Interesting times.

 

There is a curse, wrongly attributed to the Chinese, that says, “May you live in interesting times.”

We certainly do.

As most of you probably know, that strange assemblage of little squares above is a QR Code (QR is shorthand for Quick Response, I’m told). You see them all over the place in these interesting times. They bear about as much resemblance to the real world as Rorschach ink blots. Word is, if you point your smart phone at one, it will link you to some other place online.

As one living in interesting times, and feeling a slight tug at times to keep up, I got my very own QR Code. It links to my web site, writerRodMiller.com. I had to borrow my wife’s smart phone (because I don’t own one) to test it. It works. I was amazed and surprised at the success of my first-ever experience with a QR Code.

Try it.

P.S. The hero of four of my novels, Rawhide Robinson, was jealous and wanted a QR Code of his own. So, I got him one. Try it, too. Here it is:

 

P.P.S. All My Sins Remembered was just named a finalist for the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Best Novel of 2022!

 

School days.

In recent weeks I’ve had the opportunity to spend time on university campuses at opposite ends of my home state of Utah.

At my alma mater, Utah State University in Logan, I met with a classroom full of journalism students. For more than an hour they peppered me with questions about journalism, advertising, magazine writing, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, Western history, how I go about writing, and all manner of things. Fortunately, after stringing words together over several decades for all manner of reasons I was able to offer some sort of response to most of their queries.

Days later, I spent an equally enjoyable hour with creative writing students at Utah Tech University in St. George. Again, the questions were insightful and the discussion engaging. Later, UT hosted a public event during which I read from several of my books—mostly fiction but also some nonfiction and poetry—answered a few questions, and spent time talking with and signing books for some of the readers kind enough to come out for the event.  A fine local bookseller, The Book Bungalow, handled sales and now has several of my titles on the shelves at their store in St. George.

All in all, the faculty and staff members involved in my visits had everything well in hand to make the experiences enjoyable. And, the students at both universities were impressive. They seemed bright, immersed, and involved—much different from my own time as a college student, if my hazy memories are to be trusted.

On the trail of an idea.

Writers—including yours truly—are often asked where they get their ideas. It is not always an easy question to answer. But in the case of my short story “Black Joe” I know the answer.

“Black Joe” was originally published in the periodical Saddlebag Dispatches in 2019. It was named “Best Western Short Fiction” in 2020 and given the Peacemaker Award by Western Fictioneers, an organization of professional writers of—you guessed it—Western fiction. Now it is the title story in my just released hardcover book from Five Star Publishing, Black Joe and Other Selected Stories.

But back to the subject at hand and the source of ideas.

Andy Nelson, a radio host, entertainer, and cowboy poet—and friend—of the highest order learned of the event that inspired the story from his father, Jim. It concerns an ornery wild horse, a black stud called Black Joe, that attacked a father and young daughter while out riding in the backcountry of Idaho. Andy passed the story on to another friend, cowboy composer, singer, and songwriter Brenn Hill, who saw a song in the incident. He penned “Black Joe” and recorded it for his 2018 album Rocky Mountain Drifter.

Being a fan of Brenn Hill’s many talents, I heard the song numerous times as I played and replayed the album and saw in it the idea for a tale that starts with the story in the song and goes from there. The result is the short story “Black Joe.” (Starring, as it happens, two cowboys named Andy Hill and Brenn Nelson.)

So, many thanks to Jim Nelson, Andy Nelson, Brenn Hill, Saddlebag Dispatches, Western Fictioneers, Five Star Publishing, and you for the parts you all played in making “Black Joe” a success.

 

One man's opinion.

My latest novel, All My Sins Remembered, has been reviewed by readers a number of times, with generally positive comments for such a gritty, violent story. One review in particular examines the novel in depth and offers incisive analysis—well beyond what I, as the author, could offer. The reviewer is Charles E. Rankin, and he is widely experienced in reading, evaluating, editing, and publishing books about the American West. Mister Rankin is the retired Associate Director and Editor in Chief of University of Oklahoma Press; former Director of Publications, Montana Historical Society Press; and former Editor of Montana: The Magazine of Western History.

