Sunday, November 30, 2008

Excerpt of YA Novel

WOW-Have I got a streak of lazy going on lately. With thanksgiving and my beloved Wyoming cowboys looking for a new football coach I have written very little, actually none, in the past week. I did spend some time ordering some Christmas presents on-line. Not really a big fan of huge black Friday crowds so I shopped from my easy chair.
I am back to working on my young adult, modern time, western. Thought I would post an excerpt so here goes—enjoy. But as the old cowboy saying goes, “I ain’t about to give any thing away, for free that is.”


From Chapter 2 of - Occurrence at Hell’s Half Acre Wyoming

Jimmy Bison-Man and Robert Lincoln sat shivering in the back of a small, crumbling cave tucked away on the west side of the canyons of Hell’s Half-Acre Wyoming. Shivering from the early morning summer cold, and what they didn’t want to admit, fear. Fear of what, of things they didn’t know? It wasn’t the cave the darkness the bats or the howling winds, nothing to do with their present living accommodations; it was about who they were and where they were going, these two big city Indian boys. Maybe, just maybe this cave, this canyon and their lives were supposed to be together, tied together by fate through their elders generations ago.

Silently they sat looked at each other across a very small nearly smokeless Sage wood fire. Both were thinking and probably thinking the same thing, “What are we doing here?” Each knew the answer, but were there really great treasures or anything else here, or was this just imagination, running wild, in the heads of two seventeen year olds? Silence padlocked them in the cave as they looked into the glowing fire, then at each other, and reluctantly out into the vast badlands of Hell’s Half Acre. And they listened, listened to the eerie sounds of the wind and it’s oowoo, oowoo howl as it turned and talked its way in, out and through the canyons, caverns, caves and spires of this Wyoming wasteland, all the time wishing they could magically vanish and reappear back home in Fairborn Indiana. But they were not home they were in Wyoming trying to find their past, follow their dreams and face the present.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Hillerman & Grove

Two of the Greats have left us--Fred Grove and Tony Hillerman

I was saddened to hear of the death of one of my all time favorite writers, Tony Hillerman, his research allowed his readers to learn as they followed Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee in search of the bad guys in Navaho country. He was a great writer and one who will be sorely missed. Then the somewhat late announcement that ninety year old writer Fred Grove passed on in September left me with another void in my reading life. Many readers of today’s westerns have not heard of Fred but he was a truly unique writer and his half Indian ancestry gave him a unique perspective to write from. I was never interested in horse racing, except for an occasional Triple Crown race on television, but his tails of racing in years past were excellent with great stories. I have read most of Tony Hillerman’s novels and five or six of Fred Grove’s and I will continue reading their great stuff. Writers and readers of western novels have lost a couple of superstars—Vaya con dias.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Short Story

Finished a new short story today, pretty good for me to complete in one day, it runs about 1,300 words and was a lot of fun to write.

This is my first in a bit of a cross over genre that I will call, western science fiction. Even I think it’s weird for an old guy like me to write anything except straight westerns, humor or notes to myself. If anyone is interested I spent about four hours and may need another half hour after I get some feedback.

Excerpt--"I Should Have Crossed Over"

Runs-With-Fire sat sunning himself high above the North Fork of the Shoshone River and wondered why he was here. Not here in this place but here in 2008. Runs-With-Fire had not died, had not died and passed over to the other side. Here he sat on the same rock he had sat every day, early in the morning, as he had been doing for the past one-hundred and thirty-two years. All those years since he came back to this river from the Greasy Grass and the great victory over the blue coats at the battle the soldiers called, Little Big Horn.

© 2008 NA Waring
Westerns for Today

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Time to get back to work

Today I am back working on my Western Mystery. I still like it but maybe not as much as I need to. This week I came up with an astonishing 107 words, and that’s in three writing efforts. I hope to write 500 or so today and if I can stop watching football on TV I could make it. This story may be my toughest undertaking as an author. It covers only about ten days of time but has several historical flashbacks, one to 1755. The amount of research has slowed me down. But I will make it.

Now with an old bit of cowboy wisdom I will go back to work.

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”