Writing Places and Edward S. Curtis

 Confessions of a Writer of Westerns

January 10, 2022 

I am off to a pretty good start this year. I have not written too much, but I am picking it up. Last week around 3,000 words, this week almost 5,000, and I have edited through nearly 20,000 words of my new western mystery book. This is the first and longest of the three edits I usually do. After those edits, it will be off to beta readers – hopefully sometime in February.

Often writers, especially Indy and small house published writers like myself, have no set deadlines, leaving us open to changing gears, or directions, when we probably should not. By that, I mean we tend to stop what we are working on and start something else before finishing. I did this twice this week, had a great idea, and had to write it down. Most of the time, I write a few pages – in the case of these two book ideas, I wrote about three-thousand words. Now, I will leave both alone until inspiration strikes. If it does, I will let you know here.

My office, I did pick up a little before snapping this one. 

Reading – More looking at photos than reading, and very much enjoying – The North American Indian – The Complete Portfolios. This is the one-book compilation of Edward S. Curtis's thirty-year, twenty-volume work on the American Indian. Some day I hope to get a chance to look through one of the original books; sadly, not many around any longer.  

Reading Bookcase - constantly changing.

Weather – After the freezing temperatures of a week ago, this week has turned relatively mild. Most days start cool, low twenties or below, but reach around forty by mid-afternoon. Quite comfortable.

Quote of the day – "For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time." Louis L'Amour

Beside my recliner in the family room - lots of writing gets done here.

Today's Photos – Self-explanatory – But I have an admission here. I bought another camera this week. Guess I thought six was not quite enough. Sigh – it's only money, they say - yikes!

Running in the snow

Have a great week. Keep on reading, and keep on writing.  

Back to Writing

Writing - It seems like I should be writing more, not less, now with so much time at home. But that does not seem to be the case. Not sure why - worrying too much about the state of our country and the world might be the problem.

The good news -  is the past week, I have started turning it around and getting some work done.

What else have I been doing? Cleaning up the yard and garden and attempting to make some organizational sense our of our garage. Oh - I have got quite a lot more reading done. I usually read about a book every 10 days, now I am reading about twice that amount. 

Staying in Shape - We have also been actively walking/hiking. We live in a sparsely populated area of the least populated state in the United States, makes it easy to get away. On our hikes and outings, we have encountered zero people, and only saw a handful of vehicles. 

Our little town on the North Platte River

Stay Safe - Please stay safe and distance yourself from others. Find new hobbies, read a few new books, enjoy every day.

The CCC Museum at Guernsey State Park

Writing, Reading, and the Distractions of Summer

Spring seemed quick, we are now into some summer-like temperatures, and it feels wonderful - until it gets too hot.

Yard Work - At one time, not so long ago, I enjoyed mowing and trimming the lawn. The lawn care only took a few hours a week, not much, but now I look at mowing as a chore that has to be done more than something I really like. In that vein, we do have some nice flowers started to show off in the yard, and that I like.

Writing Outside - I am writing churning along at five to seven hundred words a day. Right now I am doing most of my writing sitting outside on our deck. Writing outside can be a bit of a distraction watching birds at the feeder and the squirrels arriving to get their share. Living in a military town I also like to watch the helicopters, C-17s, and 

C-130s, as they circle practicing touch and goes and helicopters practice their version of the bucket brigade, for the fire season in the west.

Book Sales – My KDP pages read are way down, sales of both eBooks and soft cover books are down some but not nearly as much as the pages read has dropped. Not sure why thinks have tumbled so far on the financial side of my writing, I can only speculate.

10 Reasons Book Sales are down – My best guess

1.     People are spending all their free time mowing and trimming their lawns leaving no time to read.

2.     Fishing is picking up

3.     It is the start of picnic time

4.     School is out and adults, along with their kids, decide they will play video games on their phones instead of reading during their summer off.

5.     Too many baseball games to watch and not enough time

6.     Readers are turning to, summer romance on the beach books, instead of what they normally read

7.     Invaders from another galaxy have entered reader’s brains, and have them reading endless political and royal wedding articles online.

