A Devil in the Dancehall...or no?

In the late 1980s, when I first moved to New Mexico, there was a dance hall in Pojoaque (a small Pueblo between Santa Fe and Española) for southern swing dancers. My husband and I took lessons and joined the free wheeling crowd swinging about the floor on Saturday nights.

One night, a fellow dancer told me a story about how a community was destroyed by a dance hall. 

In early October one year, as the weather got cold, a young man, Octavio, lost his job as a carpenter. He began to drink and stay home. His wife was angry, so he took off on a Saturday night to go to the dance hall  -- run by a very handsome newcomer in a black cape. The music was loud and the girls were pretty, but only a few people attended. Octavio scoured the community the next Saturday and convinced several other young men and the daughters of several churchgoers to join him at the dance. Octavio only danced with the girls at first, but as the gathering grew over the month of October, he began to give out a kiss or two. The other dancers saw him and took the same risk. 

The community became alarmed at the behavior at these dances, yet the planner scheduled one for Hallow's Eve. Octavio's wife visited the local priest and begged him to go to the dance and send everyone back home to their families, but the priest was stopped at the door by an extremely handsome dancer, bearing eyes of onyx, a black cape and a white smile. He was a smooth talker.

"Nothing is going on here, Señor. We are having good Christian fun. Do not worry."

The priest, smelling sulfur and feeling the heat of a fire, pushed past the well-dressed man, stopped the musicians, and took the stage.

"Young men and women. You are sacred children of God, well-loved by your community, in debt to your families. This planer is not bringing you happiness or joy. Think about it -- he is encouraging sin. The crowd booed loudly, and threw beer bottles at the priest. He was forced to run from the dance hall. The man with the cape and glassy eyes laughed loudly at the fleeing man of God -- a laughter that haunted the priest for many years to come.

And why? Because the next morning, when the sun rose over the fair town, all the revellers at the dance hall had disappeared and were never seen again.

I shivered when my friend told the story. But soon I realized that it might be a retelling of the old story of the Devil at the Dance Hall where the king of Hell makes off with the prettiest girl in town...but then...who says that story isn't true? "They" say it happened, and I certainly can't say it didn't...because things are....mysterious in New Mexico.

New Mexico Haunting: Mystery or Mayhem?

 

For several years I traveled once a week during the school year to Dulce, New Mexico on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. As a rule, I stayed in Dulce at the famed Wild Horse Casino and Hotel. In the fall, the not on the front entrance announced, "no bloody boots allowed." In the evening, the lobby was alive with Casino players, but I never dared go in to gamble because a cloud of negative spirits seemed to always be following me in my tasks in that quaint rural town.

One day, I arrived in a snowstorm without a reservation, and the Wild Horse Casino was filled to capacity. I turned my little Honda Civic around and headed outside the reservation to the town of Chama. Dark was falling along with a heavy snowfall, but I did find a hotel accepting guests.

The business consisted of a log cabin style structure with 4 cabins build out back. Only one cabin was available, no rooms. Naturally, with it being so late in the day, I took the open cabin. 

"One thing," the young man behind the desk held the old-fashioned key in his hand. 

"Okay?" I was in a hurry to relax.

"You don't care if it's haunted."

"What are you talking about?"

The clerk laughed. "Just a joke." He handed me the key.

"One more thing," he said as I was about to exit the door. "Don't worry if a tree falls."

"A tree."

"Loud sound, but it happens all the time."

I frowned, figured the guy was stoned, and sped out of lobby.

Lighting in the back of the building was poor, and the path to the back cabin passed by ponderosa pines whose black branches swayed in the cold breeze. It was eerie, even spooky. I began to wish that I had asked more about the haunting.

However, when I opened the door, the room was cozy, with a small refrigerator, a coffee machine, and a good television with cable TV. I fell easily into a dreamless sleep only to awake several hours later to a thundering crash. TI expected to hear sirens and see the lights of firetrucks out my window. 

Instead, a deep silence fell on the forest surrounding my little cabin. No wind blew and no cars passed in the distance. I look at my bedside clock. Three in the morning. Maybe I dreamed the sound. Still, I knew I couldn't sleep without at least checking out the room and glancing out the door to make sure a tree hadn't actually fallen onto the roof of the hotel.

The snow had stopped and the night was dimly lit. A shadow swept by the entrance to my room. The figure wore a long dress with colors that flashed in moonlight. 

"Did a tree fall?" I called out.

"They killed my children." A woman's deep voice.

"Pardon me?"

"So I blasted the mountain." 

A hyena laugh filled the dark air, and I slammed the door of the cabin, threw the deadbolt, and attached the chain lock. The laugh echoed in the woods outside my door.

