Category: Research

Happy Canyon Night Show

I have wanted to attend the Happy Canyon Night Show during the Pendleton Roundup for years. This year, I finally just bought tickets and told Hubby we were going.

When I told my oldest daughter we were going, she asked which seats and in a few days she said she and her husband had tickets not far from where we were sitting. I picked a box seat. I wanted to see it all, not knowing that probably about halfway up the stands might have been a better view. But I’ll try that the next time I go. 😉

What is the Happy Canyon Night Show you ask? It is Oregon’s Official State Outdoor Pageant and Wild West Show. It has over 100 cast members from the Pendleton area and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla. At one point, I think 100 tribal members were standing on the set. It was powerful seeing children, women, and men in historical clothing standing along the rims of the elevated set.

This is the set for Happy Canyon Night Show. This was before it started.

In 1916 the show’s writer Roy Raley wanted to add Native American life before the explorers came to the area. He asked Anna Minthorn Wannassay to help him write the tribal life scenes of the Columbia River Plateau tribes.

Anna had been a student at the Carlisle Institute in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1906 and returning to the Pendleton area. Raley knew of her love for history and community involvement. At Carlisle, Anna had participated in Dramatic Arts. This came in handy as she helped Raley with the script.

In 1917, they performed the added tribal scenes, and the audience loved it. Each year, Anna and Raley added more and more scenes to the show. They preserved history with their show.

I, Hubby, and my daughter and her husband enjoyed the show.

It starts with the tribal members welcoming one another and the start of a day in the life of tribal members before the non-Indians appeared.

There is a scene where four boys return from scouting, having vision quests, and establishing their identities. The chief calls all the tribe together, and the boys tell of their deeds to become men.

Then Sacajawea arrives with Lewis and Clark. The tribe welcomes the weary travelers, giving them food, and company.

A chief’s son has been killed. The first clash with the white man begins. In retaliation, the tribe steals a white girl (who, by the way, had good lungs! Her screams were ear-splitting) The chief appeals to the medicine man, who says the only choice is war. But scouts and plainsmen rescue the girl. I loved the part where they jumped off the cliff into a pool of water under the waterfall. Then the lights went out. All I could think of was “how can I get this into a book with a person found in the pool dead the next morning?” 😉

Cover wagons arrive. They stop for the night and have singing, dancing, and revelry. The Indians attack! There is a lot of noise from gun blasts, people falling on the ground, and horses charging around the wagons and through the people. Then the Calvary arrives chasing off the Indians.

The part that broke my heart and brought tears to my eyes was seeing the tribe, riding horses and walking, with their heads bowed as they were pushed from their beloved home. The scene was the most heart-wrenching and sad. Even the small children had their heads bowed and walked with sadness. (I was so overwhelmed I didn’t take a photo)

Then they changed the backdrop, and it was a frontier town with townspeople rollicking about. This part of the show for me, seemed to last longer than it needed to. I would have loved more of the Native American culture and history.

Then there was a trick roper who was fair. And a trick rider, who was having an off night. Or more likely, her horse was having an off night. It didn’t want to stay in the small area. It kept bolting for the exit.

After the trick roper and rider, there was a Cowboy and Cowgirl Mounted Quadrille. They square danced on horses. It was fun to watch. They did it at a lope and it was thrilling.

This and when he carried the American Flag from here down to the ground, were my favorite scenes.

Next time I will make sure my phone is charged so I can take more photos and hopefully better ones. The night picture taking wasn’t easy for me or my phone to do.

Before the show we walked among the vendor booths. There were a lot of different tribes represented at these booths. And lots of beautiful beadwork. We also walked through the Teepee village where many of the tribal members stayed for the week of Roundup.

You can see the teepee village in the distance. The stage coach was used in the Happy Canyon Night Show.

The stage was so large that you couldn’t always see everything that was going on. Even my hubby said he wanted to see it again because he felt he had missed so much. And that, my friends, means I’ll be getting tickets for next year!

Flying By

Summer that is! Wow! It’s almost the end of July. I can’t believe this month is almost over.

