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3 Ronin books and a detective novella in 2015
This will be a banner year for me. Two Bears Books will publish three more Westerns—Home Means Nevada, Bathhouse Row and The Mountain Is Easy. The publication of Home Means Nevada finishes the core books in the W. W. Ronin Western series, introducing the characters and establishing the history and time period. The first five books are written as an easy to read “third person” narrative, placed in 1880s Lake Tahoe, Reno, Virginia City and Carson City, Nevada. About book five: When Genoa farmer Orrin Hickman decides to resurrect the Mormon militia group the Danites to settle some long-standing accounts, an old curse threatens fire and floods on the people of northern Nevada. Ex-priest and Pinkerton Detective, W. W. Ronin finds his heart broken and his hands full and guns blazing as a returning husband complicates his personal life and prison-breaking felons join the “rising tide” of Latter Day Saint hit men in the fifth of the W. W. Ronin adventures, Home Means Nevada. Home Means Nevada defines place-based fiction, where real people and real places become the setting for hauntingly real human adventures. Home Means Nevada takes place in Carson City, Genoa and Gardnerville, Nevada, and tells the true story of what happens when religious dreams meet present-day realities among Nevada’s earliest settlers. A full-length piece of historical fiction, Home Means Nevada should be available in April. Bathhouse Row re-launches the W. W. Ronin epic. Written in a more active style, “darker and deadlier than ever,” my beta-readers say you’ll love Bathhouse Row! I’ve set the “first person” tale of murder and intrigue amidst four well-known northern Nevada hot springs—Steamboat, Carson, Genoa (Wally’s) and Markleeville (Grover’s). The book is out-of-sequence, moving the adventures to 1889, has all new historical content and will be available late summer. The Mountain Is Easy pretends to be a long lost W. W. Ronin journal, recently found under my bed, dating to 1901. Ronin, settled down at Lake Tahoe, having just turned fifty. Be prepared to find out what happened to some of the series’ regulars as Ronin considers retirement… You can download the first six chapters of The Mountain Is Easy by simply signing-up for this site’s newsletter. I’ll send it to you FREE, as a PDF file. You’ll be surprised to hear that I have a 21st century detective novella in the works, too. Read more…
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The Honorable Howard Hickson
He’d probably blush, hearing that such a distinguished title had been tossed his direction. But as an historical fiction writer currently focused on Nevada in the 1880s, I want to give this distinguished Nevada historian a “full salute,” as some say. Howard Hickson’s work has benefited me each time I’ve researched a novel. He’s deepened my understanding of Nevada’s people and places. Director Emeritus of the Northeastern Nevada Museum in Elko, he’s been long retired. In a brief e-mail exchange this evening–thank you, Howard, you were kind to respond–he told me he was no longer involved in research. All the more reason for the rest of us to get busy I suppose. I’m currently most fond of Mint Mark: CC – A History of the U.S. Mint in Carson City. I just received a copy of the 1972 paperback in Oregon this morning. I finished it before breakfast and later found myself bragging to friends about things I’d been hoping to find out for a long time. Some of what I learned from Howard’s life-long involvement in Nevada history will no doubt be included in my seventh narrative in the W. W. Ronin series of Westerns, Bathhouse Row. For example, his 2002 book, Elko, One of the Last Frontiers of the Old West, was an extraordinary boost to my research for books three and four, The Pinkerton Years and True Believer. A resident of an assisted care facility in Elko, Nevada, you can find some of what Howard has written here. Savor it. I’ve bumped into a few of Nevada’s best over the years. In the late 80s and early 90s, the late Vic Goodwin and I used to have lunch together at the Ormsby House Rotary meeting. Also gone, Willa Oldham and I sat more than a few times in her living room discussing books and writing. Both of these dear saints were members of the First Presbyterian Church in Carson City, where I was pastor. Hell, even Ron James sold me a trumpet once. Now there’s a saint for sure, and he keeps on giving. Howard, and the rest of you for that matter, I don’t use this language often–my character, the former reverend W. W. Ronin even less so. But you and your writing have blessed me. A profound thank you. Read more…
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March 28 at the Three Mugs Brewery, Hillsboro
We’ll be at the Three Mugs Brewery in Hillsboro on March 28 in the evening. You can expect four or five local authors reading, a delightful selection of beer, and Momos is happy to bring you some Hawaiian food to complement the evening. This is a nice event and we thoroughly enjoyed our selves last year. There was a rich variety of books–fisherman poetry from the Oregon coast (never heard of that, but wow), gonzo fiction (adults only, please), and a nice selection of fiction. Come early. Last year, the place was packed. Or head back to this site as we get closer to the date to get the exact names and times of people participating. Local author April Aasheim is hosting the event this year. April is on a number of best seller lists on Amazon and we’re thrilled to have her there. Read more…
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Are we done with print?
