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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 The book is out-of-sequence, moving the adventures to 1889, has all new historical content and will be available late summer.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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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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