AWARDS SEASON COMES TO A CLOSE

It’s been a hectic couple of months since our last newsletter. Where to start? Probably with our recent travels. For those of you who have been keeping track, we were off to Italy and Greece for Kathleen and her dearest old friend Itrice’s combined birthday celebration cruise. They’ve been planning this for years, and it came off this September. Most of the cruise was concentrated on classical archaeological sites like Akrotiri, the Parthenon, the Forum, and Pompeii. With Itrice around expect lots of laughter, joy, and good food!  

WOMEN WRITING THE WEST

Back home, the next excitement for us came when we arrived at the 30th annual Women Writing the West conference in Denver the second week in October. WWW celebrated their founding members, including Kathleen, with a special and wonderful ceremony led by award-winning author Karen (K.S.) Jones. In addition, our co-authored article, “Gene-Edited Bison: A Barnyard Revolution? Or a Looming Disaster?” placed 2nd in the Downing Journalism Awards. Then, to Kathleen’s surprise, her short story “Stalker” was the 3rd place winner in the Laura Awards in the best western short fiction category. Have to tell you, Women Writing the West puts on a great conference.

When does life ever slow down? We’re still living in the center of the cyclone, and the months of October and November aren’t even hinting at a reprieve.

In September we took off for ten days to join Kathleen’s best friend, Itrice Sanders, for a combined birthday cruise in the Mediterranean. The trip was filled with laughter, lots of classical archaeology, great meals, and good drink! Couldn’t post much about it because the frigging internet on cruise ship sucked. Nevertheless, we came home energized, infected with a rhinovirus, and filled with smile-laced memories.

So, what’s happening? The big news is the release of Switching Gears, our first short story anthology and our first self-recorded audio release of our work. Click on the link below to preorder your copy in Kindle, print, or audio!

Buy Switching Gears Online

Note that Switching Gears contains both of our Spur-Award winning stories, “No Quarter” and “Bad Choices” along with six new pieces we wrote just for this anthology. We’re particularly proud of this one. It’s an entirely new form of fiction for us, and we’ve found it not only challenging, but fun. We’ll look forward to your reaction.

Hello to Everyone! Yes, we are definitely in the “The Dog Days of Summer” here in Wyoming.

The star Sirius, known as the “Dog Star”, is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, or Big Dog. Ancient Greeks thought that Sirius’ brightness in the northern hemisphere made the world hotter and brought on madness. Hence, we get the term The Dog Days of Summer. 

As we write over 300,000 acres of wildfires are scorching the eastern half of the state. Rain and cooler temperatures are on the way, though, so hopefully that will help all the firefighters from multiple states who are fighting the blazes.

Our big news is that we just got the cover for our upcoming short story anthology, SWITCHING GEARS, coming out in October.

We are excited!  It’s called ‘switching’ gears because we alternate writing stories, Michael writes one and then Kathleen writes one. There are eight stories in the anthology, including two award-winning stories, Kathleen’s story, “No Quarter,” about the Alamo and Michael’s story, “Bad Choices,” set in the near future.  We think this anthology will be a treat for our readers who wonder who writes which passages in our co-authored books. You will discover we have distinctly different writing voices and styles. That was actually fun for us to see. Wow, we really do have different voices!

Greetings All!

Yes, we know this is supposed to be a monthly newsletter, but dang! Our lives over the past couple of months can be likened to living inside an F1 tornado.

A tremendous number of events, commitments, and well, that life stuff, too, have kept us hopping!

We’re just back from ThrillerFest XIX in New York. Wow!

We enjoyed one of our most interesting conferences ever. Michael served on a panel dedicated to research and how it helps or hinders a thriller. Got to spend time with the immortal Tom Doherty, our great publisher at Tor Books, and then had supper with long-time friend and Forge Books publisher, Linda Quinton. Catching up on the publishing industry was fascinating. The world of books has changed dramatically in the last decade. Great small publishers, like Wolfpack Publishing, can do things these days that New York houses can’t do, mostly because they understand the digital market better. The task has always been to connect readers with books they will love. Doing that is not as simple these days as it used to be. Smaller publishers just seem to be better at it.

Oh, and we’re in talks about another contemporary novel based on the buffalo industry, Yellowstone bison, and the conflict over conservationists and private landowners.

Bison, money, and murder—who could ask for more? Tentatively titled Buffalo Justice, we’ll let you know when it’s scheduled for release.

Hi All!

Well, it’s been an interesting January here. Last week the weather service informed us that Wyoming was colder than Mars.  We hit a crisp -40 F, while Mars only hit -30 below. Our wind chill factor hung around -50 F. 

Have we ever told you the story of Wyatt? 

It’s apt because Children of the Dawnland is being re-released this month. 

Several years ago, Mike was in Texas helping his parents, while Kathy stayed home to watch the ranch and work on Children of the Dawnland.  It was March, and March brings some of the worst weather to Wyoming, but that week proved Wyoming’s reputation. The ranch got about three feet of snow in two days, and the wind blew at a steady 20-30 MPH, piling drifts eight feet deep and closing the road in or out of the ranch.

Kathy was riding the snowmobile out to feed the buffalo, when she noticed a buffalo calf struggling through the snow. The little bull was alone and clearly an orphan. It’s unusual for a calf to be born in March. April-May is generally calving season. The calf’s name would become Wyatt—after Wyatt Earp. As it would turn out, he was one tough little guy. 

Kathy knew she had to catch Wyatt and start bottle-feeding him or he was going to be dead, either killed by mountain lions or wolves, or just freeze to death. It took three days to catch him. The first day, she tracked Wyatt through the snow for ten hours, but Wyatt was determined not to let her catch him. He may only have been two days old, but he knew a predator when he saw it.

Another year comes to a close. Dang! How did that happen so fast? But then, we just survived Wyoming’s traditional “Thanksgiving Blizzard!”

This happens most years, snarling traffic, closing roads, and signaling the true beginning of winter. Not that it concerned us. Thanksgiving this year was celebrated by just the two of us. Michael made his signature stuffing for the turkey and cooked it to perfection despite our malfunctioning oven. Kathleen surpassed herself with from-scratch cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and her most-remarkable gravy! (We’re eating turkey burritos for breakfast for the foreseeable future.)

This has been a wonderful year considering all the great things we have enjoyed.

First, of course, was the announcement that Kathleen’s “No Quarter” short story about the Alamo, published in the Wolfpack Rebel Hearts anthology, won the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award for best short fiction of the year. It would go on to pick up a Will Rogers Medallion Award, and finish as a finalist in the Peacemaker Awards from Western Fictioneers.