy animals. She goes to schools, hospitals, nursing homes, shelters, parties, and events with her van and animals. During the course of these adventures they will get caught up in a murder some way or another.
Here are her therapy animals:
LULU – a dapple brown and black female Chiweenie with long hair who barks at men but loves women and children.
COCOA – a brown and white female border collie who herds the other animals into the van.
ATHENA – Golden Retriever/Pyrenees mix. She keeps watch over the other animals.
SPARKY – a male mini donkey who likes to steal things.
CUPCAKE – a female black and white pygmy goat who eats anything she can get between her lips.
FLOPPSIE – a female brown and white dwarf lop-eared bunny who can get out of any cage she doesn’t want to be in.
CHICKLET – a female checkerboard silky chicken with crazy head feathers and eyes that hide behind her feathers but she sees everything.
While I’m writing the first book now, it won’t be out until next October. It will take a while to decide on the cover and what things I want to focus on for the cover elements going forward as a series.
Cousin Wanda picked us up for a day in Amsterdam. She dropped us off near the Rijks Museum and we walked across the park in front of the beautiful building that houses the museum. I enjoy looking at art, it jogs my creative side and makes me come up with stories to go with pieces that catch my eye.
Ryjks Museum
The museum was huge with lots of great art and collections to wander through. My 16-year-old granddaughter wanted to know why they always painted the women half-dressed in the old paintings. I couldn’t give her a definite answer because I’m not sure, but she was happy that they looked like real people and not models.
I enjoyed many of the landscapes, especially those by Johan H. Weissenbruch. We grabbed a snack in an out-of-the-way alcove before meeting with Wanda outside the museum.
From here we walked through Amsterdam to the Anna Frank House.
We stopped at a few shops along the way. Rietta went into a Lego store looking for a gift for her brother who likes Legos and then into a rubber duck store so she could get her brother’s girlfriend a rubber duck dressed in a Dutch outfit.
The Anna Frank House is now surrounded by a large glass building. First, you get a headset that when you enter a room either starts playing information that pertains to what you are looking at or you can punch in the number that is placed on the wall to start the dialog. All the information was interesting and kept my attention.
After you go through the information leading up to the war the self-guided tour takes you through the house where Anna and her family hid. Photos weren’t allowed.
The Anna Frank Museum is a reminder to always be watchful for those who wish to take over or treat others as less than human. It doesn’t matter their religion, race, or culture, every person is a human being.
We finished our day by going to an Italian Restaurant. There is something about foreign food in foreign countries that makes other cultures’ food not taste the same. Angie, Rietta, and I all commented on it after having Chinese and Italian food in Holland. Neither one tasted the same as what you get in America. I don’t know if it’s because the country you are in puts their own cultural spin on the foods or what.
I couldn’t get over the bicycles stacked everywhere. This was a parking area for them.
No matter what food we ate we enjoyed most of it and were thankful to be able to make this trip.
The following day Janneke and Cor took us to Volendam. It’s an old fishing village that is now a tourist attraction. We walked along the streets and shops, purchasing mementos and taking in the sites.
We had lunch at the Flying Dutchman Restaurant.
Waling around we saw sailing ships and fishing boats. Angie encounter this stoic woman of the sea and took up a pose next to her.
Rietta, Angie, and I dressed up in historical Volendam clothing and had our photo taken.
The day was fun and we learned more about Dutch culture.
Afterward, we took boxes with the souvenirs we’d purchased and Rietta’s 52 bags of hagelslag (real chocolate sprinkles) to the post office.
It was less expensive for my daughter to have Rietta purchase and ship the hagelslag than for her to buy it in the United States. I’m sure her kids were happy to see that box arrive!
That was the end of our visit to Holland. we had a wonderful time and it was fun connecting with my husband’s family again after not seeing them for awhile.
Merry Christmas or Holiday that you celebrate this time of year!
It’s hard to believe that this year is nearly over. It was filled with fun, new friends, new books, and great opportunities.
We started off the new year with a trip New Mexico and Texas to visit family. Might as well go where it’s warmer in the winter. 😉
photo from our trip
I attended a new author event in Lebanon, Oregon, held by the Lebanon Library. It was a fun event and one I’m doing again in 2025.
