Guest Posts Featuring Kathleen Eagle

#1 Jon Eagle teaches Lakota tradition
#2 Arranging lodgpoles
#3 significance of the center 2
#4 woman must wrap rope
#5 Securing tipi cover

Setting Up the Tipi: An Eagle Family Story

By Kathleen Eagle

Eagle family gatherings at our sister Bernadine’s house on Standing Rock Reservation generally attract a whole host of family, friends and neighbors, especially in the summer. For Clyde and me it’s at least a 6-hour drive each way, but the way is easy. Except for the seasons, not much changes on the prairie—same road signs, same terrain, same towns—and our memories are clear and bright.  One big change—the cell phone—allows us to check in and let our sister know how close we are. She tells us who’s arrived and what’s going on and whether we need to “step on it. These guys wanna know when they get to eat.” So we step on it because Clyde’s baby sister is the boss.

It’s been a month since our last visit, and our mission is one that’s become all too common for us in recent years. We’ll be there to say our final goodbyes to our young nephew, Caleb, who died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. Young. Way too young.

I’ve been an Eagle for more than half century. My nephew, Buddy, often reminds me that I’ve been an Eagle longer than he has, and that even he is “gettin’ ooold.” Well, this year I had a real surprise coming, which I’ll tell you about in a minute. Here’s a hint: the day I first saw this place, these people, the unforgettable cowboy who made me an Eagle seemed pretty recent until I start counting memories. We were definitely on the young end of this mighty big family. But now…

I had a lot to learn back then, and I still do. I’m always hungry for more. And I’m blessed with lots of nieces and nephews—our kids’ generation—many of whom were my students. They’re the ones raising the children and doing the teaching now. Through my novels I’ve been sharing what I’ve learned over my years of trying to fly like an Eagle. Now let me introduce you to my nephew, Jon Eagle Sr., who is the Standing Rock Tribal Historic Preservation Officer. I’m so proud of him. He learned to speak Lakota fluently as an adult, which requires real commitment and great love. He’s spent time with Lakota elders, and they’ve shared words, wisdom, tradition, stories. He’s devoting his life to keeping all this alive through the hearts and minds of people, young and not-so-young, who spend time with him.

At our June gathering Jon teaches more than how to assemble a tipi in Bernadine’s backyard. The body of an Eagle brother, father, nephew, cousin and friend will be placed inside it the following day. It will shelter the body left in the care of grieving family and friends. Pall bearers will watch over the open door to assure privacy for smudging, prayer, song, words and tears.

Three lodgepoles are lashed tightly together using a long rope and raised to form a tripod. The rest of the poles are divvied among the spaces between the tripod poles to form two circles, bottoms on the ground, tops laid across the circle of wrapped rope to create a smaller circle of lodgepole tips, reaching in all directions for the sky. So the framework for shelter is built circle upon circle, and traditionally the Lakota tipi belongs to a woman.

Jon points to the round hole formed at the juncture of the lodgepoles—the bones of the shelter—which is the sign of the human “belly button.”  Our navel.

A woman (today it’s Jon’s daughter, this tipi’s owner) must wrap the end of the rope—the umbilical cord—around the juncture of the lodgepoles.

The cover is generally made of canvas these days, but traditionally the tanned hide of the buffalo supplied the protective skin of the Lakota lodge. The tipi is hearth and home, and its structure tells a story of life.

Once the tipi was set up, we lined up by age on either side of the east-facing tipi door, females on the left, males on the right. I guess more than a minute has passed, so here’s the surprise: I’m the one closest to the door on the women’s side. I’m declared the elder woman in the Eagle family. And Clyde, first on the other side of the door, is now for all practical purposes, the elder male Eagle.

We’ll take it. We’re served dinner first.

After dark, Jon invites us to gather round for some stargazing. He shares Lakota legends remembered through the same constellations that people the world over look to on clear nights for stories passed from one generation to the next, sharing life lessons and ancestral history, wide-eyed wonder and abiding sense of community.

Isn’t it amazing how much human beings have always had in common? Over the many miles of distance and centuries of time, we’ve lived with the same wants and needs, strengths and weaknesses, wisdom and foolishness, and we’ve written it all in the stars. Could we open our minds a bit more, do a little more stargazing? And how about book-reading? Because stories remind us of our humanity.

Coming full circle now, yes, for better and for worse, a lot can happen in half a century. If you’re old enough to step back and take the long view, 50 years is really not so much. But it’s enough to make a difference.

Guest Post Featuring Rob Sangster

2021 deep time graphic

DISCOVER WHERE YOUR HEART WANTS TO GO

By Rob Sangster

At last the road is opening up before us again. Even though we’ve had our vaccinations, I suggest we not be too quick to return to where we vacationed a couple of years ago. Or visit some crowded spot just because it’s trendy. We’ve been cooped up for quite a while, so it’s time for an adventure.

