And, what I wanted to share with you right now is that in honor of the new book launch, ALL of the current Pegasus Quincy mysteries are on sale or FREE starting Friday, May first!
There used to be a wonderful commercial for Pesto Bismol that had a poor being clutching his/her stomach moaning, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”
That’s me today. Thanksgiving was a wonderful feast with good food and good company. And I swear my IQ has dropped 30 points overnight, dealing with the onslaught of too much.
So what to do? I’m glad you asked!
Audiobooks to the rescue. They allow you to quietly sit in your most comfortable chair, tune out the world, and just veg. The perfect solution!
And, you can also listen in the snippets of time you have at the doctor’s office and waiting in the grocery line. In the car. On your phone. I just discovered the other day, you can even listen to Audible audiobooks over your Alexa machine from Amazon. How cool is that?
What I have found is that listening to a book is to experience it like brand new. My readers are telling me that they are going back to the very beginning of the Pegasus Quincy world, and discovering it all over again.
I am excited to announce that Amy Otteson, a skilled professional narrator is narrating all five books (so far!) in the Pegasus Quincy mystery series. The first four books in the series are now available, and we are hoping to have the fifth one out by the end of the year. Amy has a gentle, easy-to-listen to voice that I hope you’ll agree is perfect for the series.
Then, if you’d like to listen to the whole book, you have several options: join Audible for a free 30 day trial. For a limited time only, they are ALSO offering a 53% discount for a three-month membership, too. What a deal!
Or, if you are already an Audible member, you can buy the book, of course. And I am delighted if you do. Or email me directly at lakota (at) lakotagrace.com and request a free promo code. I still have a few left and if one is available for the title you want, I’ll be glad to share it with you.
We are gearing up for the craziness of the holiday season. Take time for yourself as well as those who depend upon you.
This is Montezuma’s Castle, which is not technically a castle and most definitely was not owned by Montezuma, who never traveled this far north from Mexico.
It was, however, home to a resident Arizonan, one Blackjack the rattlesnake. He was a relatively docile black-tailed rattlesnake, and because Montezuma’s Castle is a National Monument, he was a member of the Protected Wildlife Clan.
The park crew painted his tail red so that they could track him, and at last count had moved him over 50 times from his favorite sunny snoozing point in the middle of the visitor’s trail.
This was too good a story not to pass on, so Blackjack shows up as a special critter that Peg Quincy has to relocate in PERIL OF SILVER NIGHTSHADE. I felt I had the right to “transport” Blackjack one last time, given that Montezuma never lived in this Castle, either!
Book Launch Day is exciting–like the birth of a new baby that you’ve carried for so long.
It’s time to let go of the indigestion, the sacrifice of things you’d like to do in exchange for the things you must do, the sleepless nights, the stress, and the angst. Finally these come to an end.
And now the book is here, and I hope readers like this little critter!
When I write a mystery novel, the structure of the genre is like a picture frame in which ideas can be created and examined.
With SILENCE IN WEST FORK I looked at the theme of how character and truth interact. For example, Thorn Malone told the truth, and wasn’t believed. That action got her fired and accused of murder. Her journey to the Navajo Nation on a Vision Quest allowed her to discover who she was as a person. Ultimately, she had to make the decision of whether to stand her ground or run away when life-threatening danger loomed.
Harriet Weaver, on the other hand, got into trouble when another lied on her behalf. All of her life she’d been a “yes” woman. She had a strong domineering mother, a boss that emotionally abused her, and a husband that did not appreciate her worth. Yet she, too, has the opportunity for change and learns her own truth by the time the book ends.
I hope that you enjoy this newest addition to the Pegasus Mystery collection. The scenery is gorgeous and the people have character. (They are all definitely above average, as Garrison Keillor would say!)
When I was researching the setting for the latest Pegasus Quincy novel, I wanted to include a scene where Silver Delaney and Rory Stevens meet in a bar. But just not any bar.
