Robert Collins's Blog

I spent Memorial Day weekend in Kansas City for ConQuest 43. It was a great convention!

First off, I sold about as many books this year as last year. Unlike last year, my spot was right up front. I didn't catch the eye of everyone who passed in front of me, but I did fine.

Also unlike last year, I signed up for some panels. My Friday panel was about cancelled TV shows. I don't know why I was

Here's my latest!

Spook Wagon: An ex-girlfriend of Gwen Conner’s brother asks for help. Her hometown wants to build a power plant, but a ghostly wagon has the town on edge. Who’s behind the wagon? Are they trying to stop the project?

And here's a free story...

The Best Days: A young man visits a local historical museum to see if he can learn more about his father. What will he find? How

I have more short story ebooks on sale!

The “Affair” of the Love Letters: A woman who once loved an up-and-coming politician asks for Gwen Conner’s help. Someone is trying to get the letters he wrote to the woman, and doesn’t want to take “no” for an answer.

Protection for a New Age: Four friends are asked to recover a strange object from an ancient ruin. One of them finds she can read a

This time around I want to post about how I use my iPad. Today's topic is an app: Flipboard. Click the link to learn more about it.

I'm using Flipboard in part to follow the news. I check a few times a day to keep up on local news, national news, entertainment news, and Apple news. I also look in on a Flickr feed of Kansas images, and Kansas Memory for Kansas Historical Society images.

If

The weekend of April 13-15 I was up in Lincoln, Nebraska, for ConStellation 3. This was my first con of 2012, my first time at ConStellation, and the first time I had been to Lincoln in something like 4 decades.

I had a great time at the con. I met GOH Elizabeth Bear; she signed my copy of Chicks Dig Time Lords. I also met another Kansas SF author, Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I was able to talk

A few updates...

I've added images for the short story ebooks that I now have out. The one shown above, "Protection for a New Age," will be going up this week. I've started uploading my Gwen Conner fantasy/mystery stories. I'll be doing that for several months. I've also uploaded two Frigate Victory stories; these will be the last to go up for some time.

In other Victory news, a collection

On Saturday, March 31, I took part in the Cow Creek Book Festival. It was put on by the Hutchinson Public Library.

(Pictured is Roy Bird, author of many Kansas books, including a new one on Ike's boyhood in Abilene. Next to him is Beverley Olson Buller, author of children's books about William Allen White and his daughter Mary White.)

I gave a brief talk about how readers can help authors.

On Sunday, March 18, I spoke at the Halstead Historical Museum (at the old Santa Fe depot). I spent much of my time talking about my Kansas, 1874 book. Most of the questions that came after my talk were about the Arkansas Valley Interurban. The AVI was the trolley line that connected Wichita, Newton, and Hutchinson. The AVI ran a block south of the depot, and the Halstead AVI depot still

On Wednesday the 29th, I had a book talk at the Miami County Historical Museum in Paola, Kansas.

On the way up I made a few stops. I placed copies of the new Lisa's Way at Town Crier Books in Emporia. I gave a copy of Pieces of Kansas History to the Kansas State Historical Society. The KSHS wasn't able to take my donation of part of my clippings collection. These are the clippings of

Sorry I let so much time go between posts, but I had a cold this past month. I'm better now.

I wanted to let you know that my new nonfiction history book, Pieces of Kansas History, is now available. What is it about? Here's part of the back cover blurb:

"This is the second collection of historical articles by Robert Collins. In this volume is the story of the Luke Short and the "Dodge City