Rod Miller's Blog, page 4

Luck of the draw.

In myyouth I could draw a little and for years harbored dreams of becoming acommercial artist. But I lacked the patience required to be good at it.However, I would still draw sketchy cartoons and other drawings on occasion andthat came in handy at times. As you might imagine, cowboys were most often thesubjects of my scribbles. I have included a few examples tucked away from mycollege days.

First is asmall-space teaser ad for an upcoming Utah State University rodeo, and a laterad for the same. (Those two are from photocopies using ancient 1970s technologyso are rougher than the originals.)

Thereasons escape me, but the Weber State College and Brigham Young Universityrodeo teams asked my assistance, and I made a cover for the WSC rodeo programand a handbill for the BYU rodeo.

Thesignature on the illustrations reads “Mini” which is another story. When Ishowed up at USU way back then I was considerably smaller than I am now, andone of the Rounders there—Marlow Carrol, if memory serves—dubbed me the “MiniCowboy” so “Mini” was how I was known for several years.

Ieventually outgrew the appellation in more ways than one.

 

Time.

This is aleap year. Leap years come around every four years to keep our calendar more orless harnessed to the sun in its travels. February, being the shortest month onthe calendar, gets the advantage of leap year with the addition of an extraday. Tomorrow is that day—February 29.

I oftenhear people say they don’t have time. That there aren’t enough hours in a dayor days in a week or weeks in a month…and so on, to do something they want todo.

Well, ifyou’re one of those people, you’re in luck.

Tomorrowis an extra day. A day added to your calendar to give you 24 free hours to dowhatever it is you haven’t had time for. A whole day. An entire day tailor madefor reading that book. Or writing that story. Or that poem. Or whatever hasbeen nagging at you, but which somehow always falls victim to the lack of time.

The timeis now. Get ready to get up in the morning and get it done. 

At leastget it started, and don’t worry if you don’t get it done. There’s anothertomorrow, another 24 hours, waiting. The truth is, you’ve got all the timethere is. And you won’t be getting any more of it—at least until the next leapyear, in 2028. Don’t wait.

OUTLAWMAN

Thehistory of the Old West is rife with notorious outlaws. Likewise, famous lawmen.But there were a few who, at one time or another, wore both hats, black andwhite. One such was a Utah cowboy born Erastus Christiansen (with various spellings)but known in his day and in history as Matt Warner.

Warner setout on the outlaw trail at an early age. He rustled cattle, stole horses, andgraduated to robbing banks and other crimes. He was schooled in the dark artsby his brother-in-law Tom McCarty, and the two of them served as mentors of asort to the notorious bandit who would become Butch Cassidy. Warner was, in aword, an outlaw.

But, laterin life, Warner switched his black hat for a white hat and served as a justiceof the peace and deputy sheriff for several years. In other words, a lawman.

Put thosewords together and you have a perfect description of Warner: OUTLAWMAN.

His storyis told, in fictional form, in OUTLAWMAN: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MATT WARNER,coming soon in paperback and eBook from Speaking Volumes. The tale is basedlargely on Warner’s own chronicle of his life as spelled out in The Last ofthe Bandit Riders, as well as other sources, and told in a unique andsurprising way.

OUTLAWMAN.Coming soon. Watch for it.

Speed of sound.

Awriter friend and I were talking a while back. He mentioned a book he had readin which a character under fire heard a bullet strike a tree, then heard thereport of the rifle. My friend suggested this was unlikely, as the speed of soundis much greater than that of the bullets of the era—the Old West.

Idisagreed, and we left it at that.

However,curiosity got the best of me, so I thought I’d do what they tell you to do onSesame Street: “Look it up.” It took a few hours and lots of mouse clicks toreach a number of relevant web sites. Here’s what I learned about the speed ofsound and the velocity of bullets fired from a few rifles in common use at thetime in question.

Soundtravels through the air at 1,125 feet per second. That varies somewhat,affected by temperature, humidity, and wind. And, of course, sound wavesdissipate and the noise fades with distance. The velocity of bullets varies aswell, depending on wind and distance, and the bullet loses speed the farther ittravels.