As you begin to think about possible destinations, answer two questions. What kind of experiences do you want? What do you hope to gain from the trip? With those answers in mind, you’re ready to think about where to go without being influenced by the popularity of a destination or desire to impress anyone. Now, close your eyes and conjure up the names of places that make your heart beat faster. Think of cultures, history, art, and music you love. Where will you find the adventures, weather, and scenery you most enjoy?

Next, prompt your memory with a world map. Read travel books to stimulate your imagination. Work the Internet. Skim copies of National Geographic and Conde Nast Traveler. Watch the Travel Channel, the Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Explorer. Ask friends for their most treasured travel tales.

Make a list, grouping your choices by continent or geographic region and post it where you’ll see it every day. After you’ve lived with this list for a while, cut it to a few magic places. With your original objectives in mind, rank them and then let the following factors influence your final decision.

One country–or many
The differences between a survey trip through many countries and a trip that focuses on a single country or region are substantial. If you have just a week or two, a narrowly focused trip, dealing with only one language, transportation system and culture, may be ideal. In general, daily costs of transportation, lodging, and food are lower when you spend most of your time in one place. On the other hand, a multi-country trip is like a buffet table loaded with rich and varied dishes, many of them new to your palate. That requires more effort and a faster pace to sample everything. Which best fits your objectives?

Political conditions
When the welcome mat has blood on it, think twice before you cross the threshold. While safety conditions in certain countries may not be as dangerous for travelers as media reports suggest, skip these places until things quiet down.

Mental and physical fitness
Ask yourself how much input you can handle from cultures very different from your own and for how long. There are times on the road when you won’t know exactly what’s going on or what will happen next. If your tolerance for ambiguity is low, you may prefer familiar cultures until you’re a more seasoned traveler.

Don’t underestimate the rigors of walking the halls of Parisian art museums and galleries for a week, let alone visiting a dozen Egyptian temples and tombs. Where heat, altitude, or exertion will be issues, be honest with yourself about the physical condition required. If you’re considering trekking in India’s Zanskar Valley or to the summit of Kilimanjaro, don’t think in terms of how fit you were at eighteen, or how fit you could be if you worked out for three months. Think of how fit you will actually be when you board the plane. Err on the side of caution and stay well within your capacity.

Ben Franklin said that, “Travel is one way of lengthening life.” I agree 100%. For example, board a bus in Sri Lanka I struck up a conversation with a sturdy, white-haired English lady who looked to be about 65 years old. Turned out she’d just ridden her bicycle solo the entire length of India. She exemplified the point that age need not be a disqualification when your flame is burning bright.

Local languages
Since we humans use approximately 5,800 different languages and dialects, you may worry about your inability to communicate ion some faraway place. You needn’t. English is rapidly becoming the global language. Besides, there’s plenty of assistance available when you need it, starting with friendly local people. Berlitz and many other series provide useful word, phrase, and pronunciation guides. They, along with your computer or mobile phone, are divided into functional sections, such as how to order meals, ask directions, and change money. If you can’t speak a single word of Setswana or Bahasa, or whatever, handling daily details can be a bit difficult, but a few phrases and a couple of dozen words will get you through anywhere.

Again, start by listening to your heart in choosing your destinations.


Check out Rob Sangster’s EPIC Award Winning Title: DEEP TIME

On sale for only $0.99!

Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google and Apple

Guest Post Featuring Rob Sangster

Graphic

I Can’t Wait to Get on the Road Again – to New Zealand

by Rob Sangster

Calling it sheltering makes me feel better, but I’m so locked down I’m getting root bound. At least it provides a lot of time for writing, so long as I can keep my synapses firing.

To accompany my first three novels—Ground Truth, Deep Time, and No Return—I am well into writing my next book. But the truth is that I can hardly wait to be on the road again. That makes me think of a place in which it’s likely to be safe to travel in the foreseeable future. That’s a country that makes me so happy I even bought a bit of waterfront land there. In case you, too, are eager to travel, I’ll tell you about it.

Meeting New Zealand is like beginning a fine love affair. The anticipation is wonderful and, of course, there is much more to it than you realize in the beginning.

New Zealand has a multi-faceted personality. Most evident is the familiar, traditional one travel agents promote and most visitors encounter. Typically, travelers arrive in Auckland, the capital city, and leave the next day for the small town of Rotorua to wrinkle their noses at pungent sulfur odors and watch mud boil in volcanically charged thermal springs. From there, they head south to stroll the banks of the River Avon in bucolic Christchurch, take a launch across Lake Wakatipu, and shop in Queenstown. Following an afternoon cruise in Milford Sound watching the dolphins play, they admire the Tasman Glacier and the angular summits of Mts. Cook and Tasman, even if only through the picture window of the Hermitage Hotel.

A few visitors experience mild adventures by spending several days hiking the Milford Track or a week skiing the Coronet Peak snowfields near Queenstown.

But New Zealand offers so much more, so I’ll suggest two rather different ways to get to know this distant country. One is very relaxed, the other considerably more energetic.

