Underlying theme of my next novel, "Miracle of the Talking Stick", the 4th novel in the Jim Buchanan series

There is no death
Only a change of worlds.
   
  -- Chief Seattle (Seath),
                              Duwamish-Suquamish, 1785-1866

Excerpt from my upcoming novel, "Miracle of the Talking Stick", the 4th novel in the Jim Buchanan series

Hank said, “Tell us what happened when you first spoke with the suspect.”

Abington replied, “When the suspect arrived at the scene, we approached him, but he acted as if he knew nothing. He even pretended that he thought we were there simply to evict him and his wife from their apartment. He identified himself as the victim’s husband.”

“You keep saying victim, I thought there was no body?” Hank asked.

“Come on Mr. Kelly, we know the husband and wife were the only ones living in that apartment, the wife is missing, there’s blood all over the floors, walls, and ceilings, and the husband was covered in blood. Body or no body, we know this is a clear-cut homicide investigation. All we’re looking for is a confession and a tip to where he dumped the body.”

Revamped website

I have reworked my novels' website to reflect changes that I have made. I have a home page but also pages listing and describing my books and where to order them. I also have a page about myself, another page about Montana, a page about my characters' fictional county, and a blog page titled Montana Mondays where I will post an entry every week. I plan to add to the website as time allows. Please share the website with anyone that you may know who is interested in my writing. 

Of Angels and Miracles

Do we ever really consider how events on this Earth transpired? Do we ever look at gaps in the historical record and wonder, what if?

Of all the events that occurred in our lives do we sometimes look back with regret and wish they had happened differently?

What happens when we die? Are we aware of the life we just lived? Do we meet people we knew on the other side? And finally, is it possible for us to have a second chance to right wrongs that happened in our lives?

They say you know exactly when you are touched by an angel. It may be when we face danger and someone or something not of this world influences the outcome. It may be as subtle as a twisted ankle, a red traffic light, or a squirrel crossing the road causing us to delay our activity for a few seconds or it may be as profound as a missed taxi, train, or plane. Whatever it is we can explain the ‘what happened’ but the ‘why it happened’ is lost in our orderly rationalization of events.

Explore these and more in the stories included in: Of Angels & Miracles

Character Images from a Novel - "Missing in Montana"

Character Images from a Novel - Missing in Montana

An author knows how his characters look but the reader doesn't until they develop an idea from reading the book. Sometimes that idea of how the characters look is far removed from what the author had in mind.

I took the liberty to download two royalty-free jpgs of what FBI Undercover Special Agent Axe Killian and cult-abducted Eden Child (Peta Ross) would look like in my mind.

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FBI Undercover Special Agent Axe Killian:

From the back cover:

Axe Killian was a Knuckle Dragger, ex-military, now undercover FBI with a Harley, an attitude, and a secret.

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Cult-abducted Eden Child (Peta Ross):

From the first sentence of my novel:

Peta Ross was trapped between a past that failed her dreams and a future that would deceive her faith.

This photo of Eden Child/Peta Ross made it onto the back cover of my novel.

Let me know what you think in the Amazon review section of my book by clicking on the title link.

The Jim Buchanan Novels series reorder

Originally, the order of my novels was Montana Harvest, Mystery at Little Bitterroot, and The Killing Zone and the original timeline was 1995-1997. 

However, as I continued with the series and once Missing in Montana was completed in 2018 which required backstory to describe a kidnapping in 1992, I realized that there is a certain degree of importance to not just refer to occurrences that happened in the past and how characters lived their lives during that time. It is also critical to develop these occurrences and the characters in such a way as to show the reader how these events actually took place in the author's mind. It reveals the characters in a different light and time than in the current writing. 

For instance, in the first three novels, Jim Buchanan is Cedar County Sheriff and Dan McCoy is a retired sheriff. Time is quickly passing Dan by since he retired and some of the old ways of doing things are no longer relevant or even accepted practice. Dan sometimes struggles with this and often comes across to the reader as bumbling, uncooperative, or argumentative and is called out by the people still active in law enforcement. In Missing in Montana, Dan hadn't yet retired and was still Cedar County Sheriff and Jim was a Montana Highway Patrolman. It provided an opportunity to  draw Sheriff Dan McCoy with a much different personality and as a confident and courageous law enforcement officer fully in charge of his jurisdiction.

Taking it a step further, I began writing the novel, Blood On the Rez which describes Sheriff Jim Buchanan as a 17-year old Crow youth banished from his tribe for a serious indiscretion. Not only does Jim's domineering father, Angus Buchanan come into play in that novel where he was only a reference point in the first three novels but Sheriff Dan McCoy becomes a surrogate father figure to Jim. In that novel, another character, Willie Otaktay will end up going to prison for a crime that I have referred to in my first three novels. Again, it will provide me with an opportunity to reveal to the reader different aspects of my characters' emotions and behaviors and explain what led up to the situations that I've referenced in the first three novels. 

There will be another novel, still unnamed, that will take place between the end of Blood On the Rez and the beginning of Montana Harvest that will follow Jim's career as a Montana Highway Patrolman  and leading up to his election as sheriff. It will show him fully involved in trying to solve a mystery.

Missing in Montana - a Jim Buchanan novella

As the author of the Jim Buchanan Novels, a mystery/suspense series set in western Montana, I was working on my next novel in the series titled, Miracle of the Talking Stick during the month of March, 2018. It was then that I was contacted by author Mark Reps of the Sheriff Zeb Hanks mystery series that is set in the 4-Corners section of the American West. He proposed that we collaborate along with another author and publish a 3-novella set and offer it as a free Kindle ebook on Amazon as a means to promote our other books and to introduce new readers to our protagonists.

I suggested that we meet at the 2018 Western Writers Convention in Billings Montana and iron out the details of this collaboration. We soon obtained a third partner, R. Lawson Gamble, author of the Zack Tolliver novels about an FBI agent in the American West. The three of us soon began work on our novellas. 

While in Montana, and viewing Troy Montana's 2018 Old-Fashioned 4th of July Celebration, I realized that it would make a great opening scene and cliffhanger ending scene for my novella. I researched the location and immediately began writing the novella. I finished the forty-six thousand word novella within six months of my initial contact with Mark. 

My novella, Missing in Montana was published along with Mark Reps' Native Roots and R. Lawson Gamble's The Dark Road in a volume titled, Western Justice. The 3-novella set became the #1 free book in Amazon's Kindle Store and is currently the #12 free book in Native American Literature in Amazon's Kindle Store. You can still download the Kindle edition for free.

I registered my novella with the U.S. Copyright Office and then applied for and received a Library of Congress Control Number for Missing in Montana.

After the first of the year our intent was to each publish our novellas separately in whichever format we chose. I decided to publish Missing in Montana in both paperback and Kindle versions.

I contracted with my web designer to work on a cover and from there things went pretty fast. Within a one-month time frame, I published Missing in Montana in standalone paperback and Kindle editions. You can see the full-sized cover below this text. 

The paperback version became available on Amazon on January, 31, 2019 -

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0990568415

The Kindle edition is scheduled for a March 1, 2019 release and Amazon is currently accepting pre-orders -

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCW9NNQ

I hope you enjoy Missing in Montana and its sequel, Murders at Middle Fork expected to be published sometime in 2020.