Needless to say, I tossed and turned the rest of the night and dragged miserably through work the next day. And, yes, I asked the clerk about the sound.

"Happens all the time."

And that's why I say it's mysterious in New Mexico.

The Present Moment of Covid 19 and Writing

My friend is selling this figure on Craiglist, but I don't know which Buddha it is. Here are my guesses, going on how I feel cooped up by writing a sequel to my latest traditionally published novel and trapped by Covid 19 in an endless loop of Covid 19 data.

• Laughing Buddha 
• Laughing at you Buddha
• Laughing at us Buddha
• Laughing because it is funny Buddha
• Laughing because it is not funny, but what else can I do? Buddha
• There's still joy: Laugh Buddha
• I'm overdoing the wine Buddha
• Eat, Drink and be Merry because tomorrow may...Buddha
• You're not a Buddhist, so you shouldn't be guessing Buddha

I'm not a Buddhist, it's true, but I am fond of the writer Thich Nhat Hanh. So using that limited knowledge, I think the Buddha is laughing, in a metaphysical sense, at the idea that we are controlling the events around us, when in fact we are merely observing them as they occur. Focus on the breath, focus on the step, focus on this moment, this dish you are washing, this sentence you are writing, this character...

My next book is halfway completed using this method. I have survived the virus, eaten well, and continue to exercise. Life is good for us today, in this moment. But I do sneak out on the Internet every so often, and I am hounded by crazed control freaks on every side of the issue of viruses, transmission, fear, loathing...you name it. There is very little about this information that suggests we are not in control. In fact, quite the opposite. We are encouraged to imagine we are the very epicenter of control over protective supplies, plans, transmission of invisible particles, vaccines -- it is exhausting and no wonder the Buddha is laughing.

Ohm. My meditation mantra, since, as I mentioned, I am not a Buddhist is as follows:

God is love. Let God heal. 

In the present moment.

Do Ghosts Exist? Don't Come Back

My next Molly Donovan suspense novel (I'm writing it now) features -- spirits -- aka ghosts. Do they exist?

                                                                          Read Now

The sequel is Don't Come Back!

Here's what happens. The main man of the novel here's drumming and he feels the presence of his ancestors. At first it's almost a stereotype. He's Navajo, and he has just moved to New Mexico, and he believes he is hearing the voices of his ancestors. Of course, maybe he's simply depressed and searching for his identity. (His mother moved away to Maryland before he was born, and never kept it touch with his family here.)

Then, Molly hears drums -- or is it just the subwoofer in a passing car?

I like to feature spirits in my stories...and themes of loss and abandonment. Are there spirits. I think so. I can't prove it, of course.

I grew up with lots of spirit stories: Miss Rosa rocking in the front hall, translucent figures in white, ghosts of former slaves haunting the lives of their white former owners, stories of spirit hauntings...were they true? I felt certain of it as a child. On the former plantation where I grew up, I noticed a strange phenomenon and still do. When I walked out the door as a child, the world I saw, the trees the grass, the farm buildings, seemed ephemeral, as if they might disappear or be transformed in a moment to another time and place. We had a tool house which had once been the outdoor kitchen, a graveyard where dead children were buried, still grieved all these generations later. Could these mothers still be heard crying, especially when the wind kicked up? I heard them. I often wanted to step through the veil and experience that past. But, of course, I never did. Maybe I thought there really was no veil, maybe I was afraid the veil was a one way travel and I could not return to the present.

Even today, when I walk out the backdoor of the old farm (my brother now lives there), I see a wavering light that threatens to reveal the buildings and plants of my childhood, my grandmother hanging clothes while chickens squawk at her feet. Is my memory of that time correct -- can I go back for fifteen minutes or so simply to check? Or will I then have to relive that past to get to the present

In Don't Come Back, Molly and her FBI helper Ray address the issue of spirits -- what do they find? I don't know yet, but it's still .... mysterious in New Mexico.

Do spi

Characters with Disabilities as Part of the Narrative

Think about it. How many people in your life live with mental illness (depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia) physical impairments, hearing impairments, vision impairments...

I'll bet you don't live a life peopled with only able bodied individuals, and yet, that's the ableist narrative, the cultural story, the stigma people with disabilities face.

I've set out to write mystery and suspense novels that include characters with disabilities who are part of the narrative. In other words, the disabilities are not the main point of the plot, the characters are not evil because of how they appear, and they are not heroes simply because they are alive. Oh yes, and they don't get cured so we can all feel like this is a perfect world with no problems.

Narrative fiction is flooded with able bodied people and stereotypical characters with disabilities.