When I’m in the mood to experience the relaxed aspect of New Zealand, I spend a week at an inn on the banks of a rocky brook near Lake Taupo on the North Island, watching world-class rainbow trout leap in the sun. I may pass a tranquil day in a hot air balloon above pastoral landscapes where snow drifts metamorphose into thousands of fluffy sheep. From there I immerse myself in quiet thoughts while strolling through fragrant vineyards or laze away a peaceful afternoon talking with youngsters in a Maori village outside Wanganui. Traveling farther south, I share a day with an elderly New Zealand couple on a remote sheep station, savoring silence broken only by faint yelps from sheep dogs working a flock down from high pastures.

Along the route, “backpacker hotels” provide economical private rooms and a chance to trade stories with other travelers.

An aspect of the New Zealand personality not to be missed is the warmth of its people. They are generous and opinionated and, happily, speak a language not altogether different from my own. One easy way to meet them is by spending the night in “caravan parks.” Designed for RVs, they usually offer cozy cabins as well. Community kitchens and lounges, often with logs blazing in the fireplace, are a fine setting for late-night discussions about the state of the world. When you drop into a pub for the second time, you’re likely to be greeted by a call of “good on yer, lad,” and a clap on the back.

In Wellington, board the Arahua, a shiny-white ferry with a plunging dolphin painted on its navy-blue funnel. After a few tranquil hours crossing the Cook Strait, we glide into Picton harbor at the end of the snow-capped Kaikoura mountain range. Rent a car from a local agency and drive west along the sinuous Queen Charlotte route. After several hours of spectacular views of the Marlborough Sounds, turn north toward the small settlement of Okiwi Bay and drive out French Pass Road. To either side of this winding ridge route are magnificent views of deep-water bays accented by picnic-size islands. A few impassive cows balance lopsidedly on steep hillsides, knee-deep in newly shorn lambs mindlessly munching on straw-colored tussocks. At the remote end of the peninsula, fishing boats swing slowly at anchor, feeling the pull of the deadly whirlpools of the nearby French Pass channel.

Leaving the Marlborough Sounds, you’ll reach Nelson, the artistic and sunshine capital of the country, in a couple of hours. Depart from Nelson early in the morning in order to reach the mountains to the west just as the night-fog rises from the valleys. Breakfast smoke still curls above farmer’s cottages as untended flocks wander at the edges of verdant forests. Carbon-black boulders are imbedded high on mountain slopes. These great stones look as if they’d been expelled from the subterranean world.

After tea and conversation in the picture-postcard town of Takaka, continue out the long sweep of Golden Beach to Farewell Spit. The tip of its projection into the Tasman Sea is as lonesome as the end of the world.

When it’s time to turn back, follow the river southwest through Buller Gorge, passing through a dozen rainbow arches. Mosses and lichens in shades of red and yellow clothe rock walls glistening in the mist.

Reaching Westport on the west coast, you meet the sea as it pounds itself into foam and spray. This is where you are introduced abruptly to a primitive aspect of New Zealand’s personality. The coastal shrubbery, sculpted by ceaseless wind, grows with a forty-five-degree inclination. Farther inland, weathered tree trunks stand in gray legions, branching only at the very crown. The drive is punctuated by sounds like the “crump” of artillery shells as compressed water and air explode out of caverns.

Break the drive down the coast with a trip in a shallow-draft jet boat into the mountains and the heart of wilderness. Or pause at a roadside trailhead for a solitary walk to an emerald lake.

After several hours on this deserted coast, it’s time to stop at Franz Josef, a village near one of the glaciers cascading down from the Southern Alps. Hike over the moraine on the valley floor between towering cliffs to reach the glacier’s “toe.” That’s where you’ll hear the sound of rushing water I think of as the song of New Zealand. From snowfields far above, waterspouts hundreds of feet out from the cliffs before splintering on ledges far below. The song comes, too, from underfoot as crushing pressure and the eternally slow friction beneath the living glacier melt thousand-year-old ice, freeing it to return to the sea. Crampons strapped to your boots, ice ax in hand, climb into a frozen world, exploring crevasses and caves until turned back by a craving for hot cider and the comfort of a log fire.

Continue down the coast, crossing streams with names like “Imp’s Grotto,” and “Roaring Billy,” until the road runs its course in the fishermen’s village of Jackson’s Bay. From there, scramble along the rocky coast to watch a colony of Fiordland Crested Penguins at play. Being in these places is to return to the days when human beings stood in places for the first time.


Ground Truth by Rob Sangster is on sale!

Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, or Apple!

Guest Post Feature Michael J. Allen

Banner
Banner

Guns of Underhill: Seeking the Edges

by Michael J. Allen

The old gods are liars.

Fairies doubly so.

        When I embarked on the journey of developing what later became the Guns of Underhill series, it started with a single question: What if the Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian and assorted gods of mythology had really been fairy creatures jerking us around for their own amusement?

On first blush it made a great deal of sense.

        Weren’t most of those old gods capricious to the point of self-hugging toga?

Yup, fairies.

