This week kicked my butt. I’m still moving forward, but it seems like getting to 30k is taking FOREVER.

If this was a cycling race, I’d be the one attempting the break-away from the back of the pack, trying to catch that large peloton of riders behind the leaders. 

35,000 words this month is kind of my benchmark. It won’t make me a winner in NaNo, but that’s how many I need to personally feel like a winner. That would put my novel-in-progress at a little over 60,000—and within striking distance for a finished draft by year-end.

Fellow NaNo’ers: If you’re stuck in the back of the pack but still fighting, I’m with you and I feel your pain! If you’re cruising your way to the finish line, hurray! And if you pulled to the side of the race course and quit? Get back on that writing bike and pedal through NaNovember and on into December. Because writers don’t quit!
 

Today,  meet Rumor’s half-brother, Alberto Vargas, 32. He has lived in Mexico all his life. His father and uncle work in a factory in Agua Prieta and he lives with them.

Alberto worked as a coyote, smuggling illegals across the Mexican border into the United States.

Rumor has known for years that her brother made his living smuggling, but she also suspects he has ties to the Sinaloan Cartel. It’s true. Alberto injured a Cartel member in a bar fight a few years ago, and the man later died.

To protect his father and repay his debt, Alberto switched from smuggling human cargo to smuggling drugs. He is now in over his head, and desperately wants out from under the Cartel, but he’s worried they will hard his father and uncle if he refuses to work for them.  
​
In the book, we learn a lot about human smuggling into the United States from Mexico and Central America. Here’s an excerpt:

Naco, Mexico

Alberto Vargas sat among the group of border hoppers gathering in the shade on the Mexican side of fence, wondering which of them would be the first to die.
         
A dusty thermometer on the cantina wall read 103 degrees.
 
Pathetic. When he was little, the demarcation between los Estados Unidos and Mexico had been a simple stone marker by the side of the road and a single sentry who waved you through from his seat in the shade.  But since 9/11 everything had changed. Now, more than ever, Mexicans had to sneak across the border under cover of darkness, across the most rugged and least populated areas.  The coyote smugglers met them on the other side, well past the "taco checks" and the border patrol rifles, to hide them in stash houses in Tucson or Phoenix.
 
A man with his wife and toddler rested on pads under a flatbed truck, waiting out the afternoon heat. The man stretched out and smoked. The little girl babbled a counting song and played with the fingers of his free hand.
         
 "How far did your man tell you to walk?" Alberto asked the father in Spanish.
 
"Hasta media noche," the father replied. "We follow the railroad tracks to the big Highway 10. El pollero said he would meet us on the other side of the road at midnight."
 
Polleros. Chicken herders. Alberto shook his head. The smugglers always told first-timers they would meet them on the other side. Forty miles on the other side. That part was left out.
         
"You don't want to do this," Alberto said to the father. "Your family will suffer."
          
The man's face split into a smile. "It will be worth it when I am rich."
 
"At least buy more water," Alberto pressed. "Two gallons each."
 
The father pulled his pockets inside out and shrugged. No spare pesos for more than    the gallon apiece his pollero had given him.
 
Of course he didn't. He and the other border crossers had each paid a partial fee to the coyote up-front, and the rest of the negotiated amount was held by a "respondent" and paid when the crosser was delivered safely to Tucson, or Phoenix, LA or El Paso, wherever had been agreed upon. 
 
When Alberto had been a coyote, he made this run two or three times a year, and even he couldn't survive on a single gallon of water. But it wasn't his job to take care of this naïve father and his young family. 

Later, the group encounters what is known as a “Cherry Tree” or a “Rape Tree”.

Often these trees are strewn with women’s garments as a warning to stay out of a certain Cartel’s traffic territory. These trees are seen on major smuggling routes in National Forest, on private land, and many other places just inside Mexico before the border.
 
A coyote will make $3,000 to $4,000 a head on Mexican illegals, and $10,000 for a Central American fare. He will bring a few to a dozen people per trip, and may make a trip a month or more.
 
But the rape tree warnings are more likely made by Cartel members marking their drug smuggling routes. That’s where the big business comes in.
An official estimated that cartels send a stunning $64 billion worth of drugs into the U.S. every year.

Mexico’s former Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna dropped that number at a recent conference in Juarez.
 
