Writing In a New Year

Christmas is over, and now we are counting down to the New Year. Each year I make a few resolutions, and each year they seem to go quickly by the wayside. Last year I decided, for the first time, to keep track of how many words I wrote and published. I did it, but am not sure I will keep track this year, seemed to put too much pressure on me, and I started worrying about the days I didn’t write. Sometimes that causes a bit, or a whole bunch of bad writing, not worth saving. (Oh, for the record, I wrote a tad less than a quarter of a million words this year. Quite a bit for me but partly because I wrote a lot recently, trying to finish up last year's goals)

Geese on the ice

This year my goals are simple - 2017

1.     Publish the third of my kid's books – This book is finished but is yet to have a cover. I am sure to get this one out. The first two of the Mike, Moose, and Me series were fun and sold a good number of copies, I hope this one does as well.  

2.     Publish the second, in what I hope will be a series of five, western mysteries, with Marshall Blade Holmes as the protagonist.  This one is 90% written, but has some things I need to clean up. Then editing.

3.     Finish my modern day mystery, set in a Wyoming small town with murder on a golf course. This is to be a novella, and I am about the halfway point. Fun, especially for golfers and mystery lovers. (still in the western genre)

4.     Publish a book for gardeners, yep gardeners. This one started on a whim and now is about 2/3 complete. Gardening tips in the western high country with every fourth chapter a murder mystery.

5.     Continue research and writing of my second nonfiction book. I hope to add another 20,000 words to this one before the years is out.

6.     Keep on blogging, for the past few years I have written more than 100 blog posts each year, twice over 200, this year about 10-12 each month on my various blogs should do.

A few minutes before sunset

2016 - This year I published one book and one short story. I also ran a five-day reduced price, promotion on my Christmas book, which was well received. I also did a giveaway of a short story, that story is still doing well, selling for .99 cents. My newest book, Ghost of the Fawn, has enjoyed a good run on Amazon, staying in the top 200, where it still is, for several weeks.

We hiked this trail a few days ago - wonderful

Will I Make This Year’s Goals? - Maybe I will do more than my stated resolutions in the New Year, I hope not to do less, it often depends on our travel and my love of photography and golf. Several things I am sure of. I will run a couple more promotions for my books, I will take lots of photos, I will write and edit, and put some time in at far away, but not too far, destinations.  

 See all my books on Amazon here.

Winter ski from the trail

A Month of Writing

Each month an online author friend, Greg Strandberg, posts what he completed for the month, he covers both writing progress and sales. He is a prolific writer and his writing posts are always interesting and entertaining. I thought that because, for the first time, I am keeping track of my writing progress, that I would see what I accomplished this month. In February, I wrote 21 blog posts. I write several blogs and for the month had an average of 655 openings, from my various posts, per day. Pretty good readership for me.

Link to my books on Amazon

 During the month of February, I wrote 30,425 words, including my works in progress (WIP) and blog posts. Not much, by many writers standards, but, not bad for me. That’s 1049 words per day – about what I am averaging for the year.

Sometimes I need a break - now this is the way to take it easy

For my yearly goals, I hope to write 200 blog posts and 350,000 words. I would like to be closer to 500,000 but when the weather turns nice, like it already has, golf, gardening, kids, grandkids, hiking, taking photos, and travel, get in the way, so I will stick with the more modest goal. 

I have not written much about my WIP, possibly because I have four, two fiction and two nonfiction. I cannot concentrate long enough to work on only one thing, so I work on what I feel like. Below you can see where I am with each of those projects.

ü 7,500 words written, about 11% of goal, on my new nonfiction, lots of research and many sources to site, hope to finish by Christmas.

ü 19,400 words written, about 38% of goal, on the second of my Blade Holmes western mysteries. This one is true, historical fiction, I like it a lot. If you haven’t read the first of the series, you can find it here.

ü 23,000 words or 75% of goal. This is an old one that I have not worked on for some time, it is a quick look at early Wyoming History. I am editing and adding right now so do not know where it will end up. This one is kind of fun as it is mostly from my teaching notes, notes I used for my, History of the American West and Wyoming History classes over the years.

ü 49,300 words or 98+%, and in the first edit. This is my young adult mystery. I hoped to have it out today, but got bored and started working on other projects. It is easy for me to lose interest when I start doing one of the three edits I do. Now I have high hopes of an April 1 release. I think I need to make that one.

