To all who have read and enjoyed my books, those who have read a few of my titles, and
finally, those who have never heard of me but happened to stumble across my website, welcome to
my world. It is a different kind of place than many of you may be familiar with, just as my books are a
little different than other mysteries. If you don’t know my world, you can’t know me, because
metaphorically we are inseparable. I feel claustrophobic without being able to see the horizon in any
direction I look. A friend of mine, also from a state of mostly flat lands, once said of Arkansas when we
both attended a conference there. “This would be a real pretty place, but you can’t see the horizon for
all the trees.” Her comment is not meant to disparage Arkansas, but an attempt to explain what we
find beautiful in our landscape.
The Texas Panhandle is twenty-six very large counties of high plains, only two major rivers, one
of which is mostly dry, cattle, oil derricks, windmills, ranch houses, large fields of wheat and other
grains, not many trees that weren’t planted by someone, and two major cities with a combined
population on a good day when everyone is home and both universities are in session, of slightly over
one-half million. My end of the Panhandle is often referred to as “the Golden Spread” for all the fields
that are golden when the wheat is ripe.
I live in one of those two cities, Amarillo to be precise. You will find the parking lots full of
pickups, primarily Ford F-150s, Dodge Rams, and Chevy Silverados with a few Toyotas and Niessen
thrown in for good measure. Those not driving a pickup truck prefer SUVs over sedans. I drive a bright
red Ford Escape myself. Try driving a sedan over some of our country roads and you will understand.
In other words, the Panhandle is mostly rural, and our mode of transportation reflects that. A pundit
once said there were more cows than people in the Texas Panhandle, but I can’t verify that statement.
I don’t own a pickup, a ranch, a farm, a windmill, a single head of cattle, or a ranch house, only the
previously mentioned SUV, a dog named Bo, who has a big bark and a cowardly heart. The cowardly
lion in The Wizard of Oz has nothing on Bo. When you adopt an abused dog, you take him as is.
Twenty miles or so south of my front door is West Texas A&M University, home to The
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum where I have spent many hours in its archives. I even set one of
my John Lloyd Branson mysteries in the museum. MURDER BY REFERENCE featured the museum but
also an account of the many supernatural happenings rumored to have occurred there, including the
ghost the University denies exists. Technically speaking one must be alive to exist, and a ghost isn’t
alive. Tell that to those who claim to have seen her.
Another feature of the Panhandle, also twenty-plus miles from my front door, is Palo Duro
Canyon, second only to the Grand Canyon in size and length. It is the principal setting for the Megan
Clark mystery, TOME OF DEATH, featuring murders that occur in the 1860s and in the present. It also
introduces a Comanche war chief named Spotted Tongue who becomes the protagonist in a new series.
MURDER IN THE MOON WHEN THE LEAVES FALL is his introduction to my fans and anyone interested in
the Plains Indians, particularly the Comanche.
If I am a citizen of the stark and beautiful Texas Panhandle, I am also a woman who grew up in
Eastern Oklahoma where state history is heavily Indian history. I vividly remember when I first read the
story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son, Quanah. It made a strong impression on me that has lasted to
this day.
I have introduced you to my world, or a small part of it, but what of me as an individual? I am
married, I have a dog named Bo, two children, four grandchildren, and live in a cottage in an upscale
retirement community. Yes, I also have a golf cart for transportation around the community. Other than
the golf cart I don’t fit the stereotype of the gray-haired retired lady. I don’t play cards, dominoes, bingo,
or beanbag baseball, my hair isn’t gray, it’s red, and I’m technically not retired. I still write at least one
thousand words a day if not more, and I’m 24,000 words into my next novel, a faux time travel love
story. What do I mean by that? You’ll have to read the book, won’t you? SUBJECT OF MY REGRET:
HANNAH’S STORY should be available next spring.
There is not much else to share with you besides the above facts. Or facts I choose to share. I am
a coffee drinker, a meat and salad person, and seldom drink alcohol. Not because I am a Goody Two
Shoes, but because I am diabetic. My outside interests consist of visiting museums, art galleries, and any
historic site I ever heard of. I also enjoy gardening in my large patio. Rather, my best friend does the
planting and advises me on keeping green, growing things alive since I have a bad track record in that
regard. To be transparent (a politician’s new favorite word) I mostly stand around and wring my hands
and appear helpless which I am not, but it works out well for both of us. I don’t get dirt under my
fingernails, and he gets to indulge his homesteading gene and dig in the dirt and plant beautiful flowers.
No, I do not intend to share his name.
LANDSCAPE AND HISTORY AS INSPIRATION
“The topic of what inspired me to write came up in one of my LinkedIn discussion groups, and I spent
some time reflecting on an answer. I could always say writing was a lifelong ambition, or I write because
I’m obsessed with telling stories, and both of those answers are true, but there is more. Just as a serial
killer (sorry, but I think in terms of crime) has a stressor that compels him to murder, a writer also has a
stressor that compels her to focus on a certain story. For some, it might be a newspaper story, a
memory of a certain experience, or meeting a person who reminds you of someone you once knew, or
even an event of some kind, such as a street carnival. But there is always something that transforms us
into salivating creatures full of creative juices.”
“For me, that stressor has always been a sense of place. Drop me into any environment, be it city or
country, a shady backyard or an old, vacant house, and I immediately start to weave a story around
what I see. My Sheriff Charles Matthews series is concerned with describing and exploring rural Texas.
My first book, The Sheriff and the Panhandle Murders, concerns the people and how they relate to one
another in a small town in the Texas Panhandle. Sheriff Charles Matthews describes the citizens and
landscape of Crawford County so well because he is an outsider. Customs that residents no longer notice
but take for granted are new to the sheriff and he takes note of them.”
