Barcelona Spain

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.

Fun New Things for a New Year

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.

So stay tuned to learn more about this new series, the Gabriel Hawke and Spotted Pony Casino books I’ll be writing this year.

Ryjks Museum, Anna Frank House, and Volendam

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!

My Fun Filled 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.

Boating in Amsterdam

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.

An Anthology, a New Release, and How to Stay Informed

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.

Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/booxnR

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.

Buy link: https://books2read.com/u/bagQ66

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

Family, Flowers, Beach, and Poffertjes

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
  • 2 1/2 tsp instant yeast 7g slightly heaped
  • 2 cups plain flour / all purpose flour 280g / 9.87oz sub buckwheat flour or half and half
  • 1 egg
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 2 tbsp butter 25g, softened or melted to grease pan
  • 1/2 tbsp icing sugar / powdered sugar to dust

Instructions

  • 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.

                    1/2 tbsp icing sugar / powdered sugar

Recipe from https://www.wandercooks.com/

My Very Excellent Vacation

Windmill in Ouderkerk

Whoops! I had planned to keep going with a post every two weeks while on vacation. That didn’t happen! To be truthful I was exhausted at the end of each day and while I did keep a journal of what we did each day, I didn’t get into all the details of the places we saw. That will happen here over the next couple of months as I share my Bucket list Vacation with you.

To start, my oldest daughter, Angie, and the 16-year-old daughter, Rietta, of my other daughter went with me. We had to be bright-eyed at 4:30 am the day we left to be on time for the departure of our flight. Which meant spending the night in Boise and taking a hotel shuttle to the airport. I wondered how the trip would go when the hotel shuttle didn’t wait for us because the phone in our hotel didn’t work when they tried to call to say the shuttle was early. The flight to Dallas was uneventful as was the 8 1/2 hour flight from Dallas to Amsterdam, losing one night’s sleep..

Brick streets in Ouderkerk

We were met at the Amsterdam airport by my husband’s cousin, Janneke. She took us to Ouderkerk on the bus. She felt we wouldn’t be stuck in traffic by taking the bus, since we arrived in Amsterdam at 8 am on the 12th having left on the 11th in the U.S. Her mother met us at Janneke’s house with apple pie and we had tea. After the treat, we settled in and took a walk around Ouderkerk. We walked past a windmill being repaired, century old buildings in the town, and bought bread at the bakery.

Back at the house we had bread and homemade tomato soup before going on a car ride around the local area. The roads around Ouderkerk are narrow one-lane roads. When you meet another vehicle the one that has a wider edge on their side pulls over to the let the other vehicle pass. These roads were nerve wracking to me, because I felt many drove too fast for that type of situation.

Back at our cousin’s house we took a nap, visited, had dinner, and visited some more before going to bed.

The second day we went to Zaanse Schans, a small older town with many old windmills. The windmills were built to grind barley, rice, paper, wood, edible oils, mustard, tobacco, hemp, and many other things including the powders to make colors. We walked through several of the windmills to see how they worked and even stood up on top near the blades of one.

The three travelers on the top of a windmill.

After touring the windmills, or molen as they are called in Dutch, we wandered through the shops. Angie enjoyed the Catharina Hoeve building where the Henri Willig cheese company showed how cheese was made using cow, sheep, and goat milk.

They had tasting areas of all the cheeses that could be purchased.

This was Angie’s favorite thing!

Angie in her happy place.

Yes, we bought cheese while we were there. We also went to the wooden shoe factory, and the oldest first market of Albert Heinig.

Me saying “Cheese!”

From there we sauntered through shops and wonderful old houses and gardens. It was a good day and good start to your visit.

Because it was a tourist place, there were plenty of photo opportunities.

Angie and Janneke
Angie and I in front of a heart made of wooden shoes.

A Chance Meeting Leads to a Character

Have you ever met a person who made such an impression on you that you couldn’t shake it even days, weeks later? I had that experience this past summer while manning a NIWA (Northwest Independent Writers Association) booth. Myself and another member of NIWA were in charge of a booth at the LaPine Rhubarb Festival for a weekend.

