Wyoming is just starting to see some days in the high 40s. Most of the snow has melted around the house, though the mountains are still white and beautiful.
On the writing front, Mike is working on a screenplay for OUTPOST, his science fiction novel set in the Donovan universe. He’s having a grand time. Writing screenplays is a different talent than novels, so it’s a learning experience, but fun and challenging.
Kathy is working on a new novel, a modern thriller, that she hopes to have completed by May. No title yet.
AND!! Book 3 in the Wyoming Chronicles series, AFTER THE EAGLE HAS FALLEN, will be released the first week of March. We are excited. It has a great cover.
Speaking of the Wyoming Chronicles, FOURTH QUADRANT received a very kind review from “READING THE WEST.” https://tinyurl.com/2nfzu8hy
If you haven’t read FOURTH QUADRANT, you might want to before book 3 comes out. It helps.
Mike will be at the Tucson Book Festival March 2-3. Stop by the Wolfpack Publishing booth and say hello!
We hope spring arrives in your neck of the woods soon.
December is a sacred time for us and around the world. In North America, many of the native peoples celebrate the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and the return of the sun the next day, which is their New Year’s Day. More ceremonies occur on December 24th and 25th.
For example, the Salish say that long ago a great and good man came among their forefathers and performed miracles of all kinds. Upon leaving them, he said he would return in the form of a big white coyote. At Isleta Pueblo, they celebrate the Buffalo Dances on December 24th and early morning on Christmas Day, and at Nambe Pueblo the buffalo dancers come out in glorious horned headdresses to dance by a light of a great bonfire. The fragrance of piñon smoke drifts through the darkness as the dancers cast enormous shadows over the pueblo walls.
In the Gear house, this season is a time of hope. We celebrate the return of buffalo to our world, and the “great and good man” who came and will return.
No matter your beliefs, we hope that this holiday season brings your long night to an end, and you find yourself surrounded by the light and the warmth of family and friends.
“The historical detail and vivid descriptions make this a fascinating and compelling read.” –Romantic Times BookReviews
I’m excited to see the FIRST HARDCOVER ever of my book, IT WAKES IN ME, which will be released on September 6th. The new cover is stunning and really captures the dangerous, seductive element of the leading character’s personality.
I wrote the book because, as an anthropologist, the global dimensions of serial murder fascinate me. We can trace the phenomenon across continents and through time from Australia to England, Pakistan to Mexico, across Africa, Asia, and America. It’s an aberration in human behavior, but a profoundly pervasive one that transcends cultural boundaries. I have long pondered how ancient peoples in North America would have handled a serial murderer silently hunting victims through their small villages.
The question interests me because many native peoples believed that mental illness was soul-loss. The soul had fled the body because of unfulfilled desires. The job of the healer was to discover, and then fulfill those desires so that the soul would wish to return and the sick person would be healed. Recollect missionary, Father Gabriel Sagard, wrote in 1632, “…for they prefer to suffer and be in want of anything rather than to fail a sick person at need.”
The soul-curing ritual used in IT WAKES IN ME was real. At the time of European contact in the 16th century, the andacwander had spread from Iroquoian to Algonquian tribes, indicting the remarkable healing power it possessed.
When High Chieftess Sora is kidnapped, drugged, and transported to the greatest healer in the land, his first words to her are: “They tell me you are a murderer. Is it true?”
Her answer begins a darkly erotic tale of love and betrayal.
I hope you enjoy this journey to America’s spectacular past!
It’s a quiet beautiful day here in Wyoming. The aspens and cottonwoods just have their first touches of yellow, heralding the arrival of autumn a bit early, but it’s been a cool summer.
We were just informed that we will be the recipients of the 2023 Frank Waters Award. “The Frank Waters Award stands for exemplary literary achievement, as well as a canon of writing that communicates a deep understanding, celebration, and love of our human nature and peoples of all races.” Previous recipients are: Barbara Kingsolver, Tony Hillerman, and John Nichols.
It’s a great privilege to receive an award that bears Frank Waters’ name. The award is given by the Pike’s Peak Library District, and we are deeply grateful for this honor.
The award ceremony will be held in Colorado Springs on June 3, 2023.