Here's what he has to say about All My Sins Remembered:

It is not by chance that, in his latest novel, Rod Miller has taken his title, All My Sins Remembered, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Comparable to the Bard and to Cormac McCarthy, this book is about madness. It is also about good and evil in contention, and the road this story travels leads to both. The protagonist—an unnamed roadhouse operator—extorts, murders, and robs from those who have things he wants or who anger him or who become innocent victims of his haunted dreams. Yet he also bestows unprovoked kindness, seemingly without recompense, to those most in need. Others, he leaves alone. Like Hamlet, he dreams, his dreams bring further madness, and they lead to his undoing.

The story takes place at a roadhouse, a western-styled Bates Motel. It sits somewhere in the desert along a dusty road that leads to California and its dreams of renewal in one direction and to some far off, nondescript valley settlements in another. A mining camp that vacillates between lingering death and renaissance is located somewhere not too far up the road, and an impoverished Paiute band ekes out existence somewhere in the surrounding hills and canyons.

At the roadhouse is a windmill and a well. Together, they constitute the story’s fulcrum. The windmill furnishes life-giving water aplenty but at a cost. The well, made unproductive by the windmill, is a sepulcher. It smells like death, as well it should. Many bodies lie at its bottom. For the life-giving water from the windmill, the roadhouse operator charges exorbitantly. All travelers protest the unconscionable cost, but almost all pay it. They are often invited in for a meal, cooked by a Paiute woman who lives slave-like at the roadhouse. If travelers come in to eat, they are directed first to a bowl with water and a towel, but no soap. Soap is for sale, but only one traveler—the photographer—buys it. He will trade images for its cost. Otherwise, the travelers’ hands, like their sins, remain unwashed.

The protagonist controls both the windmill and the well. He is an evil, violent man who commits eleven murders on stage and is undoubtedly guilty of others. The Indian woman who lives with him is silent. He likely cut out her tongue, but we never find out for sure. She is not without heart, however. She is kind to those who deserve it, especially women.

Despite remoteness, many wayfarers arrive at the roadhouse. The cast is as diverse as those in Bret Harte’s Outcasts of Poker Flat. But only two besides the protagonist are particularly important: the Paiute woman and a mail carrier who travels the road every few days on his way from valley towns to mining camp and back again. Both are symbolic. The Paiute woman, like so many Indian people in American history, has no voice. But she perseveres. Often abused and beaten terribly, she is a survivor. The man who carries the mail is a Shane-like character. He functions as fate, conscience, justice, the means to resolution. Like Shane, however, he cannot remain and must ride off into the sunset at the end.

The story is told in the first person from the viewpoint of the roadhouse operator so, like it or not, we come to identify with him. At times, he is a sympathetic character. He does not murder everyone who comes to his roadhouse. In fact, he gives kindly aid to two Mormon missionaries who make him think on religion, to three destitute children who win his father-like sympathy, and to two families so honest, yet so pathetically down on their luck, they gain his help. Other vignettes are equally curious: the three ladies of the night who barter their pleasures for his exorbitant charges; the photographer who does similarly but trades knowledge and photographs of the roadhouse grounds, including the windmill and the well, for what he owes; and the freighter who brings him much desired vegetables and foodstuffs.

The story almost seems Manichean, but it is too complex for that easy interpretation. Rather, as with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, dreams haunt the protagonist’s sleep. Interludes of flashbacks indicate a violent past not of his doing. So, we are not without sympathy, but we are morbidly intrigued. Like a disaster unfolding in real time, we cannot look away.

