Author Interview with Ruben D. Gonzales ~ Murder at the Water Wheel – #Mystery #Giveaway

Please help me welcome today’s guest, Ruben D. Gonzales…

Please tell us a little about yourself, where are you from? Where do you live now?

I was born and raised in East LA. After college I was with the Peace Corps teaching school in an African village by day and reading and writing by candlelight at night. Before I retired from full time work, I was Director of Development for Winston-Salem, NC. Now I write full time and teach part-time with the local community college. My first novel of historical fiction was, The Cottage on the Bay, published by Moonshine Cove Publishing and came out in 2018 and my second book, Murder on Black Mountain, the first in a mystery series, came out in 2020 from Fire Star Press. The second book in my Black Mountain Mystery series came out in 2022 by Indigo Sea Press, the third book in the series came out in June 2023, and the fourth book in the series released in August 2025. I have two recent books released by the Wild Rose Press, a mystery book, Cabana Bay, the first in a mystery series, released on May 14, 2025, and an action/adventure book, Under the Tree of Life, released in Sept. 2025.

Family? My wife and I have nine grandchildren!

Pets? We are down to one old dog now – but when he leaves us, we plan a long trip to Australia and after that we will get another one. In both my series, dogs are important characters in the stories.

Where did you get the idea for Murder at The Water Wheel?

Murder of course is the main plot point of Cozy Mysteries so it comes with the territory, but aside from that I love a good murder mystery.

Why did you choose this genre (is it something you’ve written in before)?

Murder at the Water Wheel is book four in my Black Mountain Mystery Series, and the Water Wheel in the story is an important fixture in the small mountain town with a mysterious past and present.

Was there anything unusual, any anecdote about this book, the characters, title, process, etc, you’d like to share?

I was born and raised in East Los Angeles so my first trip to the mountains of the Blue Ridge Parkway was a real eye-opening experience. In a huge coincidence in writing the story was a connection to mountain music, especially the blue grass tradition. As it would happen, I had a college roommate that was a blue grass fan and I eventually learned how to play the banjo and guitar, never imagining I would one day live in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

What is the most difficult thing about writing a book?

For me, it is getting the grammar right. I’m afraid an editor I work with is correct in saying my grammar sucks.

What was the most difficult thing about this one in particular?

With a series, it is difficult to weave in pertinent information from the first book into the subsequent books, seamlessly. You need enough to explain things but you still have to have a new story!

What do you love that most people don’t like and wouldn’t understand why you do?

I run about every day. It has to be real cold for me not to run. When I was young, I ran in the Boston Marathon.

What’s your favorite book of all time and why?

Moby Dick. So many elements of writing in one book and a historically inspiring trope.

Would you rather have a bad review or no review?

I’ll take a bad review. Usually people have legitimate complaints and taking the complaint to heart is an opportunity to do better.

What genre have you never written that you’d like to write?

Fantasy

Your most prized material possession?

My piano.

Have you written any other books that are not published?

Yes, I have two completed manuscripts that have yet to find a home.

What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author? 

That my grammar sucks!

What has been the best compliment?

One publisher told me that my historical fiction book about a civil war plantation matriarch’s life was one of the best they ever published.

Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?

The physical characteristics are from real people but their emotional stuff is all made up. MOSTLY

My favorite all time movie:  Casablanca

GIVEAWAY!!!

I’m giving away a copy of my book, Murder at the Water Wheel. Please go to my website; www.rubendgonzales.com and use the contact page form to send me your request to be entered into a drawing for the book. Include you name so we can contact you if you are chosen and include the word “drawing” as well.

About the Book:

Since Emma can read auras, will she know if you are lying about murder?

While on his way to the altar to marry Emma’s widowed sister-in-law, Trent Cochran ends up dead in the Water Wheel Pond of the town’s historic Shaw Mill. The murder at the mill, now a tourist attraction and major component of the Shaw business empire and Black Mountain’s vibrant downtown, threatens to disrupt commerce. Mayor Shaw grows frustrated with the contracted sheriff’s department handling of the matter and asks Emma to look into it. While balancing her new responsibilities publishing the Black Mountain Post, the town’s biweekly newspaper, operating her growing photography business, and navigating her personal affairs of the heart, Emma must investigate the murder and help free an innocent man. Using her ancestral gift of aura reading, Emma separates suspects telling the truth and those that are lying, to discover who killed Trent Cochrane at the Water Wheel.

Excerpt:

Like most people, I enjoy a good wedding. Especially when it is someone else’s. But when my big brother’s widow told me that she and Trent Cochran planned to get married in the fall, I thought it was a bit premature. I mean, Becky had only just started seeing the guy. Did she even know Trent? I mean, really know him. Can any of us say we really know a person?

Now, I admit he was good looking, in a tall, dark, and lean way, but getting married? Wow!

“So, what happened to Drew Carter,” I asked when I saw her after I heard her wedding plans, trying to remember if Becky had told me why she ended it with her former boyfriend. “I thought you and Drew were hot for each other. He’s such a nice guy.”

