I'm Ready for Fall by Paty Jager

Summer came and is quickly sliding into fall and I am struggling to feel as if I had a summer. While I enjoyed every minute of the last three months, I am having trouble digesting that they have come and gone.

June I was preparing for my trip to Iceland and ventured forth the end of the month. Up to my trip, I also jet-boated up the Snake River for research. Then July and August I pinged all around the eastern side of the state judging at county fairs, culminating with judging at the State Fair. 

This past weekend finished out my summer, I was set up at the Sumpter, Oregon Flea Market for three days selling my books alongside another author from the area. With this weekend over, summer is finished as well as my running around. For a while. ;) 

Now I need to sit down and get the book written that was supposed to be ready to go to my editor by now. Funny how having fun always seems to mess up my writing schedule. 

The worst part about having played so much this summer, I'm having a hard time getting my mind wrapped back into the act of writing. I've fleshed out the book I need to write. Made my suspect chart and drawn up info about the characters. I even have all the maps I need. But I keep finding other things to distract me.

The first book of the Gabriel Hawke series is being narrated and I stop to listen to the chapters as they are finished. 

I just published the third book in the Silver Dollar Saloon Series. Freedom. It is available in ebook and soon print.  

Their dreams brought them together. But will violence tear them apart?

Freedom longs to be out of the Silver Dollar Saloon, with a family of her own. When a white man promises marriage and children, she takes the biggest risk of her life, and follows him to the wilds of Montana Territory. Where he shows his true nature.

Water Runs Fast, a Crow off the reservation, comes upon a white man whipping a brown-skinned woman. After stabbing the white man and riding off with the woman, he realizes she is the woman from his visions. The one who pledged to help him and his people survive in the white man’s world.

On the run from the tragedy, the two grow close. Together, they begin a life as husband and wife. But will they have their chance at a life together, or will they hang for murder?

Universal link: https://books2read.com/u/mlawnB

And for one more week, you can get the first book in the Silver Dollar Saloon series, Savannah, for $0.99.

She went from an heiress to a pauper.

He outran the law and became preacher.

Escaping a past full of deceit and larceny, Savannah Gentry goes in search of her only kin, a half-brother she discovered after her father’s death. She hopes Shady Gulch in the Dakota Territory can give her a future. However, she stumbles into the arms of Reverend Larkin Webster, finds herself working in the Silver Dollar Saloon, and soon fears she’s gone from the frying pan into the fire.

After dodging death and incarceration, the Topeka Kid decides to turn his life around and takes on a new identity. Reverend Larkin Webster. It works, until he finds a temptation he can’t resist and steals the heart of Savannah Gentry. When her past collides with his, he wonders if this theft could end up with him losing everything… including his life. https://www.books2read.com/u/b5MkNp

While all of this is going on, I'm also in the critiquing stages of the 13th book in the Shandra Higheagle Series, Toxic Trigger-point. 

I guess it's no wonder I'm having trouble clearing my head and pushing forward on the work in progress, Chattering Blue Jay.  

Off to send Hawke chasing a convicted killer through the Hells Canyon of the Snake River. I hope I don't fall off a cliff! 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 40 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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Just Call Me Oregon Paty by Paty Jager

An author friend who I critiqued with for years dubbed me Oregon Pat and put the character in one of her books. I think I would have made a good female outlaw turned good person. And I would have thrived in that time and place- old west, 1800s.

While I’m not a fan of housework, I do believe I would have been just fine had I lived in the late 1800s or early 1900s.  It was a time when life was a bit harsher, but a lot simpler.

I enjoy riding horses, working cattle, and even the baking. Drawing water from a well and using an outhouse are things I’ve had to do in this lifetime and can imagine it being an everyday occurrence that you wouldn’t even think twice about. Especially, since you wouldn’t know any different.

oil lamp

Growing up we lived rural, had our electricity go out often, had oil lamps filled and ready when it did. We used an outhouse, packed water up from the ditch, and used a wood cookstove and a wood stove for heat. We went out as a family and gathered wood in the fall to get us through the winter months. We had a large garden  and canned all the vegetables we needed to sustain us through the winter, by.

The clothes were hung on a clothesline outside until it was too cold to do so.

All the elements that go into a good historical western romance are things I would have been able to cope with as a woman in the wild west. I wouldn’t have made it in the city, being coddled. I would have had to have worked in a factory or cleaned houses. I wouldn’t have liked to sit around doing handwork and telling others who to run my house.

