A Revived Series
I began writing my Skye's West series in the late eighties, and concluded it after nineteen titles. Forge, a Macmillan imprint, is now reviving the series with mass-market doubles, two books in one for ten bucks. You will find copies on the grocery racks.
The first double appeared in August, and featured Sun River and Bannack. The second, appearing a few weeks ago, features Rendezvous and Dark Passage. There will be another double next August.
I conceived of the series as a way of writing about the West without plunging into the usual frontier story. The protagonist, Barnaby Skye, is a pressed British sailor who escapes at Fort Vancouver in the 1820s and makes his way into the North American interior long before the frontier rolled west. He ends up in the fur trade, with two Indian wives, and eventually becomes a guide.
Two of the novels got starred reviews in trade journals such as Publishers Weekly.
I achieved my purpose. There are no gunfights or fast draws or cowboys in these stories. Skye's own unfinished nature gets him into trouble now and then, but his shrewd Crow wife Victoria, born Many Quill Woman, usually bails him out, or he is rescued by his truly ugly horse, Jawbone, a creature so irascible that no one else can handle him.
The reappearance of the series comes at a good time for me. I will be eighty in a few days, and the income from the series will help stabilize my income as my literary life winds down.
The first double appeared in August, and featured Sun River and Bannack. The second, appearing a few weeks ago, features Rendezvous and Dark Passage. There will be another double next August.
I conceived of the series as a way of writing about the West without plunging into the usual frontier story. The protagonist, Barnaby Skye, is a pressed British sailor who escapes at Fort Vancouver in the 1820s and makes his way into the North American interior long before the frontier rolled west. He ends up in the fur trade, with two Indian wives, and eventually becomes a guide.
Two of the novels got starred reviews in trade journals such as Publishers Weekly.
I achieved my purpose. There are no gunfights or fast draws or cowboys in these stories. Skye's own unfinished nature gets him into trouble now and then, but his shrewd Crow wife Victoria, born Many Quill Woman, usually bails him out, or he is rescued by his truly ugly horse, Jawbone, a creature so irascible that no one else can handle him.
The reappearance of the series comes at a good time for me. I will be eighty in a few days, and the income from the series will help stabilize my income as my literary life winds down.
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