Month: October 2024

Smoking Mirror, Mae Martin Book Nine, Available for Pre-order

The ninth Mae Martin Psychic Mystery

 Is she a good witch, a bad witch, or not a witch at all?

A house healer arrives in Truth or Consequences, claiming to make houses sell by removing negative energy, but disasters follow her healing efforts. Disaster is also plaguing Mae Martin’s former high school teammate Jen. Mae has a few things in common with her: an ex-husband, a desire to run her own fitness business, and a background in sports. But not much else. Mae’s stepdaughters are visiting for a month, and they’d rather never see Jen again. But Jen asks for Mae’s help with what she thinks is a curse—in Maine.

It’s a terrible time to leave town, and not only because of the kids. Important relationships are fraying. Rumors are spreading about Mae not being a real seer and healer. Compelled to act when there are no good choices, she confronts the most powerful enemy she’s yet encountered—and she’s not even sure she can remove a curse. In trying, Mae risks more than she ever thought she could lose.

The Mae Martin Series

No murder, just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of all.

*****

The e-book comes out Nov. 1 everywhere but Amazon, where the date is Nov.2. (I’m not sure why.) Place your order now and have the book show up in your e-reader as soon as it’s released. Paperbacks will follow soon for sale online and, of course, at Black Cat Books and Coffee in Truth or Consequences.

If the Barnes and Noble link isn’t working yet on Books2Read, fellow Nook owners, click here.

“A few more breaths.”

The yoga teacher I studied with for over twenty years, the man who taught me most of what I understand about yoga—the skills of teaching, the physical and spiritual practice—died Oct. 21, 2024. He’d been ill for a while, and his wife said he died peacefully.

I honor his life and work by teaching and also by practicing. By remembering not just what he taught but how he taught: with respect, humor, knowledge, and insight, with attention to every person in the room—the real room or the Zoom room—guiding students to be their most conscious selves. I used to commute all the way to Albuquerque to take his classes. The studio where he taught closed in 2020, and I continued to study with him online.

When his cancer was diagnosed, I knew I wouldn’t see him again. He was my teacher, not my social friend, a reserved and private person. I understood not to pressure to see him, not to intrude. I’ve been studying with his wife, also a thoughtful and caring teacher in the same tradition. As he grew more ill in hospice care, she asked me to take over her Zoom class so she could be with him. I wrote to her about his influence on me, and she shared my words with him. He changed my life.Today, I did my yoga practice outdoors, with his teaching in mind as I always do. “Yoga is a manual for being human,” he once said. He challenged us to practice with attention to the moment, deeply awake. Sustaining a difficult asana, he gave clear permission to exit the pose at any time, while inquiring of yourself why you needed to stop. He often ended a long-held pose with “a few more breaths” to get us through it, then saying “And when you’re done, you’re done.”

Namaste, my teacher. My spirit honors your spirit.

New Book Coming in November

That’s my excuse for not blogging at all in September. I was finishing the book.

Smoking Mirror

The ninth Mae Martin Psychic Mystery

 Is she a good witch, a bad witch, or not a witch at all?

A house healer arrives in Truth or Consequences, claiming to make houses sell by removing negative energy, but disasters follow her healing efforts. Disaster is also plaguing Mae Martin’s former high school teammate Jen. Mae has a few things in common with her: an ex-husband, a desire to run her own fitness business, and a background in sports. But not much else. Mae’s stepdaughters are visiting for a month, and they’d rather never see Jen again. But Jen asks for Mae’s help with what she thinks is a curse—in Maine.

It’s a terrible time to leave town, and not only because of the kids. Important relationships are fraying. Rumors are spreading about Mae not being a real seer and healer. Compelled to act when there are no good choices, she confronts the most powerful enemy she’s yet encountered—and she’s not even sure she can remove a curse. In trying, Mae risks more than she ever thought she could lose.

The Mae Martin Series

No murder, just mystery. Every life hides a secret, and love is the deepest mystery of all.

 

 

A New Mexico Mystery Review: The Sacred Bridge by Anne Hillermann

This is Anne Hillerman’s best book yet, a crime novel but also a book about culture, land, and history, set in various parts of the Navajo Nation in both New Mexico and Arizona. As always, her research is thorough and woven naturally into the flow of the story. The character development is deep, and the plot revolves around the inner workings of people— the victims of the crimes, the perpetrators, and the people solving the crimes.

The beginning of the book is a masterpiece in building tension, suspense, setting, plot, and conflict, when there’s only one character present: Jim Chee hiking alone at Lake Powell, discovering a crime as he’s contemplating what to do with his career. Meanwhile, Chee’s wife, Bernie Manuelito, is investigating another crime that she had the misfortune to witness. This second crime is somewhat based on actual events on the Navajo Nation that I’d read about. I immediately recognized the farm that inspired this story, and its misuse of Chinese laborers. The discovery of the full character and life path of the victims of these two different crimes is a fascinating and integral part of the process of solving them.

Bernie’s career development and Chee’s professional decisions and spiritual explorations are inseparable from the plot. Bernie’s younger sister Darleen’s maturation and use of her talents fit perfectly into the mystery. There’s not a single loose thread. Every subplot is tightly woven into the main plots.

This book kept me awake. When Bernie is coming to the end of her undercover assignment, the pace is intense and full of surprises—surprises that fit.  I like when a mystery hits me this way: Oh wow! I never saw this coming! But yes, of course that’s what happens.

Everything’s wrapped up and yet the book also ends in a way that makes me want to read the next one. Starting immediately.

The Heist

 I don’t know that it technically was a heist, but it felt like one. Is it illegal to rescue a rare plant from city property if the city is considering selling that land for development? The open space has been torn up by all-terrain vehicles that created rutted gullies, much rougher than the official marked hiking trail that runs along the edge of the bluff above the Rio Grande. The city wouldn’t sell the hiking trail, but they might sell the rest of the mesa. Despite the damage, it’s a cactus garden.

In the spring a few years back, I took to running in the gullies created by ATVs to escape the wind. As a result, I discovered an unusual, stubby little cactus with hot pink flowers and starry- patterned thorns. They were unobtrusive the rest of the year, and I could hardly find them when they weren’t in bloom.

Once the city decided they might sell the land. I worried about the little cacti. I put their picture on a New Mexico native plants website’s discussion board, and the unanimous reaction was “Save them!” Though not endangered, they’re rare and special. An expert in desert plants volunteered to rehome them to the arboretum she manages.

She drove all the way to T or C. We met on a road near the trail, I escorted her in, and she dug them up. I’d worried about how to do that, afraid I would hurt them or myself. She didn’t even use gloves, just stuck the shovel in the ground as if she could see through the soil to the exact span of the first plant’s roots, picked it up by those roots, and put it in a paper bag. Then she dug up the next one and laid it on its side on top of the first one’s bag in a plastic bucket with another bag on top. The third one was bigger, so I held a large tote bag open, and with flawless shovel management she slid the stoutest of the little cacti in.

As we returned to her car, the cactus I carried poked and scratched at my left leg through the plastic side of the tote bag, as if to say, what are you doing to me? I’ve lived here for years. We’ve been friends. You’ve admired me every spring, even brought me water once. What’s going on? How do you explain to a cactus that you’re trying to save its life in case its habitat gets razed for houses?

Anyway, off they went in bags and a bucket in the back of her car, and now they have a new home where rare desert plants are cared for and where visitors can admire them. I’m happy for these little cacti, even though I won’t see them on a regular basis anymore. I plan to visit them in the spring when they flower in their new home. And I will say no more about exactly where that is, in case this rescue really was a heist.