Reading - Writing - and Wintering

Seems I am suffering through the writing blues of late. Not stuck, just don’t feel like writing much. Oh, I do some, but not many words, not sure why. Guess I will blame it on the weather, seems as good as anything. Wait maybe I could blame it on politics, naw, just not feeling it.

Typically in the winter, I get out and do quite a bit of hiking, this winter, not so much. I think I need the exercise to get my mind going and the old creative juices flowing. At present, I’m waiting for the review copies of my most recent kid’s book – the third in a series. Shipped on Friday, shouldn’t be long now.

Nice herd of Mule Deer with Laramie Peak in the distance

As always, I am reading several books at the same time, presently reading books by, Richard Wheeler, Elmer Kelton, and Hank Haney. The books are different enough that it is not a problem reading all three at various times of the day or week. What are they? Wheeler’s, Accidental Novelist, a story of his life from editor to writer of western novels,  Kelton’s, Ranger’s Trail, a western novel, and Hank Haney’s golf book, The Big Miss, about working with Tiger Woods.

When working I am re-editing my second Blade Holmes, Western novel, and finishing up my gardening book. I am also in the planning stages of the fourth of my kid’s books. Soon, when the inspiration strikes, I will get back to research and writing of my second nonfiction book. I have found nonfiction to be both rewarding and challenging, but, someday I will finish.

Nice setting for a Mountain Man book

Keep on reading – keep on writing, and keep on thinking SPRING!

Photos were taken yesterday on a snowy drive.

Put Me In The Book and I Will Keep Reading

“Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.” Louis L’Amour

Speaking of things I have seen - watched this doe and twins today as we headed out Eagle watching

I have always liked that quote. I guess because it can be taken so many different ways. Until a few years ago I had only read one L’Amour book then I read his, Education of a Wandering Man, and I was hooked. The next year I read twenty or so of his books. Some I liked, some not so much. But he was pretty good at putting the reader inside the book through his description of place.

Seems as I get older I want to slow down and take a look around. I like it when stories do that. I don’t need a description of everyone's clothes, looks, or everything they ate, but I need to feel like I am inside the pages of the book. It seems like each month I will start 10 or so books and finish half that at best. The one thing I find in common with the ones I finish is that I can feel part of it.

 I have been a long time fan of western writers, Tony Hillerman, Elmer Kelton, and Richard S. Wheeler. In the past few years, I have added Lee Child, C. J. Box and Craig Johnson to my list of writers I cannot wait for their next book. I read many other writers as I continue my quest to find more writers that make me feel like I am a character in their story.

Today's photos I snapped late this morning. The last days of November and early December is a great time of the year for eagle watching. They are very wary creatures and require a lot of patience to take a few decent photos. But, because I do not travel too many miles, instead I take my time and stop to look around, I often get lucky. Thankfully I have a patient wife who is willing to go as slow as I am.

Mom showing the little ones how to hunt or maybe fish

Meanwhile keep on reading and keep on writing. 

Who Do I Like To Read?

Favorite Author

Someone asked me this week who my favorite authors were. Not a tough question, but I stumbled around a bit before coming up with a short list. I often smile when I see famous people list their favorite books or authors. Most are nothing more than a politically correct list of who the polls must say are the books and authors they should read. In modern days, it is tough for me to believe that books like, Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm, 1984,  Ulysses, or Moby Dick, are anyone's favorites. (I am not saying these are bad books, only one’s that many people list as favorites because it seems like they should have read them – I have read all but Ulysses)

Wyoming Traffic Jam - Just for fun

Some Books are Hard to Read

I checked out Stephen Hawkins book, A Brief History of Time, at a librarian's suggestion, when it first was published and on many readers to read list, in the late 1980s. Well, I read it, or most of it, some parts, I actually understood. Yet a reported ten million copies have been sold. Who could read it? I am not a believer in statistics, but as Mark Twain once said, although he always attributed it to others,  "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Well, at this point in the post I will make up a statistic, less than ten percent of the ten million who bought it read more than a chapter or two. Of course, this statistic does not take into account all of us who checked it out at the local library and pretended to read it.

I just keep rotating books from here to the garage

Genre Fiction

Seems that reading genre fiction is not politically correct, even though millions and millions of fiction titles are sold each year.

