Category: Historical Western Romance

Hulihe’e Palace

One morning we decided to walk farther north than we had previously. We found more shops, restaurants and a resort. But the fun thing we came across was a summer home of the Hawaii’s royalty.

It was complete in 1938 and became the personal residence of John Adams Kuakini the Governor of the island of Hawaii. It was built by foreign seamen and missionaries. They used resources on the island such as lava rock, coral lime mortar, koa and ohi’a woods.

Walking around inside the structure I mentioned to my friend the walls were really thick. Three feet says the pamphlet. I thought maybe two, by width of the windowsills. It is a beautiful building with tall ceilings and massive furniture. There are two floors come in at 3600 sq feet. there was also a basement with 2 cisterns. The cook house could be accessed through the dining room. There were also other small bungalows on the property when royalty lived there.

The last royal to own the property was an adopted heir of Queen Kapi’olani. the next owner was Mrs. Allen who died a month after purchasing the palace. The home remained vacant for 10 years.

In 1925 the building was purchased by the Daughters of Hawai’i to keep it from becoming hotel development. That is who operates and attends to it as a museum.

There are many items in the house that were purchased or given to the royals. What fascinated me were the long sticks with different shaped, what looked like lamp shades covered with feathers. Because my curiosity was aroused, I asked the woman docent who was there what they were. Feathers were treasured. with all the brightly plumed birds on the islands, the colorful feathers were deemed fit for royalty. Many photos you see that depict the leaders/royalty of Hawaii, they are wearing capes that are covered with feathers.

These feathered “lamp shades” on sticks were carried in front of Royalty when they walked around outside their homes. It was how they were recognized when travelling about the islands.

The lanai of the home has breathtaking views of the ocean across Kailua Bay.

BOOK HAPPENINGS

Starting this week, you can follow the Silver Dagger Book Tour for my new -Cover reveal for the Halsey Brother Series/ Halsey Homecoming tour. There are prizes awarded for following and adding your name to the raffle.

https://www.silverdaggertours.com/sdsxx-tours/the-halsey-brothers-series-book-tour-and-giveaway

Happy April 1st!

Most people like to pull pranks on April Fool’s Day, but I have some great things going on today and they are all for readers!

First, I have partnered with other western historical romance authors to do a $0.99 ebook special today. You can click this link and it will take you to a page with all the ebooks on sale today for $0.99.

My $0.99 book is Davis: Letters of Fate.

Widowed with two small children and a ranch to run, Mariella Swanson knows she needs help, but isn’t sure her heart, or neighbors, will accept her marrying a stranger. When the greenhorn shows up, smoking a pipe and wearing a derby hat, she can’t help but wonder if agreeing to this marriage may prove to be her biggest mistake.

When Davis Weston receives a letter from his sister asking him to marry a friend, he scoffs at the idea. However, losing his wife and son has left him a lonely man, and the whispers from others that he didn’t do enough to save his family has gone on long enough. His arrival in Oregon may be worse—these neighbors are doing more than whispering. Guns and horses aren’t his forte. He’s willing to learn, but is he willing to love again?

Special Buy Link

The second fun thing happening today is an April Fool’s Party over at the Pioneer Hearts Facebook page. There is 12 hours of fun with the PH authors. I am scheduled 12:10 EST or in my case 9:10 PST. We are all talking about writing historical westerns and giving away gift certificates, books, and swag. Come on by and chat with the authors. It will be a good way to take your mind off of what is happening in the world for a while.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/pioneerhearts

I hope you join us for the fun and distraction.

Catching my Breath

I’ve been so busy running around the state judging at county fairs, I forgot to update my own blog.

At one fair I judge open class eggs

The county fairs I judged at were a lot of fun. Some I watched 4-H members knit, crochet and sew, others I judged their foods, clothing, knitting, photography, educational displays, and presentations. And there were were a couple where I judged the open class foods and clothing.

I have to say while judging open class is easier because I don’t have to interview or write down what is good and what needs work on an item, I do enjoy the interview process with the 4-H members the most. I love their enthusiasm about the item they made or baked. If the recipe or pattern came from a family member. What I found most about the clothing and knitting projects the patterns for many were found on Pinterest. How times change!

I’m looking forward to this coming weekend. Labor Day, not for the camping and family time but because it is my annual pilgrmage to Sumpter, Oregon to set up a booth with another author at the Flea Market. It has become one of the events during the year I look forward to.

This year we have a nice tent we’ll set up.

It’s fun talking with Mary Vine, the other author, and watching all the people who wander among the booths. The best part, is when someone hurries over and say, “I was hoping you were going to be here, I need the next book in your series.” That’s why we go back every year. To provide winter reading for the people in NE Oregon. LOL

I’m way behind in my writing, but I do have a new release, the last western romance I’ll write for a while. Freedom: Silver Dollar Saloon.

Their dreams brought them together. But will violence tear them apart?

Freedom longs to be out of the Silver Dollar Saloon, with a family of her own. When a white man promises marriage and children, she takes the biggest risk of her life, and follows him to the wilds of Montana Territory. Where he shows his true nature.

