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.

The new editions of the Anasazi Mysteries Are Coming!!!

The Visitant, Summoning God, and Bone Walker are some of our fans favorite books (and ours, too). Ever since turning the last page of Bone Walker people have been asking for more of Dusty and Maureen. 

Now, for the first time in twenty years, the Anasazi Mystery Series is being reissued in a 6-book set! Each book is available for about half the price of an ordinary e-book. And, for the first time, it’s being released in digital format! Now you can read the books on your phone, Kindle, or computer!

Who were the Anasazi?

They are the ancestors of the modern Puebloan peoples, more accurately called “Ancestral Puebloans.” In the 11^th, 12^th, and 13^th centuries, they built huge stone pueblos in the Four Corners region, and Chaco Canyon was the center of their empire. The Visitant, Summoning God, and Bone Walker are set in the mid 1200s, in the period we call Pueblo 3, or P3 for short. Chaco has fallen, the Mesa Verdean peoples are evacuating the San Juan Basin. It is a time of war, and the archaeological record is rife with evidence of brutal killings, torture, famine, disease, and even cannibalism.

The Story

In the thirteenth century, a small population is hanging on in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Among them are the “Katsina’s People” followers of a new religion based on Spirit beings that today we call the Kachinas. They seek to restore the world by locating and ritually renewing the great kiva where the First People entered this final Fourth World from underworlds below. All is going well, until women begin disappearing, and each is found brutally murdered.  It falls to War Chief Browser, his deputy Catkin, and Old Stone Ghost, to protect the Katsina’s people from the diabolical murderer, who may be a legendary witch named Two Hearts.

LOOKING FORWARD TO FALL? HERE’S WHAT’S ON TAP FOR GEAR BOOKS!

We hope this finds you all well, reading in health, and recovering from a summer that has spawned smiles and remarkable memories. That’s certainly been the case for us. Our memorable summer started with the Frank Waters Award for contributions to Western literature, followed by Kathleen’s Spur Award in short fiction from the Western Writers of America for her “No Quarter” short story in the Rebel Hearts anthology. “No Quarter” ended up garnering a finalist position in short fiction from the Western Fictioneers. And, as of this writing, remains a finalist for short fiction in the Will Rogers Medallion Awards. We’ll discover if it’s the winner at the awards banquet in Fort Worth this October.

And, of course, Kathleen was inducted into the Colorado Authors’ Hall of Fame on September 11^th, which makes her fourth “Hall of Fame” induction! Some say Michael married well.

In between events we have been working nonstop on the reissue of older, previously out-of-print books. Doesn’t matter that it’s a reissue. Scanning from the original hardback introduces all kinds of new errors, typos, weird formatting issues, and the like. We have to think up creative new titles, where to break books into separate volumes, cover design, and catalog copy. It gives us a chance to go through and add another layer of polish to the story.

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

The release of Michael's "Saga of the Mountain Sage" in Four volumes!

...But what does it all mean?

Greetings, all!  

June rolled down on top of us like a wave!  You'd think, after all, June usually follows May. But this year, somehow, June 1st smacked us out of the blue! One day, it was just sometime in May, and then, wham! When did that happen?

It's been a wonderous, fantastic, wet and rainy spring here in northwestern Wyoming. The greenest spring we can remember. Better even than 1979, 1987, and 1996! The country looks like Ireland. That kind of eye-popping green! The grass is thick and seeding out nicely. Lots of subsurface moisture, but we're wondering how the hay producers are coping. It's nice to grow lots of lush and magnificent grass and alfalfa, but you need warm dry conditions to cut it, dry it, and bale it. Since we're on the cusp of first cutting, we hope they get a break in the precipitation.