Yes, it’s been a stressful day today. Fans have been notifying us from around the world that their orders for RECKONING (coming in October) and THE ICE ORPHAN (coming in November) have been cancelled by retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others. This is one of those glitches that’s very frustrating for everyone concerned. Here’s what happened…
Our wonderful publisher, DAW Books, just sold the company to Astra Publishing. The unanticipated consequence is that Penguin Random House (which distributes DAW books) cancelled all orders for DAW Books scheduled to be published after September 1st, while PRH transitions the ISBNs to Astra. DAW was not made aware of this consequence beforehand, so it’s as much of a surprise to them as it is to all of us.
It means that our fans must reorder RECKONING and THE ICE ORPHAN. We are so sorry for the inconvenience. But both books WILL be published on schedule in October and November!
Right now, we only have links to Amazon:
THE ICE ORPHAN: Amazon https://buff.ly/3OneG8v
RECKONING: Amazon https://buff.ly/3zmQUWc
Thanks for taking the time to reorder. We appreciate each and every one of you. We have the best readers in the world.
Fourth Quadrant – W. Michael Gear – Wolfpack HC $28.00 – 9781639773015 – 5/2022
This book continues the story begun in Dissolution following the outcome of an international banking collapse and corruption of the entire internet banking system. We are reintroduced to some of the characters from the previous book and meet new ones as well. Here, Lauren Davis, a young woman working in a bank in Colorado Springs is startled to find several million dollars in the account of an elderly woman wishing to withdraw a few hundred from her meager savings. As other tellers begin muttering about obviously incorrect figures appearing on their screens, one of the supervisors quietly approaches her and tells her to pull all her cash out and leave town, quickly. Thus begins her transformation from a normal existence to one of violence and moral ambiguity that challenges her very basis of belief in herself and the world.
As society unravels and people resort to brutality and aggression to either stay alive or profit from the chaos, Lauren speeds north to her home in Wyoming, dodging brigands who take advantage of the lawlessness to murder, rape and rob. When she finally reaches the border and having demonstrated her legitimate claim to be Wyoming girl, she volunteers to use her skills with her motorcycle to become a runner delivering food, water, ammo and whatever else to the border guards, founded once it became clear that everyone in Colorado wanted to escape the conflagration on the Front Range. As a result she becomes embroiled in a life and death struggle that shakes her morals to their foundations. Having been both the victim and the perpetrator of fatal violence, she descends into a hell of self-doubt and depression. She is reunited with a childhood friend, many years estranged and finds salvation of a sort, but no peace.
It is easy to write “this is a page turner you can’t put down” but in this case the phrase is apt. If you don’t get a nervous stomach reading this, afraid every minute about what will happen or not happen, you’re not paying attention. With vivid characters, non-stop action and a philosophical question at the root of all of it, this book delivers on several levels. It has all the greater “punch” because everything is completely believable. The reader does not doubt that all of this could very well happen. We have fallen into a state where we take for granted that our neighbors and others in our society will act, if not totally morally, at least with a modicum of civility, to the extent that we don’t murder each other over food, water and gasoline. When that certainty of safety is removed, the world becomes a frightening and disheartening place. How we deal with it can mean the difference between life and death, and between decency and indecency.
Shelf Talker: The post-apocalyptic outcome of an international banking failure thrusts the world into a violent struggle for existence and brings into question the meaning of what it is to “do the right thing”. Eric Boss for Read The West
It’s always a sober day in the Gear household when scenarios we predicted in our books show up on the morning news, as has been the case over the past few days with the Russian cyberattacks that shut down Ukrainian banks.
When we were writing DISSOLUTION and FOURTH QUADRANT, we knew it was inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch the lines of people crowding in front of Ukrainian ATMSs, desperate to take out money before their accounts read zero and their money is gone. Lauren Davis in FOURTH QUADRANT has to watch the same scene take place after the bank she works for suffers a cyberattack. Is America ready for this?
Six or seven years ago when we were working on the original concept for the Wyoming Chronicles series, we had a chance to chat with our wonderful congressional representative, Mike Enzi, about America’s ability to protect our banking system from a cyberattack. He said simply that America was way behind on cybersecurity…and we found those words terrifying.
