A Short Vacation into the Long Past

Nearly a decade ago, this profile of me was published in True West Magazine. I recently came across it when moving my office files from my farm outside Kansas City to my present, now full-time, home in Colorado. The interview reflects my writing life as I viewed it in early 2003.

I read it over and was mildly surprised that I would probably answer many of the reviewer's questions exactly the same way today. I still love historical research, it is still one of the main reasons I love to write, and I still believe that America's ideas about the West--whether true or myth or something in-between--define much of our national character.

By the way, the novel referred to in the article as "The Eye Dazzler" was re-titled before its publication to become, The Second Glass of Absinthe. And my first horse, Solomon Spring, also mentioned below, is still in the family. He is now cared for  by my daughter-in-law, who is studying to become a veterinarian. Final declaimer: My hair is no longer brunette!

Are Bloggers the New Gatekeepers?

Read the first chapter online

This week, I was interviewed by Jane Friedman on her Writers Digest Blog, "There Are No Rules."  The title of the interview is "Are Bloggers the New Gatekeepers in Publishing?"


Please stop by and give it a look. In it I discuss my recent self-publishing venture involving my 2001 novel, An Uncommon Enemy. Those who have been following my progress on this project will already know how a review and excerpt of the novel on the Kindle Nation blog sent sales of the ebook soaring into the bestseller range a few weeks ago. 


An Uncommon Enemy's success stands in contrast to the sales figures for its sequel, The Second Glass of Absinthe, published as an ebook and a mass market paperback by Macmillan the same week. How does a self-published book out-sell its New York-published counterpart?


Price may be one factor. Enemy's list price on Amazon is $2.99.  Absinthe retails at $7.99. That's a hefty price differential.  Still, the decisive difference may be that I, as the publisher, took the trouble to increase my book's exposure to the reading public.  No one can buy a book if they don't know it exists.

I want to thank Jane Friedman for the opportunity to share my views and my experiences on this interesting new topic of digital publishing. Her blog is filled with the latest information on all aspects of publishing today. I am now a regular reader and believe writers can learn valuable information on all aspects of the trade. Be sure to visit There Are No Rules. 


And STAY TUNED...the trade paperback version of An Uncommon Enemy is in the works.

The New Life of AN UNCOMMON ENEMY

A few weeks ago, I re-published my 2001 novel, AN UNCOMMON ENEMY.  Originally published (and nearly forgotten) in the tragic week following September 11^th, I believed the story deserved a second chance. The moral and political controversies raised after Custer’s attack on a peaceful Cheyenne camp on the Washita in 1868 were not so different from the questions faced by America in the wake of 9/11. I felt the issues posed still resonate, so I hoped the book might somehow find a new readership. 

I never imagined what would take place last Thursday night.

Kindle Nation, a blog for Kindle users, favorably reviewed the novel and posted its first chapter online. Within hours, the Amazon sales ranking jumped from #124,000th to #127th in the Kindle store.  By the next morning, AN UNCOMMON ENEMY was the #1 Western novel across ALL formats on Amazon, paper or pixel.  Number One!  The raw power of a single very influential blog to move an otherwise forgotten novel in this totally-new publishing landscape is striking. 

I also learned another lesson.  Bookstores--and the publishing industry itself--tend to force all books into narrow genres and all readers down narrow aisles.   Bloggers need not follow such dictates or conventions, and can allow their readers to self-sort their book selections without restriction.  The Kindle Nation blog, for instance, is ecumenically focused on all Kindle readers, regardless of book genre.  Think of the effect this had on my sales when Stephen Windwalker, of Kindle Nation, summed my book up this way: 

"If it weren't for my efforts to be genre-agnostic, I probably would not have gotten hooked on this novel. But the fact is that it can't be pigeon-holed in a genre; it's just a great story, well told, with totally unexpected, astonishingly well-imagined characters."

Kindle readers, who might never walk down the Western aisle of a Barnes and Noble, or read a western-themed magazine reviewing books of interest, were instantly exposed to my cross-genre novel.  (Which is more a general “historical novel” than a true “Western.”) For a brief moment, it did not have to compete for their attention with 120,000 other volumes lining the shelves and capping the ends of any bookstore.  

Bottom line: AN UNCOMMON ENEMY found an uncommon friend, for which I am very grateful.