My Story Inspiration for Rescuing Raven

 

By Jacqui Nelson

What inspires a short story? And can an author (who loves history) fit another iconic history-infused setting (Deadwood, South Dakota, during the gold rush) into a 6,000-word story that's also filled with romance and adventure? It was a challenge, believe me, but it was the best kind of challenge!

During my March, April, and May monthly blogs with Cowboys Kisses, I shared my Story Inspiration pages (the page I've included in the back of all of my books) for Between Heaven & Hell, Following Faith, and Choosing Bravery. 

Now it's time to share the Story Inspiration page for the story that chronologically follows those three, but this story was designed to be enjoyed at any time (including before reading the others)...

RESCUING RAVEN 

Story Inspiration page ~ from the back of the book

Being an avid fan of the Dances with Wolves movie (starring Kevin Costner and Graham Greene) and the Deadwood TV series (starring Ian McShane and Timothy Olyphant), I’d always wanted to write a story set in South Dakota or the town of Deadwood. After registering for the 2018 Wild Deadwood Reads (WDR) author-reader event, an intriguing opportunity arose—join 16 authors (who would also be attending the event) in writing a new story for a limited-edition anthology called Wild Deadwood Tales. The anthology would be available for 2018 only, it would be showcased at WDR and Deadwood’s annual Professional Bull Riders (PBR) event, and all proceeds would go to the Western Sports Foundation (WSF).


The WSF and the PBR connections had many of the anthology authors choosing to write stories about modern-day bull riders, but I’m a historical fiction author—who now had her chance to write about Deadwood in 1876! 


Why 1876? That’s the year the town of Deadwood was born. Prior to 1876, the site was a gulch with dead trees. Then gold was found in the Black Hills and white settlers flooded in—illegally taking permanent residence on the Lakota’s sacred land that had been forbidden to whites by the U.S. government’s 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. 


1876 is also the year of the Battle of the Little Big Horn—which was followed by General Crook’s march (from Montana Territory into the Dakota Territory) in pursuit of the Lakota Sioux. But General Crook only took enough rations for a few days—which resulted in the Horsemeat March (also known as the Starvation March) when his men had to eat their horses to survive. Near Deadwood, General Crook and his men fought the Battle of Slim Buttes and stole not only the Lakota’s winter food preserves but their horses (to replace the ones they’d eaten). 


Al Swearengen arrived in Deadwood early in 1876 and opened the Cricket Saloon, a barebones establishment that he built before his fancier and much more well-known Gem Theater. Not long after his arrival, his relationship with his first wife, Nettie, became extra complicated when a very attractive saloon girl named Kitty Austen came to town and became Al’s employee and more. 


All of this history created many complications for Raven (a Lakota woman born in the Black Hills) and Charlie Jennings (a white man from Oregon) who were perfect for each other even if their two worlds were not.

RESCUING RAVEN

Deadwood, Dakota Territory – 1876

Raven wants to save one person. Charlie wants to save the world. Their warring nations thrust them together but duty pulled them apart—until their paths crossed again in Deadwood for a fight for love.

In a gold rush storm, can an unlikely pair rescue each other?

Rescuing Raven features a grown-up Charlie Jennings who was a young boy in my Oregon Trail story, Between Heaven & Hell (set in 1850). You’ll also get to meet real-life (and really complicated) Al Swearengen—one of the first men to set up a business in Deadwood. Al’s most well-known saloon was The Gem Theater, but his first Deadwood saloon (the one shown in my story) was The Cricket. 

Click here to read an excerpt on my website.

THE LONESOME HEARTS SERIES 

Resuing Raven is part of my Lonesome Hearts series, which follows the frontiersmen and women who meet on the Oregon Trail and afterward. Each story includes one or more of the characters from the other books but is also a standalone read.

Click here to see a summary of all of my books on one page.