It is a cliché, but this is the kind of book you cannot put down. It is lean; Rod Miller does not waste words. Yet the story abounds with detail—about food and cooking, about how liquor coats a glass, about how people look—and don’t look—at each other, about how wagons are pieced together and taken apart, about how horses and mules are constituted and act, about telling silences amid edgy conversations. Told with such verve and knowing detail, the story brings characters without names and distinct faces clearly to life. The action is swift, the western scene spare and tense, the whole, as Loren Estleman says, remarkable in its historical accuracy and stunning in its immediacy.

At the Utah Arts Festival.

Every summer (pandemics permitting) some 70,000 people make their way to downtown Salt Lake City for the Utah Arts Festival. On display is art of every kind, from sculpture and painting to music and dance to film and photography and more.

There’s literary art as well, and that’s where I come in. Or go on, if you’d rather.

On Friday, June 24, at 4:00 p.m. I’ll be reading selections from my writings about the 1863 Massacre at Bear River, the bloodiest encounter between the US Army and Indians in the history of the American West. It’s a tragedy largely forgotten and ignored in our collective memory, and that needs to change.

Selections from song lyrics, poetry, short stories, a novel, as well as a nonfiction book and magazine article are on the agenda.

If you’re anywhere near Salt Lake City from June 23 through June 26, be sure to visit the Utah Arts Festival. I’ll be there, and watching for you.

My Favorite Book, Part 28

Here’s a book that I had not heard of until the movie came out, but I did read News of the World by Paulette Jiles before I saw the movie. And, as is usually the case, even though I liked the movie when I finally saw it, the book is better.

The premise itself is an unusual one—a man, Captain Jefferson Kidd, wanders around the isolated settlements of Texas reading from newspapers he collects when possible, informing people—at a price—what is going on in the world beyond the borders of their limited experience. His life gets complicated when he agrees to take on a passenger, a young girl who has been held captive by a Kiowa band and has, for all practical purposes, become Kiowa herself. Kidd is to deliver her to her only surviving relatives, an aunt and uncle.

Along the way, among other adventures, they confront a trio of bad men attempting to steal the girl for nefarious purposes and violence ensues. The delivery to the girl’s relatives doesn’t work out, and the Captain’s and the girl’s lives take an unexpected turn leading to a satisfactory conclusion to the story.

The book is engaging and well written, and is one of the few Western novels nowadays to make its way to the big screen. I liked it. However, even in a novel from a major publisher and as well written and meticulously edited as this one, mistakes sneak through. As an inveterate nitpicker, I scoffed when one of the characters said, “This ain’t my first rodeo,” a phrase completely anachronistic to the time and place. And the author repeatedly refers to a part of a printing press as a paten (which is a little tray used in the Eucharist) when what she means is platen.

Picky, picky, picky.

But we all make mistakes, and News of the World is still a fine book.

My first rodeo.

I don’t remember my first rodeo. Or my second rodeo. While I have memories of many, many rodeos over many, many years those memories are somewhat muddled and there are no numbers assigned.

Most likely, my first rodeo was a hometown Pioneer Day affair during which little kids like me were screwed down onto the backs of Hereford or black bally calves, with two hands in a death grip on a loose rope, then turned out into the arena for a few (very few) frantic seconds of jolting and jarring and jerking before landing in the dirt with a better than even chance of getting a mouthful of the stuff.

The first rodeo I have record of was a Little Buckaroo Rodeo in Orem, Utah, on Friday, May 31, 1963. On the printed program, right after “Specialty Act—Trampoline” came Section III of Pony Bareback Riding, and there I am, in black and white, with my age listed as 10. Next to my name, in my dad’s handwriting, is my score: “0.” I learned nothing from the experience. For several more years I kept getting on bareback horses that didn’t want me on them—through high school, amateur, college, and pro rodeos.

 When circumstances require, I can honestly say (for what it’s worth), “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

I am now of an age that my last rodeo, like my first, is so long ago that any memory of it has leaked out of my porous brain. There may be a connection.

P.S. My latest novel, All My Sins Remembered, is now available in hardcover from Amazon and other online booksellers. Your local bookstore can order it, and it should be in libraries soon.