Here I am at Fort Laramie, the setting for two of my WIP
I am the one that looks like I do not belong but still looking good

I have also started notes, and a rough outline on the third of my young reader, chapter book series, the Mike and Moose and Me Adventures.

That’s about it, for February, getting ready for a trip of a few days this month. So will have to stay busy on the days I am home and working.

By the way, specular, early spring-like, walk this morning. Beautiful clear skies, no wind and a nice warm sun. Right now, I am heading to the golf course.

Looking back to town from our favorite hiking place
A really nice way to spend an hour or two

A Unique Read

Not often can I find a unique book. When I do I frequently cannot put it down. Like many readers, I read mostly formula fiction, mysteries and westerns. But formula reads are not as much fun as a truly unique read. Every writer has heard that publishers hate the word unique and when querying an agent or publisher never say, “this book or story is unique.” Too bad.

If you look back on books that are some of your all-time favorites, are they unique? Most likely they are. That’s why Harry Potter and Fifty Shades of Grey took off. They were something new and exciting, different or as I said above unique. What happens afterwards, dozens of copycat books, formula reads are published. They're not all bad either, some are pretty good. From this we create an odd scenario, to be a great book it should be unique, but it is nearly impossible to find someone wanting to publish a unique book.

Deep down every writer wants to do something unique, something great but over the years many settled for a paycheck and formula books especially in the western genre. But today formula westerns do not sell, at least not very well.

So what do I consider a unique read in the western genre? Here is my top five - Little Big Man, The Virginian, The Time it Never Rained, Hondo and Andy Adams’s, Log of a Cowboy. Those are my top five, not saying these are my picks as the top five westerns ever, just my pick as great unique reads.

Think I may have set a record for use of the word unique (12 times) in one post. Below see two of my photos that I think are very unique (13) and might make a great story.

What's In A Plot ?

How many stories can be told, how many plots are novels made from? According to Christopher Booker’s 2004, The Seven Basic Plots, there are, well seven.

·        The Quest

·        Voyage and Return

·        Rebirth

·        Comedy

·        Tragedy

·        Overcoming the Monster

·        Rags to Riches

Looks good to me, if placing books in large enough categories it looks like everything would fit within Booker’s list.

Ronald B. Tobias identified 20 plots in his 1993 book,

20 Master Plots.

·        Quest

·        Adventure

·        Pursuit

·        Rescue

·        Escape

·        Revenge

·        The Riddle

·        Rivalry

·        Underdog

·        Temptation

·        Metamorphosis

·        Transformation

·        Maturation

·        Love

·        Forbidden Love

·        Sacrifice

·        Discovery

·        Wretched Excess

·        Ascension

·        Dissension.

With this list of 20 seems like most any book should fit, not bad.

This topic, plot, has been talked about and rehashed since the times of the ancient Greek writers. Looks to me like most agree there are only so many plots a novel can follow. The difference then, in a good book from a bad, is story, and how well it is told. Two books may follow the voyage and return plot, but how the story is told makes all the difference.

Seems to me that in the western genre the most used plot lines seem to be, quest, voyage and return, revenge and underdog.

You know what? Doesn’t matter to me, I just like to read a great story, with the possible exception of tragedy. I like to escape in reading not feel depressed. Sorry Shakespeare!

Standing Bear – A Western Superhero

Before Spiderman and Superman, America had Frank Grouard, a superhero before his time.

Frank Grouard was General Crooks most well known scout. Crook held him in such high regard he told his superiors he would not lead men into Indian Territory without Grouard as his scout. And latter said he would rather lose a third of his men before he lost Grouard. This didn’t set well with the rest of the scouts and might be why he is  somewhat misunderstood in history.

But this is not the entire story of one of the west’s most famous scouts. His life story reads more like mountain man fiction than the truth. Grouard’s father was a missionary from California who married a native islander while working in the Society Islands of French Polynesia. When Grouard’s father moved the family to Utah his mother became homesick and returned to the islands. Frank was left in charge of the family as his father was either off on a mission or trying to find his wife in the South Pacific.