My Reading

Recently I have finished reading a couple of mysteries. The first was C.J Box’s, Endangered, and I must say, this is a fantastic read. I also finished re-reading two of Lawrence Block’s, Bernie Rohdenbaug, mysteries, both fast paced, fun and, excellent as always, from Mr. Block. I am now reading, Fort Laramie by Douglas C. McChristian, nonfiction, for research purposes, but am finding it to be a good read. I am also reading Terry C. Johnston’s Sioux Dawn.

Sometimes I am reading, sometimes writing, and here selling books - Fun

My favorites?

Here is a short list of authors I have been reading the past few years, almost all mysteries or westerns. By the way, I took this list from my Kindel, simply scrolled down and listed who I was reading.

·        C.J. Box – Modern day westerns

·        Craig Johnson - Longmire

·        Lawrence Block – Many types of mysteries

·        Richard S. Wheeler – Love his mountain man books

·        Terry Johnston – Great research into his writing

·      William W. Johnston ( early books) Mountain man characters are unforgettable

·        Lee Child – Jack Reacher

·        Elmer Kelton – Cowboys, real life stories

·        Tony Hillerman – Navaho mysteries, terrific

·        Louis L’Amour – how can 100 million buyers be wrong?

My list of old time authors I like to read, and still do

·        James Fennimore Cooper – Leatherstocking Tales

·        Author Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes

·        Charles Dickens –  My all time favorite

·        Ernest Hemingway – My wife wonders how I can read his stuff

·        Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – From many years of teaching European history

There you have it! Who do you like?

 

Looking for a good book

One of My Favorite Writers - and a Writing Update

Elmer Kelton is one of my all-time favorite authors. Not sure if I have read all of his books but believe that I have.

I often think of this quote on writing by Kelton when I decide to start writing something at an odd time such as, eleven o’clock at night.

“I just write whenever I can.”

That sums it up for me, whenever is when I write, that’s my schedule. I believed for many years that when I retired from my full time job I would write most of the day, every day, NOPE!

That just isn't me, I, like Mr. Kelton, write whenever I can, not really, for me it’s more I write when I feel like it. I still managed to write about a quarter of a million words most years, but who’s counting?

(I wrote 28,629 words in February – Finishing my second children’s book –Then Mike Said, “There’s a Zombie in My Basement” – I am also in the final stages of finishing up with my non-fiction work, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Building of Guernsey State Park. Both will be published in print and e-reader formats by the first of April)

Back to Elmer Kelton as I close today. A favorite line from one of his best novels. The Time It Never Rained

 “A bad habit or two is good for a man or a beast. Did you ever know a man who didn't have any bad habits? I have, and I always hated the son of a bitch."

 Charlie Flagg  

Wow - Looks like the sun just came out, think I will go outside for awhile!

Old Cowboys and New Westerns

Last evening I finished reading, A Texas Ranger, by William Macleod Raine, written more than 100 years ago but still a very good tale. Some of these older westerns seem to be somewhere in between all the pulp westerns that were so well read a half century ago and the newer, truer western of a few years ago.  The difference between the new and the traditional westerns was summed up by Elmer Kelton, an all-time favorite of mine, when he said that Mr. L'Amour's characters ''are always seven feet tall and invincible, mine are 5 feet 8 and nervous.''
Seemed to me that much of the action, in westerns today, is still the seven foot tall and invincible style but grittier in modern westerns. That’s why I read them, love the action, that’s why its fiction, it’s over the top. If I see any big changes in newer western novels it might be the removal, at times, of stereotypes of Indians, women, Mexicans and some religious groups. (See Zane Grey)The so called formula western is still alive with a fair following, the one that puts the good guys against the bad guys. More and more westerns seem to be of the romance variety and these new westerns seem to be dominated by women writers, nothing bad about that, just an observance.
Type in “Westerns,” into an Amazon book search – most interesting. You will find a mix of new and old, romance and traditional and many very cheap or free on Kindle stories. 

And like any good cowboy in the end I will ride off into the sunset.

Great Sunset Over the Laramie Range December First 2014

Finding New Readers for Western's

I recently heard a comment that no one reads westerns anymore. Haven’t we all heard that, and often? And at first glance, that sure looks to be true. Reminded me of a baseball story, or maybe it was because I watched the Rockies and Brewers Friday evening.

