Downhill to the Holidays

On this downhill slide to the end of the year, I feel as if I'm on that boulder that chases Indiana Jones down that tunnel. 

So many things are happening all at once as I try and get the first three books of the new series ready to release in a row. 

And then there is family and the holidays coming. 

Also keeping the momentum going on the advertising and promotion of my main series. All of this is a must to keep my writing flowing and building, but it also cuts into the family and holiday time. 

I have managed to get my grandkids' "Grandma" gifts made. I like to make them something for Christmas. I feel that shows my love and gives them something unique. This year it is pillowcases with fabric that has something on it that each grandchild likes. 

I need some gifts for my brothers and hubby's sister and their spouses. And then there's my dad and mother-in-law. The kids and spouses gifts are done. We're having Christmas at our house for the first time since we built it, so this is a big thing for me. I LOVE decorating for holidays and this will be the first Christmas in 5 that I can pull out all of my decorations and go crazy! I will have pictures when that happens! 

What are you doing for the holidays this year? Are you going crazy decorating and having people over or are you staying low key with decorations and maybe staying home or going to someone's house? 

Connecting Life with my Stories

Wallowa Whitman Forest

The other day, I thought of a great rant to put on my blog and today, when I need a blog post, I can't think what it was....

I'm currently working away to get the next Tumbling Creek Ranch book done to go in another box set. I like writing these novellas for the sets. It gives me a chance to spend time at a dude ranch.

Many years ago, one weekend, one summer, I worked as a prep cook at a secluded ranch in the Wallowa Mountains. They had people stay there, ride in on horses, hikers used it as a base camp, and as a base camp for hunting trips. There were only two ways to get there: by horseback or to fly. The plane was a tiny single prop  that held two people. The pilot and the cook. I had to sit in the back with the supplies. Which considering how precarious the landing was, finding a strip of dirt between towering pine trees and the side of the mountain, I was glad I couldn't see where we were going.

Wallowa Mountains

The ranch was private land in the middle of BLM land.

That weekend, I helped prepare meals, learned how to knead bread dough, and washed dishes. I didn't care for the plane ride. I hate the smell of airplane fuel and this small plane reeked. The scenery to and while at the ranch was amazing. But I worked from sun up to sun down and didn't get a whole lot of time to really enjoy the seclusion and explore.  I think that's why I enjoy making up my own ranch. 

But that experience stuck with me and I use it in the Tumbling Creek Ranch books, and I'm trying to figure out how to make it work for my next mystery series.

Have you ever been to a Dude Ranch? Do you want to go to one?

Photos: Taken by Paty Jager

Oops! Mondays post on Tuesday!

I had uploaded a guest post for later in the month and thought I'd posted for this week. There goes the brain again!

Had a great weekend with oldest daughter and her family. They came over hunting and she bagged her buck. Hubby missed his, but we prefer elk over venison anyway.  He just wanted to hunt with his daughter.

Our son-in-law  is staying with us this week and helping hubby get his shop up. All last winter he kept saying if I had my shop I could be doing this and that.  This winter he will have his shop and can dink around in there to his heart's content!

Looking forward to this month. I'll have the next Shandra Higheagle mystery, Haunting Corpse, out by this time next week. It was a lot of fun to write and went quickly because I have been thinking about this story for some time.  Here is the blurb:

Desertion…Wrath…Murder

A runaway bride, murder, and arson has Shandra Higheagle sleuthing again. Sorting through the debris of her best friend’s childhood, Shandra believes she must solve the murder before her friend becomes the next victim. 

Stumbling upon a dead body, Detective Ryan Greer is determined to bring the killer to justice before Shandra becomes too entangled in her friend’s dysfunctional past. He hopes he’s not too late. Shandra’s deceased grandmother has already visited her dreams, putting Shandra in the middle of his investigation and danger. 

Now I'm working on the next Tumbling Creek novella for another box set with 5 other authors. This novella will be about Brett Wallis the owner of the Tumbling Creek Dude Ranch Resort and his cook/ housekeeper, Melanie.  I've been gathering all the info on the families connected to the ranch and Melanie's background. I've worked on the conflict grid and am figuring out the best starting point for the story.  I know it will be Lacey and Jared's wedding day but trying to decide whether to start it before or after the wedding. I'm leaning toward after, when they are cleaning up. The title of this story will be, Love Me Anyway.  

This weekend will be filled with more company. It is that time of year! What are your weekend plans? 

photo source: Canstock

A Day in the LIfe by Paty Jager

This week the post won't be very exciting and I have only a few photos.

