Do I or Don't I... I Do by Paty Jager

It seems ironic that today, May 12th, my 40th wedding anniversary to my hubby, I am coming out about something I've been contemplating for over a year.

Anyone who has heard my writing story knows my first love or reading and writing was mystery. In 2015 I launched my Shandra Higheagle Mystery series. It received accolades from my critique partners, my editor, and my proof reader. With a knot in my stomach, I send the first three books out into the reading world one...two...three.

The reviews had me over the moon. People loved Shandra and the twists I love  to put in my mystery books!

The readers want more. The sales keep climbing.

This year, January 20th to be exact, I released the first book of a new mystery series. Gabriel Hawke Novels. This is not a cozy series. It is a police procedural with the small community feel of a cozy. It's set in the county where I grew up. Again, I released the first three books, January, February, and March/April (I fell behind).

They are a hit! Even more than the Shandra books. The sales keep going up, the rankings keep going up and my head is swimming with more plots for both series.

But I haven't finished the Silver Dollar Saloon historical western romance series or the Tumbling Creek Ranch contemporary western romance series. I slogged through another Silver Dollar Saloon book. It should come out next month. That will make three in that series to date. I have plots figured out for four more. But my heart isn't in writing western romance and the sales have been next to nothing. Even my ads, that I do for both the mystery and romance...the romance tank.

Knowing I want to write mystery more than romance, and my mind is constantly finding new plots and story ideas for both Shandra and Hawke, as of this day and this month, I'm publicly letting readers know that until I get excited about writing westerns or the steamier western romance books start to pick up in sales, I am sticking to writing the mysteries.

It has been a tough decision to make. Historical western romance is what made me a published author, but it had been my fallback when I couldn't find help writing mysteries. I am writing what I've always wanted to write. I'm enjoying every minute of the research, writing, and making sure the stories are engaging and believable.

I feel as if I am finally "home" with my writing and doing what I was always meant to do- write mysteries.

If you are a western romance reader and haven't read my books, I have 22 novels you can choose from and over a dozen short stories. If you have read all of my romance, you might want to give my mysteries a try. There is romance in the Shandra Higheagle series and poor Hawke while he doesn't want to be tied down, is feeling a pull from two different women and discovering that, just maybe, he doesn't want to be alone.The Creator knows his mother wants him to marry!

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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Developing a Plot by Paty Jager

bowls made by Paty

I've wrapped up another Shandra Higheagle mystery. Artful Murder will be available in March. The setting for the book came about on a subconscious thought that had my amateur sleuth Shandra Higheagle using the excuse of volunteering at a high school to get information on a suspect in the book Haunting Corpse. 

Artful Murder opens with her volunteering at the high school.

Deciding who would be murdered, I came up with a teacher no one liked. That gave me endless possibilities for suspects. I laid all of these possibilities out on my suspect chart and then started populating the school with teachers and drawing the layout of the school.

I discovered putting Shandra in a new location required more work than having her stay in Huckleberry.  But it was all fun.

Thinking up why the teacher would be disliked, I came up with a teacher from my past who, while not being as "slimy" as the teacher in my book, he gave me the creeps, but it was known throughout the high school that if you wore a dress and sat in the front row you received an A that day. I made my murder victim, more creepy and slimy than the one I encountered in school.

When I finished with the book, Warner High is not a place you would want to send your students due to misplaced principles of the principal, teachers who didn't push for change, and the lecherous art teacher.

I'm just glad Shandra volunteered at the school and helped to bring all the secrets and shadiness out in the open.  ;)

Here is the cover and blurb. The book will release next month. As always, there is the ongoing romance between Shandra and Detective Ryan Greer.

Book ten in the Shandra Higheagle Mystery Series

Secrets… Scandal… Murder…

An autistic boy and his brother need potter Shandra Higheagle’s help, or so she believes. One of the teachers at the school where Shandra volunteers is found dead after a confrontation with the older brother. Shandra knows the boy is innocent. Digging into the teacher’s life she and Ryan turn up scandal.

Detective Ryan Greer has believed in Shandra’s dreams in the past, but she can’t always be right. When his investigation uncovers a principal on the take, females being harassed, and parents kept in the dark, he discovers more suspects than the brothers. Shandra’s time at the school is coming to an end, and the killer has struck again.

 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 32 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. 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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