A different book.

In my previous post I mentioned that All My Sins Remembered, my latest novel from Five Star, is different from any other novel I have written. Different, as well, from any novel I have ever read. You may wonder what makes it different. Well, maybe not. But I wondered, so I gave it some thought. Here are seven things that make it unusual:

1. Almost the entire story takes place in one location.

2. Two of the most important characters are a dry well and a windmill.

3. Only three people continue from beginning to end, and one of them never speaks.

4. The story is narrated by the main character, who is completely repugnant.

5. We never know the name of any character in the book.

6. The story is suspenseful to the point of causing anxiety.

7. Brief scenes of sudden, graphic violence are at the core of the story.

Several months elapsed between completing All My Sins Remembered and proofreading the galleys prior to publication. I was as surprised as you will be with the story—that is to say, much of the language and many of the details surprised me. That, too, is unusual. It was almost as if someone else had written the book and I was reading it for the first time. Go figure. Go read.

 

Coming soon.

Sometime in February, Five Star will release my latest novel, All My Sins Remembered. It is unlike any other novel I have written, and I am not even sure where it came from. But those who have read it seem to like it—if “like” is the right word for such a dark, suspenseful tale.

Loren D. Estleman is a member of the Western Writers Hall of Fame, winner of numerous Western Writers of America Spur Awards and Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and a best-selling author of both Western and private-eye novels. He says, “All My Sins Remembered is destined to join the ranks of the frontier classic. Here is suspense as taut as freshly strung barbed wire, rock-solid period detail, and an emotional roller-coaster ride set against a West that is both historically accurate and stunningly immediate. Rod Miller does what only a handful of writers have ever done: make you care about (and even perhaps root for) an astonishingly evil man.”

Another winner of the Wrangler Award and a Spur Award winner, Western novelist Michael Zimmer says, “One of the more powerfully haunting novels to come along in years, Miller’s All My Sins Remembered stands shoulder to shoulder with such literary classics as Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. A brutal, beautifully rendered masterpiece, guaranteed to stay with you long after the last page is turned.”

Finally, Marc Cameron, New York Times Bestselling author of several Tom Clancy novels as well as the Jericho Quinn and Arlis Cutter political and law enforcement thrillers, says, “All My Sins Remembered is hypnotic and poetic and vivid.”

Watch for All My Sins Remembered. As I said, it is unlike anything I have written before. And, I suspect, unlike anything you have read before.

Dateline: My House

 

SANDY, UTAH: Work proceeds apace at writer Rod Miller’s desk. The author recently shipped With a Kiss I Die off to Five Star Publishing. The novel follows the star-crossed love story of a young emigrant girl from Arkansas and a Mormon boy from Utah Territory, and events leading up to the historic Mountain Meadows Massacre. Given publishing schedules, the book is not expected to see the light until 2023.

In other news, Five Star Publishing recently completed the cover design for the writer’s forthcoming release, And the River Ran Red. This novel is also based on Western history and tells the story of the Massacre at Bear River, the deadliest slaughter of American Indians by the US Army in the history of the West.

But not all the writing news is related to tragic historic massacres. Miller just finished proofing page galleys for the paperback and ebook release of the hilarious Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award-winning and Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist novel, Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail: The True Tale of a Wild West CATastrophe, soon to be released by Speaking Volumes. That publisher also revealed the cover design for Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary: The True Tale of a Wild West Camel Caballero, a finalist for the WWA Spur and Western Fictioneers Peacemaker awards. Both comic novels should hit the shelves, physical and digital, any day now.

On schedule for release in early 2022 from Five Star is a novel by Miller that has already been labeled a “frontier classic,” All My Sins Remembered. Finally—for now—This Thy Brother, a sequel to his 2018 Peacemaker finalist, Father unto Many Sons, is expected for release by Five Star in the fall of 2022.

Read all about writer Rod Miller’s fiction, history, poetry, and magazine work at www.writerRodMiller.com and www.RawhideRobinson.com.