On the second day, a woman walked up to the booth while the other member was on her phone. I stood up, ready to answer any questions. The woman smiled a broad smile and her eyes lit up with the smile. I thought what a lovely woman. She was dressed in a midcalf colorful, flowing skirt, matching shirt, and a sweater. It wasn’t very warm that weekend.

I welcomed her to the booth and gave the spiel about this being a booth with books from the members of NIWA. She nodded asked about a book that was in front of her then smiled again and said, “Elon Musk and I are spreading love all over the world and we would love to have you join us.”

Her words intrigued me. Did she really know Elon Musk? She was dressed in nice clothes. She held herself like someone who could move in those types of circles. “How are you doing that?” I asked.

She went on to say they believed in spreading love because the world needed it badly right now. As she talked I took in everything about her. Then all of a sudden her eyelids fluttered, her eyes kind of rolled back and I thought, she’s going to have a seizure. I was getting ready to get out of the booth and grab her when she looked at me with the fiercest gaze I’ve ever seen and said in a deeper voice, “I know where the bodies are buried.”

This took me by surprise and frightened me. I don’t watch scary or horror movies. I don’t deal well with the evil side of things. She said this statement two more times and then her eyelids flickered and she smiled and said, “Elon and I would love to have you join us.” Then she walked away.

I looked over to see if my friend had seen or heard any of it. She was still on her phone. I sat down, grabbed a notebook and started writing down everything I saw and experienced during the encounter.

As was in the beginning stages of writing the next Spotted Pony Casino Mystery book. I thought maybe I’d put the woman in the next Hawke book, but he kept coming to my mind and I put her in Down and Dirty, book 6 of the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series.

If you would like to see what I did with this character that was a real person in my life for a few minutes, you can grab a copy of Down and Dirty.

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.

Universal Buy link: https://books2read.com/u/bagQ66

Sherars and White River Falls

Deschutes River

This is a short trip I made while waiting to judge day two of the Wasco County Fair. My hubby suggested I wasn’t very far from Sherars Bridge. When I looked it up and discovered it was only 8 miles from where I was staying, I hopped in my car and headed down the road.

The drive was gorgeous. The road followed the Deschutes River. On the opposite side of the river ran the railroad track. I’d sat alongside the river in Maupin the night before and videoed a train going by across the river.  Beyond the railroad tracks was reddish sharp-edged rock on the yellow hills.

Following the river, I was on a barely two-lane asphalt road. Luckily, I only had three vehicles coming from the opposite direction. I saw the platforms and ladders the local Indigenous tribes use to stand on to catch fish. I happened to be there on a day when they weren’t fishing. A sign said they didn’t fish on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to let the fishery people do what they needed to do to take care of the fish and the area.

Sherars Falls isn’t tall but it is beautiful with frothy rushing water pouring down into the crack in the rock made from centuries of water flowing over it.

I took several photos from different directions and angles. I enjoyed walking over the lava rock that led down to the river’s edge thirty feet above the water.

Sherars Falls

From there I looped my way back toward Tygh Valley where I was judging. On the way I saw a sign for White River Falls. It looked inviting, so I pulled into the small day use only park. The trees and inviting green grass in an area that is mostly rock, dried grass, and sagebrush, felt like an oasis. I sat a moment taking in the cool breeze under the shade of the trees.

Then I walked down to the board explaining the presence of a building down in the ravine made by the White River just below the waterfall. It was one of the first hydroelectric plants in Oregon. It was built in 1910 using the water from the waterfall. But the river received its name from the white silt and sediment that flows in the water. A holding pond was made for the water to flow into to allow the sediment to settle on the bottom before the water was put through the hydro plant.

You can barely see the old hydro plant down by the river.

The falls is beautiful and as always, I gain serenity and energy from any for of flowing water. I wonder if it’s due to my sign being Cancer? Something I need to look up.

White River Falls

This little side trip was fun, interesting, and hopefully like many more I take when out and about judging at county fairs. Do you like to side trips when you are traveling?