The day is Wednesday, yesterday.

Hubby left when it was still dark to help a friend haul hay. I secretly like these days because the only creatures to interrupt me are the dogs, wanting in and out. But Wednesday it happened to rain off and on all day and so they remained curled up in their respective beds most of the day.

 
I arose, checked my phone for messages, ate breakfast while playing Candy Crush Saga. Yes, I play that game when I don't feel like reading or I'm waiting for hubby as we run errands.

After breakfast, I started the laundry and cleaned up my sewing mess because my younger brother and his wife will spend the night here on Friday night. I had stuff all over the dining room table and the guest bed.

I glanced out the window as three large coyotes were trotting through our alfalfa field. One not very far from the house. Mikey was outside. I stepped out and called to him. He didn't come, but the two coyotes farthest away took off at a lope. The other one kept hovering closer than I liked. I haven't shot my hubby's large caliber rifle so I grabbed my twenty-two. But the darn pivot was parked in front of the house and I wasn't positive I wouldn't wiggle and put a bullet through it, so I just shot in the air twice and the nearest coyote finally loped off.

I dressed, and the dogs and I walked down to the corral and fed George and Apollo. Of course, I had to throw the tennis ball there and back for Mikey.

Mikey waiting for me to kick the ball

I also took a photo of the flowering wild flower because it has two blooms now.

Back in the house, I started up the computer and listened to 4 chapters of Murderous Secrets my narrator had uploaded for my approval. After that I caught up on the social media things I'd put off the day before while traveling to a dental appointment. All the social media, promotion, and all that fun (not!) stuff took up the morning. And I vacuumed out all the wall heaters because I now need heat. Only a week ago we were still using fans to keep cool at night to sleep.

In the afternoon, I continued writing the next mystery.

After dinner, I fed Apollo and George, told the dogs to hop in the car, and headed to town for groceries and to pick up hubby who left his pickup to be worked on.

We arrived home to catch the last half of America's Got Talent. We're you surprised with who won?

And that was a day in the life.

Time Management

Everyone struggles with having enough time to do everything they want or need to do. For a person who has an outside job, one where they drive or walk to, clock in and clock out, they know when they will have down time and know when they have to be working.

For the creative person or any other person who works from home, it can be hard to make a set time frame for work and one for pleasure and household duties.

I can be cleaning the house or helping with the hay and I'll figure out the element of a story that needs to come out or come up with a new book idea and sit down to make notes and before I know it, I haven't finished cleaning or my husband is knocking on the swather door wanting to know if  the machine is broke down. 

When I'm feeling creative and the words or ideas are coming, I don't want to stop. But I must. There are meals to make, clothes to wash, and floors to clean. Not to mention horses to feed, dogs to tend to, and flowers to water.  There is a person and animals who depend on me.There are days all I do is clean and take care of animals or ranching duties. Those are my down days. The days between projects or when I need a break. Like other people have Saturday and Sunday, my weekends come at any time during the week.

Me and Bud

The days when I know I need to get projects done - where I'm at right now - I pat my horse on the neck and tell him, soon. Soon, I'll be able to ride him. I just have to finish this project and finish driving around the state to judge and we can ride. A week, then two go by, and I've still not taken the time to saddle up Bud and ride, even though my heart is yearning for such an outing.

I am behind in my writing schedule. When I get caught up, I can ride, I can take a trip with a friend to browse second hand stores, I can take time to visit family.

But for now, it's eating at me that I took time away from writing to write this post, even though it is writing, it's connecting with my readers, and it's letting the world know, I am creating as fast as I can and putting out  the best book I can. 

I'm a person who doesn't like to miss deadlines, I've missed two this year. I had promised readers a book that I'm still unsure of publishing. This has been an off year for me, but I hope that next year will be better as I set my sights on the next books in the mystery series and the two new shiny historical and contemporary western series I've started.

Are you good at time management?  What is your secret?

Always a Book or Two Ahead

I don't know how other authors operate but my mind is always working on the next books I'll be writing while I'm working on the current work in progress.

Even though not all my books are in a series, I like how I can think about the next book as I write a book in a series and drop in a little nugget that gives the reader an idea of what the next book in the series might be about.  It works well for the Shandra Higheagle books. I either leave a nugget about Shandra and Ryan's relationship or the possibility of who might be involved in the next murder that happens.

The same goes for series that are set in the same area or with the same ongoing secondary characters. While writing a book, I can think of a good premise for another book. It may not always be the next book, it could be one or two down the line, but I jot down the information and use it when I'm ready for that book.