I joined an authors group who promote audiobooks, trying to get more sales of my audiobooks. I think it’s helping and we’ll be even better in the coming year when I can sell the audiobooks direct from my website.
In April I attended the Left Coast Crime conference in Seattle. It is always fun seeing author friends and meeting new readers. I’ll be headed to Denver this March for this same conference. They move around every year. I also had a wonderful week-long Oregon Coast trip with my friends. I write and then we go out and have fun. I like to do this twice a year but because of my Europe trip this year we only made it to the beach the one time.
May was a busy month promoting books and selling books. I attended the Beaver-con a mini comic con held for the first time in Central Oregon. I manned a booth for NIWA (Northwest Independent Writers Association) selling my books and those of other NIWA members. Then the end of the month I attended the Memorial Weekend Sumpter Flea Market as author Mary Vine and I have done for nearly ten years. This year it was poorly attended. We managed to sell books but not like normally.
June was another busy month with manning a NIWA booth at the La Pine Rhubarb Festival, promoting and writing books, and being one of the speakers at a conference in Beaverton.
July was a writing month. I sat down and wrote every day to get a book finished so I could attended the Tamkaliks Powwow in Wallowa Oregon. And July started my trekking around Oregon judging at county fairs. The categories I judge are sewing, crocheting, knitting, cake decorating, foods, art, photography, writing, and various other things like leathercraft and pottery. If it’s a small county with only one or two items then I do my best to judge the items.
fishing platforms on the Deschutes River
August more county fairs and the state fair where I judged writing. The month ended with our Labor Day Flea Market in Sumpter. It was poorer attended than Memorial Day. We are rethinking whether or not to continue with this event. They have started a new one on July 4th that sounds like it is gaining in popularity and we may switch to that once a year.
September is the month I waited for all year! My oldest daughter, a granddaughter, and I set out on my bucket list adventure. We started in the Netherlands where we stayed with one of my husband’s cousins. She and another cousin took us around the Amsterdam area. I’ve been writing about the trip on posts here. You can go back and read about them and continue reading about them as I will have several posts. From Netherlands we went to Spain where we stayed with one of my nieces. From Spain we went to England, specifically Bath. And then the train to Scotland.
scenic Ireland view
October found us in Ireland. We had a week in Ireland and enjoyed every minute of it. When I returned from my trip, Hubby and I looked at houses that interested us in Baker City. OR. We found one that ticked off all buy one box and decided to go for it. We now own the house we will be moving into in a couple of years when he retires from his current job. We rounded out the busy month of October with a family reunion.
November was all about writing and selling books at two large holiday events. I had a booth with another author at the Redmond Holiday Market and then manned a NIWA booth at the Portland, OR Expo for their Holiday Market.
This month was all about finishing book 13 in the Gabriel Hawke series. And celebrating the holiday with family.
This month I have audiobooks,Yuletide Slaying(Shandra Higheagle Mystery) Poker Face (Spotted Pony Casino Mystery) and Murder of Ravens (Gabriel Hawke novels) on sale for $0.99 through Kobo. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the books or start listening to the books in audio, now is your chance! I even have the second books, House Edge and Mouse Trail Ends, on sale for $1.99 through Kobo.
The fourth day of our trip, Janneke’s brother Bert picked us up with his boat in the canal behind her house. We saw beautiful homes along the way. Lots of bike riders and joggers were on the paths and roads alongside the canals. Teams of rowers were practicing on the canals as well.
Houseboats of all shapes and sizes lined the water on the way to Amsterdam and as we entered the city. Some were gorgeous and others could have used some help. Most of them had large windows and the houses looked like ones you would see in a magazine. So pristine and well decorated. Some even had small gardens on their docks or roofs.
In Amsterdam, there were more houseboats to view a as well as the old, tall, narrow buildings. In all our travels around Spain, England, Scotland, and Ireland, Holland was the only place were we saw the tall narrow buildings. We spotted one building dated in the 1500s and more in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds.
The streets and bridges were filled with bicycles. Either ones that people were riding or ones that were parked. I think there were more bikes than cars. People sat along the canals enjoying a beverage or food at the restaurants.