As a kid growing up in Nebraska, I was a big New York Yankee fan. Not sure why I was, but I knew all the players, their positions and their numbers. One of my favorites was, Yogi Berra, the great Yankee catcher who once said, the reason he quit going to Ruggeri’s, a St. Louis restaurant, to eat anymore, was, “Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”

Maybe it’s that kind of reasoning that makes western novels something, “no one reads anymore.”

Yogi didn’t get it, and maybe those of us who encourage young people to read are thinking as off keel as he was. Often when today's readers decide to read a western they are steered to classics like, The Virginian, or Riders of the Purple Sage. Both great reads, but books I would say are much too dated and are difficult reading for a first time western reader. When one becomes a serious fan of westerns these will become, must, reads.

Some young readers are told to read Louis L’Amour, because his books are still sold everywhere and so many people have read them. I enjoyed many of L’Amour’s books and have read and enjoyed both The Virginian and Riders of the Purple Sage, but none of them are a first time western reader type of book.

So what would I suggest? Something by Elmer Kelton, Tony Hillerman or Loren Estleman to start. Why? I find them more captivating than some of the older westerns, might grab a young reader more quickly.

I also really like the modern day westerns of two Wyoming writers, C.J. Box and Craig Johnson. (Johnson’s books are the basis for the hit A&E series, Longmire and, the multi-award winning, Box has had a number of New York Times best sellers, centered on his Wyoming game warden, Joe Pickett. In my part of the world a lot of high school kids like these two writers.

How about a western movie to get them started. I like, Smoke Signals, The Last of the Dogmen, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Not the choices of anyone else I have seen, but I am talking about whetting the aptitude of readers for the western genre. Smoke Signals is hard hitting, Dogmen is a bit of a fantasy and Butch and Sundance has some great comedy and music. Something for everyone.

NOTE- This post is not about teaching about the west, it is about getting the younger generation interested in reading, once again, the western genre.

If you completely disagree with this post, I could always quote Yogi again. Responding to a question about remarks attributed to him that he did not think were his: “I really didn’t say everything I said.”

Western First Lines

Today we will look at the second of two parts on famous, western novel, first lines. Some opening lines are great, some are all right and some are downright dreadful. See if you can guess who penned these first lines. Answers on the bottom of the page—no peaking.

“When the earth was already ancient, of an age incomprehensible to man, an event of basic importance occurred in the area which would later be known as Colorado.” 

“In later years people often asked Hugh Hitchcock about the Canadian River cowboy strike of 1883.”

“He was on the east side of the Absaraka Range, in the timber, heading down toward the Popo Agie. He was in no hurry, and there was no reason for him to go there.

“A boy and a horse. A thin knobby boy, coming sixteen, all long bone and stringy muscle, not yet grown up to knuckly hands and seeming oversized feet.”

“He rolled the cigarette in his lips, liking the taste of the tobacco, squinting his eyes against the sun glare.”

 -See answers below-

 

 

Centennial – James Michner

The Day the Cowboys Quit – Elmer Kelton

The First Mountain Man – William W. Johnstone

Monte Walsh – Jack Schaefer

Hondo – Louis L’Amour

 Not really much of a western but you still cannot beat – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”  Charles Dickens

 

Summer Reading

My reading seems to slow down in the summer and speed up in the winter. Guess that makes sense for someone living in Wyoming. Fishing, Golf, hiking, walking and gardening seem to be taking up most of my daylight hours. But I still get through a book every week or ten days and the one I am reading now is terrific.

 Six Bits a Day, is another of Elmer Kelton’s, Hewey Calloway novels. The most famous of the trilogy, The Good Old Boys, was published before this one but the Calloway brothers of this novel are the same but younger, making this book a prequel and the three books, the other one is, The Smiling Country, a very nice western trilogy.

 

This novel is fun and moves along at a good pace. I like the way Kelton throws in enough facts to make the book come to life. It is nearing the end of trail drives and open range and maybe the cowboy but Hewey Calloway is a real fun loving, honest to goodness, cowboys, cowboy.

 Kelton spun many great western tails; this one is a fine example and might even make a good read for people that are not necessarily western novel fans.