The thought of being out west, helping build a ranch and a family appeals to me. Hard work but very satisfying. I think had I lived 100-150 years ago, I would have fit in and thrived. It’s why I enjoy writing historical western romance. It gives me a chance to live in a time that women were blossoming into equal partners in the west and having more liberties.

If you’d like a glimpse at this time period through my eyes and those of my characters you can check out my Halsey Brothers Series, Letters of Fate trilogy, or my new Silver Dollar Saloon series.

They can all be found at my website: https://www.patyjager.net

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 37 novels, 6 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.

blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest / Bookbub

Missing Deadlines Craziness by Paty Jager

If you had told me four months ago I wouldn't be a raving lunatic about now, I would have laughed and said, "Yeah, right." At that point I had found myself falling farther and farther behind in my writing commitments. I'm a person who is always early for appointments and finishes things ahead of schedule.

Until the last year.

Life interrupted and the schedule I'd made out last fall for this year started to feel like an anchor around my neck because I wasn't getting projects done in the time I'd predicted. I had been asked to join a group of authors who were starting up their own "world" books. It sounded like fun and I came up with characters and helped populate their fictional town/community.

Before I started that book, I found out the book I'd put in a Kindle Worlds project was coming back to me. That was an added revision I hadn't planned on. But a joyful one! I loved this book and after putting it in the Kindle World I was sorry I'd let the rights go. I'd let peer pressure push me into doing the Kindle World. But Now that book, Isaac: Letters of Fate is mine, revised, and out there for everyone to purchase at all ebook venues and in print. 

The more I thought about all the projects ahead of me and how would I get them done on time, I had to step back and decide which were the most important. I decided to back out on the world project. It was the only thing I hadn't "started" writing and my fans wouldn't miss because they didn't know anything about it. Once I backed out of that, I didn't feel so rushed and didn't tighten up when I sat down to write knowing I had to get X amount of words done that day.

Writing became fun again!

And I'm happy to say, I am slowly getting back on track with my deadlines!

Isaac: Letters of Fate released in July and Lottie Mae: Silver Dollar Saloon released in August and the Dangerous Dance will release. I'll have one more Shandra Higheagle book release this year, Honeymoon Cadaver, then January 2019 will start the beginning of another mystery series release. Book one of that has been written and has received good words from the beta readers.
end of September or the first of October the next Shandra Higheagle mystery,

How is your summer going?  Did you get to spend as much time relaxing as you'd like or has it been hectic for you?

 

Goals and Milestones, Oh My! by Paty Jager

As I start the new year, I have already set my writing goals. My hubby believes I'll be a mental case by the end of 2018, but I believe, because I am excited about all of the series I'm writing and will start, that I will be having a blast, rather than fretting. But time will tell!

Barring any huge family crisis, I believe I have factored in a doable daily word count to make my goals achievable. If I write 3,000-5,000 words 6 days a week and I've factored in a week a month not writing, I should be able to easily write 3 Shandra Higheagle Mysteries, 1 Silver Dollar Saloon, 3 Tumbling Creek Ranch novellas, AND get 2 books written for the new mystery series I'll roll out in 2019.

Remember I said the excitement factor? I LOVE writing the Shandra books and "spoiler alert" the books this year are leading up to Ryan and Shandra wedding -which may or may not happen. ;) I know I've been torturing my readers, but it keeps them coming back for more mysteries.

I am having a lot of fun writing the Tumbling Creek Ranch contemporary western series that has been premiering in box sets. These 45,000 word stories are fun because I don't have to do as much research as I have lived a similar lifestyle (horses, dogs, cattle) so it is fun to put myself in my character's shoes on a dude ranch. 

The Silver Dollar Saloon books require some historical research, but I LOVE the setting and the ongoing characters I set up in this series. Lottie Mae, the next book coming out in May, will be a fun read. 

And last.... I am sooooo excited to start another mystery series with Game Warden Gabriel Hawke. I have been slowly discovering the character and the realm of his work and his heritage. He had a Nez Perce father and a Walla Walla mother. He grew up in Lapwai and finsihed school in Pendleton, Oregon. He later went on to become a State Police Trooper and finally the Game Warden in his family's homeland of the Wallowas.

Those are my goals for the coming year.

Milestones!
I now have over 30 books published!! 31 to be exact.
I have 4 audio books out. Starting on #5 in January.
I have 6 novellas and I a dozen short stories published.

I am beyond humbled that people who read my books like them enough to go out and purchase another one. Thank you all and have a healthy and happy New Year!

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 32 novels, 6 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. This is what Mysteries Etc says about her Shandra Higheagle mystery series: “Mystery, romance, small town, and Native American heritage combine to make a compelling read.”



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