Ice Castles and Drifters

A week of shoveling out from various winter storms and building an ice castle (inspired by FROZEN of course) for my daughter. Early mornings have been spent finishing up a Gideon Miles novella and giving a new look to The Drifter Detective series.

2/12/15 update: And STILL more white fluff ahead which makes my three-year-old pleased because her castle is becoming quite elaborate and now includes an opening at the top. She crawls up and sits on the snow-packed roof and surveys her vast kingdom which includes a nearby bird feeder and her grandpa plowing the road. And just checking Amazon all the Drifter Detective titles have been reorganized. I do like the new look. Hopefully it kicks the series in gear.

In Bloom

Photo of Amaryllis taken by my three-year-old daughter Ava.

Talking Twain

I'm at Macmillan's Criminal Element talking about Mark Twain. A sample:

Mark Twain (1835–1910) was never one to pull punches on politics, ethics, religion, slavery, or just about any cultural flashpoint, quite often leading public discourse on a number of weighty issues where his views, even today, still function as a moral compass. Twain approached each topic with wry humor, reminding us, “If you cannot have a whale's good opinion except at some sacrifice of principle or personal dignity, it is better to try to live without it. That is my idea about whales.”

At War

I'm waiting for white to move. This has been a hard fought battle though my opponent isn't out of the game yet. “Easy, you know, does it, son.”

False Memories

This article reminded me a bit of BLADE RUNNER's replicants created by the Tyrell Corporation. In particular, Rachel's implanted false memories. It seems, based on this piece, its just as easy a Jedi mind trick on flesh and blood.

How the West Was Written: Frontier Fiction, Vol. 2, 1907-1915 by Ron Scheer

During the years 1907–1915, frontier fiction boomed with new writers, and the success of Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) began to make itself felt in their work. That novel had made the bestseller lists for two years running. With the continued popularity of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, and the appearance of one-reeler westerns on movie screens, many featuring the adventures of Bronco Billy Anderson, the cowboy hero was becoming an established mythic figure in the public imagination.

For writers of popular fiction, the frontier was also a subject for exploring ideas drawn from current public discourse—ideas about character and villainy, women’s rights, romance and marriage, democracy and government, capitalism, race and social boundaries, and the West itself. With each new publication, they participated as well in an ongoing forum for how to write about the West and how to tell western stories. Taken together, the chapters of this book describe for modern-day readers and writers the origins of frontier fiction and the rich legacy it has left us as a genre. It is also a portal into the past, for it offers a history of ideas as preserved in popular culture of a century ago that continues to claim an audience today.

How the West Was Written: Frontier Fiction, Vol. 2, 1907-1915 by Ron Scheer is now available in print and Kindle formats.

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Praise for How the West Was Written: Vol. 1

“This is a splendid study of early western fiction, most of it written contemporaneously with the settlement of the American West. A surprising number of women authors are included among the sixty-some novels reviewed by the author. The book offers penetrating, rich, and lucid examinations of these early novels, and gives us a good understanding of where western fiction came from and how it has evolved. Highly recommended.”

—Richard S. Wheeler

Spur Award-winning author

“[Ron Scheer’s] scholarship is meticulous and the book is an enlightening contribution to American literature with this study of the Western, its roots and its themes. I’m proud to have it on my bookshelf. It’s unique in the canon, as far as I know.”

—Carol Buchanan

Spur Award-winning author

Sunrise Over The Mountain

1/18/2015. Photo by David Cranmer