Right now as I'm writing the first book of the Silver Dollar Saloon series and the secondary characters are coming to life, I can visualize the type of man each saloon girl will have for her hero, and I'm getting a good picture of the woman who will capture the heart of saloon owner, Beau Gentry. But he won't have his happy-ever-after until about book four. Why? Because the reader needs to get to know him better before they see the woman he falls for. ;)

Not only am I seeing the books that will come from the Silver Dollar Saloon series, I'm planning the next mystery and a contemporary western Christmas novella.

Lewis

The next mystery will have a Halloween theme, with Lewis, the cat, mixed up in the murder. So be prepared for that one!  I have the premise sketched out and will be working on the suspect chart soon. I'm also figuring out how to work in a secondary character in a future Shandra Higheagle book who can be used in a new murder mystery series. It's the logistics I'm working on and whether to make the main amateur sleuth a male or female. Any suggestions?

And the contemporary western Christmas novella. I'm still puzzling that out. I'd like it to have something to do with the National Finals Rodeo because it happens in December but at the same time, I'd like to write a story that sticks to what I know, cattle. So it may be a story set on a cattle ranch. Any preferences?

That is how my brain works. Constantly flipping story ideas and characters around in my head, assessing whether they will work and if I can pull off what I'm aiming for in the story.

As I've heard several times from friends and family after I've talked about the process of writing a book, "I never realized how much goes into a story other than writing it." 

Master Plan

This is a post that I had on a blog tour for one of my books. I thought my readers and followers might enjoy it.

I’ve been drawn to mystery for a long time.  The cat and mouse game the writer plays with the readers, keeping them guessing is my favorite part. I love it when a writer fools me, and yet, when I think back over the story, it was there all along.  

 

That is what I try to do in my Shandra Higheagle Mysteries.  I start out with who was killed and how. Which means, I must know that person’s background and why someone might have wanted them dead. The how can change as I start lining up my suspects. The how may have been one way in the beginning but as I list the suspects, their motive and opportunity, sometimes the how must change to fit the opportunity.

I have what I call a suspect chart that I use when listing the suspects. The columns are: Victim – Death- Suspect-Motive- Red herring.  Suspect and motive are self-explanatory. The Red herring is what the character did or didn’t do that makes them look like a suspect. I usually have anywhere from 5 to 7 suspects. Using this chart helps me to keep the story moving forward. I use the red herrings and motives as the information in each scene that keeps the story going forward and the sleuths following clues. 

Victim	Death	Suspect	Motive	Red Herring
John Doe	Stabbed
		PeeWee	Gang member	Has a criminal record for stabbing people

While this all sounds like I have my book all planned out, I don’t. Of the 7 Shandra Higheagle mysteries I’ve only written 2 where the killer stayed the same from the suspect chart to the end. As I write the book other secondary characters enter the story. What they see and do changes what I thought happened in the beginning processes. 

One of the wonderful things about writing, and writing mystery, is how my mind can have me write a character doing something, and at the time I don’t know why, then later on it is connected to the story in such a way it makes a huge impact on the outcome. 

In my stories, I also have dreams that play a role in how the main character, Shanda Higheagle, helps to solve the murder. Sometimes the dreams are explicit enough she can help guide Detective Ryan to the clues and murderer. Other times, she is too close to the situation and can’t figure it out. However, if the reader really thinks about the dreams, they could figure out who the killer is.  There are times I need to add a dream to the story, but I’m not sure what I want to show. When that happens, I quit for the day and find other things to do, and usually, out of nowhere, the dream will come to me.  It is either a foreshadowing of what’s to come or a cryptic message about who the killer is. You can go here to discover more about Shandra, her deceased grandmother, and her dreams.

The latest Shandra Higheagle book, Fatal Fall, will release May 25th,

 

Book eight of the Shandra Higheagle Native American Mystery Series
Avarice…Family…Murder

When the doctor is a no-show for her appointment, Shandra Higheagle becomes wrapped up in another murder. The death of the doctor’s elderly aunt has everyone questioning what happened and who’s to blame. Shandra’s dreams soon tell her she’s on the right path, but also suggests her best friend could be grave danger. 

Detective Ryan Greer knows not even an illness will keep Shandra from sneaking around, and he appreciates that. Her insight is invaluable. When she becomes embroiled deeper in the investigation, he stakes out the crime scene and waits for the murder to make a tell-all mistake.

But will he be able to act fast enough to keep Shandra or her friend from being the next victim?