Tag: horse backpacking

Pack Saddles & Gunpowder by Susie Drougas ** A Review

PackSaddles.scanwriting, creating, reviews,fiction, children's books, fiction for adults, women's fictionwriting, creating, reviews,fiction, children's books, fiction for adults, women's fiction                                       2 out of 5 quills
Pack Saddles & Gunpowder  ** A Review

This book has potential.  But it’s a trilogy…and unfortunately not in a good way. It is:  1) A mountain horse packing guide book.  2) A treatise about the ongoing struggle between the environmentalists and horsemen with regard to how the high country wilderness should be used and protected.  And finally: 3) an underdeveloped mystery. The story is not moved forward by the first two. It would have been much more interesting to weave the trails and lakes more into the story, almost as an after thought. There was a missed opportunity to write a chapter where the environmentalists and horsemen debate the issue with some scintillating dialogue.

More research should have been done with regard to crime scene investigation.  When the helicopter arrives to pick up the surviving victim and perps, a detective would have been on board. They would have insisted on interviewing everyone right away, even the young girl, traumatized or not. They would hardly have allowed Cassie to ‘ride off into the sunset’ just because she was an attorney in the city.  She was after all the one who shot one of the perps to death. The investigator would also have wanted to see the site of the shooting (a potential crime scene; lawyers kill too) and preserve all evidence until justifiable homicide or homicide was determined.  This would also have provided an interesting investigative/forensics chapter.

It barely affected me that the nice all-American family had been hunted and attacked.  A chapter with the family back at home with Mom, perhaps, getting ready for the hiking trip,would have helped invest the reader and, once again, was sadly missing. Continue reading “Pack Saddles & Gunpowder by Susie Drougas ** A Review”

Interview with High Country Horsewoman/author, Susie Drougas

Drouglas.4.Me at White PassTS. This new author does her research ‘in the saddle’.  An experienced high country rider this horsewoman knows the trails her protagonists ride.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide  photos of your shed, room, closet, barn….)  Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

SD. We have a great room that I love to sit in. It’s decorated like a hunting lodge with deer mounts, a wood stove and huge windows. We live in a canyon with rugged hills surrounding it. Sitting in my chair in the early morning, the sun hits the tops of the peaks and lights them up in beautiful golds. The high desert sky is blue around it. That’s usually where I write.

My favorite place to write, however, is in our living quarters horse trailer aftertrailer.Susie a day’s ride in the high country. We take care of the horses, eat and sit by the campfire. Then I go into the trailer and write. Since my books take place on the trails, all the sights, sounds and smells are fresh in my mind. It flows out of my fingers. Continue reading “Interview with High Country Horsewoman/author, Susie Drougas”