Friday, February 27, 2009

Another day in the life...

I had an e-mail today from a fellow Writer's Guild of Eastern Oregon member, who recently registered on a site called OregonAuthors.org. Looks quite interesting. It gives Oregon authors a place to set up their works for people to notice, and might make for some good publicity. So I signed up. I should know shortly whether or not I've been accepted...

I'm still looking very hard at the idea of setting up my own publishing deal, and I've already had someone ask me if I'll be taking on clients. I think I know how to make that work...

Spent the day finally getting the sheep feeding panels that Cheryl wanted done, and turned into feeders...

Got a coyote this morning, but not on the dead sheep that I hauled out a couple of days ago. Hauled another dead sheep out today, maybe there'll be a coyote there tomorrow morning...

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Welcome to my new home away from home...

As of this afternoon at about 1:30 PM, my old website is no more. I decided to terminate it in favor of something more compact and easier to manage. This will be my new home on the Web, so to speak, for the foreseeable future, or until I get evicted for not paying my rent or something disgusting like that... :>)

Speaking of the foreseeable future, in the movie Appaloosa, Everett Hitch, ably played by Viggo Mortensen, had this to say: "Life has a way of making the foreseeable that which never happens, and the unforeseeable that which your life becomes." Interesting philosophy for a guy who makes his living with a gun. The Scriptures tell us something similar in that we are to depend on God, and not our own plans, to carry us through. He will decide if we are to prosper or falter...

If you haven't seen Appaloosa, I highly recommend it, even though I'm not a movie critic, I don't play one on TV and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night; I just know what I like. There's not a lot of shoot-'em-up, though there is some, but there is a lot of character development, and it follows the book closer than most movies. If you're only sitting in the theater for the blood, gore and violence, you'll more than likely be disappointed. But if you like your movies with some depth alongside the blood, go see this one if it's still playing. If it's not in a theater near you, go buy the DVD; you won't regret it. I bought the DVD two weeks ago, and I've already seen it three times...

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Complications Excerpt

As promised, here's a brief excerpt from Complications: The Deputies Book 1

The bad guy, Howdy Baxter, is holding Kitty Moynahan hostage, thinking that he can use her to make Harvey Palmer and Deputy Jesse Thompson drop their guns...

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Jesse saw Baxter’s dive into the tunnel and heard Lila’s agonized voice as she fought to save Kitty. He rose and started for the tunnel, but before he could move away from the ore cart Baxter appeared with his body pressed tightly against Kitty and his arm and hand holding her in front of himself as a shield. The Colt was pressed tightly against her jaw. Jesse took a step forward; the Remington in his right hand swung up as he turned sideways and stepped into a perfect target stance.

“Stop right there, Deputy Thompson!” Baxter snapped. “Or I will spread this young lady’s brains all over this canyon. And I don’t think you want that now, do you?”

Harvey appeared in the corner of Jesse’s narrowed vision, Winchester at the ready. “You stop right there too, Palmer!” Baxter snarled. “If I have to kill both of these lovely ladies to get your attention, I will. You have my word on that.”

“What have you done with Lila?” Harvey grated. “If you’ve touched one hair of her head…”

“Those are big words for someone who will be dead soon!” Baxter suddenly laughed, a high-pitched caw that brought the hair on the back of Jesse’s neck to attention. “Throw down your guns and I’ll only kill the two of you. The ladies can go free. And the same goes for whomever you have on top of the bluff.”

Jesse thumbed back the hammer of the Remington. The front sight was steady on the small sliver of Howdy Baxter’s head that he could see. At the same time, he saw that the hammer of Baxter’s Colt was back and the knuckles of his trigger finger were white. Baxter was on the edge of pulling the trigger and killing Kitty.

“Drop the gun, Baxter,” Jesse said evenly. “If you kill her, the whole territory will be hunting you and you know it. Even your own men will track you down and kill you.”

“But that won’t matter to you, will it?” Baxter crowed. “You’ll be dead.”

“So it looks like a standoff,” Jesse said. His gray eyes narrowed as he tried to figure the odds of shooting Baxter without Baxter killing Kitty.

