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! 

Physical and mental impairments are part of life...

My romance novel No Way Out (now in submission), features a main character, Molly Donovan, who has a physical impairment -- limited use of her left arm due to a rare stroke that occurred when she was in high school. This inhibits Molly not at all -- in fact she's one tough woman, and her love interest, Miguel, has his hands full keeping up with her.

All my stories feature characters with disabilities, because, from my point of view, fiction contains few characters with physical or mental disabilities -- or hearing and vision impairments. Often, such characters are villains (which I find deeply offensive) or are the object of great amazement because they don't just stay home and watch television.

Really -- it's ridiculous. And this lack of representation exacerbates the cultural attitude towards persons with disabilities. "They" are different -- scary, embarrassing, to be looked away from, kept separate, not acknowledged accept for pit. They are, as we say in New Mexico, pobrecitos.

In the course of my career and my life, I have known many successful persons with mental and physical impairments. In fact, these people taught me that life is about making the most of the choices I do have. Believe it or not, that wasn't clear to me before...I felt sorry for myself because I had passed up certain opportunities or failed at others. My work with people with impairments who were successfully managing families and careers taught me that I simply had to wrong attitude.

And I've never been the same. But, to the books. I have two published series. My very first is the Cinnamon/Burro New Mexico mysteries. The very first story In Dulce, Disturbed, is about a missing boy with autism. One of the detectives is living with schizophrenia.

My second series, is part of the Cotton Lee Penn historical mystery series. In this series, Cotton Lee Penn fights the stigma of a polio impairment in the 1970's rural south. Readers tell me that like Cotton Lee because of her grit and honesty, and because she doesn't allow others to define what she can and can't do. I set Cotton Lee in the 1970's to make the prejudices against her working and having a love life believable, but these same prejudices are out among us today.

My latest book, No Way Out, is a romantic suspense, and I'm submitting it now. I hope to get the book in good enough shape so that readers can enjoy it. Readers get it that we all are vulnerable to physical or mental impairments. It's a matter of luck and time. And, so far, my readers respond positively to my characters who manage their physical and mental impairments quite well, overcoming the functional limitations of their disabilities, and overcoming the attitudes of others to persevere and wring a good amount of success out of life.

Bravo to you, my fair readers.

Things remain, as ever, mysterious in New Mexico.

Neurodiversity, Mental Illness, and the Fiction Narrative

What does neurodiverse mean?

According to https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/awareness/neurodiversity/ the word neurodiverse includes an expanding number of conditions that need to be accepted as part of the human condition.

"Today, neurodiversity is broadly defined as an approach to learning and disability that suggests diverse neurological conditions appear as a result of normal variations in the human genome.

Neurodiversity advocates promote support systems (such as inclusion-focused services, accommodations, communication and assistive technologies, occupational training, and independent living support) that allow those who are neuro-divergent to live their lives as they are, rather than being coerced or forced to adopt uncritically accepted ideas of normality, or to conform to a clinical ideal.

Different people think differently - not just because of differences in culture or life experience, but because their brains are "wired" to work differently.

"Neurodiversity is not a word about autism alone. It is a word that embraces all neurological uniqueness, all rhythms of neurodevelopment and all the forms by which humans can express themselves and contribute to their world." - newforums.com/use-term-neurodiversity/"

I have worked providing accommodations for many individuals who had a diversity of brain issues, and I have a family member who is neurodiverse. That word hasn't been around that long, and so my family member struggled through numerous oddball labels and definitions -- autism, depression, bipolar, schizo-this or schizo-that -- it got crazy for us and for the family member, because none of these labels had any diagnostic touchstone. In the 90's, I accepted that reality, but in the 2000s, I started to wonder. If there's no evidence, no blood test, no MRI, no x-ray, sonogram, no nothing...then what are we really talking about here? And if the label keeps changing, what does that say about the medical practitioners who are creating and dishing out these labels?

Those are rhetorical questions, because, from my point of view, we are talking about the concept written above -- people are neurodiverse, and there are a variety of ways that neurodiversity reveals itself in humans. The answer to the second question about medical practitioners is that they are not qualified to label individuals with an "illness" when there is no diagnostic proof it exists. The symptoms vary and are vague or pronounced depending on how they affect each individual. As I often say, if doctors diagnosed heart conditions the way they diagnose mental illness or autism, they'd be sued for malpractice.

And as regards mental illness -- with all due respect to practitioners -- psychiatry is 17th century medicine. 

So what's this got to do with the fiction narrative, you ask. I have been dealing with this for a while. My first book with a character with mental illness was In Albuquerque, Abandoned, published in 2016. One of the characters, a suspect, had schizophrenia. The character's challenges, the prejudices against him, the challenges of his family -- these are all examined as the mystery is solved. I communicated with several readers who had family members diagnosed with schizophrenia after the book was published, and I began to think about the situation more seriously.

Then I started another mystery novel about a family detective agency that was started to give the mentally ill family member a place to work, because her personality was different and hard to appreciate. After writing the first few chapters of the book, I stepped back. I didn't like the label, so I took the leap -- I called her undiagnosed, or misdiagnosed. As the story unfolds, her different way of seeing and operating in the world is turned to an advantage. This is when I learned about and embraced the concept of neurodiversity.  The character is challenging to her family and to other characters because her behavior is not neuro-conventional, yet her unique method of operating in the uncovers information that the characters who are neuro-conventional don't see.

