Bright and early Saturday morning we’ll be heading to Billings for our 2:00 pm signing at the Barnes & Nobel on 24th Street. While we’re there we’ll give a lecture on the impacts the League of the Iroquois had on our modern world. Those of you reading the PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE series which also includes DAWN COUNTRY and the latest release, BROKEN LAND have already read the nonfiction forwards and understand the impact that Native American notions of one person, one vote, referendum and recall, even the concept of confederations, of “united states” had on the formation of our society.

Europeans arriving on the American shores were indoctrinated to believe in a concept called the “Divine Right” of kings. Supported, obviously, by the church, the belief was that God granted rulership to specific individuals and families. There was no way to challenge God’s will in the matter, unless you bought that right through the church. It was the natural order of things, and all power flowed down from the throne.

Until Europeans stumbled across the Americas where the indigneous nations for the most part hadn’t heard of any such system. The shock waves rolled back across the seas, upsetting, well, just about everyone. After all, if the entire world didn’t run the way Europe did, why not? And what else might kings and the church have gotten wrong? How could they have missed an entire half of the globe? Once people started to ask questions, folks like Martin Luther posted his theses, and revolutions were born.

Nor did it stop there. As late at the 1860s a young political scientist named Karl Marx picked up a copy of Louis Henry Morgan’s LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS and read with amazement how wealth was redistributed among the Iroquois. This notion of redistribution of resources was mixed with his historical thesis and economics in a book called DAS KAPITAL. And look where that ended up!

So, yes, there will be four books in the PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE series. A mini series within a series. Why?

Because the subject is worthy of it.

We’ve got the contract with our agent’s notes printed out and will be reviewing it to have older titles up on Kindle. A few details remain to be worked out, but unless some major obstacle falls in our path, they should be up and running by the end of February. Note: This does not include any titles published by Tor/Forge. Those are encompassed by the on-going negotiations with Macmillan Publishing. With a lot of fingers in the pie, we’re still working out stubby little details. We hope to have that brought to a conclusion by the the first of February. Assuming, that is, that all the parties actually work on it. Moss grows on rocks faster than this deal proceeds!

We’re on our way to the National Bison Association meetings in Denver, Colorado. Kathleen being a Western Bison Association board member, we’re obligated to attend the Thursday board meeting where Kathy will be brilliant, and Michael will try to keep his mouth shut. The thrust of this years meeting is petitioning the US Fish and Wildlife to delist Woods bison from the Endangered Species Act. Why? Recent genetic research has shown woods bison and plains bison to be the same crittur. Woods bison, living where they do in Northern Alberta look slightly different than Plains bison living in, say, Oklahoma. These are what we call phenotypic differences. And, amazingly, if you move plains bison from Oklahoma to northern Alberta, after about 5 or six generations, guess what? Yep. The begin to look a lot like “woods” bison.

It all makes sense if you think about it. Prior to the arrival of the white guys, buffalo ranged all over North America, clear up into Alaska. And, believe us, those four feet work just fine. From the Peace River down to the Gulf of Mexico there were no barriers to gene flow–mating–between moving populations of buffalo. Yukon buffalo mated with Alberta buffalo who mated with Montana, buffalo and so on down to Texas.

It was only when biologists in the early Twentieth Century began to study them, that a distinction was made because, well, buffalo in Alberta look different from buffalo in Texas.

So why should the US Fish and Wildlife manage woods bison differently from their plains cousins?

We’re hoping that the National Bison Association will join the Western in our petetion to have the woods buffalo delisted.

Greetings All:

Just a word on the status of our ebooks. We received an email from our agent that Amazon Kindle had finished converting eight of our old titles, and was about to be complete three more, including the Spider trilogy, Forbidden Borders, and Kathy’s Light trilogy, written under Kathleen M. O’Neal. Amazon says they should be available by the end of the month. But then this all takes much longer than it should. Smart money say’s they’ll be available by the end of February!

Note: The above titles will be on Amazon Kindle only. Currently we do not have a contract with Nook, though our agent is in negotiations with them.

Meanwhile, the Macmillan titles, including the PEOPLE books remain in lawyer limbo, while we await a counter-offer from the Macmillan legal office. We are hoping to finally have this resolved before our trip to New York in February. Until this happens, BROKEN LAND will not be available on any e format.

We’re working on it, guys. Meanwhile, be well!

As of January 3, copies of BROKEN LAND are being placed on bookstore shelves across the country! This is the sequel to DAWN COUNTRY, and is the third book in the PEOPLE OF THE LONGHOUSE series! Follow Odion, Wrass, Baji and Tutelo as they enter their adult lives. But mad Atotarho has other plans for the Iroquois, and he will pursue them no matter the cost to his daughter, her friends, and his people!

