Tag: Writing

Half of a Prophesy

I had an epiphany this week as I stood in the shop petting our male cat, Cautious.

Over forty years ago, in high school our English teacher asked us to write about what we would be doing in, I think, ten years.

I wrote about my barn renovated into a house that I lived in on the coast. I was a writer and I had a tiger for a pet. Tigers have always been one of my favorite animals. The stripes, regal heads, intelligent eyes… They have just been a favorite, right up there with horses and dogs.

As I stood there, petting Cautious I noticed he had striping like a tiger, intelligent eyes, and a tail that liked to sway back and forth.

Cautious

And that’s when I remembered the English assignment and thought, “I am living half of my prophesy. I am a writer- 50 books published. I have a cat that looks like a tiger. And that’s where it ends. I live in a house that my husband and I built and we are a six hour drive from the Oregon Coast.

The interesting part about that assignment written so long ago, at the time, I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do as an adult. I grew up in a small community before the internet and more than a few channels on the TV. There were few careers that I thought would be even close to what I would like to do. I had wanted to be an artist, but my dad told me I’d never make a living at it. That I needed to go into the medical profession.

If you know me, you know I am not a good fit for the medical profession. I don’t deal well with wimpy, whiny people. But I wanted out of the community where we live and my dad was willing to pay for me to go to college. I signed up to be an x-ray technician. Long story short, it didn’t work out and I ended up moving in with a friend from school and worked many odd jobs until my marriage.

As a young mother, I read voraciously. As I had all through school. I was always reading a book or two. 😉 When the kids started school, I took a writing and art classes at the community college. It was through those classes I began to think I could be a writer. That and the English class I had in college when I went off course of my objective. Anyway, I had an inkling to try writing. I’m not sure how I knew back in high school that was what I would end up doing, but I’m glad half of what I’d dreamed of back then has come true.

I’m pleased with my newest release, Stolen Butterfly, book 7 in the Gabriel Hawke Novels. Here is the info and cover for that.

The proceeds from the sale of this book will go to the non-profit Enough Iz Enough. This is a community outreach organization that advocates for MMIW on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation.  

Stolen Butterfly

Gabriel Hawke Novel #7

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.

Universal Book Lnk:https://books2read.com/u/baZEPq

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.