The canals were narrow in some spots in the city. Because it was a weekend there were lots of people enjoying an outing on the canals. Several times I thought Bert would run into the back of another boat or get too close to one passing by. He would just grin and act as if he meant to get that close but I’m still not sure if he really could handle the boat that well or if we were just lucky.
Once we left the narrow canals and moved out into a large more open area with cruise ships, barges, fancy hotels and buildings along the edges of the waterway, we saw a large sailing vessel that would have been used in the 1800s.
We also saw a large building with swings on top of it. The contraption would load people on the swings on the rooftop, then tip out over the edge of the building swinging the people back and forth. That wasn’t something anyone in the boat wanted to do!
There were still so many flowers in bloom during our visit that the streets were a flurry of color. The flowers in planters along the bridges over the canals, in pots on balconies as well as the colorful buildings, modes of transportation, and people made every scene look like a painting.
After the boat ride, we drove to Nes aan de Amstel and climbed the church tower. The stairs weren’t too bad but the last part of the climb was straight up a metal ladder. There was one spot where the climb was through a tight spot. My fuzzy jacket caught on the old wood of the wall and for a moment I thought I was going to be stuck halfway up the ladder.
At the top were beautiful scenes of the countryside. Angie made it up and was glad she’d kept her fear in check as we looked out over the fields.
Rietta saw the tight space and the straight-up ladder and couldn’t quell her fear of heights, so she waited for us at the bottom of the ladder.
We ended the day with dinner at Tante Marie’s house. She ordered Chinese food and we had ice cream for dessert. Another fun day with family.
I have a short story in a newly released anthology by Windtree Press. The title of the anthology is Imagine and my story is Another Life.
The story is about a woman, with an abusive husband, who wakes one morning to find him dead on the kitchen floor. As police, forensics, and the medical examiner move about and she is questioned, she begins to wonder if this is just another one of her fantasies or if she finally killed him.
This is a story that was the brainchild of my son-in-law. After spending the weekend with us and listening to my husband being a pest to me, he asked if I ever fantasized about doing something to my husband. And then he went on to say I could write a story about fantasizing I’d killed my husband only to have him be alive. When the title for this anthology, Imagine, came up, I knew what I was going to write about.
Imagine
Imagination. It is a word that conjures up so much and can cover so many emotions. In this collection of nine unique stories and a poem, you will cross centuries, hang in suspense, chuckle and perhaps even laugh, and wonder did the character imagine that or not. Dari LaRoche starts this anthology with a poem that explores what sparks the imagination as it moves between conscious thought and the sublime, reflecting the beauty that surrounds us.
In Metro Takes a Road Trip, Susie Slanina returns to the adventures of a dog named Metro discovering new places and talents. In The Watching Game, Lisa de Nikolits crafts a story that explores invisible friends, suspense, and the power of suggestion. Diana McCollum’s story, Son-ja’s Journey, explores the story of a lost child who wanders into a Native American tribe’s camp and is raised as one of their own.
Pamela Cowan’s story, Mars, moves away from earth to outer space, in her futuristic tale with a twist about a young man coming of age. Back on earth, Mary Vine provides a story of romance, suspense, and humor in Grandma Harper’s Imagination. Maggie Lynch pits fantasy against reality in Sky Painter, as a young girl develops unusual talents.
Another Life, by Paty Jager, provides a conundrum for the reader to unravel whether a battered wife and a dead husband is a tale of delirium or truth. In Project I.M.A.G.I.N.E. Anna Brentwood and Colton Long pen a cautionary tale of artificial intelligence that begins in the 1980s. Kimila Kay closes out the anthology with Rattlesnake Ravine, a suspense novella that plays with imagination versus truth and the consequences of having to choose only one side.
I think I mentioned this book before, but I have the 6th book in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series published. You can purchase the book in ebook and print. I’m working with my narrator to get it out in audio.
Down and Dirty
Book 6
Spotted Pony Casino Mystery
The Spotted Pony Casino’s head of security, Dela Alvaro, receives a late-night call that takes her to a deserted walkway along the river. After confronting a woman babbling about love and bodies being buried, Dela stumbles over a corpse and discovers her knife covered in the victim’s blood.
