Writer’s Block: Fact or Fiction: Guest Post by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

SARA SUE HOKLOTUBBE: Writer’s Block: Fact or Fiction

When I started writing, I heard people talking about writer’s block. Some thought it was real; others considered it an excuse. I fell in the second camp, believing anyone could work through it if they tried hard enough. That is, until it hit me. 

After my fourth book hit the shelves in 2018, I took a break from writing. Recovering from major back surgery had shifted my focus for many months to the simple act of walking again. Moving from Colorado to Oklahoma a year later left me feeling displaced. Books, research papers, and everything else in my office was securely packed away in boxes for the seven-hundred-mile journey. How would I ever get it all sorted out? 

By the end of 2019, I began to settle in with a plan to be writing again soon. We took a short trip during Christmas and New Year’s and arrived home in early January shortly before Covid-19 made its unexpected arrival in the U.S. No one has to be reminded what happened next. 

At the beginning of the shelter-in-place orders, I thought it would be the perfect time to pump out mystery book number five. Then reality set in. There are writers who can write in the midst of chaos and some who cannot. 

I had writer’s block. 

As hard as I tried, nothing would come. Day after day I tried to form a plot in my head. I came up with an interesting character, gave him a name, made notes, and filed them away. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? I wasn’t sure. It would come to me later, I was sure. 

With thousands dying every day, and countless others trying to slowly recover from an evil virus, the thought of writing about a murder mystery in the middle of a pandemic seemed wrong on so many levels. 

The collective worldwide reaction to the murder of George Floyd set off a whole other dimension of pain and suffering. How could I come up with a fiction story about murder when the daily headlines bled with horror stories of deadly injustice? I couldn’t do it. 

I had all these thoughts and feelings screaming to get out, so I started writing essays. It wasn’t a mystery, but it was writing. I began chipping away at my writer’s block. 

Then came the deaths of two of my heroes – John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – not from COVID-19, but that other lethal C-word. I was heartbroken. How much crueler could 2020 be? 

The universe seemed to be sending signs of encouragement. My second book, The American Café, published in 2011, received a new five-star review on Amazon. The book had won some awards when it first came out, yet nine years later readers were still discovering it. The review lifted my spirits. 

When I started writing the Sadie Walela Mystery Series twenty years ago, one of my goals while creating murder mysteries, was to passively educate the reader about Cherokee history, injustice, and discrimination. I wrote each of my four books with its own underlying message, one that hopefully didn’t interfere with the story, yet left the reader satisfied that justice had been served and they had learned something. 

I recently received an invitation to serve as the featured author for Amerind’s first virtual Happy Hour Book Club to talk about my last book, Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch. It will take place on Zoom on November 5. Amerind is a museum, art gallery, and research center for Native cultures and western art located in Dragoon, Arizona. (www.amerind.org) 

As I slowly deal with the trauma of this year’s pandemic and the added chaos an election year brings, I search for my voice and know there’s a story waiting for me to tell – one of truth and justice, a story that soothes the reader’s soul while they try to escape the daily grind. I’m not sure what that story is yet, but I know if I work hard enough, it will come. 

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Sara Sue Hoklotubbe is the author of the award-winning Sadie Walela Mystery Series set in the Cherokee Nation where she grew up. She is the winner of a WILLA Literary Award, a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Best Mystery, a Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Award for Best Mystery, and the 2019 Trophy Award for Best Fiction Book by Oklahoma Writers’ Federation. Her books are: Deception on All Accounts, The American Café, Sinking Suspicions, and Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch, all published by the University of Arizona Press. Sara and her husband currently live in Norman, Oklahoma. 

Writing Through Osmosis: Guest Post by Sara Sue Hoklotubbe

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe:
Writing Through Osmosis

The dictionary defines osmosis as the process of gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas and knowledge. No one, it seems, can escape 24/7 news. It is prolific, always streaming somewhere in the background, and it affects both the conscious and subconscious parts of our minds.

When I began working on Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch, (University of Arizona Press, 2018) I had no idea how timely it would be when it was released. While the book is purely fiction, it embraces ideas, that even though they have always been present in American society, have become more prevalent in today’s daily conversations – bullying, bigotry, sexual assault, and racial bias. These topics seeped into my writing, I believe, through osmosis.

Sadie Walela, the protagonist of my Sadie Walela mystery series, is an amateur sleuth who involuntarily becomes entangled in murder investigations. She is Cherokee, lives in Cherokee Country in northeastern Oklahoma, and tries desperately, in her Cherokee way of thinking, to restore balance and harmony in the world around her.

Lance Smith, Sadie’s significant other and local lawman, tries to keep Sadie and her wolfdog out of trouble. That turns out to be a tall order, especially when someone like Angus Clyborn moves into the area. Conflict is unavoidable, and in this case, it includes murder.

Angus Clyborn, the antagonist in Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch, is easy to hate. As a man with money, he believes he is privileged, better than everyone else. He thinks nothing of lying to, stealing from, cheating, and bullying people if they don’t look and act exactly like him. It wasn’t until I’d finished the manuscript and sent it on its way that I realized I’d plucked his character traits right out of the daily news cycle.

I enjoy reading good murder mysteries that make me think, and when I turn the last page and close the book, like most mystery readers, I want justice to prevail. But I also want to take away something positive.

I learned that from the late, great, mystery writer, Tony Hillerman. I devoured his books and loved the fact that after reading his mysteries, I came away having learned something. I don’t know if he ever wrote through osmosis, but he inspired me. His mysteries, set among the Navajo and Hopi, encouraged me to write about my people—the Cherokee. I owe him a great debt of gratitude.

Before I became a writer, I spent twenty-one years working in the banking business where I personally experienced discrimination simply because I was a woman. It was a good-old-boy world where women were the worker bees and the men sat around in cushy offices, smoking cigarettes, and making decisions regarding things they knew little about. The gender pay gap, once uncovered, was shocking. So, when I wrote my first book, Deception on All Accounts, I was determined to highlight how awful women were treated in the banking world. The book took a ninety degree turn and became a mystery. However, I think I’m safe in saying that my message came out loud and clear.

The second book in the series, The American Café, centered on family secrets, how they affect people the rest of their lives, and can even lead to murder. The third book, Sinking Suspicions, showed how identity theft can destroy lives. The story also sheds light on the toll combat takes on our warriors, and sometimes we have to revisit where we’ve been to know who we are.

I saw a quote recently that said: “We write down made-up stories to tell the truths we wish we could say out loud.” I don’t know who the author of that quote is, but I agree with it. While my mysteries are not based on sensational headlines, in retrospect I think they reflect today’s world, written through osmosis. It works for me.

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Sara Sue Hoklotubbe is the author of the Sadie Walela mystery series set in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma where she grew up. She has won the Willa Literary Award, the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, and Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers’ Mystery Book Award.