But,all things being equal, a bullet fired from a .52 caliber Spencer repeatingrifle would lose the race, lumbering along at a paltry 931 to 1,033 feet persecond.

Therace with a .44 caliber round from a Henry rifle would be a dead heat, thebullet leaving the barrel at 1,125 feet per second.

Abullet from a Winchester .44-40 Golden Boy outruns sound at 1,433 feet persecond.

Theold-time Hawken rifle, .50 caliber model, spit out lead at 1,600 feet persecond.

Winningit all is the Sharps .50 caliber, which, depending on grains of powder in thecartridge, fires bullets that fly 1,448 to 1,814 feet per second.

Noneof which matters. But how else is an old man with no gainful employmentsupposed to spend his time?

 

Still Sinning.

All My Sins Remembered is now available in paperback and eBook, as well as the originalhardcover edition. I have wrenched my elbow patting myself on the back aboutthis book, so this time I will leave that to others.

“A riveting tale of human weakness which explores the nature ofevil and its presence in and among us.” True West magazine

“All My Sins Remembered is destined to join the ranks ofthe frontier classic.” Loren D. Estleman, Western Writers Hall of Fame author

“A brutal, beautifully rendered masterpiece, guaranteed to staywith you long after the last page is turned.” MichaelZimmer, Winner of the Western Heritage Wrangler Award

“The action is swift, the Western scene spare and tense, the wholea haunting tale of good and evil. This is superb Western fiction.” Charles E.Rankin, Retired Associate Director/Editor in Chief, University of OklahomaPress

“All My Sins Remembered is hypnotic and poetic and vivid.” MarcCameron, New York Times bestselling author

“All My Sins Remembered is a unique, original novel with awealth of period and milieu detail.” John D. Nesbitt, Spur Award-winning novelist

eBook:
Amazon US
Apple Books
Barnes& Noble
Google Play
Kobo Books

Paperback:
Amazon US
Barnes &Noble

Hardcover:
Amazon

Stupid words redux.

Aftermy latest rant on abuse of our shared language, a friend suggested I did notlike to see language evolve. But it happens. It’s something that can’t behelped. Most of the time it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s an improvement.Sometimes it’s not.

ButI can sleep at night knowing that many—at least some—of the stupid words I rantabout will end up on the trash heap of speech, discarded as the useless, evennoxious, locutions they are.

Usingonly words extant during my lifetime, I offer some examples of thisself-correction.

Timewas, people who were “cool” (a word that was silly then and still is, but has demonstratedstaying power) were ofttimes referred to as “cats.” If they were really cool,they were “hep” cats. No more. In the same vein, “groovy” has pretty muchdisappeared. And when was the last time you heard something cool referred to as“far out” or “bitchin’?” “Fab” had its day, which has long since passed. And weno longer say we “dig” things that are cool. An event or incident that was theopposite of cool was often called a “bummer.”

Clotheswere once “threads” but now they are not. No longer are women “chicks” or “dames.”I haven’t heard police referred to as “fuzz” lately. And we have moved beyondall the silly CB radio-inspired lingo too expansive to chronicle here. To thatI can only say, “10-4 good buddy. See you on the flip side. Keep your ears on.”

 

Good Books.

Readany good books lately? Along with numerous other writers, I was asked by theShepherd.com web site to list the three best books I read in the past year. Notnecessarily books that were new in the past year, but books read during that period. 

Foralmost 40 years (don’t ask me why) I have kept a list of the books I read. So, findingmy three favorites for the year took nothing more than paging back 12 monthsand going through the list to see which titles jumped out at me. Some surprisedme, to be honest. Others almost topped the ones I chose, but not quite. Still,it was not an easy decision. Maybe, on a different day, my choices would bedifferent.

Youcan see my list here: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2023/f/rod-miller. 

Anddon’t hesitate to wander around the Shepherd.comweb site for other lists by other writers on other subjects. (Somewhere onthere is my list of five Western novels about cowboys who really are cowboys,rather than the usual fare of outlaws, lawmen, gamblers, and the like.)

Really Stupid Words, Chapter 22.

Youhear a lot about “hacks” nowadays.

Not,in this case, “hack” as a means to cut or sever or chop with repeated irregularor unskillful blows, as most dictionaries define the word’s original and primarymeaning.