And, just so you know, the fourth and final book, THE BLACK SUN is finished and will be published October of this year!

Hi Everyone,

We did a fun interview with the great Barnes and Noble folks for THE BROKEN LAND. If you’d like to review it, please go to:

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Fiction-General-Discussion/New-Release-The-Broken-Land-Q-amp-A-with-the-Gears-Kathleen-and/m-p/1259381/message-uid/1259381

We hope you enjoy the interview!

Mike and Kathy

http://thereadingfrenzy.blogspot.com/2012/01/barnes-noble-interviewthe-broken-land.html

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Reading-Frenzy/100121796745258

Brian: It’s Christmas morning and we’re still here! So, back to the various calendars to recompute when the next combination of Mayan and Christian calendars give us a chance to start over! We’ll be waiting!

Dear All:

We received a Christmas letter from our dear old friend Brian O’Neil.  Michael first met Brian back in 1979 at the Lay Site, a multi-component archaeological site in northwest Colorado.  They’ve been great friends ever since and share a long and involved correspondence covering a vast array of topics.  Brian could be a stereotype for the grizzled “have trowel will travel” dirt archaeologist.  The kind of guy you hire first because he knows his stuff, can dig a level floor without a line level, and doesn’t baffle the listener with superfluous bullshit. 

As we head into 2012 it’s popular to parrot the media hype based on the pseudo-expert kooks dredged up by the History Channel, Discovery Channel, and the other mass-mind-melting gurus on the internet.  The current biggie is that the Mayan calendars, the chatun and katun will finally align, and this, the Fifth World, will end on December 21, 2012.

 Hollywood–always a haven of intelligence and balance–picked up the ball and ran with it, creating a disaster film that defied planetary physics–let alone any kind of horse sense.   2012?  This is the year the world ends!  How exciting.  Of course the smart guys in Hollywood never really bothered to learn anything about what the Maya really believed, which was that the cycles would simply start over with the beginning of the Sixth World.  After all, humans–and the earth–have been through this five times already, and nothing apocalyptic happened on the previous transitions between worlds.

There’s the reason no one invites archaeologists to parties. We dig up dirt about peoples’ past.  And Brian O’Neil is a consummate digger.  He also teaches a Southwest Archaeology class at Mesa College in Grand Junction, Colorado.  Which means his students get a real education in archaeology–not the pablum spouted by bored academic PhDs in other institutions.  Brian, to his amusement, has been watching the brain- anesthetizing programming about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world on December 21, 2012. 

So he’s doing a special Christmas “Blue Light Special” as he puts it, for his archaeology class.  He’s a digger, remember?  An old-time, real, scholar.  He started doing real reasearch on the Mayan calendars, and immediately ran into problems.  You see, we’re talking about thousands of years.  And, there’s the problem of which calendar are you using, and, well, shucks, people have actually changed calendars over the years.  So we thought we’d share a quote from Brian’s latest letter to us:

“…The 7 different calendars employed by the Maya do not always line up with the exactitude presented by the History Channel. (Duh!) Nor does modern astrology (synodic) match up with current (sidereal) astronomy, and the dating correlations depend on whether you use the Jullian or Gregorian calendars, and their correlations with the signs of the zodiac.  [Astrologer Roberta S. Skowler uses the Julian calendar as a better synodic correlate with the Classic and Post Classic Maya, as it was in use in Western Civilization between 45 BC and AD 1582 when the Gregorian calendar came into use.]”

Brian, of course ran his own numbers, not trusting what the ”archaeologists” on the History Channel claimed.  Which makes us wonder.  Why is it that none of us in the archaeological community have never heard of these archaeologists?  A quick check of the Society for American Archaeology shows that none of these “experts” have presented a single paper in the last decade!  Reminds us of the line in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones asked, “Which top men?”

We digress.  What did Brian find?  Well, depending on which combinations of Mayan and Western calendars you use, you get different dates!  Imagine that!  But one combination really rang Brian’s bells.  What was it?     “Ok, so here it is…wait for it…wait for it…according to the Waters/Skowler calculations, the end of the Fifth World will occur on Dec. 24, 2011.  Well, doesn’t that just ***** up your Christmas party?