        What I hadn’t realized at the time of that first question was the wonderful journey a single question would bring into my life. One question became two became four and so on. What happens if humanity discovers the ruse? How would that affect what we know today as European history? If the Romans were busy trying to exile their fairy overlords, what would happen to their conquest of Gaul? Brittany? The Celts? If war never reached those areas, who would have risen to leadership?

I’m not a historian. Normally, I just make stuff up.

        Okay, there’s real research in all my novels, but nothing like what Guns of Underhill required.

Suddenly I found myself pouring through history, trying to find key shifted caused by the mass exile of all Fey from Europe. Where would the Fey end up? Who would they find there? What would happen when humanity eventually decided they wanted to expand into that area? How would guns factor into the equation? How would magic wielders adapt to muggles toting around a six-gun? And of course, how would a bunch of vindictive, god-like fairies react?

The initial research led to Feyrth, a fantastical alternate history Earth centered around the wild west era. It led to the epic, world-spanning story of Rafael West, half-elven druid turned gunslinger, being coerced into a service of one of the old gods: Fey West.

Fey West was only the beginning.

        Once more, I’m digging through history, trying to find facts that can meld with the fantastic. Once more, I’m jugging the balancing act of honoring the past while infusing it with magic.

I could be happier with the challenge.

        Every time I locate a pivot point where a little tweak can reroute history, I can’t help but get excited. Need an upheaval? No problem, how about a fallen emperor. Need a villain? Look no further than a duplicitous dowager. Add in some real-life rebellions, a pinch of hubris (theirs, not mine), a blood curse, several measures of human nature, another mad fairy or two, and viola – Guns of Underhill 2, a gripping adventure following Rafe’s friend Shamus through the 19th century Far East, is under construction.

Fortunately for me, every era has people that are a mess. That makes searching for the edges where the magical world can be seamlessly grafted in with real life a little easier. (Thank God for historians and librarians.) Chances are, if something has happened, it will turn out to be neither the first time nor the last. The trick is combing through the patterns and parallels until the story is as real as the history books – give or take a little magic.

All in all, crafting a story in an alternate history Earth means a lot more digging, but the treasures are so worth the back pain.


Michael J. Allen’s Book, Fey West is on promo from 3/16/2020 through 3/31/2020

Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple

 

Guest Post Featuring Jane Singer

Alias Dragonfly banner 2020

The Freak Who Became A Spy

by Jane Singer

When Maddie Bradford, the teenage spy in Alias Dragonfly by Jane Singer fell out of a tree when she was five years old and hit her head on a rock, her spells, as she called them, started. Today, we’d label what happened to her a traumatic brain injury that left her body whole, but her brain forever altered. But Maddie was born in 1846, long before diagnostics might illuminate why this sad youngster twisted and thrashed without warning and seemed to gaze into thin air, seeing, hearing, what? And then suddenly right herself, her tumble of curls covering the tears on her cheeks.  At least they didn’t put her away.

She could be anywhere when the spells came. At home, at school, or in her town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire where she was a freak, “the village peculiar,” as the goodly folks of Portsmouth whispered. Too bad she could hear them. She could hear … everything. The sad howls of a wolf who’d lost its mate to a hunter’s snare deep in the woods, the distant sobs of her Mama at the grave of her sister, and the during those times when she saw flashing lights, shapes, even the minute details of faces of everyone around her—the exact numbers of specks on a strawberry—what she didn’t know as a scared child with scared parents who had no idea how to help her, was that her “runaway” brain would forever change her life.

And she did run away: from school where the kids laughed and pointed, from home into the woods where her Papa had taught her how to use a gun, but never to kill an animal, unless her life was at stake.

Her growing years were a muddle of sadness when her sister Nancy died at only five, and shortly after, her Mama died of the same wasting illness. And then war came. The Civil War. Her Papa enlisted when Mr. Lincoln sent out the call for volunteers. Maddie begged to go with him. Why couldn’t she be a soldier, a girl in a boy’s disguise?

Not ever, her Papa said and took her for safekeeping to Washington, D.C. before he left for the front and parked in her Aunt’s boardinghouse.

That’s when her life began again.

That’s when her oddities, her talents, meant something to Mr. Alan Pinkerton’s secret service force. That’s when the “village peculiar” became a spy. That’s when she shed old skin and donned her alias, Dragonfly.

See what happened. See the Civil War through the eyes of a fifteen-year old girl, a savant, some might call her. See what you think and tell me.

I write about that war, about unknown men, women and teens living in a time of terror. That is my mission, my calling.

Visit Maddie and me at Janesinger.com, meet spies of all stripes, and look for the sequel Alias Sparrow Hawk in the near future where you will meet a fiercer, harder, toughened-by-war Maddie.

