Hello and Happy August!
It’s been a cool and rainy summer in northern Wyoming. We are enjoying each drop of rain.
We remember well the terrible drought of the early 2000s where the ranch got only five inches of rain each year. It was immensely sad to watch the bison pawing for water in the areas where springs had dried up. They had water in their stock tanks, but they remembered where the springs used to run and, we suspect, could smell water running deep in the earth. Our hearts go out to all the ranchers and farmers struggling to make it through this year. We pray that Buffalo Above brings abundant snow this winter to help the grasses and crops next spring.
This has been an interesting summer for us.
As we told you in our last Newsletter, at the first of June we were honored to receive the Frank Waters Award, then at the end of June, Kathleen’s short story, “No Quarter,” published in the REBEL HEARTS ANTHOLOGY, won the Spur Award for the Best Short Fiction of the Year. That story, which about two slaves in the Alamo, is also a finalist for the Will Rogers Medallion Award, which will be announced in Fort Worth in October. If you’d like to attend, tickets can be obtained at:https://www.willrogersmedallionaward.net/award-ceremony
Also in June, Kathleen’s book, THE ICE GHOST, won the International Book Award for Best Young Adult Novel of the Year, and Mike’s book, FOURTH QUADRANT, won the International Book Award for Best Mystery/Thriller of the Year. His book, ALPHA ENIGMA was a finalist in the science fiction category. Two of our dear friends, Heather Graham and Jon Land, won in that category with an outstanding book. We send them our hearty congratulations!
We also learned that Kathleen will be inducted into the Colorado Authors’ Hall of Fame on September 11th at the Doubletree Hotel Denver Tech Center. It’s a huge honor. We’d love to see you all there for this special gala event. Tickets can be obtained at: ColoradoAuthorsHallOfFame.org. And Media requests should be addressed to Judith Briles at:
On the book front!
Mike’s quartet, “Saga of the Mountain Sage,” which includes THE MORNING RIVER, WHITE MIST DOG, PANTHER’S SCREAM, and COYOTE SUMMER, has been in the top ten on several Amazon’s bestsellers’ lists for over two months straight. It’s always fun to see books being introduced to new audiences and discovering that they love them. Reading styles have changed in the last 30 years. Today, people demand shorter books for a lower price. That’s why the original duology was split into four books. You can read each for less than half the price of the original, and if you want the rest, you can easily order it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to order the rest of the book. With these four books, readership keeps going up! It’s especially gratifying to see Millennials and Gen Z discovering and enjoying great historical fiction.
Get the Saga of the Mountain Sage Books
We are both busy correcting page proofs for the new editions of the Anasazi Mysteries. Coming soon!
We are excited about these new editions. They have spectacular covers and we’ve updated the archaeological information to make sure our readers are getting the best archaeological reconstructions that we can provide. The information changes literally every day, so the update is necessary. And it’s just plain fun to revise these books, which are some of our personal favorites. As with the Saga of the Mountain Sage, the trilogy will be broken into six books and the prices lowered to allow more people to access the series. We’ll let you know when the covers have been finalized.
The new editions will be released starting the first week of October, and then every two weeks. The first five books are entitled: THE VISITANT, WHERE THE BASILISK DREAMS, THE SUMMONING GOD, THE TWO HEARTED, and BONE WALKER. We are still working with the publisher on the title for the sixth book in the series. When we have the finalized covers, and the last title we will let you know!
We hope the rest of your summer is beautiful and filled with family and friends.
Best Regards,
Michael and Kathleen