The Indian Queen would risk torture and worse to keep her secrets from these barbarians in suits of metal and their search for cities of gold. They never found the gold. Empires rose; empires fell, the centuries passed. Legend became fireside myths, but no treasure was ever found. Yet, among the grey-green drapes of wisteria and wild jasmine along the misty shrouded lowlands of bayous and marshes of the Westo River, the folktales persist.
In the lazed creep of a near-tropical dawn lit the pungent Turkish coffee permeates Moccasin Hollow. Beyond the kitchen door Lucky, Craige Ingram’s German shepherd gnaws a favorite bone. Looted burial mounds seem a world away until plundered mounds on Moccasin Hollow land brings amateur archaeologist PI Craige Ingram into the cross-hairs of kidnapping. Stealthy hideaways are concealed in old colonial brick-lined river grottoes beneath the big house of Ardochy plantation. Sex-tape underage blackmail and thrill killings on federal land spur a medical examiner’s preliminary postmortem to more than a hired cleaner’s quickie cover-up passed off as drug deals gone sour. Greed tangles a witch’s pigswill of illicit affairs and murder-to-hide-murder. Shady investigators and shadier politics stir an unexpected concoction that threatens the lives of those at Moccasin Hollow in a spiteful plot against ex-SEAL Craige Ingram and the woman he loves.
Thanks so much Hawk for taking the time and allowing me a few minutes to chat
about Westobou Gold and a little about your
writing style
I haven’t had the
pleasure of reading any of your work before so let’s start at the beginning.
Can you tell us what
kind of story Westobou Gold is about
and what Genre?
Westobou Gold is the second title in The Moccasin Hollow Mystery Series. This
second book is a tale of greed complicated by out-of-control compulsions that become
paranoia. My favorite characters in the series are the women with the swirl and
dash they add to the historical backstory of the romance genre and the
contemporary chase of mystery…the same covert intrigue that the serial
character Craige Ingram brings from Book 1, Hidden
Chamber of Death.
Did the character of
Craige Ingram come before the Moccasin
Hollow Series?
Yes…the distinct backgrounds
of an unnamed figure of Welsh, French, and Scottish kith-and-kin laid out a
wealth of character/personality traits long before placing the figure into
outlines, themes, settings, plot, etc. to become The Moccasin Hollow Series. The serial aspect of the protagonist-character theme, the
Ingramme/Ingram name went through several changes and backgrounds to become an uncompromising
principled Southron with the will from his forefathers—and Grannie—to survive. Craige
Howelle Graeme Roynane Ingram...with questionable branches of twined family
trees and heraldic honors with Coats of Arms—I researched hundreds of single-spaced
pages, ancient genealogy bloodlines…stirred and mixed the character that eventually
would become Craige Ingram. Much of the shaping of the protagonist was
nonfiction woven into deniable fiction…like most of our immigrant European, Welsh,
Irish, Scottish ancestors.
Did you develop the
series to give Craige something to do?
With such
hot-blooded powerful ancestors, land barons and their industrial legitimate and
illegitimate prodigy, PI Craige Ingram needs no prodding. He doesn’t lack for
places to be, things to do, or people who need help and know he can be trusted.
He picks his cases, and lucrative investments have given him the opportunity to
be lazy when he wants to retreat/recharge at his ancestral home, Moccasin
Hollow. As a SEAL, Ingram was tasked as the Commanding Officer to select the
men to outfit an antiterrorist covert unit. He stays close to his serial-characters
SEAL buddies across several states…lawyer, forensic doctor, sheriff, and police
lieutenant. SEAL to the core, unit members retain their code of ethics in their
civilian pursuits—considerate of others and of the consequences of their
decisions. They can be animal-intense when the situation demands it.
I see that our main
character in Westobou Gold, Craige,
is a retired Navy Seal. Is there a little bit of you in Craige’s character?
Absolutely…probably
more than at first intended…which is nothing new with writers of any genre. I
am not a SEAL, but my military career positioned me in some of their support
units. They live hard, fast, sometimes crude, but always there when needed…no
matter the hangover. Writers pull from themselves and from the brew of life
around them, then wrinkle non-fiction yarns into a fiction brew that isn’t
fiction at all. Nor does most tales told fit snug and neat into any genre.
There’s a bunch of romance with the serial characters in The Moccasin Hollow Series…especially in the historical romance, Moccasin Trace, which gives the
historical background to the present-day mystery series.
When you began The Moccasin Hollow Series did you have
a plan for how many books
would be a part of
the series, or is that developing as the series moves forward?
A
series wasn’t planned until character sketches were expanded. Character back-and-forth
relationships expanded until red flags warned of too many twists, plots and
subplot-plots were flying for Hidden
Chamber of Death. There were rewrites, hard edits and storyline cuts…with
Book 2, Westobou Gold in the offing.
It hasn’t stopped. How many books? I’ve no idea, but certainly more than I’ll
ever get put together.
The story is
interesting in that it has an underlying historical significance. Did you come
up with the historical/legend of the story first?
I’d
like to claim that was planned/outlined from the start. It wasn’t. The legend fed
the story, a tale waiting to be jig-sawed with murder, greed and gory madness. From
all manner of researched notes Ingram and Graeme and Greer and DeWorthe
characters/plots warped-and-woofed into Moccasin
Trace, the historical romance of the Ingram bloodlines. The scenes/settings
and characters’ backstories of Moccasin
Trace were trimmed to a draft of the first and last chapters in both Books
1 and 2, Hidden Chamber of Death and Westobou Gold in the mystery series. Through the generations, family names changed from Craige
Howelle Graeme Roynane Ingramme to Craige Ingram—a whole basket of learning and a lot of fun to
weave the characters through each title. Book 3 is with the editors…and away we
go.
How did you choose
the location of Westobou Gold?
Why Westobou Gold? The legend, locations,
landmarks and settings came near readymade. Some characters blended with other
caricature-cutouts or moved from other sites; unrelated but juxtaposed in the
tale being spun. Timespans were crunched or expanded; the pieces waiting for
Craige Ingram and his significant ‘others’ to have the webs spun around them. The
decades of writing through my teens were west of the Mississippi
except for cousins and creek-cousins in the Cajun lands south of New Orleans
I’m always
interested in the research that an author does for a story. Did you
have to do any
special research to develop the story or plot in Westobou Gold?
With
all the gran’mothers that know their history cold—that’s a most explicit and definite
YES. One of the dictates of the research, it is imperative to keep historical events/places
and characters historically correct in a work of fiction like Moccasin Trace. One glitch—something
inaccurate—and it’s a solid platinum promise, more than a few razor memories will
spot it. Senior moments blown to blazes…some of the Southron octogenarians are
sharp. It is critical to fact-check and research from more than one or two
sources. Internet browsers are a great tool, but reference librarians are way-beyond-awesome
in digging up often-archived details.
Just one more
question and I’ll let you get back to writing…
When you’re not
writing do you have a hobby that keeps you busy?
My hobbies are varied. The well-worn
comment, “Reading a well-written book.” More to the point, a nonfiction well-written
history by a writer that was contemporary to that history; i.e. the unabridged The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
It was a slugfest and in many places a real drag, BUT it had some hidden
treasures in it as well. Another hobby—collecting original contemporary
Southron watercolorists to place them in museum collections for everyone to
enjoy instead of secluding the pieces in some underground Hidden Chamber vault.
Thank you so much for spending some time with us!
Where to buy
Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble
Giveaway
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