This one had to be the local neighborhood hangout, where after work the lineup at the old wood bar is three deep. Where, when you arrive, the barkeep has your favorite drink mixed before you reach the end of the room.
The Village of Oak Creek has one, called PJ’s Bar & Grill. I happened to catch it for this photograph on a midday, mid-afternoon before all the regulars started to arrive.
You’ll find it in PERIL IN SILVER NIGHTSHADE. Watch for it!
I prefer the folly of enthusiasm
to the indifference of wisdom. ~Anatole France~
Most foster homes are places of love and compassion. Silver had the bad luck to be raised in the other kind. Rather than what COULD BE, she lives by the truth of WHAT IS.
She has three rules. #1–People don’t always do what they say they will do. #2–The world is full of danger. #3–Look out for Number One.
And that is exactly what Silver intends to do when she arrives in the Verde Valley. Her goals are simple: find her (rich, of course) birth parents, con them out of as much money as she can, and start over in a new life.
Her dream job will be a famous chef in Paris, or a doctor collecting grateful accolades and high salary, or even an award-winning actress. But then she gets accused of murder and scrambles to prove herself innocent.
Is she up to it? Find out how Silver’s brand of justice prevails in this fourth book of the Pegasus Quincy Mystery Series.
I’m on the final edits of the fourth Pegasus Quincy novel. This one is called PERIL IN SILVER NIGHTSHADE and gets its title from a poisonous plant prevalent in Red Rock State Park near Sedona, Arizona.
Soon it will be LIVE in both Kindle and paperback versions.
Bird flight is a miraculous event. I once had the privilege of watching two golden eagles in mating flight over the Red Rocks of Sedona. They swooped and swirled, and at the very last moment the female turned on her back in mid-flight and they joined, the male carrying both of them with his strong wings. That numinous vision has remained with me to this day.
I sat on the back porch at dawn the other day, watching the sparrows dive in to the feeder, while the hummingbirds performed aerial acrobatics overhead. Even the pigeons, so clumsy on the ground, soared and gyrated in the morning air.
As a species, humans have always wanted to fly. It’s the only motion of the animals that we can’t do ourselves: we can walk, crawl, swim, climb—but not fly. And we want to. But it is a particular type of flight—the flight of the angels. Not for us the flittering, bare-skinned flight of bats and pterodactyls.
No, we want wings! And feathers! Or better yet, nothing at all. Think of the magic when Peter Pan first shows Wendy how to fly, just by holding on tight. Or when Superman gives Lois Lane that first breath-taking ride over the city.
My heart stopped at that sword fight among the bamboo branches in Crouching Tiger, Flying Dragon. They had to be sorcerers, to stop time that way, in midair. Yes! That’s what I wanted, too.
We’ve tried to copy it the best we can, through airplanes. But traveling enclosed in a metal cocoon with windows that don’t open is like comparing a sedate freeway bus ride to swooping down Highway 1 along the coastline of California at 90 mph on your Harley with no helmet!
We know what we want: That startling adrenaline rush of being in total control of our own destiny. We yearn to soar through the air on the wax wings of Icarus, and yet we crash just as inevitably to the ground. We want the ability to fly. And that’s just what we can’t have.
Some people cope through complacency and forgetting. Peter Bruegel once painted a picture of Icarus plunging into the sea while a plowman nearby focused on his fields and the ships continued to sail by as though nothing important was happening.
Some people cope by dreaming. We fly only in our dreams, in our imagination, in our flights of fantasy and creation.
Maybe wanting what we can’t have is a good thing. And maybe that’s why we can’t fly.
That inability becomes both a lesson in humility and a rainbow to the future.
As long as that desire exists, the hoping and the wishing that is the most quintessentially human of virtues continues to vibrate through our species.
It pulls us forward, helping us to grow, allowing us to dream of the someday when perhaps we can fly!
