with Jana Bommersbach
We are delighted to welcome author Jana Bommersbach to Omnimystery News today.
Jana's new novel is based on a historical figure, Ella Watson, also known as Cattle Kate (Poisoned Pen Press; October 2014 hardcover, trade paperback, and ebook formats), the only woman to be lynched in what was then the Wyoming Territory for rustling cattle.
We recently had the opportunity to talk with Jana more about her book.
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Omnimystery News: Cattle Kate is, by its very nature, a stand-alone novel. Is that your preferred style?
Photo provided courtesy of
Jana Bommersbach
Jana Bommersbach: I write stand-alones because I keep finding these compelling stories to tell. Until now, I've written non-fiction crime books — The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd about the 1930s Phoenix murder that became an international sensation, and Bones in the Desert, about a recent Arizona murder. Cattle Kate is my first historical novel, and again, I found a compelling woman who had been wronged — my general theme.
OMN: How have you gone about including the facts of her story into the book?
JB: I have included extensive "end notes" that tell the true story. I added the chapter-by-chapter end notes because I thought some readers would want to know exactly what really happened, and others would need the proof to believe such a travesty of justice could occur — even if it was 1889 in Wyoming Territory.
OMN: Give us a summary of Cattle Kate in a tweet.
JB: Cattle Kate: Rustler? Whore? Lynched in rangeland justice? All a dirty lie to cover murder of Ella Watson, homesteader in the way of cattlemen.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
JB: First, I read everything I can find, taking notes on points that stick out. I make a running list I call "the sexiest things I know about this story." It can have hundreds of items, but I highlight what I find the top 25 or 30 items. But I keep adding things to the list because it's easy to forget high points after you've worked with the information for months or years. I also make "scene" notes: as I'm researching, if something seems like a good scene to tell this part of the story, I jot down my thoughts. (In Cattle Kate, my discovery that she left an abusive husband who used a horsewhip on her led me to begin that chapter with the first time he ever hit her. Or when I learned about the disastrous winter of 1886-87, which would be called the Big Die-Up, I told that thru her disappointment of not getting to have a decent Christmas.) I don't necessarily write in order. In Cattle Kate I pretty much did, although the Christmas chapter was written early because I'm a nut for Christmas and it seemed a comfortable chapter to tackle. And this is an important step my editor keeps stressing: when I find something that should have gone in a chapter I've already written, I don't go back and write that in, but make a note to add it. And I KEEP WRITING. Once you've got it down, you can always fix it, expand it, move things around. But a blank screen doesn't give you much!
OMN: Where do you usually find yourself writing?
JB: My writing environment is everywhere. I wrote Cattle Kate all over this country as I visited family and friends and added vacation time on top of writing. I must have a window by my desk; I must have good lighting; I often write longhand and then input on my computer later. I prefer having a lake or ocean in my line of site, but then, looking at the beautiful mountains of northern Arizona isn't bad either!! Most of all, my setting can't be boring. My home office has a desk in front of a window that overlooks my historic neighborhood of Phoenix and is a favorite spot to hummingbirds.
OMN: Since Cattle Kate is based on a real person and real events from over 100 years ago, how did you go about researching the plot points you wanted to introduce?
JB: I'm a rabid researcher. Fear that if nobody gave me a deadline, I'd research forever and never get anything written. I read books. I consult the internet, always diligent that its information is reliable and comes from solid sources. I do lots of interviews. For Cattle Kate, I was lucky to have several books that had already spoken to her legend — some telling the truth, others perpetuating the lies — and I read them all. Things are easy now, with the internet to double check things. When I wrote Winnie Ruth Judd, first published in 1992, I had no internet, no Google. That very complicated murder mystery was all done by original research in libraries and archives all over Arizona. Even I am astonished sometimes when I go back and read Winnie Ruth Judd to remember the piece by piece way that story was woven together.
OMN: If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to research the setting for a book, where would it be?
JB: I'd go to the Holy Land and research the life of Mary Magdalene. I've always wanted to write a historical novel of how she met Jesus and became his disciple. My confirmation name is Janice Ann Magdalene Mary Bommersbach. So I feel a connection. (I go by Jana now but Janice is the name my folks gave me.)
OMN: What are some of your outside interests, and have any of these found their way into your books?
JB: I collect glassware and dishes; I collect dolls; I collect copper. I collect copper pencil sharpeners that are shaped like lamps and stagecoaches and pianos, etc. My Christmas collection is colossal. I also love to cook and garden. I love trying new kinds of craft items — lately I've been making kaleidoscopes and learning to do "torch work" to melt glass into pendants. I probably have the best individual collection of "women of the west" books. My most valuable collection is Native American pottery "storyteller dolls," which are female figures covered with children. They're amazing! Of course, if any of this fits into a book I'm writing, I add it!!
OMN: What's next for you?
JB: I'm currently writing a nonfiction true crime book about a young Arizona mother who spent 23 years on death row for a crime she didn't commit. I'm also writing a pure fiction book called Funeral Hot Dish that is a murder mystery set in North Dakota. And then I'm going to write another historical novel set in Jerome, Arizona, in 1905 — the heyday of its silver mines and the years immediately before Arizona's Statehood — where the heroine is a female newspaper editor that I've discovered, but nobody else seems to know existed!! Love those discoveries!
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Jana Bommersbach is one of Arizona's most respected and acclaimed journalists. She has earned numerous national, state and regional awards, including the prestigious Don Bolles Award for investigative reporting for the newspaper series on Winnie Ruth Judd that led to the eponymous book. Raised in a large extended family in North Dakota, she attended graduate school at the University of Michigan before moving to the Southwest in 1972. She lives in Phoenix.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at JanaBommersbach.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook.
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Cattle Kate
Jana Bommersbach
A Historical Mystery
Cattle Kate is the only woman ever lynched as a cattle rustler. History called it "range land justice" when she was strung up in Wyoming Territory on July 20, 1889, tarring her as a dirty thief and a filthy whore.
But history was wrong. It was all a lie.
Her real name was Ella Watson. She wasn't a rustler. She wasn't a whore. And she'd never been called Cattle Kate until she was dead and they needed an excuse. She was really a 29-year-old immigrant homesteader, lynched with her husband by her rich and powerful cattle-baron neighbors who wanted her land and its precious water rights.
Some people knew the truth from the start. Their voices were drowned out by the all-powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association. And those who dared speak out — including the eyewitnesses to the hangings — either disappeared or mysteriously died. There was no one left to testify against the vigilantes when the case eventually came to trial. Her six killers walked away scot-free.
But the legend was stronger than the truth. For over a century, newspapers, magazines, books — movies, too — spread her ugly legacy.
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