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.

Bye-Bye Byline: Ranch & Reata, for the last time.

The new issue of Ranch & Reata is out. Unfortunately, it’s the last of what has been an outstanding publication. For more than five years, the magazine has covered a lot of interesting people and places from all around the West. I know, because I had the opportunity to write about many of them.

While I didn’t have a byline in every issue, it was pretty close—and, in a few, I had two stories. That’s the case with this final issue.

“The Top hand and the Tenderfoot” compares the experiences of two poets at the 2016 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering—Wally McRae, who has been there since the beginning more than three decades ago, and Marleen Bussma, who made her first appearance this year. It’s an interesting look at what has become a fixture in the world of Western culture, seen through the eyes of a pair of participants.

Also in the magazine is “Ninety Percent Off,” a story about War Paint, the legendary saddle bronc horse of the ’50s and ’60s who bucked off about nine out of ten of all the rodeo cowboys who stretched a cinch around his middle. Among his victims were the best bronc riders in the business, including world champions. The article was inspired by and quotes Idaho cowboy Bob Schild, who got on—and off—War Paint twice in his career.

I’m sorry to see Ranch & Reata go. It has been a real pleasure to pen stories for them.