-
The Presbyterian church
The old door shook. It wasn’t his intent to harm anything. Fact is, the once-reverend W. W. Ronin wouldn’t think of making light of the buildings that had given him succor over the years—initially in Greensboro, Pennsylvania where he was in training, and later in Wichita, Kansas as the second rector of the St. John’s Episcopal Church, when it was still made out of logs and situated between the confluence of two sometimes over-flowing rivers. There was still something sacred about religious places, even if he didn’t embrace the faith they sometimes contained. The church wasn’t just about “the people,” as he used to say while preaching, one hand on the lectionary, the other searching for a Bible in the event his people asked an unexpected question or two over the meal that many times followed services. Church was the building, too, though he didn’t understand that at the time. He lifted his knee up to his chest and pushed again, the bottom of his foot—the ball, actually, not the heel as it dissipated too much force to use his boot that way—and the old wooden doors, crafted from pine planks harvested in the Sierra mountains, just up the Kings Canyon toll road he figured not that it mattered, splintered into pieces like the old man’s leg caught under the wheel of an errant coach from Benton’s Livery on Carson Street last week. The door swung back and forth, its lock shattered, shards of it rolling lifelessly across the entry way of the building, erected in 1861, before Nevada was even a state. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain’s) brother, Orion and his wife Molly attended there, though Clemens was now dead, having died a year ago, about the same time he began to wonder if there was anything real at all to the Protestant convictions he once proffered as an Episcopal priest on the American frontier. He dumped the shorter of his two Colt handguns over the back of his holster, until it was level, and then slowly extended it forward into the midnight darkness of Nevada’s oldest sanctuary, as long as you didn’t count the Mormon meeting place in Genoa, or the Catholic church which was actually finished before the Presbyterians were, though the Calvinists had started earlier but ran out of money. Read more…
-
25 most popular Western movies
Asking people what their favorite Western movies are produces an interesting list, at best. I did that in February on my Facebook author’s page, and soon learned that if I wanted a statistical sampling I’d have to ask the question more carefully. Some folks responded with their favorite books. Others didn’t distinguish between multiple versions of the same story. Nearly everyone assumed that someone else’s mention of a film meant they didn’t need to mention it again. By way of reporting, 3104 people saw the post. A much smaller sample, 65 people, voted. Some folks voted multiple times. Three actors were mentioned by name—Errol Flynn, John Wayne (most often) and Clint Eastwood. The result was an enthusiastic list of “gotta see” films. Tombstone, with nine people reporting, and True Grit with eight, were the most popular. Here are the multiple winners: Tombstone (9), True Grit (8), Jeremiah Johnson (4), Lonesome Dove (4), Open Range (4), Searchers (4), Shane (4), 3:10 to Yuma (3), Blazing Saddles (3), Good, Bad and the Ugly (3), Monte Walsh (3), My Name is Nobody (3), Once Upon a Time in the West (3), Silverado (3), The Outlaw Josey Wales (3), The Shootist (3), Unforgiven (3), Winchester ’73 (3), Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (2), Cat Ballou (2), Conagher (2), Hang ‘Em High (2), High Plains Drifter (2), Magnificent Seven (2), Pale Rider (2), Quigley Down Under (2) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (2). Here are the single mentions: Big Jake, Broken Arrow, Broken Trail, Dances With Wolves, Dodge City, Duck You Sucker, Fistful of Dollars, Fort Apache, Heaven’s Gate, High Country, High Noon, Hombre, Judge Leroy Bean, McClintock, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Paint Your Wagon, Red River, Red Sun, Return to Lonesome Dove, Rio Bravo, Rio Grande, Shanghai Noon, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Sons of Katie Elder, Stagecoach, Support Your Local Sheriff, The Cowboys, They Died With Their Boots On, Verz Cruz, Virginia City, War Wagon, Wild Bill, Wild Wild West, Wyatt Earp and Young Guns. Read more…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
“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…