Paty Jager, author of Merry Merry Merry Murder, a Cuddle Farm mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us a bit about setting her book in a small town.

Welcome, Paty. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

It’s true that writers bring a little bit of themselves or their surroundings into their work.

When I came up with the idea for the Cuddle Farm Mysteries, I knew it would be set in a small town. All of my mystery series are set in rural, small towns. It’s where I grew up and have lived most of my adult life. It’s what I know.

There is nothing like everyone knowing everything about you and you knowing a lot about everyone else. It keeps people, mostly, honest. Or it keeps them the main source of rumors. 😉

This gossip and knowing a lot about everyone is what makes writing mysteries in small towns so much fun. The amateur sleuth is usually more in the know than law enforcement, which makes them the best person to dig for the truth.

My fictional small town is a facsimile of the town where my husband and I are retiring to. I love the beautiful downtown area, the river that flows through the middle of the town, and they have a large central park with a pavilion where events are held throughout the year. All of these elements are in my fictional town.

My main character, Andi Clark, likes to take her dogs to the park for walks. Then she takes them to the Bow Wow Brew, a coffee shop across the street from the park. People can get coffee and sandwiches inside or sit in a covered patio with dog-friendly tables, benches, and water bowls. They also serve pup cups (ice cream cones made from dog-friendly ingredients with whipped cream in them) and dog cookies. This is one of the main places that Andi and her dogs meet up with Andi’s friends. I’ve populated the town with a number of coffee spots, but then in the real town, there are at least 6.

I enjoy coming up with names for businesses. One of my fictional businesses is Cheesy Pie. If you didn’t already guess, it’s a pizza place that you can order and eat in. Their famous pizza is the Everything But The Kitchen Sink. It has everything you could ever ask for on a pizza, all on one pizza. It’s Andi’s brother’s favorite pizza.

The town, I’m sort of replicating, has a grand, old hotel that was built in the 1800s when the gold from the surrounding mountains was flowing through the town. I have a similar hotel with an expensive restaurant in my book. It’s called the Auburn House. The town’s name is Auburn, and it’s set in Baker County, Oregon. If you are from Oregon or even the NE corner of Oregon, you’ll know the town I’m using as my blueprint for Auburn.

I’m hoping that with all the other small towns around the real town that I will also have places for Andi to travel a bit and get caught up in murders that aren’t right in her backyard. Or I should say, pasture.

She lives on her family’s sheep farm twenty miles outside of Auburn. Her family has been raising sheep and making yarn and garments from that yarn for three generations. The fourth generation, Andi’s nephew, has started weaving like his uncle, Andi’s brother, Rudy.  While everyone in her family, except her brother-in-law, either spin, weave, knit, or crochet, Andi keeps the books for the Weber family business and helps with selling the crafted items and with the sheep when needed.

Because she and the Cuddle therapy animals travel around to different places during the week, she just pops into the shop a couple of times a week to take care of the bookkeeping. It’s just enough numbers work to keep her brain happy, and she doesn’t have to hang out too long with her older sister.

Andi can’t remember when things changed, but she does have vague memories of her and her sister playing and having fun. Unfortunately, those are fading memories. Her sister and her best friend have been mean to Andi since she started school. The two would find ways to make her life miserable. Luckily, she hadn’t been a normal student. She was what they called a nerd. She and four other girls were at the top of their classes in mathematics and science. The boys were jealous of them, and the other girls called them weirdos. But they banded together and cheered each other on when they did well academically. 

After high school, Andi went on to college and received an accounting degree. That’s when she met her husband. Mick swept her off her feet, and they traveled the world as he worked for dignitaries and she helped him with accounting discrepancies.

But all of that ended with Mick’s accidental death. Andi didn’t feel like traipsing all around the world anymore. She headed back home to Auburn.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Paty, and good luck with Merry Merry Merry Murder, the first book in the Cuddle Farm mystery series. Readers can learn more about Paty Jager by visiting the author’s website and her Bookbub, Pinterest, Instragam, TikTok and Goodreads pages.

The book is available online at the following retailers:

 Amazon – B&N

About Paty Jager: Paty Jager is an award-winning author of murder mysteries, western romance, and action-adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes in eastern Oregon, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.