***

And if you like nonfiction, check out my latest, The War Criminal’s Son: The Civil War Saga of William A. Winder, a good man with a bad name synonymous with brutality in an already brutal war. As the first-born son of Confederate General John H. Winder of Libby, Belle Isle, and Andersonville Prison infamy, William A. turned his back on the entire Confederate Winder clan—father, uncles, half-brothers, cousins, aunts and grandmother—to stand with the Union. For this loyalty, and that is a theme that recurs in much of my work, William A. was under suspicion throughout the entire war. So the Civil War still haunts and simmers for me. And the themes then as now of discord and division resonate again and again our own troubled time.


Alias Dragonfly is on sale for $0.99 from February 1st through February 15th. Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple.

Guest Post Featuring Katherine Scott Crawford

keowee banner
KSCinred

What Would Quinn Do?

by Katherine Scott Crawford

Every Autumn, when the mountains around my Western North Carolina town flame with color and the humidity lifts, leaving a sky so crystalline blue it hurts your eyes to look at it, I think of Quinn.

Quinn (or Quincy) McFadden is the heroine of my first historical novel, Keowee Valley. In the 1760s she leaves behind the bustling, international port of Charleston, South Carolina—and her irascible, skeptical grandfather—for a new life in the wild Carolina backcountry. Though Quinn sets out in summer (via carriage, wagon, and foot along the Cherokee Path), it is Fall when the novel opens. In fact, it’s an “Indian summer,” just like the one my part of the world seems to be experiencing this year.

“Indian summer,” according to the experts, is an unseasonably hot, dry Autumn. It was dubbed such because it occurred most in places where Native Americans (or American Indians) lived and hunted. Considering that here in Western North Carolina in 2019, September was hotter and drier than August (the hottest and driest on record), it seems a fitting description.

In the Prologue of Keowee Valley, Quinn looks back on her life, remembering such a time. The Prologue was the start of the novel for me, in more ways than one. It remained virtually unchanged from the time I wrote it until the time it appeared in print, as a published novel. Here’s the first paragraph:

My story begins before the fall, in that Indian summertime when the hills are tipped with oncoming gold, and the light hangs just above the trees, dotting the Blue Ridge with gilded freckles. The mornings and the evenings are cool, but it is the mornings I remember most: waking before the men, wrapping a shawl around my shoulders and slipping out through the fields, the dry grass crunching beneath my boots. Drifting down from Tomassee Knob the mist would spread over the Keowee Valley in a great, rivering pool of gray, the sun rising in the east flecking the horses’ breath—suspended in the air before their nostrils—with slivers of shine. It was then the whole world was quiet, no crows eating my corn, the peacefulness not even broken by the bay of some wolf on the ridge, calling to the still-lit moon in the western sky. The whole world was silent then, and the Blue Ridge breathed beneath the deep purple earth. I thought I could feel it, a great heart beating in the wilderness.

Many times over the years, friends and family members, book club participants or folks in the audience at events where I’ve been a guest speaker, have asked if Quinn is me. I think this is a natural assumption: after all, characters are an author’s creation. But the truth is, while there is much of me in Quinn, she’s made up of the fibers of my experience, and of my inexplicable dreams.

Still, when it comes to Autumn in the mountains, and how she feels about it, Quinn and I are kindred spirits. Quinn craves solitude; she doesn’t mind being alone. On the dangerous Southern frontier, even among the few colonial settlers, the Cherokee people, the plants and animals, Quinn still needs to be alone at times. She is a deep thinker: a stare-out-the-window sort of person.

Just like Quinn, I crave the nature of wilderness—never more so than in Autumn. I am a natural ponderer, and so is she. For the two of us, wild places, and expansive views, invite pondering more than anywhere else.

However, in addition to being a novelist, I am also mother to two young children. When you’re a mom, you just don’t get much stare-out-the-window time, no matter the season. You don’t have much of a chance to ponder on anything except, perhaps, family concerns. But for me—and certainly for Quinn—this is an important part of our personalities. It makes us, us.

This Autumn, I’m determined to be more like Quinn. I long to step away from the overwhelming noise of the modern world, and to stare into a forest full of stories. I want to watch elk graze in a long mountain valley, in meadows the color of old gold.  I want to settle myself on a creek bank, consider the play of light on ancient boulders in the water. Even if I have only moments of solitude before my busy life intrudes.

Quinn is my inspiration, though. Because in Quinn’s story, an unusual man crosses that creek to find her, and an epic adventure begins.

***

Katherine Scott Crawford is an award-winning historical novelist, newspaper columnist, and Founder and Director of MountainTop Writers Retreats. An avid hiker and travel junkie, she’s also a former newspaper reporter, backpacking guide, and college professor. She lives with her husband and daughters in the mountains of Western North Carolina, where she is at work on a new novel. Connect with her at www.katherinescottcrawford.com or on social media (especially Instagram @thewritingscott).


Keowee Valley is on sale for $0.99 from November 1st to November 15th. Find it at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple.