Given our backgrounds in the collapse of world cultures across thousands of years, we had to write the Wyoming Chronicles series. The problem at the time–and now it’s even more relevant–was that America was so far behind Russia and China, it was clear we were vulnerable.
The question now is whether or not America has lost the opportunity to protect itself.
It always a good day in the Gear house when PUBLISHERS WEEKLY gives one of your books a great review. In this case, they reviewed THE ICE LION (Book 1 of the Rewilding Chronicles) coming out in early June: “With this engrossing series launch, Gear (Cries from the Lost Island) conjures a vivid postapocalyptic world. …This mesmerizing adventure through a world destroyed by climate change is sure to have readers hooked.” You can read the full review here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780756415846
Mike has two books coming out in June: DISSOLUTION and ADRIFT (the next book in the Donovan series). PUBLISHERS WEEKLY called DISSOLUTION, “…harrowing…” and said, “Gear (the Donovan series) conjures a frighteningly realistic dystopian future in his Wyoming Chronicles series launch.” No reviews for ADRIFT yet, but we will post when they come in!
We’ve never had individually authored books come out in the same month–let alone three from two different publishers–so this is going to be interesting.
In the meantime, we are hard at work on PEOPLE OF CAHOKIA: LIGHTNING SHELL and THE ICE ORPHAN (Book 3 in the Rewilding Chronicles) and enjoying both books immensely…
We hope springtime has come to your part of the world and you are starting to get outside in the warm weather. It’s been snowing here for the past few days, but we are looking for temperatures in the 60s by the weekend!
Love some of the quotes from the review. If you have not pre-ordered DISSOLUTION, you should. Here’s what you have to look forward to: “Gear’s novel teams with well-developed characters of varying backgrounds.” “The story wisely zeros in on Sam’s perspective…” And, “The author enriches the plausible narrative with ties to real-world events like COVID-19 as well as analogies with ancient civilizations collapsing.” Or, how about, “Despite a thorough ending, this engrossing book launches a new series.”
And the conclusion: “An absorbing, realistic dystopian tale with a superb cast.”
DISSOLUTION may be the novel that establishes a whole sub-genre: The apocalyptic Modern Western.
The way we see it, CJ Box and Craig Johnson brought modern Wyoming fiction to the world, and while Joe Pickett and Walt Longmire solve some pretty tricky mysteries, Sam Delgado has to save civilization. And he may have to at the cost of his life!
It’s been a surprising and wonderful day here in Wyoming. We were just notified that we will be receiving the Owen Wister Award, which is the highest honor a Western writer can receive, and we will be inducted into the Western Writers of America Hall of Fame this summer.
It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be able to tell stories about the frontier and the people who, for over 20,000 years, have lived and died facing its challenges. Thanks to all of you for caring about their stories. We can’t do what we love without readers.
HAPPY FEBRUARY!Wyoming is just starting to see some days in the high 40s. Most of the snow has melted around the house, though the mountains are still white and beautiful. On the writing front, Mike is working on a screenplay for OUTPOST, his science fiction novel set in the Donovan universe. He’s having a grand […]
Dear Readers,December is a sacred time for us and around the world. In North America, many of the native peoples celebrate the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and the return of the sun the next day, which is their New Year’s Day. More ceremonies occur on December 24th and 25th. For example, […]
“The historical detail and vivid descriptions make this a fascinating and compelling read.” –Romantic Times BookReviewsI’m excited to see the FIRST HARDCOVER ever of my book, IT WAKES IN ME, which will be released on September 6th. The new cover is stunning and really captures the dangerous, seductive element of the leading character’s personality. I […]
Happy September!It’s a quiet beautiful day here in Wyoming. The aspens and cottonwoods just have their first touches of yellow, heralding the arrival of autumn a bit early, but it’s been a cool summer. We were just informed that we will be the recipients of the 2023 Frank Waters Award. “The Frank Waters Award stands […]
Hello Everyone,Yes, it’s been a stressful day today. Fans have been notifying us from around the world that their orders for RECKONING (coming in October) and THE ICE ORPHAN (coming in November) have been cancelled by retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others. This is one of those glitches that’s very frustrating for everyone […]