Would a border wall stem that drug flow? I don’t know.
 
But I do believe that illegal immigrants will continue to come into the United States from all of the countries to our south unless something is done to ease the extreme poverty in those nations. I don’t think a wall will stop the people.
 
I know many of you would like for me to put this suspense novel to bed, and get back to writing on the Ancient Magic series book two. While I think you’ll love Crescent Moon Crossing and these characters, I’m also looking forward to writing the second paranormal book, and use all those beautiful Scotland locations we scouted during our trip this summer.

So cheer me across the NaNo finish line on November 30.

Here’s to a new book release in January. AND the start of a whole new novel in February!

Until then, good reading!

#amwriting
#NaNoWriMo

Week Three of NaNo is the hardest for a lot of participants. Everyone is trying to get ready for Thanksgiving dinner and guests.

Plus, a lot of books tend to get bogged down as they head into the middle scenes, somewhere around 40-45k. People who are “on target” should have just passed the 30k mark, so we’ll see how many run into the Week Three doldrums. 

 I’m not bogged down, I’m just a v-e-r-y slow writer I passed 15k today on my NaNo word count. I had a fantastic week plotting to have my bad guy murder two women camping in the Cochise Stronghold Campground near Tombstone. The first woman I patterned after someone I dislike. (There are so many perks to being a novelist!) She was so bossy, bad guy decided to kill her first. He slit her throat when she visited the latrine before bed and then stuffed her in the self-composting toilet.

 My husband suggested strangling the second girl and stuffing her in the “bear box” at their campsite, but I wasn’t sure she’d fit without cutting her up. Those boxes are kinda small, and I didn’t want my killer to have the deal with that mess.  So I countered with rubbing her body with the morning breakfast’s bacon grease, and leaving her out as a treat for the bears.

Ultimately, I decided the whole “two young women camping alone” scene was cliché, and scrapped all 2,000-plus words. But, damn! It was fun to write. I’m keeping the scene…who knows, maybe you’ll read it someday as a short story.   

I had a fantastic week plotting to have my bad guy murder two women camping in the Cochise Stronghold Campground near Tombstone.

The first woman I patterned after someone I dislike. (There are so many perks to being a novelist!)

She was so bossy, my bad guy decided to kill her first. He slit her throat when she visited the latrine before bed and then stuffed her in the self-composting toilet. 

​My husband suggested strangling the second girl and stuffing her in the “bear box” at their campsite, but I wasn’t sure she’d fit without cutting her up. Those boxes are kinda small, and I didn’t want my killer to have the deal with that mess.  So I countered with rubbing her body with the morning breakfast’s bacon grease, and leaving her out as a treat for the bears.

Ultimately, I decided the whole “two young women camping alone” scene was cliché, and scrapped all 2,000-plus words. But, damn! It was fun to write. I’m keeping the scene…who knows, maybe you’ll read it someday as a short story.   

While we’re on the subject of bad guys, this week I’d like to introduce you to our first suspect, the victim’s husband, Army Staff Sergeant Jace Merrick.

It remains to be seen whether Jace is pure evil, but he is definitely a narcissist and a sociopath with no conscience.
He enlisted in the Army during college, after losing is scholarship (it was his professor’s fault, of course), and was infantry, 11-Bravo. He’s a smart guy and has done well.

Now his military career is taking a satisfying leap forward with his transfer to Ft. Huachuca, AZ, for counter-intelligence training.
​
That is, until his wife, Abby, threatens to report his long-running affair to his commanding officer. Unfortunately, his lover is a female officer, also at the Fort. If he doesn’t break off the fraternization, they could both be court-marshalled. He’s not going to let Abby use his affair against him. In fact, he begins to plot how to get rid of her and make it look like a Cartel human smuggling operation gone wrong.  

In researching sociopaths, one of the things I found interesting is that they see nothing at all wrong with their way of living in the world. Every decision a sociopath makes is based on “how does it affect me.” They are noted for their shallowness of emotion, and the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feeling they may claim to have carries a certain breathtaking callousness
.
They have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate. Once the surface charm is scraped off (and often there is a thick overlying layer of charm—sociopaths are very good at their game), their marriages are loveless, one-sided, and almost always short-term.

