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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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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…
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Writing place-based fiction
Author Katie Schultz has some interesting thoughts about writing “place-based fiction” in an energetic blog called “The Writing Life.” I stumbled on them, and her, while wondering if there were other people who enjoyed setting their fictional stories in actual places. Clearly, of course, there are. Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Steinbeck should have come immediately to mind, Faulkner too as these writers were a staple in my middle and high school years. (I confess a fondness for pulpier novels nowadays, particularly Florida fiction writers Carl Hiaasen, Randy White and (gulp) Tim Dorsey, but that’s another post.) It’s just that I get so excited at times writing about people’s actual stories and places in the context of my make-believe ones that it never occurs to me that doing so is “burnt-over ground,” so to speak. Schultz, who is a mentor to writers far and wide, describes her process simply. She buys maps, borrows library books, then pins what she’s learned about a particular place on butcher paper before actually visiting. At least that’s my take of the February 2011 piece I found while Google-searching the words “place-based fiction.” Her approach initially sounded sort of old-school, given what’s available on-line. I’d have no more idea where to buy a map than a home-made candy bar nowadays, though I do have a personal librarian who is an absolute peach in getting me what I need for W. W. Ronin’s next adventure. The more I thought about it however, the more I realized I was doing nearly the same thing when writing W. W. Ronin Westerns. My historical fiction books–the Ronin series of Westerns–are set in northern Nevada. And each of them is the benefit of hundreds of dollars of books, many of them out of print, personal visits and interviews, too. The first three books put me on a four-wheeler in the mountains above Carson City in order to get a good look at what used to be the old Bigler Toll Road, from Carson City to Lake Tahoe. A couple of days later, I tipped a man $20 to take a twenty-minute peek at the supposedly haunted remains of an old social club in Virginia City. More so, I’m the only person I know who has ever been in the basement of Bowers Mansion. All in a day’s work, so to speak. I’m working on the sixth and seventh in the series now. The fifth is with my editor, who is crazy enough to actually read my books in the raw. She sleeps with me, too. I’m that lucky. Read more…
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