For not having posted anything much this week, but I have a book project that I needed to finish this week … and well, that sucked up just about every scrap of available writing time. But it’s done … and see the cover, below the fold
This is a bit more of a romp than my previous books, but with a sort of mostly historic background, and a few of the same historical figures. My daughter decided early on that we should go for a sort of pulp-Western look for the cover, and my brother the graphic artist came up with this –
There is a subtitle which explains practically everything but was just too long to fit on the cover; “Being The Entertaining and Mostly If not Always True Adventures of Texas Ranger Jim Reade and his Blood Brother Delaware Scout Toby Shaw in the Time of the Republic of Texas: a A Diversion by Celia Hayes” I’m aiming it more at the YA market, and gleefully throwing every bit of classical Western adventure that I can think of, and the cover alone should get this book banned from every PC-addled middle-school classroom in the land.
It’s my book for this year, released in time for the fall/winter book and Christmas event season. The official date is October 15, but I am taking pre-release orders here, which will be autographed with a personal message, and mailed out by October 8th. There’s a sample chapter, too. If you like the looks of it all and you know any young male readers now bereft of Harry Potter and uninterested in elimination games in a dystopic future … consider this as a Christmas present for them.
Ordered. That will make a nice stocking stuffer for myself.
Looks good.
Thanks, guys – every bit helps – especially as I have to pay my brother for something original and hand-drawn, which he hasn’t done in simply ages!
Is this the story of the real Lone Ranger that you have written about here?
No, this is something a little different; Captain Jack Hays is a reoccurring character and a historical figure, but the two main characters are totally made up. A lot of the background events are things that really happened, and about a third of the characters mentioned were real people.
I don’t think there ever really was a ‘lone Ranger’ unless it was in the later days, when they became more of a state law-enforcement body – that’s where the ‘One Riot, One Ranger’ trope comes from. Until late in the 1870s, they were recruited and campaigned in companies – basically mounted militia for the mission of the moment.
I am not thrilled with the cover. The sample chapter sold me. Fine writing.
>>…gleefully throwing every bit of classical Western adventure that I can think of, and the cover alone should get this book banned from every PC-addled middle-school classroom in the land.
You realize, I suppose, this will jeopardize your invitation to the American History Political Correctness Steering Committee this year? You could even be labeled a Pro-American Counterrevolutionary! And then woe betide to you, comrade!
Other than that, it sounds like a lot of fun. :-P
(When I was child I once met, at different public events, two of the only celebrities that I idolized. One was Brooks Robinson, the other was Roy Rogers. I was a huge fan of both of them. Many a Saturday morning I went riding off with Roy on one of his adventures! And the more I’ve seen of The West the more I love it.)
Well, Mike, as for me and the AHPCSC – as we used to say in the Air Force , f**k-em if they can’t take a joke! ;-)
It’s a fun project, and my daughter and I skulled out the general plots for another three or four stories for the next collection … oh, there will be more.
I’ll have to look around among old Western movies for some classic plots that I can hijack. I’ve already used “Three Godfathers”, and elements of Romeo & Juliet. There must be some more out there …
“I’ve already used “Three Godfathers”,
I just read “Dobie” Carey’s book about his life in the John Ford stock company. It’s great and has a whole chapter about that movie. It’s a fun memoir about the movies and Los Angeles before freeways. He has a great story about his death scene in Three Godfathers.
>>There must be some more out there ”¦
Don’t know if you’ve ever seen To Have and Have Not, with a very young Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart on the island of Martinique in the late 30’s time-frame. She plays a young drifter, outta money, dabbling in petty crime, lost. Then she hooks up – inadvertently – with HB and ends up helping the French resistance against the Gestapo.
There’s a plot outline you could hijack! All kinds of character and plot options there.
“There’s a plot outline you could hijack!”
I never figured it out. I don’t think Howard Hawks did either. At least he said so years later when Bogdanovich asked him.
Well, if you need another interesting historical character, may I suggest George W. Bush, specifically George Washington Bush.
His was not an ordinary life, even for those times.
>>I never figured it out. I don’t think Howard Hawks did either.
I didn’t mean the exact plot. I meant the young drifter woman with a mysterious but clearly unpleasant past, maybe set in 1870 or maybe 1850. You could do all sorts of things with that plot line. Almost anything you wanted.