Richard S. Wheeler's Blog, page 3
May 31, 2016
A Starred Review
This address will take you to the Booklist starred review of my new novel, Easy Pickings. I marvel that such a review would come along at my age:
http://www.booklistonline.com/Easy-Pi...
http://www.booklistonline.com/Easy-Pi...
May 30, 2016
A Salute
I wish to congratulate Peter Bowen on the occasion of his birthday. He has had some harrowing health troubles and has gotten past them, and has a bright future.
His first novel, Yellowstone Kelly, was successful and became the basis for a series. (I had worked for the small Midwestern company that published him, but left before Bowen's novel was published.) Later he developed a second series featuring an investigator named Gabriel Du Pre, a Metis from Montana, set in present times but nowhere identifiable. These stories are marvelously comic, culturally rich, and a delight to read. He took frontier fiction and detective fiction and turned them on their head, which is why he has an enthusiastic body of readers. Legend has it that he creates these novels in two weeks or so on an old Royal typewriter.
His roots are in journalism. He was a columnist for Forbes before he expanded into the world of fiction. He has contributed to western fiction, and I hope he will continue to do so for many years to come.
His first novel, Yellowstone Kelly, was successful and became the basis for a series. (I had worked for the small Midwestern company that published him, but left before Bowen's novel was published.) Later he developed a second series featuring an investigator named Gabriel Du Pre, a Metis from Montana, set in present times but nowhere identifiable. These stories are marvelously comic, culturally rich, and a delight to read. He took frontier fiction and detective fiction and turned them on their head, which is why he has an enthusiastic body of readers. Legend has it that he creates these novels in two weeks or so on an old Royal typewriter.
His roots are in journalism. He was a columnist for Forbes before he expanded into the world of fiction. He has contributed to western fiction, and I hope he will continue to do so for many years to come.
May 23, 2016
I opened a Facebook account and was deluged with hundreds of requests for friend status from people I've never heard of (plus a few I did know).
I was horrified. You don't make friends by pressing a button. Friendship is the result of companionship, working on things together, lunches, coffee, frequent contact. The whole Facebook thing is a fraud. I did learn that the word, friend, in Facebook language means approval. You approve of some stranger by asking to be a friend.
I decided I wanted to live in the real world, not this synthetic world of a social medium, so I've learned how to scrape away all those alleged friends. I'll leave the account open and think if I can put it so some legitimate use somehow, but it has me wondering about this country and the manipulators of its people.
As one of my real friends pointed out, if it's free, the product is you. Facebook and others would soon be monitoring my every taste and habit, to sell stuff to me or use me in some yet to be seen way.
I was horrified. You don't make friends by pressing a button. Friendship is the result of companionship, working on things together, lunches, coffee, frequent contact. The whole Facebook thing is a fraud. I did learn that the word, friend, in Facebook language means approval. You approve of some stranger by asking to be a friend.
I decided I wanted to live in the real world, not this synthetic world of a social medium, so I've learned how to scrape away all those alleged friends. I'll leave the account open and think if I can put it so some legitimate use somehow, but it has me wondering about this country and the manipulators of its people.
As one of my real friends pointed out, if it's free, the product is you. Facebook and others would soon be monitoring my every taste and habit, to sell stuff to me or use me in some yet to be seen way.
May 19, 2016
A Tender Goodbye
This was a memorable evening. We gathered from the four corners of the world to celebrate the life of Jim Harrison, with bountiful food, spirits, and memories, just as Jim would have wanted it. The celebrated and obscure from all the arts came to say goodbye to perhaps the finest poet, novelist, and gourmet of our times. My friend Marian Hjortsberg and I could not think of a proper word to describe the evening, so consider it a moment beyond language.
May 15, 2016
Loose Change
A while ago, Forge began reissuing my Skye's West novels as double mass-market paperbacks, selling at groceries and airports for ten bucks. Somehow, I hadn't heard about it, probably because of my own health troubles. But now the first checks are rolling in, and they are substantial. There are three doubles out, and two more are in the works, one in August and another next March. And they are not all Skye novels, either.
I had expected to write to age eighty, and then see my savings decline as age caught up with me, but these reissues will add several years to my writing life and extend the period when I make a living entirely from my fiction. I'm eighty-one now and the savings are still growing.
The reissues tell me that I still have a readership, even in old age, which is comforting.
So far, the fat doubles include Rendezvous and Dark Passage, The Far Tribes and Yellowstone, and Sun River and Bannack. In August, Snowbound and Eclipse will be published.
I had expected to write to age eighty, and then see my savings decline as age caught up with me, but these reissues will add several years to my writing life and extend the period when I make a living entirely from my fiction. I'm eighty-one now and the savings are still growing.
The reissues tell me that I still have a readership, even in old age, which is comforting.
So far, the fat doubles include Rendezvous and Dark Passage, The Far Tribes and Yellowstone, and Sun River and Bannack. In August, Snowbound and Eclipse will be published.
April 28, 2016
Starred Review
My new novel, Easy Pickings, out in May, has received a starred review from Booklist, the publication of the American Library Association.
April 21, 2016
Omnibus
Forge has informed me that an omnibus edition of Snowbound and Eclipse will appear as a mass-market paperback on August 2, for ten bucks.
The two novels fit together nicely. One deals with John Charles Fremont, and the other about Lewis and Clark after they return. Both novels were well reviewed and I regard them as some of my best historical fiction.
It's hard for me to write now, so I am grateful to my publishers to keep my books alive, and bring in a little royalty income.
The two novels fit together nicely. One deals with John Charles Fremont, and the other about Lewis and Clark after they return. Both novels were well reviewed and I regard them as some of my best historical fiction.
It's hard for me to write now, so I am grateful to my publishers to keep my books alive, and bring in a little royalty income.
April 4, 2016
Jackets
I received the jackets for my next novel, Easy Pickings, today. Forge has created an attractive cover. You can see it on Amazon. This is the first genre western I've published in a long while, and we will see how it goes. Pubdate is May 10.
April 3, 2016
North by Northwest
My thoughts have been upon one of the greatest films ever made, Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 masterpiece North By Northwest. Somehow, it touches every feeling and sensibility I possess. Certainly Bernard Herrman's themes are a large part of it. But so is the taut story, or that mesmerizing actress Eva Marie Saint, or that melancholy genius James Mason. I have watched it several times, and for some reason find myself, know myself, better after each viewing.
April 1, 2016
Deep Loss
Livingston is feeling the deepest loss I have ever experienced here. People knew and loved Jim Harrison, and revered his work. His death was coast-to-coast front-page news, and even now, the remembrances flood home. He was that rare writer, admired for his literary skills, but also a great storyteller, enjoyed by those who prefer popular fiction. And a tender poet, too.
The world is smaller now.
The world is smaller now.