“Drew’s nice, Emma,” she told me then, “but he doesn’t have ambition. He’s just happy to be working at the lumber mill for fifteen dollars an hour. I need someone with more ambition. You know, I have my boys to worry about. Trent has more ambition.”

“What about Eddie Jordan,” I had asked about another nice guy she saw after my big brother, her husband, was murdered. We all grew up with Eddie and now he coached at the Black Mountain High School.

“All Eddie wanted to do was play games. He wasn’t serious about anything if it didn’t involve sports.”

Of course, all that ambition or seriousness doesn’t do you any good if you end up dead the morning of your wedding.

Becky’s opinion aside, I always had mixed feelings about Trent, especially his dark orange aura. The color of an aura I associate with people who can’t make commitments.

I’ve always been able to see a person’s aura. When I was young I thought everyone could. It wasn’t until my grandmother, Louise Looking Bird, explained that my aura reading ability was handed down to me by my Cherokee ancestors. A special gift that not just everyone had.

I use my aura reading gift in my portrait photography. I found I got the best results if I clicked the shutter at the moment of a subject’s aura’s rightest moment. My old editor praised my work saying, my shots captured the real essence of people, and their likeness was so real it was as if the subject was only caught between breaths.

So, the wedding plan went forward and the morning after the big rehearsal dinner Trent Cochran threw at the Shaw Winery, I donned my heavy parka, grabbed my camera, and clenching my teeth, I went for a walk with my dog, Blue. The old pro photographers I used to work with always said never go anywhere without your camera because you never know what you might see.

The first freeze of the season swooped down the mountain in the morning catching the small mountain town in a surprise early winter of ice and cold. The kind of cold you meet with strong hot coffee and double layers of clothes. Since I was out so early, I thought I’d take a few photos of the sunrise over the frozen town.

My dog, Blue, never feels the cold like people, so pulled on her leash dragging me along, happy to be outside. I got Blue as a gift for solving a murder two years ago and we started a rough get acquainted period but came out the other end better for our trial. We’ve settled into kind of a mother – teenage daughter type of life together, in the little mountain town of Black Mountain I moved back to after swearing I never would. Except in this relationship, Blue was more the mother and me more the daughter.

We walked along a tributary of the Swannanoa River, right before a wide bend that flows at the northern edge of town. In the old days, like a hundred and fifty years ago, before electricity, the river’s powerful flow turned a big water wheel at the mill. It drove the saw that cut the lumber and crushed the grain that made the Shaw family the richest in the Valley of the Three Forks.

Although I’m part Shaw, I’ve tended to shy away from the recognition because they are a greedy bunch. The Shaw family owns just about everything in town including the bank, general store, real estate company, and the renovated historic water wheel where they sell tourist souvenirs, mountain crafts, wine from their vineyard, and baked goods from the community women who make the best pies in the state.

In a major irony, it appeared that I inherited the same business genetic make-up that drove the founding fathers of the Shaw clan. I returned to my childhood home to open my own business, a photography studio. A good many people, mostly men, laughed at my choice of an enterprise since these days everyone carries a phone camera and thinks of themselves as the next Ansel Adams. But through a varied menu of services and products I’ve managed to survive in the business world, thank you very much.

At the bend in the river, where Main Street straightens out, Blue and I approached a trio of County Sheriff cruisers, lights flashing in the early morning light, and several red trucks and a vehicle from the volunteer rescue squad. A big crowd started to form in front of the historic water wheel complex. Not one to miss an opportunity to capture a moment, I clicked off several shots of the flashing lights reflecting off the water, with the mill a dark shadow looming over the scene.

“What’s going on?” I asked Shelby Shaw when I saw her in front of the mill. Shelby is the mayor’s wife and the manager of the mill. As she stood outside the yellow taped off area, I shot a profile of her with the mill in the background. Even in the morning her aura brimmed out in a dark gold, a sign of people having trouble.

“I can’t believe it,” she moaned.

“What?”

“I found Trent Cochran, down in the water wheel pond,” she said. “Looks like he’s dead.”

About the Author:

I was born and raised in East LA. After college I was with the Peace Corps teaching school in an African village by day and reading and writing by candlelight at night. Before I retired from full time work, I was Director of Development for Winston-Salem, NC. Now I write full time and teach part-time with the local community college. My first novel of historical fiction was, The Cottage on the Bay, published by Moonshine Cove Publishing and came out in 2018 and my second book, Murder on Black Mountain, the first in a mystery series, came out in 2020 from Fire Star Press. The second book in my Black Mountain Mystery series came out in 2022 by Indigo Sea Press, the third book in the series came out in June 2023, and the fourth book in the series released in August 2025. I have two recent books released by the Wild Rose Press, a mystery book, Cabana Bay, the first in a mystery series, released on May 14, 2025, and an action/adventure book, Under the Tree of Life, released in Sept. 2025.

website: www.rubendgonzales.com