I spent most of this month with my butt in the chair writing the next Spotted Pony Casino Mystery. I wanted it to be published right before I go on a vacation in September. It is written, polished and off to my critique partners and beta-readers. I am proud of myself for writing over 70,000 words in 25 days.

My cover designer has the cover made.

Now to get the back cover blurb written and some memes made to promote the pre-order and the release of the book. That’s what the rest of this month and all of next month will be about. Setting up all my blog posts and promotions through my vacation. I don’t want to worry about having to get things out on a schedule when I’m enjoying traveling with my oldest daughter and granddaughter. I’ll have more about the trip in future posts.

I made time this month for two fun things. The first one was learning how to make Tule baskets from a Paiute woman. My daughter and I took a class from Beverly Beers. It was fun and taught me a bit about the culture and that I need to really practice if I want to make tight baskets. Here are some photos of the process.

We started with ten pieces of tule that had been soaked. You squeeze out the water and kind of flatten them in the process.

The next step was crossing five pieces over the other five and weaving them together to make the bottom of the basket.

When the bottom was woven, then a longer piece of tule was bend in two and then used as the weaver to go around the basket. I struggled with twisting the pieces correctly in between the uptight pieces. Beverly took mine out at one point and made me start over.

My finished product. We were told we could soak them and then put them around a can or jar to let them dry to the that shape if we wanted a perfectly round basket.

This is what it looked like after it dried and I added the tule rose I made (with help from my daughter) and the dried seeds that were on the end of one of the tules.

The other fun thing was attending the Tamkaliks Powwow in Wallowa Oregon. I enjoy the ceremonies, the dancing, and visiting with the vendors. I found a young woman who was selling healing teas and balms from the Umatilla tribe who gave me her email so I can ask her questions to hopefully give my Spotted Pony Casino books more color and influence of the culture.

Here is a youtube video I took of the horse procession at the powwow. It is my favorite part of the event.

Have you ever attended a powwow? I enjoy the singing and drumming as much as the colorful regalia and dancing.

The Archeology and Cultural Keepers Roadshow

I may live in a large county with a small population in SE Oregon but there is always something interesting going on. On Saturday, I attended The Archeology and Cultural Keepers Roadshow in the Hines, OR Park.

The opening comments told me it has been happening in Harney County for many years. Why this is the first year I discovered it before it happened, I don’t know. It is the type of event that I like to wander through.

There were booths telling about archeological finds in the area, about rocks, and groups in the area. There were several booths hosted by the Burns Paiute tribe. The people in the Burns area are mostly descendants of the Wadatika Band. They originally roamed 5250 square miles in central-southeastern Oregon, Northern Nevada, northwestern California and western Idaho. They are one of the few tribes who were allowed to keep their language. Because the the Bannock War of 1878 forced the Wadatika from the land the government granted them in 1869 called the Malheur Reservation, when the Paiutes returned after being forced to Washington, they Malheur had been taken back by the government. The Wadatika who returned set up a temporary tribal encampment outside of Burns, OR. The tribe eventually purchased the land and it is now the Burns Paiute Reservation.

Because they are welcomed by the community, the tribal members work with the Harney County Chamber to share their culture with everyone. It was through the Harney Chamber and tribal member Beverly Beers that I participated in the pine needle basket making event.

At the Roadshow, I visited with Beverly at her booth that showcased the methods of baskets and weirs that the Wadatika made from natural resources. Pine needles, tule, and sticks. Another booth showcased the first foods the tribe has lived on for centuries. I learned about the biscuitroot and was even given one to sample. It was small and white and when peeled tasted like a parsnip. I should have taken a photo of it before I ate it! They also had chokecherries. I didn’t realize they were so small! And a blanket made from rabbit skins. It looked warm and felt soft.

Dogbane plant
Dogbane in the various stages

Another booth showed how to make fiber from three plants. The milkweed, Dogbane, and stinging nettle. The woman at the booth explained the whole process to me.

Dogbane is the prettiest in color and I was told is the easiest to work with and the strongest of the three types of fiber.