I had a great time in college. Not in the sense that you might imagine. I didn’t drink. I didn’t party. And I never inhaled. Truth be told, I never put a fatty, as tokes were called in those days, to my lips. My wife Nancy says I spent a lot of time in church. Fact is, I read a lot of books and enjoyed learning. I know, I know, Gregg’s a square peg in an even squarer hole. I guess that’s true. But given the chance to do things over again, I doubt I’d do it any differently. For instance, I lived most of my first year as a music major at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania. I spent a second year of undergraduate study in philosophy and religion. At Drexel University for years three and four, I majored in social psychology. If I had a minor, it was focusing on future studies, with the amazing Art Shostak. The upshot at my age is a liberal arts-educated bald old guy who’s generally up-to-date. Take the issue of books, for instance. You probably didn’t know there was an issue, right? I’ve got maybe 75 boxes of paper-based books sitting on shelves in my home. There were more, before I started getting rid of them. They make up what’s left of a professional library. Twenty-four years a Protestant pastor and easily another six years ramping up to that adds up to someone who used to buy books like an addict buys drugs or alcohol. And you know, people aren’t reading the same anymore. I still spend hundreds of dollars a year on books, but they’re mostly e-books, and they live on my Kindle. There’s the rub. I think people are into video nowadays, even if the computer, tablet or e-book reader is only showing them scribbled words. “There are no pictures in this,” a work friend recently complained when I handed him a copy of East Jesus, Nevada, my first novel. “Really?” I wanted to say. Jesus. So listen, it’s time to wake up, here on The Writers Edge. It’s time to hear the sirens and warning bells, and pay attention to the blinking lights. There are no cuneiform tablets anymore. We’ve learned to spell out our words instead of pressing sharp sticks into clay to make pictures. And nobody uses papyrus rolls, even the Egyptians. Read more…
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Gregg Townsley thumbing fast in Watkins,CO
I’d love to think that my performance in this video of a World Fast Draw championship in Watkins, Colorado, was fast. Fact is, world-class shooters–of which I am not–regularly draw and fire in under 3/10s of a second. I only occasionally get there. But the video shows some of the understanding I have, and the research I do, when writing the W. W. Ronin series of Westerns. I own the weapon or have fired it. I’ve been to the mountain, lake or pass I’m writing about. I’ve thrown the kick, or punched the punch, or shared that kind of dialogue in a real church setting. I’m not boasting, I’m just saying. If you’re going to spend your hard-earned dollars on fiction of any sort–historical fiction included, which is what I like to write–do it on a book you can enjoy and with an author you can trust. Thank you for considering some of mine. Read more…
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About the Author
Gregg Edwards Townsley is a reflective, free-thinking ex-pastor, martial artist, writer and Western Fast Draw enthusiast living in St. Helens, Oregon. No stranger to the places his Western characters inhabit–Reno, Carson City, Virginia City and Lake Tahoe–he raised his children in northern Nevada, from 1984 through 1993, while serving as pastor and head of staff of the First Presbyterian Church in Carson City. Prior to living in Nevada, he made his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Penns Grove, New Jersey, “a veritable fountain,” he says, of people and places he likes to visit in his Tommy Valentine, PI series of short stories. Townsley is a member of the Western Writers of America. His wife, Nancy, is also a writer and the managing editor of the Hillsboro Tribune and Forest Grove News Times. Read more…
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W. W. Ronin video