Guest Post Featuring Kathleen Eagle

glory days
every gam
What the Heart Knows Banner

Kathleen Eagle’s Love Affair With Basketball

By Kathleen Eagle

Mamas might not want their babies growing up to be cowboys, but writers don’t mind at all when the hero in their work-in-progress does just that. Readers have been snapping those guys up since Owen Wister’s Virginian warned, “When you call me that, smile!” But for years editors have admonished against musicians, artists, dancers, and–unless he rides something that bucks–sports heroes. I played by the rules for years. Write what you love, they say. Write what you know. I know cowboys, Indians, Indian cowboys, soldiers, the county sheriff, the struggling rancher, the dedicated teacher–I write hard-working heroes inspired by people I know.

But I’m pretty sure I was born a basketball fan. Growing up in Massachusetts in the ’60’s, I rarely missed a high school game. Those were the days. And who remembers the Celtics back then? Couldn’t be beat. Remember Julius “Dr. J” Erving at UMass? Glory days.

My father, circa 1940, Colonial Beach, VA. Within 2 years he would be training and then parachuting and fighting in Europe.

And then there was the time I asked my mother what made her fall in love with Daddy, and she said, “He was such a good basketball player.” What? And I thought he was all about golf. But Mama had the picture to prove it. So when I became a high school teacher on a Lakota Sioux reservation in the Dakotas, where basketball is the sport, I was there for every game.

This is my son, David’s favorite picture of his Mom.

Years and many published books later, I had an idea for a wounded hero–one who had to retire at the top of his game–and I knew what game it would be. I do believe in writing what I know, and I don’t know any NBA players. (I met Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at a book event and the late great Coach Flip Saunders at a Blockbuster store, both very briefly.) But I’m in the business if making people up. I decided to roll up some of the special basketball players close to my heart into one of my favorite characters–Reese Blue Sky–for What the Heart Knows.  I sold my editor on the idea with a “secret baby” plot–one of the most popular conventions in the romance genre. But this book is bigger than that. Lots of family angst, secrets and lies, return of the native, casino gambling, murder, restoration and renewal. And there’s a love of basketball.

I was already a Minnesota Timberwolves fan when I started writing the book, but I became a close follower. I went to a few games, but mostly I watched at home. If I can’t do what a character does–generally I can’t–I have to find other ways to get inside that made-up head and pack it full of the stuff that life is made of. I dedicated the book to my father, Sid Pierson, and to Robert Eaglestaff one of my first high school students, both of whom died from heart problems, both of whom played basketball with a passion.

I still look forward to basketball season, and I watch my team, win, lose, or rebuild. I cheered our first #1 draft pick, celebrated Kevin Garnett’s homecoming, mourned the sudden death of Coach Saunders—like Robert and Daddy, much too young. Real life, real loss, real heartache. That’s where good fiction comes from.

But by definition Romance is uplifting. It’s about the “better angels of our nature.” The writer builds characters from human strength as well as flaws and vulnerability. Coaches build players the same way. Writers build communities the way coaches build teams. Start with a dream and weave the necessary elements into a story.  There’s an arc to every game, every season, every era.

Make no mistake, What the Heart Knows is not about basketball. It’s about people’s lives. My interest in watching a team or reading a novel wanes when I can’t identify with the players or the characters. Like the kid getting his big chance, being mentored by the veteran nearing the end of his career. Or the woman burdened with baggage full of secrets and unrequited love and the man discovering the child he never knew he had. It’s an emotional roller coaster. It’s a story. And I’m sticking to it.


What the Heart Knows is on sale at all major e-format retailers from the 16th through the end of September.

Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple

Excerpt available here.

Guest Post Featuring Rob Sangster

2019 deep time graphic (EPIC Award Winner!)

Turning Flesh and Blood Into Smoke and Mirrors

By Rob Sangster

PEPPERMINT SCHNAPPS would have been the perfect title for a story I badly wanted to tell. It was about paddling a raft through 100 miles of wild rapids in remote northern Idaho with gallon jugs of peppermint schnapps on board. However, I realized that as non-fiction it would read like a bad journal entry. Refusing to be deterred, I tucked that story into the middle of my novel about a Saudi prince, the President of China, and a swashbuckling Wall Street CEO determined to corner the world market in rare earth elements. That was NO RETURN, a suspense/thriller published last year.

Now, let’s get back to that river and the inside story. We—six men and three women, all in our thirties—climbed out of a battered Blue Bird bus onto the steep bank of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, also known as the River of No Return. Banners pasted on both sides of the bus read Bomar Marine Racing Team, a name with no connection to reality. We just liked the way it sounded.

After a long night of partying, we struggled out of our tents at first light, broke camp, and shoved our three oar-powered Avon Adventurer rafts into the rushing river.

The guy in the lead boat was an investment banker from Denver who answered only to the name Mad Dog. Since he was the only one of us who had paddled this river, we counted on him to warn us before we reached any especially treacherous rapid. Because he was serious about having his beer cold, he had filled a mesh bag with dozens of cans of Coors beer and tied it to trail behind his boat in the icy water. Within the first mile, reckless from three beers at breakfast, he cut too close to a granite ledge. It ripped the bag free, sending every beer can into the dark depths.

