I Never Do Things Easy by Paty Jager

This month at RTG the theme is “Marching to a Different Drummer.” I can tell you about that!

I’ve always been an independent spirit. My mom said when I was a baby, I didn’t like to be held. I’ve always been happy to hang out by myself, which was good considering I had two brothers. One is 18 months older and the other 4 years younger. I spent most of my time either reading, listening to music, painting or working on a craft project, or riding my horse when I wasn’t doing my chores. My younger brother and I did play together and ride horses together when he was older.

I also loved to sit among the ferns under the trees between the river and the ditch not far from the house. Here I would draw in a sketch book or write stories. It was my hiding place of sorts. It’s where I dreamed up all kinds of wonderful scenarios of how my life would be.

I’m sure you’ve seen the ads where you can send in a drawing and they evaluate it? I did that. And they sent me a letter saying how they could see me as an artist or graphic designer and they could help me attain that goal with their curriculum. Mom indulged me and let me purchase the first kit. But when I wanted to go on to college for art, my dad squashed that idea out. He told me I would be going into the medical profession. That was where I’d make money.

He was adamant. I refused to be a nurse and found out it only took two years to be an x-ray technician. Needless to say, I didn’t finish. I didn’t want to be in the medical field but I didn’t know what I wanted at that point. Though my college English professor encouraged my writing.

A couple years were spent at different jobs, trying to find the one that fit. I married, started having kids, and when the two oldest started school and hubby was willing to take #3 with him trucking, I started taking college writing and art classes. The art dropped to the wayside but I was inspired by writing.

I started writing for the local newspapers, while also working on the first great American novel. 😉 Which was really a murder mystery with an amateur detective. By this time, I had read nearly every mystery book our local library had and knew this was what I wanted to write. After a bad experience with an agent, and not able to find a way to learn more about mystery writing, I turned to Romance Writers of America and started writing historical western romance.

History was one of my favorite subjects in school. Especially American history. It made sense that I’d write that when I had a bounty of workshops, conferences and people who were willing to help me learn the craft and the business of writing. My first book was published in 2006 by a small press. That book began the eventual 8 books in the Halsey Brothers Series.

But I still felt I hadn’t achieved what I wanted. When agents at a conference said they wanted historical paranormal, I came up with the Spirit Trilogy. Books historically accurate with Native American spirits. An agent loved the books but couldn’t figure out how to pitch them to the people who had asked for historical paranormal. Luckily, an editor, with the small press that published my westerns, loved the books, and they were published. Now, I not only had historical western romance but I'd added Native American romance.

Still not happy, I wrote a contemporary western romance and then another. I’d just added another genre to my list.

Then I decided to write a series with a female MacGyver/Indiana Jones character. I loved writing Isabella and Tino’s adventures. I called it Action Adventure but the books could also be classified as Romantic Suspense, with the same two main characters. I LOVED writing the Isabella Mumphrey Adventures. The first book in the series won an award and reviews were good. But they weren’t selling.

I went back to historical western romance. But the idea of finally writing a mystery series kept banging at my brain. And I finally came up with a character, where she lived, a paranormal element, and I started writing the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series. I LOVE writing this series and characters. My readers love this series. The sales are doing well.

With all the great things happening with the mystery series, I decided to write another one. This one has a male protagonist, who is also Native American. Which is now becoming a worry. I have a person who connects me with the reservation and people my Shandra character is related to, but I need to make a connection with someone from the reservation where Gabriel Hawke hails from. I made a small connection last spring and plan to make it much stronger this spring.

But like I said in the beginning, I never do anything the easy way! It’s been a long trip, but I am finally in my happy place with what I am doing.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 43 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

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