Summer Member News

AWARDS

Nancy Oswald's latest, TROUBLE RETURNS, was a 2017 WWA Spur Award Winner. 

www.nancyoswald.com

www.filterpressbooks.com

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 FINDING DOROTHY SCOTT, LETTERS OF A WASP PILOT, by Sarah Byrn Rickman, was awarded the Sarton Women's Book Award.

http://sarahbyrnrickman.com/ 

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Barbara Marriot's “PAINT 'N SPURS: THE MEN WHO FOUNDED THE COWBOY ARTISTS OF AMERICAS” a biography of the founding members of the Cowboy Artists of America was announced a finalist in the International Book Awards. 
www.bsrbramasrriott.com 

Published by Fireship Press 

Amazon

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 NEW RELEASES

BAD BOY, BIG HEART by Andrea Downing

When New Yorker K.C. Daniels heads to Wyoming for a summer job, she wants nothing more than to fit in with the staff of the Lazy S Ranch. Yearning to be independent of her mom and dad, and have a taste of the west before she starts her Master's degree, getting involved with a cowboy is the last thing on her mind—especially when she’s greeted with warnings about ‘Bad Boy’ Chay Ridgway.

High school dropout Chay Ridgway sees summer as his time to be a rodeo star and win a girl in his life, while facing the responsibilities he has for his father. Although working to bring in cash to help his dad, he's never had a problem finding a woman who's happy to be that summer love—until K.C. Daniels appears on the scene.

As two different worlds collide in a season that will end all too soon, is this going to be another summer romance or a love that will last for years?

Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Boy-Big-Heart-Book-ebook/dp/B072MKG48B/

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Andrea also has a story, CITY BOY, COUNTRY HEART in the collection COME LOVE A COWBOY

Don’t miss this great collection from USA Today, Amazon Bestselling, and Award-Winning authors!! 

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Available at https://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Keep-Contemporary-Western-Collection-ebook/dp/B072869SGV/

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THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T DIE
by Randall Platt
publisher - Skypony

They call her the Arab of Warsaw.
Some say she’s Jewish. A few know she’s a girl.
Most agree she’s high on the Nazis’ hit list.
One person believes she could become a hero.

Poland, 1939. Arab knows that looking out for anyone but herself is as good as painting a target on her own back. So she plans to survive the Nazi occupation the way she always has: disguise herself as a boy, lead her street gang, and refuse to get involved.

But though Arab starts the war with just one goal–staying alive–others have different ideas for her. And when a stranger who claims to work with the resistance tries to recruit Arab for a rescue mission, she has to make a choice. Acting like a hero is a surefire way to get killed. But is she doesn’t do it, who will?

Available at your local independent bookstore, or at Amazon

The trade paperback of Randall's previous book, INCOMMUNICADO, is also now available. Learn more at http://www.plattbooks.com.

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Ordinary Skin: Essays from Willow Springs
by Amy Hale Auker, previous WILLA winner
published by Texas Tech University Press

www.amyhaleauker.com
Book may be purchased from author website or all major booksellers
Amazon

Amy Hale Auker's first book of essays, Rightful Place, was the story of a woman finding beauty in her place, the Llano Estacado. Her new collection of creative non-fiction, Ordinary Skin, explores her mid-life transition with prose poems and essays that illustrate a new terrain as well as new ways of being in the world. Touching on faith and body image and belonging, these essays explore our role in deciding what is favorable or unfavorable, as well as where we someday want to dwell, and who came before us. In that touching, they feel their way with observations about current affairs, drought, mystery, and the hard decisions that face us all as we continue to move toward more questions with fewer answers. This exploration is informed and softened by hummingbirds, Gila monsters, bats, foxes, bears, wildflowers, and hidden seep springs where life goes on whether we are there to see it or not. It is about work in a wild and wilderness environment. In the end, even as life changes drastically around us, we are better off for knowing that the ugly mud bug turns into a jewel-toned dragonfly.

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Susan Matley's story, THE AUDITOR is included in a new anthology, Incarceration (WolfSinger Publications). “The Auditor” is a horror story set in near-future China, inspired by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It’s more eastern than western. The publisher, however, is in Colorado! The details:

The publisher:
http://www.wolfsingerpubs.com/OurBooks.html

Susan Matley's website, Home page:
https://www.susandmatley.com/

Website, with “buy” link:
https://www.susandmatley.com/anthology/


 

January 2017 Member News

New Releases, Awards and Special Events for January 2017

Awards

The prestigious Will Rogers Medallion Award presented to “The Longest Trail” by Roni McFadden in the Non-Fiction category for 2016.