From that moment on, he stayed drunk on his only remaining beverage—peppermint schnapps. On the third day, he failed to give us a heads up before we rounded a bend, and there it was, the dreaded Dagger Falls, a 15-foot vertical drop. We dug in with our oars, but all three boats shot over the precipice. We were shaken up, lost some gear, but survived. What I didn’t mention in NO RETURN was that I suffered a cracked rib and rowed the remaining two days in periodic agony.

Another member of our crew who made it into my novel was Zacky, as beautiful and mysterious in real life as in fiction. She read paperbacks, often soggy, on the river and took solo walks out of sight on shore. She interacted with the rest of us as though she were an alien sent to observe our compulsion to risk our lives in tumultuous water crashing over craggy boulders.

I couldn’t resist exporting one more of our eccentric paddlers into NO RETURN. His rounded body and upward-tilting nose reminded me of an Emperor Penguin. Although he called himself Feed Bag on the river, he became Levi in his fictional life, a big-time bond trader in Manhattan who bet the survival of his company on a daily basis.

In each of my novels, two or more of the characters are real people I’ve encounter during my own adventures. Transforming them into fiction is one of my favorite challenges as an author.

 


About Rob Sangster

Yampa River – 1975

Rob Sangster’s first Jack Strider novel, Ground Truth, was #1 on Amazon Kindle. His second, Deep Time, won the 2017 EPIC Award for best suspense/thriller of the year. A Stanford lawyer with experience in finance, politics, and public service, he’s an avid sailor who has traveled in more than 100 countries. Rob and his mystery writer wife divide their time between their homes in Tennessee and on the wild coast of Nova Scotia.

 


EPIC Award Winner

“Wild ride, in-depth characters, compelling plot, cutting-edge issues.” Marq de Villiers, prize winning author, Order of Canada award.

“Masterful, high-stakes suspense thriller.” Lisa Turner, best selling mystery writer, Edgar Award nominee.

A disaster lurks beneath the ocean floor.

A riveting Jack Strider suspense.

Deep in the Earth’s crust beneath the Pacific Ocean lies an ancient site likely to be the birthplace of life on our planet . . .

And a portal into unimaginable forces and incredible wealth . .

A place where large ships mysteriously disappear, including the vessel carrying Jack Strider’s goddaughter, Katie . . .

A greedy energy baron risks everything to pursue vast supplies of power trapped deep in the Pacific Ocean sea bed off the Oregon coast. But the man’s psychopathic scheme is about to launch a terrifying tsunami that will destroy the entire west coast of the United States. Strider’s beautiful, brilliant partner in law and love joins the fight, and Jack leads a desperate attack on the largest offshore platform ever built. Jack Strider may be the only man who can stop the disaster that is already underway . . . or maybe no one can.

Rob Sangster’s Deep Time is on sale now until the 31st! Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple!

Guest Post Featuring Kathleen Eagle

Sunrise Song Banner
dramatic sky

A Tale Of Two Heroes

By Kathleen Eagle

This is one of my favorite covers. Sunrise Song is a serious story, and this is a serious guy. It’s also a Romance. The heroes–two for the price of one–are irresistible. The title fits the story, which is romantically uplifting. And the setting is wild and wondrous. It’s all here, on the face of a work of fiction, the proverbial lie that tells the truth.

Years ago my husband, Clyde, participated in a conference that featured a presentation on Hiawatha Asylum For Insane Indians in Canton, SD. It was operated by the government from 1903 to 1935, when a new administration investigated it and shut it down. Clyde–who is Lakota grew up on the South Dakota side of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation–had never heard of any asylum for “insane Indians.” We were intrigued and decided to drive down to take a look. The buildings were long ago replaced by a community hospital adjacent to a 9-hole golf course, which surrounds the burial place for at least 121 asylum “patients,” whose names are engraved on a single memorial. A golf tournament was going on around us as we read the names, and a ball dropped over the fence. I could almost hear the ghosts laughing.

I think those spirits helped me come up with an idea for a story. It would invite readers to walk in Indian Country with two sets of flesh-and-blood characters in a story that tugs at the heartstrings, at once gritty and hopeful, as women’s fiction is wont to be.

Researching the place proved challenging. Nothing had been written about it. Back home the elders who remembered hearing of the asylum said people spoke of it in whispers back in the day for fear of “being taken away.” You didn’t have to be insane, they said. Just uncooperative. Maybe you were as traditional as your grandparents, and you“spoke Indian”or you ran away from boarding school. I needed to know all that and much more. Both sides. With the help of a librarian at the SD State Library I got copies of old reports from their historical files.

In the years since we did our research, the site has been added to the National Registry of Historic Places. Sunrise Song was favorably reviewed in the Canton SD newspaper. And I received a letter from a woman who grew up in Canton. Her family lived close to the asylum, parents worked there. They admired Dr. Hummer, the supervisor of the asylum, who was fired after the D.C. administrators got around investigating the program. The letter writer said she’d read my book, and she was deeply moved. She remembered visiting with patients–inmates, really–through the fence. And now she wondered whether anything her parents told her was true. She couldn’t ask them. Her father, a local farmer hired to manage the asylum’s farm, and her mother, a cook, had long since passed away.  Now it was my turn to be deeply moved by someone who was there, and who was able to look back at her own story and turn the coin over, really look at the other side. She thanked me for writing Sunrise Song.