I am recovering from depression and addiction, and I live a very full life. I worked, I raised a family, a have relationships with partners and friends. I did experience functional limitations to my life at various times, but because my disability was hidden, most people never noticed. So, in a way, I passed as non disabled. But that didn't work until I acknowledged to myself that I was experiencing a functional limitation, and I needed to accept that and not try to pass in my own brain.

I actually remember the place where it happened and how shocked I was to understand it. I didn't accept my own limitations.

I wanted to change fiction -- no literary fiction but popular fiction, romance and mystery fiction, to include characters with disabilities.

No Way Out, my soon to be released suspense novel features Molly Donovan, a hard-charging fraud investigator and her new romantic interest PI Miguel Alvarez. Molly lost the use of her left arm in a rare stroke suffered in high school. She uses brains, brawn and her unaffected arm to . Miguel is a recovering addict, who navigates a maze of old friends and old habits. The two make a connection. A peripheral characters fight the notion that his disability makes him evil.

And Cotton Lee Penn, in the southern mysteries Gone on Sunday and Premonition, fights the same cultural attitudes in the 1970s -- along with the idea that disabled people shouldn't have sex.

Let's change the habit of eliminating half our friends and lovers from our fiction.

Thanks remain as always: mysterious in New Mexico...

Cover Reveal Suspense Novel: No Way Out

My first traditionally published book (http://www.solsticeempire.com), first cover...so much fun. And so is the book...locked in an Espanola adobe, nearly drowned in Cochiti Lake...what next? 

If anything happens to me…

That phrase from Gloria’s email haunts Molly as she bounces around half-conscious in a dark space. Later, she opens her eyes in a small house with all the windows bricked shut and the door boarded from the outside. Her kidnapper has taken her keys, her cell phone, and her purse. Molly scrambles through the house, looking for any sign of life, any hope of escape, but the house is abandoned and she sees no way out.

The kidnapping of former fraud investigator Molly Donovan follows Gloria’s murder, an event witnessed by Molly and PI Miguel Alvarez. Gloria’s mysterious email throws the two investigators together in a frantic search for the perp. A stranger traps Molly inside the abandoned house while an old friend sucks Miguel into his troubled past. Molly trusts Miguel until a series of notes incriminates him and leaves Molly on her own to investigate a sex cult, missing money, and jaded love.

***

After so much time, it's great to have the recognition of a traditional publisher. I enjoyed publishing through my small company eiffeltowerpublishers, but I wanted to try writing out in the real world. I started submitting to agents, but those folks are beyond busy. So I tried publishers who accept unagented manuscripts and that crowd is way more friendly. And I think my writing got a fair hearing from the publishers. Plus, of course, the manuscript was accepted by the Summer Solstice imprint of Solstice Publishing. 

Editing is next. I hire an editors and beta readers for my independently published works, but now I'm working for someone else. I'll let you know how it goes. Generally, I love editing my works, but we'll see. I'm as vain as the next writer.

And it's still...mysterious in New Mexico.

Lightning Bolt Romance is back! (With a little suspense...)

How Did You Meet? by Tower Lowe

Office Delia Gonzales spotted a blue Toyota SUV in the ditch on Acequia Madre. Both passengers doors were wide open. A man about her age squatted by the rear wheel well. Muscles bulged in his thighs as he rose up and aimed a bottomless brown-eyed gaze at her body. Delia meant to be offended, but she got side-tracked by pheromones or the smell of pipe tobacco, she never knew which.

"My name is Ramon." He took too strides in her direction, put his hands on her waist and dented her skin with his fingers. Delia's right hand searched for her gun.

"I'm your cousin," Ramon said. "Don't you remember me?"

"No." Delia touched the cool steel of the police revolver. Ramon was close enough to breathe warm spearmint into her face.

"We played soldiers in the dirt out back of your house. You had a dog named Scruffy."

"I don't know you." Delia felt sweat drip between her breasts. "I never had a dog."

A line grew between his brows. "Then love me anyway, the way I love you."

His lips touched her cold mouth, her hand removed the gun from her holster and Officer Delia was seconds away from firing into Ramon's belly.

"Daddy. What are you doing?" It was a toddler in dark curls and a yellow jumpsuit.

Ramon backed off. Delia kept her gun pointed at him.

"Is that lady going to kill you, Daddy?"

Ramon opened both arms to grab the girl and lifted her into his arms, covering his belly and chest, making it impossible for Delia to fire without hitting the child.

"I want her to be your Mommy," Ramon said.

"Now?" the girl asked.

"No, not now. But in a little while."

Delia put away the gun.

***

No Way Out, a romantic suspense, is under contract to be published soon.

Follow me on Bookbub to get the release date!