All principal characters in all my books are outsiders in one sense or another. Sheriff Charles Matthews is
a native of Dallas and knows nothing of the Texas Panhandle. Lydia Ann Fairchild, also a native of Dallas,
finds the small town of Canadian, odd. She finds her boss, John Lloyd Branson, defense attorney
extraordinaire, to be even odder. Professor Ryan Stevens, Curator of History at the Panhandle-Plains
Museum, is pulled into the world of a mystery book club when he only read one mystery in his entire life
and is out of his element. Ryan is at a complete loss when dead bodies start appearing, but his friend
Megan Clark revels in solving a real-life mystery.”
Along with a sense of place, history is a theme in many of my books. The Sheriff and the Branding Iron
Murders combines life on a large cattle ranch and history based on the story of a brutal outlaw from the
nineteenth century. The imaginary legend of the Golden Crucifix ties together the themes. The Sheriff
and the Folsom Man Murders is a story told under the shadow of Mount Capulin, an extinct volcano in
northeastern New Mexico, which also weaves the history of archaeology into the plot. The Homefront
Murders combine memories of the home front during WWII with the search for a killer in a small town
where the inhabitants hold their secrets close in a murder case more than fifty years old.
The John Lloyd Branson series illustrates the strongest sense of place of any of my mysteries set
in the present. The small town of Canadian, Texas; the proposed nuclear waste dump in Deaf Smith
County; the gritty streets and dark alleys of Amarillo where crime and prostitution were rampant;
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum where strange happenings had no rational explanation; and
religion in the close-knit, small town of Canadian, Texas. Legal maneuvers and courtroom scenes
juxtaposed against the work of the Special Crime Unit of Potter-Randal Counties provide the reader a
glimpse behind the scenes of actions by law enforcement and a brilliant defense attorney. The legal
maneuvers are real; Special Crimes is real; and the court scenes are loosely based on actual cases tried
or witnessed by my husband, a former prosecutor. Believe me when I say no prosecutor would want to
face a real John Lloyd Branson.
The Megan Clark mysteries are influenced by a sense of history, as well as a sense of place. The
primary setting for all the titles is Sixth Street in Amarillo, the last remnant of the original Route 66.
Blended into the mix of murder is the history of Route 66 and the Great Depression; accounts of famous
murders in Amarillo; a used bookstore where eccentric characters meet to discuss their favorite mystery
authors and dabble in solving real-life murders. Sixth Street is one of my very favorite places in Amarillo.
Of course, its old buildings are now trendy cafes and antique stores but close your eyes and you can
almost hear the sounds of old cars and the ghostly voices from the past. When I wrote Murder in
Volume there were still used bookstores on Sixth Street, wonderful places with haphazard stacks of
books and the smell of old paper. They only exist in the Megan Clark series now.”
One of the Megan Clark series contains a flashback to Comanche life in Palo Duro Canyon. Tome of
Murder marks the first appearance of Spotted Tongue, Comanche Warrior. I found Spotted Tongue such
a compelling character that I wrote a book about him and his people. Murder in the Moon When the
Leaves Fall is the first title in the Spotted Tongue mystery series. It was inspired by both a sense of place
and time. The desolate plains of Kansas in the 1860s, where a narrow little creek with not much to
recommend it but a medicine lodge built of tree branches beside its banks, called me. The last treaty
talks with the Plains Indians took place in this obscure corner of Kansas, and I could close my eyes and
hear the rattle of harnesses and the voices of over five thousand people speaking six different
languages. It was a time that will never come again, when five different tribes of Plains Indians rode free
before the confinement to reservations forever changed their cultures. Once more an outsider is the
protagonist, a Comanche war chief named Spotted Tongue who has lost his ability to make medicine,
and no longer shares his people’s beliefs. There is a murder that Spotted Tongue feels obligated to solve,
while at the same time listening to the speeches of the Peace Commissioners and the council chiefs of
the five tribes to determine what the treaty will really mean to his people. More importantly, will he ride
the Reservation Trail to confinement, or will he fight until he can fight no more?”
“Speaking of stressors, Palo Duro Canyon exerts such a strong influence on me that it is difficult
to avoid including a mention, even just a passing reference, to the Canyon in nearly all my titles. It lies
about twenty-six miles south of my front door. It was the last refuge pf the Comanche fleeing from the
army, and the site of their final defeat in what is called the Red River War. After the destruction of their
horse herd and their encampment, Quanah Parker led the survivors of his sick and hungry people to Fort
Sill to surrender. I have spent a lot of time in Palo Duro Canyon, and it doesn’t take much imagination to
see a ghostly encampment of tipis under the cottonwood trees, hear the faint sounds of hushed voices
where there are no people, and smell the scent of buffalo meat cooking over a fire. When the sun sinks
below the canyon’s rim and shadows creep down its rugged walls to shade its bush-choked and rocky
bottom can be an eerie experience. There is a definite sense that you are not alone. You should try it
sometime if you ever visit the Canyon.”
“If I am a citizen of the stark and beautiful Texas Panhandle, I am also a woman who grew up in
Eastern Oklahoma where state history is heavily Indian history. I vividly remember first reading the story
of Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son, Quanah. It made a strong impression on me that has
lasted to this day and has influenced me, and in turn my writing. No commercial publisher or agent was
interested in Spotted Tongue’s story, but I believed in my Comanche warrior enough to publish the book
myself. I have never done that before, but sometimes an author must swim against the current of
disinterest in and disregard of a story because it is out of the mainstream and rather peculiar. Let the
reader decide.”