This didn’t set well with Frank and he left for as the old-timers used to say, “For parts unknown.” He spent time as a bull-whacker and later worked for the Pony Express. History doesn’t say much about his time with the Pony Express but he likely worked for more than rode for them. Grouard, just in his late teens, was described as over six feet tall and around two-hundred pounds. He probably seemed a giant to most of the riders who weighed in closer to 100-120 lbs. But he did ride at least a few trips because on his fourth trip he was captured by the Crow. (Some sources report the tribe as Blackfeet)

He was tortured by the tribe who let him run for his life, naked and being beaten by any tribal member that could pick up a stick, as he ran.  But he outdistanced his captors and escaped, ending up at Fort Hall, nearly 70 miles away.

A year later he was captured by a band of Sioux as he rode along at a snail’s pace in a blinding Wyoming snowstorm. As his captors argued over who would get what of his possessions another man rode up. This person seemed to be most powerful and he took Grouard as his captive. Grouard learned during the three day ride to camp he was riding with, Hunkpapa Sioux holy man Sitting Bull. When Sitting Bull rode into camp hauling Grouard, Gall and No Neck, chiefs with as much power, in the tribe, as Sitting Bull insisted he be put to death, the sooner the better. Grouard with his long black hair and skin of a pacific islander looked to them like an Indian from another tribe, therefore an enemy.

Sitting Bull didn’t often, if ever, lose what he wanted in the tribe. He announced that he had made Grouard, his brother, renaming him Standing Bear. Because it was the dead of winter Grouard was wearing a full length bear-skin coat, towering over his captors by three quarters of a foot and looked, very much, the part of a bear.

Grouard stayed with Sitting Bull and the Hunkpapa for more than six years, reaching near legendary status in the tribe for his strength, speed, size and look. All warriors within the tribe, who had ambition to lead, had to undergo the torture test and Grouard withstood the cutting of 400 pieces of flesh from his arms and allowed flaming sticks held against his body until they burned out and cooled. He endured the punishing torture for more than four hours.  Never crying out or flinching and was pronounced, “brave.”   

Depending on which western history authority is researched, Grouard either escaped or was left with blessings from the tribe after six or seven years with Sitting Bull. All of this and he had, by then, reached the grand old age of 25 or 26. He went on to become one of the most famous scouts in the west working for the U.S. Army and General Crook.

Grouard reached Little Big Horn shortly after Custer and the seventh were annihilated and was the first to report the news to Crook. He was present at Fort Robinson, Nebraska when Crazy Horse was murdered. He was also on the Yellowstone Expeditions and at the battle of Slim Buttes. He was assigned to the Pine Ridge Reservation during the Ghost Dance Uprising and was present at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. Grouard later served as a U. S Marshal in Fort McKinney near Buffalo, Worming and was somehow connected to Wyoming’s Johnson County War of 1892.

Here was a man that made history and lived history.

You can get the full text of the, Life and Times of Frank Grouard, here-

http://www.archive.org/stream/lifeandadventure00debarich#page/n7/mode/2up

Greatest English Language Novel

In a quest to find the greatest works of English language novelists, Random House, in 1998, used its editorial board to come up with the 100 best novels of the 20^th century. And the winner was – Irish writer James Joyce for his novel Ulysses, interestingly he also came in third for, A Portrait of the Artist.

So what was Ulysses? A wandering story of more than a quarter of a million words that takes place in a single day, June - sixteenth - 1904. The novel establishes parallel lives between Homers, Odyssey and Ulysses of Joyce’s work.

It is tough reading in places as Joyce, a stream of consciousness writer, uses a large number of puns, twists and turns to tell his story. The novel was attached for obscenity and criticized by some scholars for too many mistakes, but it continues to show up at the top of nearly all lists of great novels.

The book was originally serialized into eighteen parts, of which as a college student I was forced or honored to read two of them, we could have read another for extra credit, but I passed.

Think I will kick back and relax with a good western.

 

Has the Western Novel Been Gut Shot ?

I read a lot of western fiction and also write a fair amount. (See the post from my new novel-my last post). Western fiction, like all fiction has several reoccurring themes that define most stories. Below is my short list of themes that make good westerns

·        Surviving on an unsettled frontier - man vs. the environment, nature and other settlers

·        Gold, silver and/or the mysterious lost mine – or who owns it, claim jumpers

·        Gunfighter comes to town – who is he after?

·        Settlers trying to create law in a new and lawless area

·        Conflict between native Indians with - settlers, the Calvary, outlaws, gunrunners

·        The chase - catching the bad guys

·        Land grabbers and squatters.

