Poetry Month bonus.

 
    April is National Poetry Month here in the good ol’ USA. Here we are at the short end of it. We’ve had thirty days of poetry readings, poetry recitals, poetry postings, and poetry podcasts.
    By now, you may have had your fill of poetry—if such a thing is even possible.
    But hold on. You’re not free of it yet.
    There’s a popular podcast called “Cowboy Up” that originates from the White Stallion Ranch in New Mexico, hosted—usually—by Alan Day and Russell True, and produced by Stan Hustad.
    To close out National Poetry Month, “Cowboy Up” is offering a bonus program. Log on and you can hear Stan interview me and read a few of my poems as we talk about poetry and cowboys.
    You’re invited, welcome, and encouraged to listen in. Click here and you’ll be there: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cowboy-up-podcast/id1521902050

 

My Favorite Book, Part 26.

    Over the years I have presented many a lecture to writers’ groups on a variety of subjects. One topic in particular, presented on several occasions, examines outstanding opening lines in books, why they work, and how writers can use that knowledge to create better openings for their own stories.
    One example I use—one of my favorites—is, “He was dying faster than usual that morning, striping the sides of the dry sink with bloody sputum and shreds of shattered lung.”
    So begins Bloody Season by Loren D. Estleman.
    Not only does it begin in a way that intrigues and engages readers, it drags us into the story to find out the who, what, where, and why of Estleman’s opening line. And it doesn’t stop there. The entire book sings with wordsmithing that makes the reading as fascinating as the story.
    Bloody Season is the story of the famed gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Not only do we learn what led to the altercation, we learn what happened in the aftermath—a bloody season of manhunts and murders. You’ll come to know Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and other well-known characters better than you know them now, no matter how well that is.
    Few writers can evoke the level of feeling that Estleman can, or paint characters with such vivid color. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read this book. But I can promise you I’ll read it again.

 

Lost by a nose.

    I miss the smell of books. It used to be I could walk into any one of a number of bookstores in my area and breathe in the smell of ink or paper or glue or dust or whatever it is that gives bookstores that distinctive smell. They were all different, I suppose, but there was something in the way they touched the nose that they shared.
    Most of those bookstores—along with their counterparts all across the country—are gone now. A few are victims of the recent and ongoing pandemic. Some lost out by being undersold once too often by online predators. And some were done in by the so-called big-box category killers that took over the market in years past, aided by business practices since declared illegal.
    The most venomous of those is still around and, in many places, is the only seller of new books still standing. Visiting those stores just isn’t the same, somehow. And they don’t smell right—they smell like coffee, rather than books.
    There are still some bookstores that smell like bookstores are supposed to smell, but there are fewer of them all the time, and they are increasingly farther between.
    I look forward to my next visit, spending time sniffing out some good books.