Now How Is This Supposed To End?

I see so many posts lately about writers block. Writers who get stuck and cannot seem to go on. Seems like I have so many projects going on that this is not a problem. If I get stuck, I just put it away and work on something else. Seems I always have several projects going and others shoved, temporally, to the back burner. But, the blocks do come.

Talking to High School Kids About Writing

Someone asked me recently how I could write, and why I do, in so many different genres? Well, the answer is I don’t. I write westerns or about the West. I do expand the area, maybe more than most, but at the heart, still westerns. Some of my writing’s lean more toward historical fiction, like my book, Commitment, because I use some actual people in real settings, but in a fictional story.  UnderWestern Skies, my book of Christmas stories meets every requirement of today’s Westerns. Except they are not all set in the old west, some are modern day and others are set in the 1950s or 60s. This book of western tales falls into several sub-genres, romance, a bit of sci-fi and in one case, just for fun, fantasy, but all westerns, not doubt about it.

 My chapter books for young readers are not in their truest sense westerns, but they fall into the fringes of my take on westerns. The books were set 60 years ago and in small town Nebraska, I call them growing up adventure westerns. They are high-interest fiction and written, in part, because of my love of reading and trying to encourage kids to read in today’s society, where we have a new culture dominated by two-minute YouTube videos.  The books titled, Melvin the E Street Ghost and, Then Mike Said There’s A Zombie in MyBasement, are fun, and I hope, catchy for the eight, nine and ten-year-olds they are meant for.

I also write nonfiction, but they are books about the west. The only one I have published is about the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Building of Guernsey State Park, is set in Wyoming and deals with the CCC created by FDRs New Deal. My works in progress, and I have two, (the ones I am not writers blocked from), are both about Wyoming, one dealing with Fort Laramie and another, a general look at the Indians and forts of early Wyoming. I think that makes these pretty much western.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned writer’s blog which brings me to this. I have a novel I cannot finish. I have got it out and put it away, at least, a dozen times. It is a favorite of mine, I like the characters, the setting, and I even like the murder the book tries to solve. This one has a modern day setting and much of it takes place on a golf course of all places. Is it a western, absolutely, an unfinished one. Why is it unfinished? A bad novel writing mistake, I didn’t decide on who did it and why before I started writing, and now I don’t know. Someday I will figure it out – probably not today.

My Amazon Author Page

One last note, my new book, Ghost of the Fawn, is still on track to be released before the end of February, wish me luck.

Beautiful Winter Day Here