You removed the leaves from the stems, then she used a rolling pin to crack the stem open by rolling the pin down the stem. She said at home she uses an old wringer machine, like they used to wring out wet clothing that had been washed.

Stinging nettle the next strongest
Milkweed, the weakest of the fibers and the hardest to work with.

After the stem is cracked the center or the plant is scraped out and then the outer layer of the stem is made wet and the “skin” of the plant is scraped off with a table knife or a flat piece of obsidian. All that is left is the fiber.

The fiber can be used to weave cloth or braid to make strings.

braiding made with the fibers.

If you know the plants and know how to extract the fibers from the stems, you can make a shoestring, or a snare, or any number or items to help you if you are out in the wilderness. I am already conjuring up ways Hawke can use this method of making a snare or fishing if he is in the woods and can’t travel back to civilization.

I enjoy events where I can learn something new and possibly put it in a book and enlighten others.

An Exhibit Worth Seeing

To help me better understand the politics and people of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla I subscribe to their newspaper . When I received this month’s issue, I was happy to see there was an event being held at the Tamástslikt Cultural Center that resonated with me and my writing.

If you have read my books or even follow this blog you know that I am a supporter of the MMIP movement. The title of the event was “Murdered and Missing Indigenous Persons and the Umatilla Reservation.” It was to be a panel of family members of victims, an MMIP advocate, CTUIR Tribal Director and Judicial Assistant, and representatives from the Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center.

Because my Spotted Pony Casino mystery series is set on the Umatilla Reservation and I have and continue to write about the MMIP problem in my books, I thought it would be a worthwhile event for me to attend and hear all sides. I’ve had two people tell me about losing family members and not knowing what happened to them or still not knowing where they are.

Anyone who reads my books, knows that the core of every book is justice or injustice, however you want to look at it. And MMIP fits well into the theme I have in my books. I also like when a reader will say, I didn’t know about the movement or that it was such a problem until I read your book. That makes me happy. It means I am doing a small part to educate more people about the problem.

I wanted to have a powerful blog about the event, but when I arrived, they told me that the event had been postponed due to a death in one of the speakers family. While I was bummed because I was looking forward to learning more and I had driven 5 hours to attend, I was able to see the Portraits in Red exhibit which is powerful.

Artist Nayana LaFond was stuck at home in 2020 and decided to paint “Lauraina in RED” for the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls on May 5th. She asked people for a photos of missing or murdered relatives and she would paint a few more. She received 25 photos the first day along with the story of how the loved one went missing or was murdered.

Murdered or Missing

The Portraits in Red are of missing or murdered family members or friends and one wall has portraits of activists and survivors.

Murdered or missing

I, of course, being backwards, started on the side of the activists and survivors and ended with the murdered victims. Which in a way, I think, made it all the more compelling as I saw people fighting for the cause and then saw why they were fighting.

To the left of the hand survivors and to the right activists for the cause.

These aren’t only half of the portraits that were hanging on the walls. There is also a display that the Assitant Director Randall J. Melton told me had surprised him. They asked people from the community to put up a hand with a name of a family member or friend who had been found murdered or was missing. This is the wall.

Even though I write murder mystery, I can’t fathom the horrendous things people do to one another. MMIP be talked about in my books so that I can continue to raise awareness about this issue.

I will be at a mystery conference on the date they rescheduled the panel. But it can be listened to through the Tamástslikt Cultural Center Facebook page.

I will be in Bellevue, WA at the Left Coast Crime conference April11th-14th. If you’re in the area contact me and I can try and meet up with you.

Fun and Not so Fun

Since the beginning of the year. Jan 1, 2024, I pushed to get the next Spotted Pony Casino book finished. And it is off with my line editor and will be released February 22, 2024. So far my critique partner and beta readers have enjoyed it. 😉

The Pinch

Book 5 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery

Dela Alvaro, head of security for the Spotted Pony Casino, is asked to do a security check of a casino on the Oregon Coast. She no sooner starts her rounds at the casino and a child is kidnapped. The parents are a dubious couple. Special Agent Quinn Pierce of the FBI has been out to get the father for some time.