My Favorite Book, Part 24

 

There’s a common belief about Western novels, practically a law, that the hero always saves the day and good always triumphs over evil. And, truth be told, that’s the formula behind most, almost all, Western novels.
    But there are books that defy the doctrine and go a different way, presenting a more nuanced—you could say more realistic—way of seeing things. Some of them become classics.
    One such is The Ox-Bow Incident by the late Nevada writer Walter Van Tilburg Clark. There is no hero in its pages, the day is not saved, and there is no triumph of good over evil—just the opposite, in fact. And yet upon publication in 1940 the novel achieved eminence, and has maintained its place among the best Western novels of all time, widely considered a masterpiece.
    It just goes to show, I suppose, that while there is safety for Western writers and Western novels in following the herd, there is more than one trail that leads to success.
    And, to my way of thinking, to better books.

 

New York speaks.

    Regular readers here may have already heard of my most recent novel, Pinebox Collins. Perhaps not. The book was released just as we were all falling into the coronavirus and COVID-19 abyss, so it sort of got lost. In a word, it’s a story told by an itinerant one-legged undertaker in the Old West. Not long ago, I came across a review of the novel in the New York Journal of Books that I had not seen before. Here’s some of what the reviewer, Carolyn Haley (who I do not know), had to say:

“It’s all presented in a relaxed, steady style that melds what we think we know about the Old     West with what it actually was like….
    [T]he story belongs to Pinebox, whose character and trade we also get to learn about through subtly sketched detail. His voice is laconic, erudite, wryly humorous, and feels true to the period. He salts his narrative with colorful one-liners, such as ‘Abilene had grown like a litter of pigs’ and a saloon with ‘empty tables as rare as hair on a billiard ball….’
    Rod Miller’s skills and knowledge, combined with a natural storyteller’s knack, make Pinebox Collins both a great introduction to the genre and an enlightening addition to it."

Some writers say they never read reviews of their books. I read this one. You can too, right here: https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/pinebox-collins.

 

Pedagogical distancing.

I am no stranger to teaching. While not formally trained, I have taught one thing or another throughout most of my adult life, from several semesters as adjunct faculty teaching advertising at a college and a university, to teaching Sunday School classes to people of all ages, to teaching many, many workshops at writers conferences.
    But, come November 5, I will set sail on a 50-minute teaching trip the likes of which I have never before undertaken. It can all be summed up in one onomatopoetic word that heretofore described the sound of something moving quickly: zoom.
    Owing to the ongoing coronavirus threat, the Utah Valley University Writers Academy went online this year, and has been in progress since October 9. My presentation, “How to Build a Book Without a Blueprint,” goes zoom Thursday, November 5 at 6:00 pm MST. For the first time ever, I will attempt to convey my message to conference participants via a zoom meeting, where we will all, theoretically, gather around our computer screens to watch and listen and, I hope, participate.
    My presentations tend to involve a lot of back and forth, give and take, question and answer, and interaction with participants. That, in my limited experience on the receiving end, doesn’t always work out too well with zoom.
    Still and all, I am as prepared as I’ll ever be and hoping for the best.
    Ready.
    Aim.
    zoom.

 

The Joy of Being Stupid.

 

    Writing a book is a good way to reveal how stupid you are. You have an idea, and you start writing. Soon, you realize you don’t know what you’re writing about.
    Take my latest novel, Pinebox Collins. I thought it would be a good idea to tell a story about a man who moved from place to place in the Old West, using his travels and encounters to tell other stories about actual events and people from history. I decided a footloose undertaker might move around like that. And, for some reason, that he should be missing a leg. I don’t know why.
    I soon realized there had to be a reason for his missing leg, which took some study of Civil War battles that might fit the bill. Then I had to learn about Civil War hospitals, surgery, amputations, prosthetics, and the like.
    Then I had to learn about the history of undertaking, embalming, and building coffins—none of which I knew anything about.
    Pinebox’s travels required buffing up my knowledge of cattle trails and cowtowns, mining strikes and boomtowns, stagecoaches and railroads, and historic incidents and events in those places.
    Then there were people. Charley Utter, Calamity Jane, Jim Levy, Joe McCoy, John Wesley Hardin, Phil Coe, Jack McCall, Porter Rockwell, and others, mostly “Wild Bill” Hickok—many of whom, but not all, I knew something, but not enough, about.
    I enjoy writing. Even the parts that make you realize how stupid you are. With every book, I learn something—many somethings. And I hope the people who read those books might learn something too.