“I think not. Drop the gun!” Baxter commanded. His voice was rising and he was getting further and further from sanity. Jesse’s finger tensed on the trigger. Then something caught Jesse’s eye that kept him from firing.

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Author's disclaimer: Before everyone starts thinking that my blog is degenerating into nothing more than a commercial for my books, let me say that, well, it is, but only temporarily. It'll get back to normal as soon as I manage to migrate everything from my old website. Until then, please bear with me...

Cowboy Ethics and Cowboy Values...

The following link will take you to a blog on Fox News that I think makes a whole lot of sense:

Cowboy Ethics and Cowboy Values

Check it out. You'll probably agree...

Major overhaul in progress...

For those of you who may accidentally trip across this rambling discourse on my life occasionally, things may look a bit different than what you've seen on past visits. That's because I've decided to set up housekeeping here, and do away with my other, much more costly, and hard to work with, website. I'll be adding features as I go along, so stay tuned...

So far, I've changed my profile picture, added some landscape fencing (barbwire), and stuck in some of my favorite links. I've also included an area for book advertising and sales. So far the only books there are mine, but I'll be adding some of the ones that belong to some of my cowboy buds as time goes by. And I'll be posting some book excerpts, that sort of thing...

So come on back, y'hear?

Monday, February 23, 2009

One down, who knows how many to go...

Well, it appears that the "traditional publisher" gig has fallen by the wayside. Due to some research by the nice lady who did the copyedit for the novel that was supposed to be going to the "traditional publisher", and also due to still another "your work's not good enough to publish so you have to spend a whole bunch of money on our editor" e-mail, I've decided to shelve that idea for the time being, unless they come up with a better offer. Funny how "it doesn't cost you a cent to publish with us" becomes the above-mentioned "hire our editor", isn't it? Doesn't that constitute me spending my money to have my book published? The book in question, Complications, is already a Print-On-Demand novel, so I see no point in doing the same thing all over again. Guess I'll look for another publisher. Or become a publisher myself. I can do that, ya know...

As I was in the middle of reading, laughing at and complaining about the publisher's last e-mail, which, by the way, completely ignored my copyeditor's, and my, comments on their review, which was done by someone who apparently had no clue whatsoever regarding the westen genre, Cheryl suddenly asked, "Why don't you set up your own publishing company and publish it yourself?" That was an idea that I kicked around when my second book, Tyler's Law, was ready to go to print, but I decided that I didn't have enough time to mess with it. But now I'm thinking about it again...

Using the crash course in copyediting that I got during the rewrite of Complications, I've been doing an extensive rewrite of Book 3, Valentine's Revenge, for the last several weeks, and I do believe that it is decidedly improved over what I originally wrote. Once I get through the rewrite of the rough draft of the original, I just need to finish the danged thing...

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

My first YouTube video!

Here it is, folks: my first YouTube video! I'm celebrating the release of my new novel, Tyler's Law, which has been quite some time in the making...


Monday, February 2, 2009

Monday, February 2, 2009

Hm, not much is new, really. We won some money in the Durkee Valley Football Pool. We had the Ravens...

Book 2, Tyler's Law, has gone to the printer, so I should have the first copy in my hot little hand in a few more days...

Saturday, I took a snowshoe trip to the top of the ridge across the creek from the house. There's a gate up there that was left open last fall and needed to be closed; I was pretty sure from looking at the ridge from the other side of the canyon that there was no way to get the four-wheeler up there, so I decided to walk. I've been getting entirely too fat anyway, and it would be good exercise...

Once I got to the gate, it was of course under the snow; I found out that a snowshoe makes a fair to middling snow shovel. The gate is now closed. On the way up, I saw one coyote, way too far away to try to shoot, and on the way back down I saw a bunch of deer. It was a very pleasant day, and a very pleasant walk, about three miles round trip...

Regarding hiking up the ridge on snowshoes: this winter, at D&B's "customer appreciation sale", I bought a set, top and bottom, of DuoFold polypro active base layer. It's supposed to wick moisture, and I'm here to tell you, it works! I did quite a bit of sweating, but when I got home, my outer layer was damp, but the base layer was dry! I was impressed...