8.     Sunstroke

9.     Everyone has decided to reread old books

10.   Summer reruns have started on television and are too captivating to miss.

What Am I Reading? Mountains and Molehills, by Frank Marryat. I am also beta reading a book, far out of my normal genre, for an indie-author, so far it has been a fun read.

Enjoy the rest of the week, and please, keep on reading, even if the yard is calling.

Writing Update and Fort Laramie

Another month has come and gone, and we have reached May 2018. I remember May 1, May-Day as a big deal when I was a kid. We would do something called a May Pole at school, and after school deliveries of May-Baskets full of candy to our friends and sweethearts – not sure any of that goes on in today’s world. But, the 1950’s in the middle of America were much different than today.

Selling Books – April never seems to be a great month for selling books – speaking of my books only. I was down a bit in pages read, eBook and regular book sales. Still, I am happy to be able to pick up enough each month to pay a bill or two.

Works in Progress – As I was with my last post I am spending most of my writing time working on a nonfiction work on Fort Laramie, and my third Marshal Blade Holmes western mystery. I am also spending time watching my grandson at baseball practices and reminiscing about my days as a kid.

What am I Reading? – The Hair of Harold Roux: A Novel, by Thomas Williams and still reading, A Guide to Photographing Rocky Mountain Wildlife, by Weldon Lee.

Life in General – My wife and I enjoyed spending time at Fort Laramie this weekend in the celebration of the 150 year anniversary of the Treaty of 1868. The crowds were big, and the weather was nice - a wonderful event. I am also spending time tending my growing flats of, tomatoes, onions, and flowers, three more weeks, and in the gardens, they go. Still spending some time, out in the wilds, with my cameras, and doing our walking.

Today’s Photos – From the four-day celebration at Fort Laramie.

Keep on reading, keep on writing, and enjoy the renewing season – Spring

See all my books here on my Amazon Author's Page

From our backyard

Spring is Here and the Writing is Easy

Spring is here, and I say, it is about time. We, my wife and I, had a bit of a tough winter, flu, colds, and too much ice and bad weather. Now we are back walking and enjoying time outside.

Writing and Researching - My writing, or at least my researching is picking up. I always have trouble getting sidetracked when doing historical research – too much good stuff. The problem is I find stuff I will never use, at least on my current work in progress, but it is much too interesting to put down. Oh well, it can lead to several hours of enjoyable reading. I am managing to write, at least a few hundred words each day, not bad, when writing nonfiction.

Reading – Finished The Killing of Chief Crazy Horse, terrific nonfiction read, now I am back to fiction, reading Elmer Kelton’s, Texas Vendetta, Kelton’s western fiction is always enjoyable.

I have also pulled up some of the works I was stuck on and hoping that after a break I can get going again.

Spring Fever - Should have mentioned I am also reading several new seed catalogs, kind of a gardeners spring fever thing. I have started planting my early seed flats, with a little luck, the new plants will be ready for the garden in the middle of May.

My Gardening Book & my Newest Release – Last year I released my gardening book, Beginning Gardening and Other Entertaining Lies, the book has garden information and includes four garden Murder Mystery short stories. With spring approaching it is starting to sell again, thankfully, as March is a traditionally slow sales month, at least for me. My newest release, On Turing 70, a humorous and reflective look at my new age is off to a good start. If you fall into my age group or hope to reach it someday give it a look.

Today’s photos are from our Monday hike in Wyoming's Guernsey State Park

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After a Bit of Time Off

I have taken a few weeks off - seems a series of trips to the Dentist and Cardiologist will do that. If you are as old as I am, or close, you may have heard the expression, "I was feeling kind of punk." It came from when wood started to rot and got punky, not sure I like that definition but then again . . . .

Muted colors as the sun was setting -  Mule Deer  does and fawns

Now I am feeling better and hope to get back to writing more than a couple of hundred words a week, where I am now. I have always tried to post on this blog three or four times a month and hope to still make it this month. 

View from the Castle on the North Bluff in Guernsey, Wyoming State Park

We are also planning our annual trip to Branson Missouri, in early November. We have been going there for many years, and it always seems to rejuvenate me, and along with that, my writing.

Walking up a mountainside

Meanwhile, my sales and pages read also seem to be slipping - might be my lack of advertising and blogging. 