One of Dela’s best friends from the Army appears and they catch up, only to find her friend strangled the next morning after having divulged to Dela she may have photos of the kidnapping.

As Dela struggles with the violent death of yet another best friend, her lover, Tribal Officer Heath Seaver, arrives and the two begin untangling the lies, bribes, and murders.

In the end, as Heath carries the child to safety, Dela must face a cunning killer alone.

pre-order link: https://books2read.com/u/38Y787

Now that is fun to see the cover and read the blurb! It means that this book is wrapped up all but the edits and uploading it to vendors. Which means… I’ve started gathering research for the next Gabriel Hawke book. As yet, untitled, but I had a good conversation with an Oregon State Police officer with the Fish and Wildlife who is helping me with this particular book.

Hawke and Dog will be patrolling the Snake River with biologists. While helping the biologists with their work, Dog will come across a decades old body or should I say skeleton. It’s what they find with the body that helps Hawke follow the clues to its death and others. So stay tuned for that!

I also have a YouTube channel where I have been putting up samples of my first in series audiobooks so far. You can find them here: Paty Jager – YouTube

If you are an audiobook listener, I am setting up audiobook specials with different vendors for the coming months. As well as I have a Special coming up in February for Double Dupilicity in ebook and audio formats. It has a new cover and I’m having a “New Cover Special.” I’ll be posting about it in my next blog post.

I have been trying to get my newsletter signup form and thank emails set up and synchronized in the new format my newsletter provider has upgraded to. It is a pain! As soon as I get it figured out and set up, I’ll post it here so you can get my newsletter if you would like to have a fun puzzle to solve each month and have access to free short stories and specials.

And here is a photo of my writing partner. She has discovered she can go from the back of my chair to the window and snooze in the sunshine.

Deluge of Life

Ever feel like you will never get something accomplished? Even if it is something that you can accomplish?

That’s where I’m at. November is such a busy month. I have two long writing/book events which will take up two weeks. I have a book I would like to have finished by the end of the year, I have audiobooks I need to upload to make into audiobook bundles, I am learning new things to hopefully get those said audiobooks selling, which leads me to even more things I need to do for the audiobooks.

And then there is life outside of the writing. Hubby is finishing a barn that has had poles in the ground for 15 years. While he is doing most of it by himself, he does need my help for certain things. Like lifting the metal roofing up to him.

Hubby on the roof, the piece of metal against the hay that I lift up.

There is also my desire to decorate the house and soon start baking. Not to mention working on the quilts for the two grandkids graduating in 2024 and Christmas presents. One of my favorite things about Christmas is finding the perfect present for my family and friends. I think even if it’s a trinket or bauble, if it has something to do with their favorite things, it makes them smile.

Today, I didn’t take my usual morning walk so I could sit down at the computer to write this post and get some more words on the Work in Progress- AKA The Pinch book 5 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series. My friend and I spent a weekend at the Chinook Winds Casino and resort on the Oregon Coast last spring so I could research for this book. I’m finally getting around to writing it. And I’ve discovered there were some things I should have researched while I was there. *sigh*

I’ve sent an email to the casino, but I fear they won’t reply because I didn’t ask about staying there, I asked questions about how the place is run. They would rather take my money and have me visit than help me with logistics for my book.

I will continue using common sense and hope I get things right. Or if I really need to get the answers, it might mean a trip to the coast for hubby and me in December. 😉

There are so many things I need and want to get done before the end of the year. I’ll have a tight schedule next year too as I try to get back to publishing 4 books a year and also take a month-long trip to Europe with my oldest daughter and a granddaughter. I can’t wait for the trip, but I have to. It won’t happen until September next year. I’ll have more about it in future posts. As it gets closer and I get more excited, I’m sure I’ll have posts about how we planned and booked everything.

That’s all the dithering I have on life at this time. My next post will be about the 20 Books Vegas conference I’m attending next week.

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.