Nordoes it conform to another longstanding sense of being unable to deal with a givensituation successfully, as in “he can’t hack it,” or “he’s a hack writer,” bothof which can be seen to have evolved from the original meaning.

Noris the current usage related to the meaning of the word that came along withthe rise of computer networks and the internet, where people “hack” into computersystems where they have no business being, whether for fun or to do damage—choppingtheir way in, so to speak.

No.The current buzzwordy use of hack has to do with something altogetherdifferent, and I am not sure how or why it applies. You hear a lot these days aboutthis “hack” or that “hack” that seems (apparently) to be a shortcut orsomething of the sort. Just lately, I have been advised of “hacks” for life, fishing,parenting, productivity, health, housekeeping, heating and cooling, cooking, cleaning,clothing, crafts, decluttering, organization, school, math, travel, and on andon and on…

Ona side note, “hack” seems to be popular with the same people who are fond of “sidehustle” (which sounds to me like being up to something no good) and “the gigeconomy.”

Icannot fathom the word “hack” in this most recent—but already clichéd—usage. Iguess I wish there were a “hack” for understanding stupid words.

On the air in Ireland.

Thisstory starts a few years ago but got derailed when Covid shut the world off fora time. A radio producer from Ireland contacted me to say he lived and workedin County Kerry, homeland of Patrick Edward Connor. Connor was the armycommander behind the Massacre at Bear River (promoted from colonel to brigadiergeneral following the atrocity), the Father of Utah Mining, and was involved inother military and business pursuits here in the West.

Theman from Radio Kerry, Jerry O’Sullivan, wanted to create a radio documentaryabout Connor, was coming to Utah, and wondered if he could interview me. Thencame Covid.

Butall things must pass, and early this summer he contacted me to say he was onhis way. We spent some time at the remnants of Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City,including a spell at Connor’s gravesite in the cemetery there to record theinterview. O’Sullivan interviewed other people here, then went back to Irelandto put the program together. It aired on Radio Kerry in early August, and “GloryHunter”is now available on Spotify. (Just click on “GloryHunter”and you’ll go there.)

O’Sullivanalso wrote a commentary on Connor, the connections between Ireland and the USA,and the way we remember history. That article appeared recently in the Salt Lake Tribune. (Again, aclick should get you there.)

Connorwas an interesting man of many accomplishments—not all of them laudable. Itwill be worth your time to hear—and read—what JerryO’Sullivan has to say about him.

See page 26.

TheAugust 2023 issue of Roundup Magazine, official publication of WesternWriters of America, focuses on the theme “Writing the Traditional WesternNovel” in a series of articles. One story, by Western Writers Hall of Fameauthor Loren D. Estleman, offers adeparture to talk about Western novels that stray from the herd in search ofsomething more.

Estlemanwrites in “Westerns: Beyond Tradition”: “The difference between the‘traditional’ Western and literature that resonates through the decades is thesense that these stories are not confined to the page. The characters seem tohave a life outside the story. Men and women live and die, often violently; butthey don’t exist merely to thrill. While they live, other lives are affected,and when they die, others are left to mourn, or at least ask why. That simple premiseis what separates the enduring classic from empty tradition.”

Offeredas examples are The Virginian by Owen Wister (of which, Estleman says, “Nearlyall the tropes we associate with the Western were invented by one writer in onebook”), Shane by Jack Schafer, True Grit by Charles Portis, thenovella “A Man Called Horse” by Dorothy M. Johnson, Ride the Wind by LuciaSt. Clair Robson, and All My Sins Remembered by Rod Miller.

What?If that last bit surprises you, imagine my surprise when I saw it. About thebook, Estleman writes, among other things, “Miller tells his story with aminimum of emotion and just the right amount of pathos, masterfully expressedbetween the lines of his spare prose. A 2022 release, All My Sins Rememberedis a late addition to the long string of Western classics and promises thatit’s nowhere near its end.”

Byhappenstance, when the article appeared I had just started proofreading thegalleys for the pending paperback and eBook editions of All My SinsRemembered, due out within the next couple of months. The hardcovereditionis still out there and will be, I hope, for a long, long time.