At the banquet, hosted Saturday evening, October 29, 2016, in Ft. Worth, TX, thirty-six authors and publishers were presented Will Rogers Medallion Awards Honoring Excellence in Western Media in twelve categories.  “Each year, the quality and level of excellence of the books being awarded goes up,” noted Charles Williams, Executive Director.  “It is a tribute both to the enduring appeal of the West, and to the high quality of publications being produced today.  We are especially proud of our publishers, who have maintained such high standards in a marketplace where they face competition from e-books and other electronic media.”

Two weeks later, Reader’s Favorite proudly announced that "The Longest Trail" by Roni McFadden was a Gold Medal Winner in the Non-Fiction - General category in their 2016 International Book Award Contest.  Those awards were handed out in Miami November 19, 2016.

Buy The Longest Trail 

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Susan Wittig Albert's biographical novel Loving Eleanor (www.LovingEleanor.com) has added three recent awards to its previous IPPY:

• Library Journal named it their Undie EBook (romance) for 2016
• Kirkus Reviews named it to their Best Books of 2016 list; and
• USA Best Books 2016 awarded it a first in their LGBT category.

The book was published under her imprint, Persevero Press, in February, 2016.


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New Releases from WWW Members

New Release on January 27, 2017

Remember How It Rained: River Saga Book Two
Author Name: K. Lyn Wurth
Publisher: True to Story Publishing

Divided in childhood, but children no more, Margaret Rose, Jack and Kuruk answer the echoes of childhood loves, memories and voices. Power is shifting in Darkwater Creek, old crimes cry out for justice and Nebraska’s deadliest floodwaters gather in the west. Book Two of the River Saga, Remember How It Rained continues Seven Kinds of Rain’s voices of innocence, corruption, courage and justice on the Great Plains. It sings of running away and coming home to find love, truth and justice in the places and people who won’t let you go.

Buy at Barnes and Noble

Buy at Amazon.com


K. Lynn Wurth's Author Website
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New Release Available Now

FLASH & FRIENDS
By Natalie Bright
Book #4 Rescue Animal Series

Available on Amazon Now

The series features true stories about a registered Tennessee Walker whose family moves and is unable to take him with them. Featuring vivid, colored photographs, Book #4 shares details about Flash’s adopted family and work in this very personal scrapbook. Find out where he lives, meet his corral mates, and follow him along as he works in an equine outreach program.

http://nataliebright.com
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New Release Available Now

Baby on the Oregon Trail
By Lynna Banning

Heading west to Oregon, pregnant widow Jenna Borland’s life can’t get any more difficult . . . until fate throws Robert E. Lee Carver across her path.  She resents his help, but she needs him to drive her covered wagon over the Great Plains.

Lee can’t fathom why this prickly woman gets under his skin.  But as the journey brings these two outsiders together, he wonders if Jenna and her baby could be just what he needs to begin a new life with a brand-new family.



Available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.  Buy link at www.lynnabanning.net.

Carolyn Woolston, writing as Lynna Banning, shares this insight about her new book:

My new book, “Baby on the Oregon Trail,” is close to my heart because my great-grandparents came to Oregon in a covered wagon along the Oregon Trail.  Grand-grandfather Edgar Boessen was an immigrant from Germany; Great-grandmother Maia Bruhn came from Denmark.  Their descendants now number in the thousands.

Typical of those intrepid travelers who came west on the Oregon Trail is the following diary entry:  “Friday, October 27.  Arrived at Oregon City at the falls of the Willamette.  Saturday, October 28.  Went to work.”  (James W. Nesmith, 1843) 

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New Release January 6, 2017

THE ACCIDENTAL STRANGER
by Cj Fosdick

Jessica Brewster is being watched…and things go missing from the remote Wyoming home she shares with her toddler. In a freak accident, she shoots the bearded thief stalking her before she recognizes the mesmerizing green eyes that belong to the only man she ever loved.

Has Mitch bridged time to find her? In a race to save his life and change hers forever, she takes him into her home and heart. But his memory loss and puzzling clues curry doubt and expose mystery and danger. Is he truly her son’s father, a murderer from Old Ft. Laramie, or an irresistible stranger in her arms?