Water Runs Fast, a Crow off the reservation, comes upon a white man whipping a brown-skinned woman. After stabbing the white man and riding off with the woman, he realizes she is the woman from his visions. The one who pledged to help him and his people survive in the white man’s world.

On the run from the tragedy, the two grow close. Together, they begin a life as husband and wife. But will they have their chance at a life together, or will they hang for murder?

Universal link: https://books2read.com/u/mlawnB

And I should have the next Shandra book, Toxic Trigger-point coming out in September. We’re still working on the cover design. It’s being tricky and the book is going through the editing phase.

What did you do this summer? Was it fun? Are you looking forward to fall coming?

Creating Book Covers by Paty Jager

Jet boating the Snake River

If all goes well, I should have a book out this month and one next month. I’m behind in getting my latest books written and out. I’ve been doing too much playing this year, but I think it makes me a better writer to experience things before I write a story.

The first book to be released is Freedom, book 3 in the Silver Dollar Saloon series. The background for the cover was easy. We use the same background on all the books. We just add the character the book is titled after. In this case, Freedom, a young black woman.

I spent hours going through photo galleries online where you can purchase photos to use on covers. I wanted a fresh face, not one with makeup, and she needed to have her hair a certain way. When I’d found four possibilities, I started looking for a body with a dress from the 1800s. I found the perfect one on Pinterest. It was from an auction house. I contacted them, they responded if I could tell them the numbers on the photo (auction date) they could send me a good photo. After I sent the date to them, I never heard from them again.

Which sent me looking elsewhere,and I finally found a dress online and purchased it. Then I sent the women I’d found to my cover designer and she began playing with putting the heads on the dress. After several tries we were both finally happy with the way it looked.

I now have to find a photo for Toxic Trigger-point a murder that takes place on a massage bed in a spa. I’m trying to decide if I want a body on a massage bed or a spa as the cover image. What do you think would make the better, more eye-catching cover?

$0.99 Birthday Special!

From now until July 1st you can purchase the Letters of Fate Trilogy as an ebook box set for only $0.99!

It’s my birthday month and I like to give. So for this limited time you can get Davis, Brody, and Issac for a steal of a price. The normal price for these this box set is $9.99.

These are my “mail-order grooms” books. Only instead of the hero getting a letter from the heroine, he receives a letter that changes the course of his life and puts in the way of his future bride.

Three historical western novels filled with steamy romance and the rawness of a growing country.

Davis: Davis Weston receives a letter from his sister asking him to marry a friend. Widowed with two small children and a ranch to run, Mariella Swanson knows she needs help, but isn’t sure her heart, or neighbors, will accept her marrying a stranger. Can the two compromise or will fate once again leave them alone?

Brody: After receiving a letter, Brody Yates finds himself escorted across the country to work on a ranch rather than entering prison. However, a revenge driven criminal, the Oregon high desert, and his grandfather’s beautiful ward may prove more dangerous than anything he’d faced on the New York docks.

Isaac: The last thing Isaac Corum needs or wants is a snooty woman. Dang it all, the woman doesn’t do a single blasted thing she’s told, and Isaac can’t just sit back and let her go traipsing off into the mountains alone…

Universal link: https://books2read.com/u/47zp6R

Life Cycles by Paty Jager

As with all things in life there needs to be change. And when change is a positive thing, then all is good.

I feel the change I am making in my writing life is going to make a happier me. We all know that being happy is the center of everything in a person’s life.

For those who haven’t followed my writing story, the first 2 novels I wrote were mysteries. I had been an avid reader of mystery novels and a passive reader of romance. But when I couldn’t find help perfecting the craft of writing mysteries, I turned to Romance Writers of America to learn writing craft and the business side of writing. I published 15 romance novels before I ventured into writing what I call Action Adventure or Romantic Suspense. I had such a fun time writing the three Isabella Mumphrey books that I had a hard time going back to writing westerns.

Then a mystery idea struck. Shandra Higheagle kept knocking on my brain and asking when I’d write her mystery series. 2014 I wrote the first three books in that series and published them in 2015. They were so well received that I kept right on writing them- I’m now at book #13 and I’ve started a second mystery series, the Gabriel Hawke Novels. These have been getting wonderful reviews and selling like I’ve never sold books before!

Because of the wonderful sales of the mystery series and the fact they have from the beginning been my favorite to read and write, I am going to only write the mystery books until, I either no longer want to write mystery or the sale of this genre takes a dive. At which time, I will pick back up writing the two western romance series I started- Silver Dollar Saloon and Tumbling Creek Ranch.

If you are one of my western romance readers, you might try my Shandra Higheagle mystery series. These are like a contemporary western romance only the romance is the second or third plot in the story. The main plot is the mystery.

Having told several friends of this and now you, my readers, I feel a huge boulder has been lifted from my shoulders and I am ready to take on these two mystery series with all my imagination and writing prowess.

