Guest Blog: Paty Jager: Building a Family One Book at a Time

Thank you for having me on your blog during my blog tour.

The Halsey family wasn’t even in my head when I started writing Marshal in Petticoats. It was the sixth historical western romance book I’d written and happened to be the first book to get published.

Marshal in Petticoats was about an accident prone young woman, Darcy Duncan, who ended up in a down-on-its-luck town in the middle of gold country. I was hunting for a place to put this story when I read a book about gold mining in eastern Oregon. I discovered a town that had its post office, building and all, stolen in the middle of the night by disgruntled miners who didn’t want to walk down the mountain to check for mail. This one event made my mind up that this had to be the setting for my accident-prone heroine.

After establishing the heroine and the town, I gave the heroine a younger brother so that her actions had merit for why she dressed like a young man and accepted the job of marshal. She had a strong family commitment, which meant the hero, Gil Halsey, wouldn’t, or at least thought he didn’t deserve to be in a family. He’d left home at a young age believing his brothers blamed him for the deaths of their parents and younger brother.

Gil had been a drifter until he met Darcy. When the subject of his brothers came up as I was writing the story, I thought a minute and gave them each a name: Ethan, Hank, Clay, and Zeke. And the next thing I know, Darcy drags Gil home and a reunion takes place. The four older brothers are determined to help Gil clear Darcy’s name, and they all ended up as secondary characters in the book. Once readers had a taste of the brothers, they asked for more Halsey books.

Since Zeke was mooning over a school marm in the first book, he and the school marm were the main characters in the next book, Outlaw in Petticoats. To keep Ethan, the oldest from being shut out of married life, I wrote the third book, Miner in Petticoats. Ethan as the eldest is determined he has to make the family mine take care of all the growing families. He’s come up with a way to make money for the family and help the other miners, but he needs land from the Widow Miller. She’s not about to sell. In Miner in Petticoats, Clay is injured and that sets him up for his story with Dr.Rachel Tarkiel in Doctor in Petticoats.  And last, poor Hank.  He had to wait until everyone else was happy before he could go after his dream and in the process fall in love with a very unlikely match. Not only is Kelda handy in the kitchen, but she’s handy with a whipsaw as well. At the end of Logger in Petticoats, I set up the possibility of continuing the Halsey saga with younger members of the cast, by mentioning Jeremy, Darcy’s younger brother, had gone to Alaska to seek his fortune.

When I finished the five books, I took a break from the Halsey family, but I kept receiving emails asking for more Halsey books. I thought on it a bit and decided I could do a trilogy with the young men who were brought into the Halsey family through marriages. First Jeremy Duncan, Darcy’s brother, then Colin Healy Miller, stepson to Ethan, and the third the blind boy, Donny, who was befriended by Clay and brought to Sumpter to help him with his business. 

These three books are the Halsey Homecoming Trilogy. In each book the young men have been away from home and are coming back. Jeremy’s story is, Laying Claim. Colin’s story is Staking Claim and Donny’s story, to release in late June is Claiming a Heart.

There will be a short Christmas story coming out in November with Shayla, Colin’s sister. This story will be the finish of the Halsey stories. In it, all the couples and their children will appear and help Shayla celebrate her Christmas wedding. If you want to know when that story is available sign up for my newsletter. I only send them out when I have a new release. And if you are a newsletter member you learn how you get the latest release at a reduced price. ;)

This month, I’ve set Marshal in Petticoats permanently FREE. I’m giving all romance and historical western romance readers the gift of this first book free so they can begin their journey with the Halsey family.

Marshal in Petticoats blurb:

After accidentally shooting a bank robber, Darcy Duncan becomes marshal of a town as accident prone as herself.  Darcy’s taken care of her younger brother the last five years, and she’s not about to take orders from a corrupt mayor or a handsome drifter, whose curiosity could end her career as a marshal and take away their security.

Gil Halsey is looking for his boss’s son who is riding with outlaws. Taking the young man back to the ranch will seal the foreman’s job. When he discovers the town’s new marshal is a passionate woman with high regard for family and being framed for a bank heist, he has to has to decide which is the better future—the feisty woman or the ranch.

Links to FREE download.

Windtree Press http://windtreepress.com/portfolio/marshall-in-petticoats/

Kindle http://www.amazon.com/Marshal-Petticoats-Halsey-Brother-Book-ebook/dp/B004W9C2II/

Kobo https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/marshal-in-petticoats

Apple https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id858169882

This book is also available in:

Print - $12.99 http://www.amazon.com/Marshal-Petticoats-Halsey-Brothers-Series/dp/1940064481

Audio - $17.96  http://www.amazon.com/Marshal-in-Petticoats/dp/B00IX3F0QA

Bio:

Award-winning author Paty Jager and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon.  On her road to publication she wrote freelance articles for two local newspapers and enjoyed her job with the County Extension service as a 4-H Program Assistant. Raising hay and cattle, riding horses, and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

She has published twenty novels, three anthologies, and seven novellas. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Her penchant for research takes her on side trips that eventually turn into yet another story.

You can learn more about Paty at her blog; Writing into the Sunsethttp://www.patyjager.blogspot.com/  her website; http://www.patyjager.net or on Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/#!/paty.jager , Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1005334.Paty_Jager  and twitter;  @patyjag.