Hope you enjoyed my writing inspiration and that your Friday and your weekend are filled with sunny summer inspiration ☀️❤️

~ * ~

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Writing Out of My Comfort Zone by Paty Jager

When I started the Silver Dollar Saloon series, I did my research. I picked the Dakota Territory along the North Pacific Railroad for a reason. I loved that it was as big or bigger melting pot of nationalities and cultures than some of the large cities at the nineteenth century. 

To attract immigrants to the Dakota Territory stories were circulated in papers about how it would be as fertile and grow abundant crops like the Red River Valley along the Minnesota state line. Once the Northern Pacific Railroad ran from Chicago to Bismarck, more towns and businesses sprang up along the line. 

Germans, Scandinavians, Russians, and immigrants who initially landed in the big cities on the east coast moved to the Dakota Territory to either farm or after gold, when it was found in the Black Hills.

Farming began in earnest in 1868. It was 1879-1886 when the big settlement boom happened in the northern part of the territory, before it became a state in 1889. 100,000 people surged into North Dakota during the boom. While most came to start farms and sustain their families, others saw the potential in selling goods to the new farming communities. 

Towns sprang up along the railroad. This is why I set my fictional town of Shady Gulch along the North Pacific Railroad between Fargo and Bismarck, North Dakota. Where there were towns, there were saloons. Usually multiple saloons in one town. And that is what gave me the idea for the Silver Dollar Saloon series. Only the Silver Dollar isn't your usual saloon. 

Beau Gentry, along with his partner Creole Jules Mathieu run the saloon more to rehabilitate woman who have been wronged by men and help them find men who treat them like well and love them.  The Silver Dollar is and upscale saloon. The patrons aren't allowed to touch or say lewd comments to the women who serve the drinks, dance, and sing. 

The women live in a boarding house behind the saloon that is run by a widow who makes sure the women behave appropriately and slowly incorporates them into society. The town knows about the wronged women working at the saloon and that they don't bed men or behave unbecomingly. 

Because the area was populated with many cultures, I also populated the saloon with a diverse group of women. Savannah, Beau's sister, was a Southern Belle; Lottie Mae was a teacher who was attacked and ridiculed; Belle is a woman who had been sold a child to a man three time she age who tossed her out when he wasn't satisfied; Liesa, is German and was treated poorly and left for dead; Darie, is a Czechoslovakian girl who was raped and thrown off a train; and Freedom a Black woman who was put on a train and sent off with no money and only the clothes she had on because she knew the truth about the death of a child she'd been the nanny. 

My new release in the Silver Dollar Saloon series is, Freedom. She is a Black woman who was near dead when Beau and Jules found her and brought her to the saloon. She has been there several years and yearns to get out of the saloon and start a family. 

Because I am not Black, and while I feel all of us have the same emotions, I asked a Black author to be my sensitivity reader for this story. When I received her feedback, I learned a lot more about being Black and how there are so many things in my life I take for granted that would not be seen the same by someone who is not White.  It was eye-opening as I have had little contact with Black people in my life. A short friendship in college, I worked for a Black woman as her secretary for a couple years a couple days a week, and then my fleeting meetings with Black authors I know. 

This book would not have rang true to Freedom's feelings if I hadn't found someone to read it looking at her background and upbringing.  So a big Thank you to C. Morgan Kennedy. 

This book is available at Amazon in ebook and hopefully by the time this posts, at most other ebook vendors. I'm giving you the Universal Link as it will show you the places it is available now. 

FREEDOM: Silver Dollar Saloon

Their dreams brought them together. But will violence tear them apart?

Freedom longs to be out of the Silver Dollar Saloon, with a family of her own. When a white man promises marriage and children, she takes the biggest risk of her life, and follows him to the wilds of Montana Territory. Where he shows his true nature.

Water Runs Fast, a Crow off the reservation, comes upon a white man whipping a brown-skinned woman. After stabbing the white man and riding off with the woman, he realizes she is the woman from his visions. The one who pledged to help him and his people survive in the white man’s world.

On the run from the tragedy, the two grow close. Together, they begin a life as husband and wife. But will they have their chance at a life together, or will they hang for murder?