As the book evolves, Jace will refuse to acknowledge any blame or even responsibility for the decisions he makes, or for the outcomes of his decisions.   The American Psychiatric Association actually has a term for this, “consistent irresponsibility,” and it’s a cornerstone of the antisocial personality diagnosis.

I thought it would be difficult to write a sociopathic personality, but, as it turns out, I am dealing with one in my real life right now, so it was easy to find examples to pattern the behavior.

There’s a good chance you may have a conscienceless sociopath in your life as well. According to the book, The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, PhD, sociopaths make up about four percent of the population.

Often they are attractive, intelligent and extremely successful. But because they truly have no conscience, self-awareness is impossible, and the rest of us just shake our heads and mutter,”Whaat? How can you possibly think that…act like that…do that to someone?”

If you have a close relationship with a sociopath, with a person who truly has no conscience, all my research says not to put out the effort to try and change him or her. Instead, walk away—and take your loved ones with you.

In the end, just as the sociopath has no genuine relationships with other people, he has only a very tenuous one with himself.

Stop by next weekend and meet another suspect, Rumor’s brother Alberto. He’s a Cartel coyote and drug smuggler, but much more of a good/bad mix than Jace. I think you’ll like him, and he’ll teach us a lot about the dangers of smuggling people and contraband across the Mexican border into the States.

Until then, good reading.
#amwriting
#NaNoWriMo

NaNo week 2 has begun, and I passed the 10k word benchmark yesterday. I should be at 15k but gotta say, 10,000 words in eight days is really good for me!

I'm nearing the half-way mark in the novel, and Rumor has been shot and is in the hospital. Coop has come to the realization that he's falling in love with her, and he has vowed to find the attacker. The investigation just got more personal!

There's more on Coop below. It took a while, but now I think I like Coop as well or better than I liked Nicholas in my first book. He's not nearly as cranky, but he's just as inept at expressing his feelings! 

​Meet Sheriff Cooper (‘Coop”) Jones, age 36. He is a widower and has a young daughter, Sadie (you will also meet her in the book). His wife was killed by a junkie in a home invasion while Coop was with the Miami police force.

​After he buried his wife, Coop wanted to get as far away from Miami as possible. 
 
He is now the acting Sheriff of Cochise County, AZ, through a circuitous set of events.  The police chief he worked under in Florida met Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpio at a national conference, and his boss recommended Coop for a job in Arizona if anything came open.
When the Sheriff of Cochise County was killed in a traffic accident, Coop got the call.
 
He had only been in Arizona a few months when he has to investigate the murder of a woman, Abby Merrick, in a remote stretch of desert outside Sierra Vista.
 
She may have stumbled on some Mexican Cartel members smuggling drugs or human cargo across the border. He initially suspects a young Hispanic man who has Cartel ties, and also happens to be the younger brother of Rumor Vargas, a well-respected antiques dealer and business owner in nearby Bisbee.
 
On the other hand, Abby’s husband has a pretty strong motive to kill his wife as well. He’s in the middle of a long-term affair with a lanky blond Lieutenant with a highly connected daddy.
 
But the more Coop digs into Abby’s death, the more things don’t quite add up for either of these suspects.
 
Rumor insists that her brother is innocent. Coop has a lot of respect for her, and his instincts say she is right.
 
Then someone attacks Rumor, and Coop is desperate to find the perpetrator and keep her safe. He believes his wife would still be alive if he’d paid attention to his instincts then. He’s not about to make the same mistake again.
 
Coop is fast becoming a favorite character of mine. When I first started writing him, I put the Sheriff’s personality characteristics through the Myer Briggs personality tests (as part of a writing class I was taking). He came back as an INTJ, an interesting character type.
 
To outsiders, INTJs may see to project an aura of “definiteness” and self-confidence. Sometimes mistaken for arrogance by the less decisive, it is actually a very specific rather than a general nature. Its source lies is the specialized knowledge systems that INTJs start building at an early age. When it comes to their own areas of expertise—and INTJs can have several—they will be able to tell you almost immediately whether or not they can help you, and if so, how. INTJs know what they know, and perhaps still more importantly, they know what they don’t know.
 
Whatever they happen to be working on is for them the equivalent of amoral cause, and both perfectionism and disregard for authority may come into play.
 