My wife and I have been out the past few days hiking and walking, and with that, I have taken a few, okay, a lot of nice fall photos. Enjoy!

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Taking a break on our Saturday afternoon hike

Keep on reading and keep on writing!

Who's Reading Now?

Nice Spot to Read a Good Book

According to a report from the Pew Research Center, about a quarter of American adults did not read or listen to a single book last year. Seemed like when I was a kid everyone read books, but that was back in the 60s, the one channel on television and no internet days. The same report says that in the last 25 years the percentage of non-readers of a single book in a year has nearly tripled. That is a lot of people not reading, and only about a quarter of Americans say they read 11 or more books in the last year.

Why are people reading less? Too many other things to do for entertainment? Maybe, or maybe not enough good books to get people excited about reading again. Like them or not, the Harry Potter books, the vampire romances and books like 50 Shades, have certainly got, at least, some persons excited about reading.

Do we just need better books? Unfortunately too many books attempted to copy these best sellers and most didn’t work. But that has always been the case with success in every venue.

So what is the answer? Write something people want to read. But the question, what is it that will get both readers and nonreaders alike excited about reading again?  Most genres are too narrow to appeal to those who have given up on reading, so it must be something new and exciting. Or maybe not.

Good stories, good writing, great promotion might help. Seems like word of mouth is still what sells the most books, even traditionally published books need help from word of mouth and of course social media.

But it is still about the story. The last three fiction books I have tried were no-goes. I give them one or two chapters, that’s it, too many books to read a bad one. I get authors promotions touting their great new book, and in some cases, they are just, flat-out bad.

So it’s still the story, if it is a great story and the author promotes, word of mouth/social media should take care of the rest.

 

 

A good book may be hard to find

Seems to me like every book I have read recently is tooooo long. I see suggested word counts for novels are anywhere from seventy-five thousand words up to well over one hundred thousand words. I think there should be a new word count rule for authors—use just the ones you need. (Words that is) Too many pages of descriptions of meaningless places or things and too many pages looking for someone or something leave me wanting for a new book. The one good thing I have learned as I get just a tad bit older is that I do not need to finish every book I start, but usually I still do. Although most of my reading centers on historical fiction, westerns and murder mysteries in the novel category and historical journals and political pieces in non-fiction, I like everyone else, still prefer a real page turner. (Go ahead and keep me up late reading)
Long is not always better.
But a good read—I hope to never be without it.

Reading & Writing

It is often hard to balance reading with writing. I try to read as much as I write. Most writers I know write a lot and read a little. This usually happens when an author fears he/she will start sounding too much like the novels they are reading. This might not be all bad. I read about a book a week, light by Stephen King standards, but quite a bit by the standards of most writers, or for that matter most readers. I just finished another of the late Tony Hillerman’s great Navajo mysteries. If someone told me I wrote or sounded a little like him I would take it as a complement.

I spent only a few hours writing this week—three hours on my YA mystery and four hours on my nonfiction work on early Indian tribes in the west. About the same seven or eight hours I spent reading. If I could get away from the TV I might get more done. But working nine to eleven hour days at a regular job plus working Saturdays keeps me starved for some time to relax.

I enjoy the process of writing but find if I am too tired it soon turns to crap. Then it is time to read, relax or sleep.

Reading and Writing since 1954 and Mrs. Brandenburg’s first grade class at Central Ward elementary.



Comming soon a new page from my nonfiction work.

Westerns--Alive or Dead

Well partners—welcome along and I hope we have a great ride. This is post # 1 of someone still writing about the old American west.

I live in the west, Wyoming to be specific, and have written both fiction and nonfiction stories about this great area of our country. From time to time I will be posting some of each. All comments are welcome; I will try to answer every one. I have read so much lately about the dying western.

Not sure it is the western that is dying, just maybe the readers. So how do we go about fixing it? Find new readers.

Right now, I am working on a contemporary young adult western, about 1/3 done, 20,000 plus words. I like it, hope someone else does, will finish by the first of the year. In the area of nonfiction I have just completed a short work of early Indians in Wyoming, concentrating on what is was like in the pre-1800s west.

Stay with me for stories of cowboys and Indians, and everything else, from trail dust to cowboy cooking.

See you in a few sunsets.