I’ve got to tell you, my friend Bill Fogle is a peach of a guy. I was his youth pastor many, many moons ago at a small church in Pennsylvania whose future had been bisected by a busy four-lane north and south highway. The highway is probably bigger by now, given that it feeds the Valley Forge National Historic Park. I’m sure the Port Kennedy Presbyterian Church is not. Geography has a way of limiting growth. As the community goes, generally so do the organizations and institutions in it. But Bill Fogle has hung in there, or his affection for me anyway. I hadn’t seen the boy in more than 40 years–I don’t want to count them, I’m sure it would be too painful. But there he was, a friend of a friend on Facebook–all bubbly and handsome, an accomplished writer, artist and videographer. I wrote him and he remembered me. The rest is, well, a delightful long-distance relationship that, I hope, will result in even more poignant memories than his sitting at my young ministerial feet assuming that I had something to say. I should note too that the above video is his work. Produced when there were just three books in the W. W. Ronin series of Westerns–there are five now, four you can buy and many more on the way–Bill volunteered to make it. It is a testimony of our friendship, I guess, and a window into the soul of a very beautiful man. It’s a good introduction, too, to what I’m trying to do with historical fiction in the W. W. Ronin series of Westerns, set in and about Nevada at the close of the 19th century. There are six of them now, available with my other books and short stories, HERE. Bill, please hear once more my deep and abiding appreciation. I love being your friend. And while we’re at it, here’s a LINK to Bill Fogle’s website. It’s beautiful, too. Read more…
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“Social proof”
I think the term is “social proof.” It’s the currency of on-line marketing nowadays. When my wife and I owned martial arts studios in Hillsboro and Sherwood, it was the difference between my saying something about our program and someone else saying the same thing. For instance, with a financial partner and another martial arts friend, Nancy and I set-up Oregon’s first transported after-school martial arts program. We had a couple of 15-passenger vans–a friend of mine recently called them “death traps”–a 3,000 square foot studio near a well known restaurant and highway, and lots of experience and talent in programming for children and youth. We ran 14 weeks of summer camp the first year, in addition to the usual martial arts classes for children, youth and adults. During the school year, we picked up kids from a dozen or more Washington County elementary and middle schools, keeping everyone busy and safe until parents finished up at work. A person has to have a little bit of skill to do that sort of thing. But telling you that wouldn’t persuade you to hand me $400-500 a month, would it? Not if I asked you to sign a contract, right? That’s where “social proof” comes in. A couple of letters, maybe a video or two of parents swearing that we hadn’t damaged their children, and a razzle-dazzle website of studio pictures that screams “you or your child can be the next Bruce Lee” puts it all together. Or helps to. I’m writing about social proof on an author site because you need to know that Two Bears Books isn’t selling you the usual pablum of insipid intellectual and entertainment fare many Westerns are made of. I’ve been to most of these places (see the real Bucket of Blood Saloon above). I’ve lived in some of the places I write about. I’ve shot the guns, thrown the punches and weathered the sometimes complex relationships my characters find themselves in. Have I told you that well-known Western author, Louis L’Amour, once wasted two-hours of my life? Not that I knew him of course, and I appreciate Louis L’Amour’s Westerns as much as the next guy. But in one of his books, L’Amour placed cold beer on the Comstock (the gold and silver strikes in Nevada) in a time and place cold beer wasn’t. And the editor of my first book caught me parroting that less-than-fact. I’m just saying, a reader has to be careful nowadays. Read more…