Tamkaliks Ceremony

The third week of July, I attended the Tamkaliks Ceremony held in Wallowa, Oregon. My brother, sister-in-law, and I arrived Saturday morning before the horse procession. This is where members of tribes who once lived in Wallowa County ride horses around the dance arbor. A riderless horse is led by one of the riders. This symbolizes the ancestors who have passed and any tribal members who were lost the past year. They ride slowly around the arbor, and begin singing, until they finally dismount and enter the arbor.

Every time I witness this procession it makes me emotional. The reason I write the characters I do, is to show the world how the Native Americans revered the land that gave them life and how resilient they are to be proving they are the stronger people.

That morning we joined in the Friendship dance and watched the naming ceremony, passing of the pipe ceremony, and gift giving ceremonies from the families of members who had passed since the last Tamkaliks celebration. The princesses who were at the celebration ranged in age from 6 to teens. I enjoyed hearing each of them tell us about themselves in their language and then repeat it in English. I love that the young people are learning more and more about their culture that had been stolen from the grandparents and great grandparents.

Around noon we headed to the Wallowa Historical center to look up information I wanted for the current work in progress. Then we had to go to the Josephy Center in Joseph for my brother to pick up his artwork and that of his daughter and wife that had been on display.

That evening we went back to Wallowa and watched them honor the veterans and the contest dancing. The beautiful regalia was breathtaking. The young men put on a show, with their bobbing, stomping, and twirls. The women’s dresses and shawls were colorful. Many dresses were made of the beautifully tanned deer and elk hide adorned with shells and elk teeth.

A wonderful thing happened that I had hoped for when I decided to go Tamkaliks. That was meeting someone who would guide me with my Native American characters. While sitting and watching the ceremonies in the morning, there was a woman below us who answered questions and taught a young couple how to say her dog’s Nez Perce name. I felt she was so willing to teach non-Indian people her culture she might be a good person to ask about helping me. When I finally got up the nerve to talk to her, she was open and willing to work with me. She said her new job was working with people like me to understand the Nez Perce culture. I gave her my card and she gave me her name, email address, and phone number. I’m excited to start working with her.

It was a wonderful weekend, gathering information for my books and immersing myself in another culture.

Flat Tire and Inspiration

Over the past weekend I drove to Wallowa County on a research trip. Those that read this blog and my books, know that my Gabriel Hawke series is mostly set in the county. I had two, well, three reasons to go to the county.

Reason one was to attend the Tamkaliks Ceremony. It is a powwow held every July in Wallowa, Oregon. And while I did attend and came up with some ideas to add to my books as well as made a great contact, this post isn’t about the powwow. That will be the next post. 😉

Reason two, the current work in progress (WIP) has a couple of scenes set in an area I have never seen in person. I’ve heard stories and looked it up on Google Earth and an Oregon Atlas & Gazetteer. I had this feeling I needed to see the area.

Reason three, I couldn’t find anywhere to tell me why the area was named the way it was.

I left Thursday, spent the afternoon and night with our oldest daughter in Cove, OR and wandered on to Wallowa County Friday morning. In the county there is an old town named Maxville. There had been a lot more talk about it the last few years. They have an interpretive center for the town in Joseph and even had a day when you could take a tour of the area. I had a prior commitment and couldn’t make it. So I decided to take a look on my own on the way to my brother’s in Enterprise.

I turned at the sign on the highway that said Maxville 13 Miles. Then I turned on my phone’s GPS knowing I was headed onto dirt roads that wove through timber. My phone told me I had arrived when there was a long drop in a wooded canyon to my right and a steep hill on my left. I didn’t see anything that remotely looked like old buildings or a logging camp. I went farther and discovered a road that went off through the woods with a sign that said no motorized vehicles.

Nia and I got out and walked up the road a bit, but didn’t see anything other than a deer, a squirrel, trees, wildflowers and bushes. We returned to the car and turned around. What I was searching for was a logging camp that was set up in the woods in 1923 by a logging company out of Missouri. They brought Black loggers and families to the county to work at the camp. The unincorporated town lasted about ten years and the families slowly moved away as the logging died out. My curiosity about history had me wanting to see what was left of the town. But I didn’t find it.