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All Emotions are Universal by Paty Jager

As I am flowing to the end of the next Gabriel Hawke book, my mind has already started “stewing and brewing” the next book on my list. It will be another book where I write about an ethnicity not my own. It will require some reading and research. But as was said at the Diversity Conference I attended last year.

All emotions are universal. As long as I portray the correct emotions and bring the character to life as a human being, I will have done my job.

My next book is Freedom– Book 3 in the Silver Dollar Saloon series. Freedom is an African American woman who was born after the Civil War but still suffered at the hands of man who whipped his workers and withheld food if he thought they weren’t giving their all to their work.

She’d been caught visiting with her employer’s son when she was supposed to be doing the laundry. The man whipped her, leaving scars across her back, and put her on a train to North Dakota with only a few dollars. He didn’t want his son to be friendly with girl like her.

When she’d run out of money and couldn’t find anyone who would hire her, Beau Gentry came along. He told her he owned the Silver Dollar Saloon in Shady Gulch, ND and she could work for him. Unsure if she could trust another rich White man, she declined his offer.

Within an hour of declining his offer, a man of color walked up to where she stood on the street, asking the women who passed by if they needed help. He told her he was partners with Beau Gentry and if she came along with them, she wouldn’t have to beg or ward off advances from men.

And that is how she ended up working at the Silver Dollar Saloon. Her book will be about how she finds love and the life she’d been hoping for that matched the name her parents gave her- Freedom.

The research I’ll be working on is how African Americans were treated in the late 1880s and how to use a scenario I started with her in the other two books to work in her book. She is the best Shoo-fly pie maker in North Dakota which caught the eye of a trapper, but do I want him to be the man who sweeps her off her feet, or, do I want more conflict and her discovering he is a lot like the man who put her on the train?

If you have suggestion for books that would help me learn more about the life of African Americans settling the West, I’d appreciate it.

Taking Time and Exploring by Paty Jager

This past weekend hubby and I took a quick trip to Reno, Nevada. I’d won a two-night stay at the Peppermill Casino last March at the Left Coast Crime conference. We needed to get the certificate used and realized once our daughter and her family left to join her husband in Maine for the winter, we’d be stuck home feeding her cattle. So we made reservations and took off.

The casino had changed a lot from the last time- 20 ahem-years ago that we were there. It is as sprawling and opulent as a casino in Las Vegas.  We had a beautiful room with a jacuzzi tub! I was so excited I couldn’t wait to use the tub. That was one of the “oops” in our new house. We forgot we had a beautiful old clawfoot tub we could have put in for a bath tub and instead asked a plumber friend to get us a soaker tub. Well, if you are a four-year-old, the depth of the water is just fine, but for an adult there is no soaking. There is getting your bottom and legs wet. So I was excited to have a nice long hot soak.

We also received spa credit in the package I’d won. I had a massage and hubby had a gentleman’s pedicure. I will go back there again for the beautiful room and the spa facilities. They were amazing! I’ll know what it is all about the next time we go. Yes, we will return sooner than 20 years the next time.

Looking from the upper part of Virginia City down the hill.

On Saturday, we drove out of the fog in the Reno valley and up to Virginia City, which was above the fog. It was like flying over the clouds, looking down at the fluffy whiteness between the peaks of the mountains.

At Virginia City we walked the main street browsing the stores. Then we walked the streets uphill from main street looking at all the old houses with beautiful detailed wood working. We noted there were half-a-dozen Bed and Breakfast places. Ideas of yet another get-away.

One of the old houses on the upper side of Virginia City.

We stopped at a nice quiet coffee place for a light lunch and then as we drove around the lower streets, I noticed a sign saying open. It was for tours of the MacKay Mansion. I am always a sucker for seeing inside old homes.  There were some amazing pieces of furniture. Many that the owner, John Mackay made and carved himself. Even though he was a billionaire, he enjoyed wood carving. It was an occupation he’d learned and used on his way to making money.

Mrs. Mackay’s bedroom

The history in the family was interesting. So much so, I’ll be purchasing a couple of books about them that I hope to later use the info to add a character in my historical western series.

These chairs were made and carved by John Mackay. His wife Marie sewed these cushions when ex-president Ulysses Grant came to visit.  

The tour guide talked about the place being haunted and how she’s had experiences and some ghost hunter show filmed an episode there. She showed us a 3 second clip of the show that aired that showed a dark shadow walking across the room. I believe in ghosts but tend to be skeptical when it is used as a means to make money.

Child’s bedroom. Marie lost a daughter to disease and another fell down stairs becoming a cripple. But after marrying John, he took the child to the best specialists in Europe and she could walk again. They had three sons and one died while racing a horse. 

After Virginia City, we returned to the Peppermill, where I lost money and hubby made money. We came home with the same amount we left with and had purchased meals and some gifts. So not a bad trip and it was definitely relaxing!

On the 6 hour drive there and back, I wrote blog posts for the places I’ll be guesting on my blog tour next month and this post. Back to getting the second Hawke book written this week.

I hope you had a great weekend and take time out this time of year for yourself.