·        Eastern dude swindling the poor townsfolk

·        Bad guys vs. the lawmen - bank, train and stagecoach robbers and  stock rustlers

·        Many western novels focused on regular people being forced to rise up and fight the treacherous outlaws

·        Internal conflict - man vs. himself, concurring real or imagined problems (my favorite)

Book sales tell us that western fiction has been in gradual decline since the early 1980s, after being popular for more than a century. For many years it was one of the most popular genres, but that is no longer the case. Seems to me that a few more good western novels are coming out again and some fine western movies are still making it at the box office.

Not sure the Western Novel will ever die but do believe it was gut shot there for a while. Thanks to the healing work of the old country doctor and the beautiful but naiveté homestead girl (just thought of another theme there-sorry) looks like it will make it.

Novel Complete and Will Rogers Too

My novel is complete (83,000+ words). I have finished my rewrites and now must decide if I want it edited professionally and how to find an editor if I go that route. I believe every writer should, but it can be cost prohibitive.

Also time for a query letter-could take awhile to finish it the way I want.

And some Friday fun-

ü Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

ü  Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco.

ü  Always drink upstream from the herd.

ü  There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither one works.

ü  If you're riding' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there

ü  Never miss a good chance to shut up.

-Will Rogers-

And the Dead Guy Takes two

 Doing lots of research and even a little bit of writing and editing with the cold weather now set in for a spell.  Odd how I seem to have so much time to set at my computer now that the garden and the golf greens have froze up for the year.

I have been toying with writing a short story about this incident for years but settled on the following, magazine type story—hope you enjoy.

-And The Dead Guy Takes Two-

In the last half of the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth Hartville, Wyoming was a wide open cowboy and miner town. Main Street boosted several bars, gambling houses and even a few upstairs of ill-repute businesses.

In the spring of 1902 a man only know as, the White Swede, came to town intent on a little drinking and gambling. He drank some, partied some, and died. Not a very good story, not until he was dead anyway.

The town of Hartville had no undertakers and no one seemed willing to make the five mile trip over iffy roads to Guernsey to see if an undertaker could be coerced into making a dangerous five mile trip under pitch dark skies. Because the Swede had no known family, and no close friends, the small group in the bar where the heart attack, or some other natural cause took him, decided to wait for morning and then do something about a burial for the poor guy.

The body was moved, out of respect for the dead, to a more suitable room away from the hustle and bustle of Main Street. Two cowboys and a copper miner volunteered to watch the body until morning and helped carry the old Swede to a room a block away from the main action of the town. It didn’t take long for the three helpers to get bored. And what better way to pass the time than to play some cards, poker to be precise. The three started a lively game but it didn’t seem quite right without a fourth. So they propped up the old Swede, put a cigar in his mouth, poured him a shot, sat the bottle near his right hand and dealt him in.

After each deal they put the Swede’s cards in his ever stiffening hand and took turns betting and playing cards for him each time his turn came up. The foursome played through the night with visitors often stopping by to see how this most unusual game was going.

The next day the Swede was buried and the undertaker was paid from the Swedes all night poker winnings. He didn’t clean his playing partners out, but he came close.

*When I first moved to this area, 80 years after the White Swede was laid to rest, the old timers were still telling this most unusual story. To add either more fact or fiction to this story, they mentioned, the White Swede had dark hair, was short and rotund and looked nothing at all like a Swede.

I'll Try Again Next Year

Jan 1, 2013 – Going on official record – “I love the New Year and I love New Year’s Resolutions.”

6:00 a.m. - Eight hours of sleep, healthy, balanced breakfast, went for a walk, did my stretching and lifting workout, spent some hobby time, did some putting away and picking up in my workshop.

8:00 a.m. - New Years are great-reinvigorating, life anew

9:00 a.m. - Feel like I need a nap, have a bit of an upset stomach, my shoulders, hips and feet ache.

10:00 a.m. – Doing much better now, reclining on the couch, watching first of many New Year’s Day Bowl Games, still resting after my workout, and dreaming about the next year.

11:00 a.m. - Very soar, dull pain starting on top of my head and ending on the bottom of my feet, not feeling well at all, will take a handful of pain killers and continue resting on couch.

I really do not like New Year’s—except for the Football

Noon – Drinking soda, eating chips and peanuts, still resting on couch, feeling some better, game has reached halftime, watching shootout on the Western Channel until second half starts.