We made it back to the highway and my brother’s house. There I told my sister-in-law about wanting to learn the reason behind the name Starvation Ridge and take a drive out to see it. We first went to the Wallowa County Historical Center in Joseph to see if we could learn anything about the naming. No one there could help us. As we left there my brother called and said he was off work what were we up to.

We told him of my desire to go to Starvation Ridge, so we swung by the house and picked him up. We had a good discussion about the name on the way out and I was glad I’d decided to see the ridge in person. It wasn’t what I’d expected from the shots on Google Earth. The road was made of fist-sized and large jagged rocks which made driving a slow process. And the area I thought I knew from the satellite images didn’t look the same from ground level. It helped me better understand the lay of the land. Which in turn meant changing a couple of scenes in my WIP.

This is where the flat tire comes in. I turned around and immediately one of my tires lost twenty pounds of air pressure. We crept to a spot where there were fewer nasty rocks and in the shade. My brother changed the tire with my SIL and I helping. We made it back to the tire store before they closed and had the tired fixed and put back on.

The next day while we were attending the Tamkaliks Celebration, we ran into a person who knows a lot of Wallowa County history. He couldn’t tell us what we wanted to know but he suggested we try the Wallowa Historical Center. And we found our answer in a thick book. I wanted to know how Starvation Ridge got its name. It wasn’t near as interesting as the stories my brother and his wife thought were the reasons. It was named that by Billy Smith who left his sheep on the ridge so long they ate all the grass off of it one year.

And that was the essence of my research trip. My next blog will be about the Tamkaliks Ceremony.

I’ll leave you with a photo I took of a chipmunk.

Another Road Trip

The end of this week I’m headed to Lincoln City on the Oregon coast. Many years ago while at the Oregon coast on a writer’s retreat, I saw three things during a walk on the beach that had my mystery mind whirling.

The three unrelated things, what looked like a grandfather and grandson playing on the beach that was mostly empty, something that looked like a seal head or person in diving gear bobbing in the water not far from shore, and a boat that was also close to the shore.

Most people wouldn’t think much of these three things. But when I came back from my walk, the boat was gone and the grandfather was all alone. That had me wondering if that wasn’t really the grandfather, but a man who had lured the child to the beach in order for someone to kidnap him. The scuba diver and the boat waiting off shore.

And that is where the idea has sat for a number of years. Because I couldn’t figure out how to make it work in a book/series. Well, the time has come. My character Dela Alvaro of the Spotted Pony Casino mysteries is the perfect person to make a trip to the Oregon Coast. She will be visiting the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City to learn things with other security teams from Indian run casinos.

I can now let this story, that has been simmering in my head, play out in a book.

That is why I am headed to Lincoln City. To get a feel of the layout of the casino and hotel rooms. To walk the beach and see if I can set the scene I described above for someone staying at the casino to have witnessed and for Dela to come to that person’s aid when there is an attempt to steal their camera and later their life.

While I am headed to do research for the Spotted Pony Casino book, I am actually plotting out the next Gabriel Hawke book to be written after I write a short story for an anthology.

However, I won’t have time to do the research for “The Pinch” nearer to the time of writing it and that’s why I am headed over there now. I plan to have fun and get all the information I need.

My latest book in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series is available for pre-order.

Book 4

Lies, deceit, blackmail.

Murder ends it all.

Or does it?

When an employee at the Spotted Pony Casino is caught leaving early, Dela Alvaro, head of security confronts the woman. The lies the woman tells only piques Dela’s curiosity. After witnessing the employee threatening a man, she is found murdered in her car parked in the driveway of her home.

Upon learning the woman used her job at the casino to blackmail men, Dela feels compelled to solve the woman’s murder and teams up with Tribal Officer Heath Seaver. Not only does the duo have a death to solve, but there is also a mystery behind Dela’s dead father. Not to mention, her mom just announced she’s marrying a man Dela has never met.

UBL: https://books2read.com/u/4X0WY9