Two Decades and She Still Lives On - Lost Love by Paty Jager

There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about my mom.  She left us twenty-one years ago on Thanksgiving after battling cancer.  I regret that she never had the chance to see how beautiful and well-adjusted her grandchildren have become or the chance to play with her great-grandchildren. She loved children and enjoyed life.

Mom loved to play jokes. Especially on my husband because he took the jokes so well and retaliated back in kind. On our wedding day, she got into his packed suitcase and sewed all the flies on his shorts shut. And for Christmas one year she sent him unlabeled jams because they had a running joke where Mom would ask him if he wanted strawberry or raspberry jam and he’d always ask for the opposite one she placed on the table. Of course my husband wasn’t the only person who was targeted with her practical jokes.

One Christmas when my husband and I were first married and living in a small, rundown house where I’d had more encounters with mice than I care to remember, my mom sent a large box filled with Christmas presents and bunched up newspaper.  I opened the flap and spotted what looked like mouse droppings in the folds of the crumpled newspaper. I picked the newspaper out gingerly, deciding Mom had used a box out of the attic in my parent’s old farm house.  The box was half empty when I stuck my hands in, grabbed the wadded up newspaper, and raised it out. A long, thin tail hung from my hand. I shrieked and threw the paper and tail in the air. Our just-walking daughter giggled, toddled over, and picked up the mouse. I ran over to make her drop the vermin and realized it was a fake mouse. I called my mom and all I heard was laughing on the other end of the phone. The next time my parents visited my dad went into detail about how Mom had dyed rice black to make it look like mouse droppings and the length she went to, to find a fine replica of a mouse.

We now have a grandson who loves to play jokes. I often wonder if it’s Mom’s way to making sure we don’t forget all the joy and heart-stopping moments she brought into our lives.

Mom had a way of making people feel at ease and confide in her. I’ve been told I’m a good listener. I hope that of all the things I could have inherited from her it’s being a good friend and confidante.  And a fun mother and grandmother.

One thing my mom was adamant about was that we, her children, could do anything if we just set our mind to it. It was her confidence in my writing that kept me going all those years ago. So it’s with great pleasure I’d like to give you the excerpt from my twelfth published book. It’s a historical western romance set in NE Oregon.

Logger in Petticoats blurb:

Hank Halsey believes he’s found the perfect logging crew—complete with cooks—until he discovers Kelda Nielson would rather swing an axe than flip eggs. As he sets out to prove women belong in the kitchen, he’s the one in danger of getting burned.

Strong and stubborn, Kelda Nielsen grew up falling trees, and resents any man who believes she’s not capable, until Hank. He treats her like a lady and has her questioning what that means.

As Kelda and Hank’s attraction builds, she hires a cook so she can sneak out and work in the woods. But will her deceit ruin her chance at love or will hardheaded Hank realize it’s more than his love that puts a sparkle in Kelda’s eye?

About Me

Wife, mother, grandmother, and the one who cleans pens and delivers the hay; award winning author Paty Jager and her husband currently ranch 350 acres when not dashing around visiting their children and grandchildren. She not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

She is a member of RWA, EPIC, and COWG. Her contemporary Western, Perfectly Good Nanny won the 2008 Eppie for Best Contemporary Romance and Spirit of the Mountain, a historical paranormal set among the Nez Perce, garnered 1^st place in the paranormal category of the Lories Best Published Book Contest.

You can learn more about her at her blog; www.patyjager.blogspot.com  her website; http://www.patyjager.net or on Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/#!/paty.jager and twitter;  @patyjag.