These personality traits should make an interesting sheriff, don’t you think? If you’ve ever watched the series Western crime suspense Longmire on A&E, you’ve already met an INTJ lawman, and he’s a doozy of an example. 

​Longmire features Sheriff Walt Longmire (Aussie actor Robert Taylor), who grapples with a hazy past, complicated moral decisions, and the bad guys of modern northwestern Wyoming. 
             
Walt Longmire is the charismatic, dedicated and unflappable sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming. Like Cooper Jones, Sheriff Longmire is also recently widowed. Both characters ae men in psychic repair. And bury their pain behind a brave face and dry wit. And both men have a deep understanding and respect for their environment and its indigenous people. 

​I hope you will come to like Sheriff Coop Jones as much as I’ve enjoyed getting to know him. Look for him in my upcoming book, Crescent Moon Crossing, scheduled for release in early 2018.
 
And come back to visit here next weekend when you will meet our first suspect, Staff Sgt. Jace Merrick.
 
Until then, good reading!

I can’t even tell you how excited I am for the 2017 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I’m going to use the push that the contest provides to finish my novel-in-progress, Crescent Moon Crossing.

Yea, I know, you’re supposed to start a new novel for each NaNo, but this is a contest for US, the writers, and this book has been languishing below 30k words all year. It’s time to light the fire and get it finished.

Because I’ll be writing 2,000-plus words a day to make that happen, my blogs will be shorter this month. But I will give you weekly updates on my progress, a synopsis of the book, and some fun character profiles and insights.
My book synopsis and the first character profile, protagonist Rumor Vargas, is below.
Please stop by here and cheer me on! Or, if you participate in NaNo, friend me there (writing under the name SINAZ) and I will follow and encourage you as well.

Crescent Moon Crossing – Synopsis
​

Staff Sgt. Jace Merrick's two short-term goals: Join the Army Counter-Intelligence Unit, and kill his wife.

When his bleeding-heart spouse, Abby, begins volunteering at Hope House, a group that leaves supplies in the Arizona desert for illegals crossing the  border, he hatches a plan to make her murder look like a coyote smuggling gone wrong.

Rumor Vargas is first on the witness list of Deputy Sheriff Cooper "Coop" Jones, assigned to investigate her friend's murder. Rumor finds his quick mind and wicked wit attractive and she's curious about his battle-weary eyes. But when he turns that inquiring mind on her little brother as a prime suspect, Rumor finds she has a reason besides attraction to keep Coop close.

The Sheriff suspects Alberto Vargas has Cartel ties, and this certainly look like the notorious Mexican gang's work. On the other hand, Abby's husband—and his lover--have their own motives for murder.

The further Coop digs into the case, the less the facts add up for any of his known suspects.
​
Someone has a grudge against Jace Merrick. A life and death grudge. And it's time for payback.

Meet Rumor Vargas - Protagonist
​

If you read my first book, Song of the Ancients, you will remember Rumor Vargas as Samantha Danroe’s business partner at their antique clothing store in Sedona, AZ.

Since Samantha took off for London at the end of that book, with no intention of returning to Arizona, they sold off the store and Rumor moved south to Bisbee, another quirky Arizona town near the Mexico border.

Now, in Crescent Moon Crossing, Rumor has again demonstrated her entrepreneurial acumen by opening an antiques store in Bisbee, specializing in folk art, occult pieces and yes, vintage clothing.

She has also earned her private pilot license and travels during the summer, acquiring antiques from around the world. If you’ve ever been to Bisbee, by the way, you know how well this eclectic store would fit in in real life!

Rumor, now 33, is American but has her Mexican father's olive skin, dark hair and eyebrows.  She is bi-lingual and often volunteers at a local refugee shelter called Hope House. By the end of the book, she also decides to advocate in court for illegals fighting to stay in the United States.

Her half-brother, Alberto, is a coyote—a human trafficker for a Mexican cartel.
Rumor's friend Abby has been murdered, and Rumor is a partial witness. She wants to help authorities find the murderer, and also clear her brother, who is a suspect. 

Drop by here each Friday in November to meet more characters from Crescent Moon Crossing, as well as interesting insider fact nuggets dug up in my research that will never make it into the book.
 
#Amwriting
#NaNoWriMo