I created a word there -- neuro-conventional.  Maybe you can find another, and the words and labels don't really matter.  I guess the way I see it is the way the Burt and Ernie characters saw it in a tape I used to have when the kids were small..."Anybody Can Play."  In other words, people need not be eliminated from our life experiences, our work world, our church, or our community because they don't play the same way we do. We can make room for them.

And I am trying to make room for people with disabilities -- diverse individuals -- in my fiction narrative. While I don't--yet--have a physical impairment, I will if I live long enough. I have struggled with mental health issues -- and I only succeeded in managing those issues successfully when I accepted the idea that it's okay to function differently from others.

So...all of this said, we need fiction novels for adults with characters with neurodiversity who are part of the narrative, not the subject of the narrative. We need more adult fiction with characters with disabilities who are part of the narrative, not heroes because they live with the disability or subjects of pity.

Thus, being submitted to publishers now is my mystery novel that includes Spree, who lives with neurodiversity and her family, who lives with her and her neurodiversity with love and with challenge.

Silencing Sistine by Tower Lowe

The star investigator at The Finders, a missing persons agency, is the multiply diagnosed (neurodiverse) Spree, a Brazilian adoptee, sister to long suffering Jack and daughter to the ever-patient Eva, who started the agency to keep her family together. The team are hired out of Santa Fe, New Mexico to find Sistine, who disappeared from Miami twenty years ago on the arm of a dangerous man. Sistine’s younger sister, Lace, hires the agency when her dying mother accuses Sistine of murdering their father.

The story quickly moves to Cuba, where The Finders discover that the story of Sistine is a bit more complicated than they first thought. The Cuban government, Cuban families in both countries, and a mysterious stranger back in the United States cloud their efforts to locate the elusive Sistine. Spree’s quirky personality and intuition drive the family towards a resolution, aided by Jack’s sketches and Eva’s knowledge of human psychology.  

More on the book and characters with neurodiversity in fiction when the book releases.

Thank you for following all that is mysterious and romantic in New Mexico.

The Ghost of San Miguel Past

I spent the last two weeks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and I wondered: Does that old colonial town full of artists, great Mexican food, mercados, and USA ex-pats have any old ghosts?

Claro que sí.

 I asked one of our neighbors, a Mexico native who has lived ten years in San Miguel de Allende, and did she ever have a story to tell. It starts in on of the historic hotels in El Centro, which is basically the town square. This hotel goes way back into the time when the Spanish ruled the area. 

In this hotel, people kept losing items of clothing! The aristocracy staying there blamed the Maya who worked for them, but they Maya simply shook their heads and whispered. Finally, one of the young Spanish girls -- Carmelita -- who had befriended a young Maya girl asked, "What are you whispering about the missing clothes?"

"Aluxes," the Maya girl said. "They are stealing the clothes because they do not like the people."

"What is an Aluxes?"

"They are little people who live in the forest. Mostly they joke around, but, in this case, they are mad because the Maya are not getting enough food."

"How do you know that?"

"They whisper to us in the night."

Carmelita did not really believe this story, so she asked if she could spend the night with her friend and hear the Aluxes for herself.

It was agreed, because Carmelita was a very spoiled child and usually go to do whatever she wanted. It was fun to stay with the Maya family, as they were warm and funny, and not so strict as Carmelita's family. The girl meant to stay awake until the Aluxes appeared. But she and her friend snuggled into blankets on the floor, and after the warm meal of beans and squash, Carmelita fell instantly asleep. She dreamed off beautiful gowns and tiaras and as she went forward to try on one of the beautiful dresses, but just as she was ready to put it on, the dress was snatched away, and Carmelita was left standing naked. She awoke, and felt a cold wind on her chest. 

Carmelita opened her eyes. She saw a tiny figure holding the tip of her blanket, pulling it off her shoulders.

"No!" she called, but the creature continued. It was a girl, too, and she winked at Carmelita once the blanket was down to her waist. Then she hopped on the Spanish girl's chest, tickling her so that she laughed.

"What do you want?" she asked.

The little creature walked closer to Carmelita's face. And then, she ran to her shoulder an leaned into her ear.

"You must tell your mother that the Maya don't have enough food. Just as you were cold when you tried to wear the beautiful dress, the Maya are hungry when they prepare your food."

"Tell her yourself!" Carmelita did not think her mother would like the message.

But the Alux had disappeared and Carmelita was covered by her blanket again and warm. The next morning, she told her little friend about the visit.

"You must help us," he friend said.

So, Carmelita, spoiled and beloved, told her mother about the night time visit of the creature and her message. Her mother looked at her closely and then bushed Carmelita's hair from her face.

"I think you are a very observant little girl," she said.  And she gave her daughter a basket to fill with food for the Maya.

That's a nice story, I told my Mexican neighbor.

"Indeed. But watch out, now. For once you speak of the Aluxes, they will come to visit you with a message."

Little did I know, that very thing would happen in two days. I'll write about it in my next post.

And that's why it's mysterious in New Mexico (and Mexico, too!)