Fiction is written to entertain, but it can do much more. It can allow us to walk the road less traveled wearing the shoes of someone living in a place among people we know little about. Books, books, books–surely you are the salt of the earth.

Happy reading!

Kathleen Eagle


Sunrise Song by Kathleen Eagle is only $0.99 until the 31st! Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple!

Guest Post Featuring Rob Sangster

Yampa River
No_Return-200x300x72
2019 no return graphic

Turning Flesh and Blood Into Smoke and Mirrors

By Rob Sangster

PEPPERMINT SCHNAPPS would have been the perfect title for a story I badly wanted to tell. It was about paddling a raft through 100 miles of wild rapids in remote northern Idaho with gallon jugs of peppermint schnapps on board. However, I realized that as non-fiction it would read like a bad journal entry. Refusing to be deterred, I tucked that story into the middle of my novel about a Saudi prince, the President of China, and a swashbuckling Wall Street CEO determined to corner the world market in rare earth elements. That was NO RETURN, a suspense/thriller published last year.

Now, let’s get back to that river and the inside story. We—six men and three women, all in our thirties—climbed out of a battered Blue Bird bus onto the steep bank of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, also known as the River of No Return. Banners pasted on both sides of the bus read Bomar Marine Racing Team, a name with no connection to reality. We just liked the way it sounded.

After a long night of partying, we struggled out of our tents at first light, broke camp, and shoved our three oar-powered Avon Adventurer rafts into the rushing river.

The guy in the lead boat was an investment banker from Denver who answered only to the name Mad Dog. Since he was the only one of us who had paddled this river, we counted on him to warn us before we reached any especially treacherous rapid. Because he was serious about having his beer cold, he had filled a mesh bag with dozens of cans of Coors beer and tied it to trail behind his boat in the icy water. Within the first mile, reckless from three beers at breakfast, he cut too close to a granite ledge. It ripped the bag free, sending every beer can into the dark depths.

From that moment on, he stayed drunk on his only remaining beverage—peppermint schnapps. On the third day, he failed to give us a heads up before we rounded a bend, and there it was, the dreaded Dagger Falls, a 15-foot vertical drop. We dug in with our oars, but all three boats shot over the precipice. We were shaken up, lost some gear, but survived. What I didn’t mention in NO RETURN was that I suffered a cracked rib and rowed the remaining two days in periodic agony.

Another member of our crew who made it into my novel was Zacky, as beautiful and mysterious in real life as in fiction. She read paperbacks, often soggy, on the river and took solo walks out of sight on shore. She interacted with the rest of us as though she were an alien sent to observe our compulsion to risk our lives in tumultuous water crashing over craggy boulders.

I couldn’t resist exporting one more of our eccentric paddlers into NO RETURN. His rounded body and upward-tilting nose reminded me of an Emperor Penguin. Although he called himself Feed Bag on the river, he became Levi in his fictional life, a big-time bond trader in Manhattan who bet the survival of his company on a daily basis.

In each of my novels, two or more of the characters are real people I’ve encounter during my own adventures. Transforming them into fiction is one of my favorite challenges as an author.


About Rob Sangster

Yampa River – 1975

Rob Sangster’s first Jack Strider novel, Ground Truth, was #1 on Amazon Kindle. His second, Deep Time, won the 2017 EPIC Award for best suspense/thriller of the year. A Stanford lawyer with experience in finance, politics, and public service, he’s an avid sailor who has traveled in more than 100 countries. Rob and his mystery writer wife divide their time between their homes in Tennessee and on the wild coast of Nova Scotia.


“Rob Sangster’s No Return is a blazing thriller chock-full of intelligence and action.” –Mark Greaney, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of Agent in Place

A riveting new Jack Strider suspense from EPIC Award winning author, Rob Sangster.

San Francisco lawyer Jack Strider sank everything he had into an offshore mining operation. Now he’s about to go broke. Worse, a Wall Street CEO, a Saudi prince, and the president of China all want him dead. And he doesn’t know why.

Cormack Slade, megalomaniacal CEO of an international banking juggernaut, is cornering the supply of Rare Earth Elements. Without these elements, computers, smart phones, nuclear reactors, military jets, and other critical technology simply won’t function. If Slade succeeds, he’ll be the most powerful man in the world. If he fails, his firm will go bankrupt and trigger a cascade of business failures so massive no government can stop it.

To get the money and answers he needs, Jack is forced to navigate the wild whitewater rapids on the River of No Return. All too soon, he’s trying to outrun assassins and stop the catastrophe that will take Wall Street down. To survive, Jack will have to stop running and gamble everything, including his life.

Rob Sangster’s No Return is on sale, now until May 31st! Available at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple!