Katie Ruggle's Blog, page 8

Within three months, I moved twice,

My new house!

edited two-and-a-half books in the Search and Rescue series

and managed to (barely) avoid curling up and rocking in the corner. I maintained my sanity by counting my blessings (for example, I was grateful that my short-term rental house didn’t smell like cat pee rather than old cheese. I was even more thankful it wasn’t a long-term rental house) and running with the dogs. After moving (for the last time ever in my life–no more moving for me. Never again. The sight of packing tape makes me cringe) into my 150-year-old Minnesota farmhouse, I started exploring the trails in the nearby Big Woods State Park.

On a beautiful (only slightly rainy) October day, I crested a hill just as the sun made a valiant effort to peek through the clouds. Looking around the quiet (only slightly damp) woods, I realized that the worst of this crazy, stressful, change-heavy year was over. Suddenly, my one a.m. shift at the bakery, the half-finished edits waiting for me and the dozen boxes stacked upstairs that flat-out refused to unpack themselves didn’t seem so unmanageable.

For the first time in months, I took a breath.

The post Taking a Breath… appeared first on Katie Ruggle Books.

And here it is…the cover for Hold Your Breath!

The post Hold Your Breath Cover Reveal Day! appeared first on Katie Ruggle Books.

I just finished first-round edits on two (yes, two!) of my upcoming books: On His Watch and Hold Your Breath. On His Watch will be a free (yes, free!) novella releasing early next year that will introduce everyone to the Search and Rescue series universe–the remote, rather quirky (sometimes flat-out weird) small town in the Colorado mountains inhabited by uncommonly attractive first responders and possibly a killer or two. Hold Your Breath is the first full-length book in the series. Once all rounds of edits are finished, I’ll be posting excerpts from both books for your reading enjoyment, so stay tuned!

The post Edits! appeared first on Katie Ruggle Books.

It’s been more than three years since I’ve lived in town. When I was in the middle of the mountains, people often asked, “Aren’t you lonely out there?” I would look at them, a little baffled. Lonely? No, although I would get a little twitchy after ten days or so of being snowed in. Those times, when the internet just wasn’t enough, I was tempted to chase down the County plow so I could talk to a real-live person.

When I moved to my temporary (thank God), current (and old-cheese-smelling) house, though, I realized that I did have definite hermit-y tendencies. I’d forgotten just how close in-town neighbors are…and how loud. Is it normal for kids to scream constantly as they play? I was a kid once, and I don’t remember that much top-of-my-lungs, I’m-being-dismembered-by-a-hacksaw shrieking, but I could be wrong.

The dogs, having been used to seeing two or three vehicles drive by in a day, feel the need to let me know every time someone in the general area speaks/moves/walks a dog/closes a car door/screams/closes a house door/plays music/screams even louder/sets off fireworks (that’s been happening a lot. It’s almost August. Please stop.)/argues/cries/begs/etc.

And that’s just people. Don’t get me started on the bunnies. At one point on one of our early a.m. runs, there were three bunnies, two ducks and a squirrel on the path ahead. As the dogs had a group psychotic break and attempted to dislocate my shoulder, I felt like we’d been dropped into the hell version of a Disney movie.



I realized on one of those same morning runs that this was normal. It was me, with my off-grid house plopped in the middle of silence and solitude, who was the odd one. Most people enjoy the social aspects of living close to others and appreciate the security of nearby neighbors.

Me? I can’t wait to move to my new acreage at the end of September.

I’m not worried about the isolation. After all, Minnesota has a lot of plow drivers, so I can just chase one down when the cabin fever hits.

The post Guess I am rather hermit-y, after all. appeared first on Katie Ruggle Books.

If you’ve been wondering why I’ve been MIA the past couple of weeks, the answer is that I’ve been in the deep, dark depths of moving hell.

As much as I love my house in the mountains, I wanted to be closer to my gazillion siblings, their delightful offspring and my parents, so I made the (very hard) decision to move back to Minnesota. Since my house is smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, I figured that it would take a long time–months, if not a year–to sell the Colorado property. Nope. Within a week, it was under contract, and I started scrambling to find a new place to live in MN.

Goodbye, Colorado home!

If it had just been me, it wouldn’t have been a problem. I could’ve couch-surfed with relatives or gotten a short-term rental or even stayed at a hotel while I found, bought, closed on and moved in to a new place. The problem is that it’s not just me. There are also three rather large, fairly obnoxious dogs.

In a stroke of desperation-fueled genius, I called my wonderful former landlord, Pat, and asked if he had any rentals available. He did, and the conversation went something like this:

Pat: Uh, just so you know, it’s not as nice as where you lived before.

Katie: No problem. You heard me when I said I had three dogs, right?

Pat: No, I mean, it’s really not as nice.

Katie: Is it my truck? Because living in my vehicle is Plan F if this rental house falls through.

Pat: I just don’t want you to arrive and say, “Oh my God, Pat!”

Katie: I promise I won’t say that. [Pause.] Okay, I might say that. But, even if I do, I’ll live there anyway.

After that conversation, I was expecting a cross between a cave and a crack-house, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a semi-decent place.

Sure, the interior smells like old cheese (no idea why) and years of cigarettes, but nothing is falling down. Okay, so maybe one of the windows in the kitchen fell out of its frame the other morning, but not too many things are falling down. Yet.

The basement does scare me, however. I think its the wall slime. Or maybe the kill room in the back corner.

The post Goodbye Colorado appeared first on Katie Ruggle Books.

After my niece’s wedding in the wilds of Minnesota, I was chauffeuring my parents and eleven-year-old niece to the Twin Cities Airport (Minneapolis/St. Paul, for the non-Minnesotans). We’d just reached the northern edge of the Cities when a pickup truck rear-ended a minivan right in front of us. After jumping out to check the damage, the pickup-truck driver (we’ll call him “Earl,” just so I don’t have to keep calling him “the pickup-truck driver”) got back into his vehicle. Since I assumed that Earl was planning to simply move his truck in front of the minivan so it was out of traffic, I slowed down and let him into the lane in front of me.

However, Earl didn’t stop. Instead, he stomped on the gas and ran.

“Call 9-1-1,” I told my parents, speeding up as I focused on the pickup weaving in and out of the cars in front of us. “Let’s go get Earl.”

“Uh, Katie,” my dad said. “You can’t chase him.”

“Why not?” I switched lanes, rather impressed by the quick acceleration of the Camry.

“Because there are parents and a child in the car?”

“Oh. Right.” A little disappointed, I eased off of the gas pedal, kicking myself for not getting the license plate number when the pickup was directly in front of us. “Let’s at least call it in and give Earl’s direction and vehicle description to Dispatch.”

My dad made the call, and we also let the dispatcher know when Earl turned off the highway onto a side street. Although I was tempted to turn on the same side street, a throat-clearing from the back seat reminded me that the others in the car would rather not follow Earl. With a disappointed sigh and a final glance at Earl’s rapidly retreating taillights, I continued to the airport.

About four years ago, I received my certificate in law enforcement while I worked as a Community Service Officer for the local PD. I was planning to apply for a police officer position, but an engineering company lured me back to Colorado, instead. It surprised me that, even four years later, I still have the impulse to run toward the fight, rather than away from the fight.

Even though I didn’t stay in police work, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in cop school and as a CSO. My favorite aspect was collecting and processing evidence as part of the Crime Scene Team. What I learned is a huge help when writing the crime-related parts of my books, too (to the point that my editor had to ask me to tone down a certain forensic detail in Hold Your Breath. “Why?” I asked. “It’s cool.” “No,” she responded. “Not cool. Gross.” [I’m paraphrasing here, as my editor put it in a much kinder and more erudite way]).

I believe my law-enforcement experiences warped my sense of humor a bit, though. At a recent “Write Funny to Me” workshop at the University of Iowa, there was class-wide agreement that I write more scary than funny.

C’mon. What’s not funny about a dead body?

[Awkward pause.]

Okay, I might see their point.

The post You can take the Katie out of the squad car… appeared first on Katie Ruggle Books.

I spent the previous week at Wild West Women’s Week at Mountain Sky Ranch in Montana. This was the second annual WWWW for me (and my third time at the ranch), and it was amazing and tons of fun, as usual. Since the food is incredible, I would go for a three-mile run on the Forest Service road next to the ranch every morning, in order to ensure a day of guilt-free eating. I actually don’t mind the jog, since the ranch sits at around 5,000 ft, about half of the elevation I’m used to at home. That means that there’s a crazy amount of oxygen in the air, so I feel like I can run very fast (in reality, I’m not running that fast).

Just after sunrise on my first morning at the ranch, I set off on the gravel road, talking to myself, singing off-key and clutching my bear spray. A whitetail deer nearly gives me a heart attack.

Once I’ve recovered from the scary deer, I run the mile and a half to my turn-around spot. I’d just started back toward the ranch when I saw something standing in the road about a hundred feet in front of me. My mental conversation with myself went something like this:

Me: What is that?

Me: It looks like a horse. Did one of the ranch horses get out?

Me: Don’t be an idiot. It’s not a horse. It’s a moose.

Me: A moose!!!

Me: Calm down. Back away slowly. Put some obstacles between us. Trees will work.

I did not take this picture. I was not thinking about taking pictures of the moose. I was thinking about getting away from the moose.

A few months ago, while writing Book 3 in the Search and Rescue Series, I included a moose encounter. Why a moose, rather than a bear or mountain lion or something scarier, you ask? Because, in all honesty, nothing freaks me out like a moose does (maybe–maybe–a badger in a bad mood, but that’s it). Moose are huge, weird-looking and unpredictable, and I’m just waiting for the horror movie featuring rabid attack moose. I won’t go see it. You can’t make me.

Anyway, I did a bunch of research on moose before I wrote that scene, and I learned all sorts of interesting moose facts (if you see a moose is licking its lips, 1)it’s feeling a bit rage-y and 2)you’re standing too close). With that information in mind, I watched (from behind a big tree) the young moose walk off the road to the right and disappear into the trees. Keeping my eyes on the spot where the moose disappeared, I crept down the road a few feet, planning on taking a detour to the left in order to make a wide circle around the place where the moose had been standing (and could very well still be lurking).

There was a grunt to my right. Really, really close to me. Not even fifteen feet away was a huge moose cow. The only thought that darted through my head was, “Here’s mama moose,” before I was gone. I’d reached the top of a steep wooded rise before I’d even realized that I’d run. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a cartoon-like puff of dust remained where I’d been.

Mama Moose did not follow, thankfully, but I still ran really fast back to the ranch. Really, really fast.

The post Fiction Meets Reality appeared first on Katie Ruggle Books.