 

Anticipation.

Having something to look forward to makes life more interesting. At least I have always thought so. It can be something big or small, important or trivial, consequential or just for fun. But having something, anything, on the horizon helps spur us on in the direction of life.

At this writing, I have three new books on the shelf next to my bed that I cannot wait to get to. As soon as I finish the book I am enjoying now, I will open one of them—and I cannot decide which will come first. The books bear little resemblance to one another, but each is written by a writer I admire.

There’s The King of Taos by Max Evans. If it’s anywhere near as good as his Hi-Lo Country or The Rounders, it will be well worth the wait. I once had the privilege of having lunch with Ol’ Max Evans and a few other writers. He said something I will never forget; in fact, I used the line as the basis for a poem. He was telling us a story—something, he said, that happened a long time ago. He paused, then said, “Hell, when you get to be my age, everything was a long time ago.”

My friend Marc Cameron has a new novel, Stone Cross, featuring Arliss Cutter, a Deputy US Marshal stationed in Alaska—an assignment Marc knows all about, and his Arliss Cutter novels demonstrate that. Marc also knows about writing, and his political espionage thrillers featuring Jericho Quinn can keep you up nights.

Finally (for now), I have a new collection of short stories by Wendell Berry, Stand By Me. I have read many, probably most, of the stories elsewhere, but Berry is such a remarkable writer I can’t wait to read them again.

But I will have to wait.

I will wait shivering with anticipation.

Change the subject?

When I speak or present workshops at writers’ conferences, I always explore what other writers—both those attending the conference and other presenters—write about. With few exceptions these days, it’s fairies, or wizards, or vampires, or zombies, or witches, or elves, or dragons, or dwarfs, or demons, or space aliens, or other such make-believe things that do not exist in the real world. Even the “worlds” are mostly made up.

I wonder why.

What is the attraction of these non-existent, unrealistic, fantastical characters and the make-believe worlds they live in? What draws so many to write about them? What attracts so many to read about them? I have read a few such novels over the years, and most escape me in their appeal. Others are well written, enjoyable, escapist reads.

But a little bit goes a long way. I soon find myself craving realistic landscapes, realistic characters, realistic conflicts, realistic lives, realistic rights and wrongs, and the ambiguity of the real world.

Perhaps I would find more success as a writer if I invented pretend worlds and populated them with fantastical characters. But, for my money, fairies and dragons just can’t compare to cowboys and horses and cows and the American West.

So, I guess I’ll stick to the subject.

My Favorite Book, Part 22.

Wendell Berry is, and always has been, more committed to doing things right than in doing them quickly, or efficiently. If he is still farming in Kentucky at his advanced age, he will be farming with horses, as he has done throughout his life.

And when he writes, he writes in longhand, with a pencil.

He writes poetry. He writes insightful and challenging essays. And he writes fiction. All of it is worth reading. Not quickly, but attentively, and thoughtfully.

Most of his fiction is about a made-up, but true, place called Port William, Kentucky. It is a farming community; a close-knit agglomeration of people, all with stories worth hearing. As much as his novels and stories are about people, they are about place, and how people and places are connected, and how those connections make our lives, and create the communities and world we live in.

A Place on Earth is but one of many novels about Port William, this one set during World War Two. In its pages, you meet—more than meet, become acquainted with—many of the families and individuals of Port William of that day; families and people whose pasts and futures populate other Port William novels.