“Maybe Next Year, never have liked New Years stuff, too much hype, just another day for this ol’ cowboy”

-Happy New Year-

Between Wyoming’s, wish it could have been more

 From time to time I review books, more for my own enjoyment than for others. The following review is of a non-western book, but one I never the less thought would be a good read.

Growing up in the 60’s and loving the music of that era I thought this book would be a natural for me. And the fact that it is named after the state I live in, how could I go wrong?

I knew of Ken Mansfield and felt like a road trip with him would be a lot of fun. Well, it was not. It took me nearly two years to get through this book, I started and stopped a dozen times, just could not get into it.  I felt like a thief in the night, getting this book for free, and then not reviewing it. In the meantime I have read 60 plus books, but not this one. I retired in May and forced myself to finally read, Between Wyoming’s, in its entirety.

This book just never hit the mark with me, much too long to tell what seemed to be not much of a story, or a series of short encounters stretched to make a book. The storyline of his journey to Christ seems to be lost in the endless stories of the 60’s.

The entire book reminded me of a self published memoir that only family and friends cared about. I hope others find this story better than I did.

Black Hills Weekend

Spent a nice weekend in the Black Hills, sorry to see fires burning there much like the ones we have here in Wyoming. Love the night lighting of the faces at Mount Rushmore, very patriotic, something every American could enjoy. (We have been there for the lighting before and will do it again)

We took along our seven year old grandson; he really enjoyed the trip, his favorite places, Reptile Gardens, Bear Country and Flintstone Village.

Some neat and inexpensive museums and a lot of western entertainment can be found throughout the hills, from cookouts to trail rides and don’t forget Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are buried side by side in Deadwood. But you might have to circle wide around the one armed bandits in Deadwood.

Of Westerns, Family and the Good Ol' Days

Family reunion weekend is over and maybe it answered some questions about the Western for all of us. Maybe remembering the old days is fading and only kids of the 50s and 60s still remember the western on TV. For my kids the old days were the 1980s. At the reunion my aunt talked about Indians moving to a new camp spot in the summer near their Iowa farm in the 1920s and how scared her German immigrant mother was of the Indians.  She remembers the old days, getting their first TV in 1951, and reminisced about watching all the western programs on TV.

TV westerns like western novels almost always had a moral, personal responsibility and family were important and if the cowboy had no family he cared for his horse first. Cowboys never relied on the government for help and were more often skeptical about it than libel to trust it for much. Good triumphing over evil may not be as popular as it once was. Today it is often the bad guys that get the glory, not the good guy in the white hat.

Today’s kids are watching video clips, listening to 30 second sound bites, downloading music and playing video games when we were watching and reading westerns. For today’s young adults, Magnum P.I., Matlock, and Remington Steel were the good ol’ days of Television. And books from the good old days were: THE HORSE WHISPERER, MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS, ANGELA'S ASHES, and JURASSIC PARK

I still love a good western, but my kids would rather hear about the 60s.

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.

A Long time Ago

Wow-Did you ever leave something alone and then come back to it a year or more later? It will be either better than you remembered or filler for the trash. In my case I was happy with the novel I put away-two years ago, better than I thought, still needs some grammar and punctuation stuff but all in all I like the story. Time to get back to work; hope to peddle this before the first of September

Tie Up That Horse Cowboy

The cowhand raced to save the distressed maiden, he leapt from his trusty steed, and ground tied him, as whistling lead and the smell of gun powder filled the air.
I made that up, but did recently finish reading books by two different authors, where the hero ground tied his horse under all conditions- they ground tied so much I got tired of waiting for the horse to run off. Things that I have read, and or tried with ground tying indicate the cowboy may need hiking boots instead of cowboy boots if he ground ties too much.
Much like the cowboys that loop the reins around the hitching post in the old movies, horses will shy and get the heck out of Dodge if too much action and noise starts. Heck my pick-up doesn’t like to stick around if things get to wild-------but I do.
I like well researched western reads, not sure these writers had spent much time around horses. Too bad, one of them was fast paced and fun.