Dela and Tribal Detective Heath Seaver find themselves working with FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce when the murder seems to be connected to a drug cartel. Dela nearly becomes the victim of a hit-and-run while someone is trying to frame her for the murder.
Proving her innocence has Dela interviewing past acquaintances and members of a drug cartel, all while trying to decide if the woman she met the night of the murder is truly crazy … or the killer.
If you are interested in getting new releases before they show up on bookstore websites, you’d like to know more about the writing process, get a fun word game each month, and a link to a free book, you can sign up for my newsletter. It is the best way to stay informed about my books and writing and to learn about more authors and books you might like. To join click on this link: Paty’s Newsletter
Where you can find me at events this month:
Nov. 9th & 10th Old Fashion Christmas, Deschutes County Fairground, Redmond, OR
Nov. 15th-17th Portland Holiday Market, Expo Center, Portland, OR
On the third day of our Europe trip, another Dutch cousin, Wanda, picked us up. We visited with an aunt and uncle on my husband’s paternal side.
The dahlia farm
After the visit, we drove to a Dahlia farm that had 600 varieties of dahlias! All the colors, sizes, and shapes were gorgeous. Rietta cut some with visions of drying them to put in the journal she kept of the trip.
From the Dahlia farm, we drove to the beach.
We had a nice walk along the water’s edge. Rietta was excited to find so many full shells. On the Oregon coast, you are lucky to find a whole shell.
By this time, we were hungry. We came across a café on the beach that had swings for the chairs at the picnic tables. Rietta was excited about this discovery.
We enjoyed listening to the sounds of the ocean and watching the waves as we ate.
After eating, we wandered back toward the lighthouse. We climbed to the top and took photos of the views. From the lighthouse, we wandered a bit through the shopping area adjacent to the beach.
Back in the car we headed to Ouderkerk, we mentioned that Rietta’s mom wanted her to purchase 52 packages of hagelslag – it is a pure chocolate sprinkle the Dutch eat on buttered bread. Her family loves the treat. Her mom wanted her to get 52 packages so they would have one for each week of the year. Wanda felt a large supermarket would be the best place to get it. And so she took us to one. We counted out 52 packages and went to the cashier. She saw the heaped basket and asked how many. We told her and she put that number in the till. Rietta paid and we scrambled to find boxes to carry it out of the store.
When we arrived back in Ouderkerk, Wanda suggested we eat at the Panakoke Restaurant that Angie and I had seen on our first walk around the town. We agreed and we were happy we had. The poffertjes we had for dinner were delicious and filled us up. Poffertjes are small Dutch pancakes the size of a ping pong ball. They puff up when cooked and are served with butter and powdered sugar, or syrup, or fruit. I had the cinnamon apples with mine. Just thinking about it now makes my mouth water! It was the perfect way to end our third day in the Netherlands.
To make the poffertjes they use a special pan that has indents in it. But you can make the small pancakes at home in a fry pan if you like. Here is a recipe I found for them.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups milk 375ml / 12.68floz very warm but not hot (1 1/2 minutes on high in microwave), sub oat or almond milk
In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, sugar and yeast, giving it a quick mix and making a well in the center.
2 cups plain flour / all purpose flour, ¼ cup sugar, 2 1/2 tsp instant yeast
Pour in the warmed milk and egg, then whisk into a batter. Cover with a tea towel or silicone bowl cover, and leave to rise for an hour. The batter should be double in size and look very bubbly when ready. Note: If in a colder climate, allow extra time and pop the bowl in a warm location.
1 1/2 cups milk,1 egg
Grease a poffertjes pan or frying pan with the butter over a medium heat. Once warmed, add heaped tablespoons of batter into each well in the poffertjes pan. Make sure to leave space if using a frying pan.
2 tbsp butter
Once bubbles start to pop on top (1-2 minutes), flip using a single chopstick or skewer (similar to making takoyaki). Allow to cook for another minute or two, once puffed up and cooked through, then remove from the pan. Repeat until all batter is used up.
Serve while hot, sprinkling icing sugar / powdered sugar over the top to dust.
Writing Into The Sunset 