There is one passage in A Place on Earth that seems to me to speak of the curious times we are living in today: “The life of the house will change, accommodate itself to the needs of the new life, and then in a few days the new will be learned, what once was unexpected will become a habit—and they will go on as before.”

New news and newer news.

 

The release of my newest novel, Pinebox Collins, is days away. It’s about a one-legged itinerant undertaker in the Old West. In his travels from place to place, Jonathon “Pinebox” Collins sees the West grow and change. He spends time in cowtowns, mining boomtowns, small towns, and thriving cities. And he crosses paths with some of the wildest characters the Wild West has to offer, including “Wild Bill” Hickok.

Next in line, slated for release in late August or early September, is my newer novel, A Thousand Dead Horses. That’s the cover, above, seen here in public for the first time. Set in 1840, it is based on a historic horse-stealing adventure, when mountain men and Ute Indians followed the Old Spanish Trail to California and robbed ranchos there of some 3,000 horses and mules, many of which did not make it across the Mojave Desert alive.

These books are going to need shelves to sit on, so please make room on yours. Thank you.

Ding Dong.

It’s the end of the year. Time to ring out 2019 and ring in 2020. Time to look back and time to look ahead. Time to take stock of our lives—or, in my case here, the writing life.

 No new books with my name on the spine were released in 2019, save the large-print edition of my November 2018 novel Father unto Many Sons.

I am tempted to defend myself by saying I haven’t spent the year just sitting on my butt. Then it occurred to me that sitting on their butts is exactly what writers do. A lot.

During all that sitting on my butt in 2019, I worked with Five Star Publishing to get Pinebox Collins ready for April 2020 release, and working on getting a second novel, A Thousand Dead Horses, ready for November release.  

A third novel, And the River Ran Red, is awaiting publication, most likely in 2021. A fourth novel, All My Sins Remembered, is also in Five Star’s hands.

Late in 2019, Five Star released an anthology, Hobnail and Other Frontier Stories, which includes my short story, “The Times of a Sign.” And I worked with editors Nancy Plain and Rachelle “Rocky” Gibbons on a chapter for Go West: Seldom-Told Stories from History, a nonfiction anthology for young readers that Two Dot will publish in 2021. My piece is titled “Earl Bascom and His Bronc-Bustin’ Brothers: Fathers of Modern Rodeo.”

I also managed to write a magazine article for Cowboys & Indians; another for Range magazine; a feature article, a column, and a poem for Saddlebag Dispatches; and a book review for True West magazine. And, Grits McMorrow reprinted several of my essays on writing poetry in his Minnekahta eMessenger.

If I weren’t so lazy, I would get more done. Maybe in 2020….

But for now, back to sitting on my butt.

My Favorite Book, Part 17

You’ll have to excuse me. I am not going to tell you about one of my favorite books this time. Instead, it’s an entire library of good reading from one of the finest writers of our (or any) time.

Wendell Berry loves the land. For years, he farmed the old-fashioned way in Kentucky, with horses and hand tools and husbandry that is about as far removed from modern “agribusiness” as you can get. He’s an outstanding poet, but we’ll leave that for another time. He writes some of the most incisive essays and social commentary you’ll ever read, but we’ll leave that for another time, as well.

His novels and stories of what he calls the “Port William Membership” are more than worth reading. Every one of them, and there are at least a dozen of them (I don’t have an exact count, because some of the novels stand alone but are also included in short novel collections), is worth reading.

Port William is a fictional small town in Kentucky, surrounded by land farmed through generations by the Catletts, Coulters, Penns, Feltners, and others. They are deceptively deep, touching, realistic stories of people and land, loves and friendships, work and play. Sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, and always beautiful, Berry’s stories can make you wonder why we let the world change the way it has.

Read Wendell Berry. He writes every word of every book with pencil and paper—handcrafted prose in every sense of the word.