Random Thoughts on the Sundance Kid

Harry A. Longabaugh is a tough name to pronounce and not very memorable. But when he stole a horse, saddle and a gun in northeast Wyoming and got himself tossed in jail in Sundance, Wyoming, he became a legend, the Sundance Kid. The movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did not hurt his popularity either. It might be that Butch and Sundance would be little more that footnotes in Wild West history if not for the movie. We would still love them in Wyoming and Utah but the rest of the country may have enough of their own bad guys to celebrate.

So who was the Sundance Kid anyway? His friend Butch Cassidy is much better known as leader of the Wild Bunch and as an all around character of the old west. So why was Harry (the Sundance Kid) Longabaugh famous, was it only because he hung out with Butch?

Born in Pennsylvania in 1867 he came west (probably first to Colorado) as a teen and later ended up in north eastern Wyoming. By age twenty his outlaw career had started and ended. A year and a half later he was released from the Sundance jail and returned to life working on a ranch. Either bored with the life of a cowboy, or needing adventure he was implicated in a train robbery three years after his release (1892) and then another five years later. Maybe he was just supplementing his meager ranch wages but more than likely he was an outlaw and had gotten away with more than local people knew about at the time. These robberies may have been as part of Cassidy’s wild bunch.

I suspect, like many of the outlaws of the old west, he lived two different lives. Part of the time he was a hard working ranch hand, raising, feeding and taking care of stock, riding fence and spending time with locals in town when he had a chance. But he had a wild streak, one that left him less than satisfied with this life. It could have been money, might have been a need for adventure, or he may have been in it for the thrill of the chase. Whatever it was, his unsettled feelings may have led him to an on and off life of crime, sometimes with months or years between hold-ups.

After the Winnemucca National Bank, Nevada hold up, Butch and Sundance took off for South America with the Pinkerton Detectives right behind. The story ends there, or does it? Were they killed in the famous shootout with the San Vicente police in Bolivia in 1908? Most avid readers of western history hope not. Stories say he and Butch came back to America, living in Utah, Wyoming or elsewhere for many years. We may never know for sure, but we really hope they were a lot like Redford and Newman in the movie.

Good Read

Just finished reading, Cormac McCarthy’s, No Country for Old Men, I liked the story line, and have always enjoyed, so called, modern day western’s. The trouble I had with this book, and one other of his that I have read, is trying to figure out where dialog starts and ends, or story narration is taking place. Part of the way down each page I would figure it out and then often start that page over.
But somewhere along the ling I realized I could not put it down—I really liked the story, and now I want to read another of his works.
Good book, but beware of the lack of punctuation.

Wyoming and the Code of the West

Last March the Wyoming legislature passed senate file 51. This bill, while not a true law as much as it is a suggestion has been both admired and critized. Some say it makes those of us who live in Wyoming look like a bunch of hicks, others say, yes, this is what we are all about.

Here it is - The Code of the West, bill.

Adapted from the book, "Cowboy Ethics," by James P. Owen

-The code includes-


1. Live each day with courage
2. Take pride in your work 3. Always finish what you start
4. Do what has to be done
5. Be tough, but fair
6. When you make a promise, keep it
7. Ride for the brand
8. Talk less, say more
9. Remember that some things are not for sale
10.Know where to draw the line

The Code of the West, alive and Well in Wyoming –click here to watch a great four minutes of Wyoming.

http://www.vimeo.com/7931683

Favorite Western Movies

In just a few days the new version of True Grit opens. Will it be a winner or just another western that today’s audiences don’t like? Fifty years ago nearly everything on Television was some kind of western series and many feature films were westerns. Did too much cowboy time on TV kill the western? Twenty-nine series westerns in 1959 –Over exposure, maybe! And maybe that is what killed the big budget westerns on the silver screen. There have been some exceptions but for the most part westerns, of today, are marginal hits at best.
Maybe westerns don’t lend themselves to enough special effects and big screen tricks to keep today’s young viewers in their seats.
Or likely we oldsters don’t go to the theater enough.
Just for fun here is a list of my favorite westerns (some well know some a little more obscure) – not in order just my top 15.
What are your favorites?
Here is my list.
1. Open Range
2. 3-10 to Yuma
3. The outlaw Josie Wales
4. Winchester 73
5. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
6. The Shadow Riders
7. Last of the Dogmen
8. Jeremiah Johnson
9. Dances With Wolves
10. Stage Coach
11. Unforgiven
12. The Good the Bad and the Ugly
13. Rio Bravo
14. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
15. Ride the High Country