Universal link: https://books2read.com/u/mlawnB 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 40 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest / Bookbub

Whiskey, Beer, and a New Series by Paty Jager

I’m ready to start my new historical western romance series. The idea has been brewing since the first of the year. I’ve been researching, asking readers questions, and now I’m am ready to start writing the first book in the series. 

The series is called Ladies of the Silver Dollar Saloon. Guess where a lot of each story will take place? Yep! In the Silver Dollar Saloon in Shady Gulch, Dakota Territory. I wanted the town on a railroad, and I discovered that the Great Northern Railway ran from Duluth to Bismarck in 1873 and continued on in 1881. 

Shady Gulch is a made-up place, but I’m using towns along the railroad route to formulate my own.  I didn’t want to worry about keeping things exact to an already established town. This way I have some leeway. But I’m making sure I have historical facts and figures in the stories along with fun characters. 

The free land act gave a person 21 or older 160 acres of farm ground. They had to prove up 10 acres for 5 years and it was theirs. Many people of different nationalities came to the Dakota Territory to start a new life. Some made it and others left when harsh weather kept them from being able to prove the land. Wheat was the biggest cash crop. It sold for $1 a bushel in the early 1880’s. And with the railroad, they didn’t have to haul it by wagon hundreds of miles away.

My research on the Dakota Territory has given me even more ideas for the stories and heroes the Ladies of the Silver Dollar Saloon will meet and marry. With the cattle ranchers, railroad men, farmers, schools, newspapers, and so many different cultures converging in the area and along the railroad route, the ideas just keep pinging around in my head. 

I’ve also been researching saloons in the time period of my story. They sold whiskey and beer. Whiskey at most saloons would be watered down to make the saloon more money. In some places they sold whisky colored camphine, fusel oil, and oil of turpentine.  This was why many who drank to excess ruined their stomachs and died.  It was also noted they would mix creek water with any or all of these ingredients to make a drink that was hot, acrid, and bitter, giving it the illusion of strength:

Tartaric, citric, and sulfuric acids, fusel oil, ammonia, black bone meal, gunpowder, molasses, oak bark, oatmeal, cayenne pepper, tobacco, snake root, nitre, juniper berries, creosote, and turpentine.

No wonder whisky got the nickname “Rotgut”. 

The Scotch-Irish have been credited with being the creators of whiskey in America. They used rye, corn, barley, and potatoes to make the whiskey.  “Western Whiskey” which originated in the wild untamed west had three varieties: rye, bourbon, and corn whiskey. Corn whiskey, of course, was made from corn with a bit of barley malt to help it ferment.  Whiskey was made in barrels which made it easier and more profitable to transport than the commodities it was made from.  Bourbon has been said to have been accidentally invented by the Reverend Elijah Craig in 1789. He scoured the inside of empty barrels with glowing ashes to clean and ready them for whiskey. He then forgot several barrels that were hid in a dark corner, and when they were found and opened they had aged, mellowed, and had a full-bodied spirit. 

Beer was the other drink sold at saloons.  It appeared early in the West. There was a brewery in California in 1837 when it was still under Mexican rule. The first regular brewery opened in San Francisco in 1850. German Union troops had a “lagerbeer wagon” follow them in the Civil War. By 1880 breweries were in mining camps and larger cities.  

Most saloons sold both beer and whiskey but there were some that sold on beer. A large or “big ‘uns” was 10 cents and a “little ‘uns” was a nickel. 

The Silver Dollar in my series will have both whiskey and beer and because my saloon owner will also be a hero in one of the books and I have him portrayed as a good guy, he’ll sell only real whiskey but will also have a watered down bottle for the drunks who should be home taking care of their families. 

The first book of this series: Savannah and Larkin will be available in August. 

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 30+ novels, a dozen novellas, and short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. She has a RomCon Reader’s Choice Award, EPPIE, Lorie, and RONE Award. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. This is what readers have to say about the Letters of Fate series- “...filled with romance, adventure and twists and turns.” “What a refreshing and well written love story of fate and hope!”

 

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