“Sorry Virginia, Santa Claus will not make his appointed rounds on Christmas Eve. The Hollywood Amrageddonists and Disasterites have predicted that the super volcano in Yellowstone NP will erupt, monstrous earthquakes will cause California to slide into the sea, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello will no longer play Beach Blanket Bingo, Lindsey Lohan won’t have fun, fun, fun, til her daddy takes the T-bird away, immense tidal waves will cover the earth making Surfin’ USA a global phenomenon (in 3D), the world’s magnetic poles will flip and the EMP will fry the GPS on Santa’s sleigh causing it to plunge to earth in a fiery ball of burning wrapping paper…

“But wait!  What’s that I hear on the roof where there arose such a clatter?  Tis Santa crying, ’Ho! Ho! Ho! Step on it, Rudolph!  Tis time to get out of here before I have to trade you for a fricking red-nosed penguin with happy feet!’  And I heard him say as he flew out of sight, ‘Merry Christmas to all, and the Maya were right!’”  

In concert with our agent, we’ve had preliminary discussions with a production company about adapting one of the PEOPLE books to either a motion picture or television pilot.  No one should get terribly excited about this.  It’s far from a done deal. We’ve been down this road several times before, and a great many hurdles remain to be jumped.  Nevertheless, just like Las Vegas, there’s always now a chance that you might see one of your favorite Gear stories on the screen. 

For the moment, a nondisclosure agreement is in effect so we can’t discuss any of the details about which book is under consideration, or who the production company is.  Stay tuned to the Gear fan club for details as they are revealed.  You can link from the website home page.

We’re positive, at least, that the producer we talked with understands and is sympathetic to the fact that prehistory doesn’t mean what Hollywood has always protrayed it as.  He’s looking at the project in a very human and complicated way.  He is also intrigued by the notion that no one has ever filmed a precontact story set in America before, so the film would be breaking new ground.  Even Mel Gibson’s APOCALYPTO, set among the Maya, ended with Spanish coming ashore.

The pipe dream in all of this is that if the project comes to fruition, and if it is successful, film makers will have a whole new universe of cultures and environments to draw from.  The film also has the potential to overturn stereotypes of “prehistoric” North America. 

In the meantime, we’re delighted with the prospect.  Having a producer contact you about one of your books is always flattering.  We’re looking forward to exploring the potentials of the project.  It is, afterall, exciting times.

Dear All:

Thanks for all of your concerned comments about our bull search at the Western Bison Association show and sale in Ogden.  As soon as we started prowling the pens, we almost swooned at sight of this one huge three-year-old bull.  The New Mexico trich-tag in his ear gave him away as one of John Painter’s animals.  Painter runs Montoso Bison between Taos, and Tres Piedras, New Mexico.  And drought has been kicking his butt.  But then, as slowly as Painter moves, a two-toed green sloth could kick his…  Well, never mind.

We promptly asked Painter about the bull. Would he be in the sale?  ”No,” John said, “Tiberius is ‘show only.’  I’m not selling him.  Period. He’s out of the Snyder’s bull, Gray, and one of your Red Canyon cows.  I’ve been waiting for years to produce a bull of Tiberius’s quality.”

So we looked around at the other animals, most of them from Rex and Rhonda Snyder.  For you non-buffalo sorts, the Snyders went out and bought the best bison in North America, collecting champions from all over the US and Canada.  They have some of the finest bloodlines in the country, and stack of national and regional trophies to prove it.  A couple of years back they brought the finest 3 year-old bull we’d ever seen to the Western Bison Association sale.  And we’d have been real happy with one from this year’s consignment. 

To make a long story short, Painter walked up to us before the sale, a scowl on his normally scowlly face.  “Listen.  I’ve got a proposition.  You know about this drought.  I’ve got hay to last only until February.  Here at the show, I’ve got Tiberius and Lady Bug, the Grand Champion yearling heifer, both ‘show only’ and not for sale.  But I don’t have feed at home. How about I lease you the bull to use for a year?  But I want you to take the yearling heifer and feed herr, too, because I want Tiberius to breed her in spring.” 

Michael immediately started counting on his fingers and mumbling under his breath when John told him the price.  Michael couldn’t help it,  and asked, “So, like…what’s the catch?” 

“No catch,” Painter said. “And if we don’t get moisture, I may be knocking on your door to relocated the rest of the Montoso herd!”

So it was, good readers, Tiberius and Lady Bug rode home in the Red Canyon Ranch trailer, across icy and slithery roads, to temporarily join us.  Lady Bug is a gorgeous yearling, and currently in a pen with Pia and her calf, acclimating to the ranch.  Tiberius gets the run of the corrals so he can snort at Sunchaser, our 17 year-old bull, and promise mayhem when he finally get released.  Introducing bulls this way cuts down substantially on how “Western” things get when they finally duke it out.  What might have been bloody and too the death between total strangers will most likely only be a tussel to establish dominance.

So, now, when you ask if we got bull, we most surely do!  And we’re still trying to figure out what the catch is?