Series: Book #2 in the Accidental Series set in Wyoming can stand alone
Genre: Mainstream mix of contemporary/historical/romance/time travel/mystery
Released:  Friday, Jan. 6. in eBook & print (latter only from Amazon, publisher and author)
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Cj's Website: www.cjfosdick.com

Buy Links: https://www.amazon.com/Cj-Fosdick/e/B00V14E74E   Amazon
                http://catalog.thewildrosepress.com/1256_cj-fosdick   Publisher
                http://bit.ly/1QcHLOq      B&N
                http://www.bookstrand.com/the-accidental-stranger    Bookstrand

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New Release

Sarah's Secret
By Beverly Scott

Available now at Amazon
Author Website: www.bevscott.com

The two key protagonists, Sarah and Sam, historically on their separate journeys of trust, secrets and betrayal on the frontier of the old West, remain intimately connected.  In the 1880’s, Sam, who is irresponsible, lonely and untrustworthy has abandoned those he loves until he seeks redemption and marries Sarah.  After Sam’s death in 1911, Sarah draws on her pioneer spirit to find the inner strength to overcome loneliness, poverty and illness to support her children.  She learns staggering news which complicates her efforts. Will Sarah find forgiveness in her heart and the resolve to accept her new life alone?

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Events and Appearances

photo credit to Steve Atkinson

Amy Hale Auker has been invited to participate in the 33rd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, January 30-February 4, 2017, in Elko, Nevada. Amy is appearing for the 5th time at the Elko Gathering. The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is an international festival that honors the arts, culture and traditions of the rural West, with poetry, music, storytelling, dancing, workshops, exhibitions, discussions, food and fellowship. The 33rd Gathering will celebrate the art and tradition of storytelling in the rural West, presenting first-hand narratives wrought from personal experience and told in verse, song, film, visual art, new media and prose.

Amy Hale Auker cowboys for Spider Ranch in Yavapai County, Arizona, with her husband, Gail Steiger. Work on the ranch provides ample material for her writing: prose, poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She is the author of Rightful Place, a collection of essays, and two novels, Winter of Beauty and The Story Is the Thing. A new collection of creative non-fiction will be released in 2017. Amy’s presentations on the stage and on the page are deeply rooted in the natural world where the bats fly, lizards do pushups on the rocks, bears leave barefoot prints in the dirt. Where hummingbirds do rain dances in August, spiders weave for their food, and poetry is in the chrysalis and the cocoon. She tells stories about the real world where things grow up out of the ground, where the miracle of life happens over and over again, where people can and do survive without malls or Arby's. Amy believes that what you put out there is what you get back, and that growing food is an honorable profession.

Amy will join nearly 50 other poets, musicians and musical groups from the U.S., Canada and Australia who will perform on seven stages at four different venues in Elko. For artist bios and audio samples, visit www.nationalcowboypoetrygathering.org. The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering also features hands-on workshops in traditional Western arts including rawhide braiding and horsehair hitching, foodways, dancing, songwriting, and how to play the bones. A special exhibition will present an artful view of the horse in the American West and will display contemporary gear from the Western Folklife Center’s collection. Tickets to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering can be purchased at www.nationalcowboypoetrygathering.org, or by calling 888-880-5885.

No Conversation Necessary

 by Amy Hale Auker

(Written at the beginning of 2 weeks as Artist-in-Residence at Playa Summer Lake Residency Program, Paisley, Oregon)

I had forgotten what it is like to go to the totally blank page. The expanse of white. That nothingness needing be filled, screaming for ink, longing to be sullied with thoughts and ideas and connections between disparate philosophies and metaphors that cling like burrs in the brain. I had forgotten how amazingly hard it is.

Writing is a lonely activity, a solitary endeavor. A time of passionate reflection. The philosophy held by most directors of artistic residencies is that the optimum length of time for a residency is four weeks. Four weeks with a definite project in mind and a strategy for getting it done. Because most people find it difficult to take a slice as wide as four weeks from their lives, this facility offers two week spans. However, in the application, not only does the applicant have to furnish work samples, but he/she also must map out a plan for the proposed project. This is a place for those who are serious about their lifework.

Having private living space is key to this kind of atmosphere. I am in a cabin, alone with the writing. I can seek out companionship if necessary or desired in the Common Room, but mainly I am alone with this work. I wrote on the white board that if anyone is going to the near-by hot springs of an evening, I would like to tag along since I am without a vehicle. There are two communal dinners here every week… Monday nights and Thursday nights. Because residents arrive on Mondays and leave on Fridays, this works well.

In just two short days, I can see very clearly the benefits of residency programs. The distance from one point to another is removed. The clutter and demands of belongings and relationships are gone. Of course, so is the comfort of those things. Still, no conversation necessary. Just the animal body seeking warmth and the emotional/mental longing for the pen and the page—the work—the meaning. The real core of my drive is laid open and I don’t have to search for the tools. There is no need to fight for the focus—unless I am fighting my own self, a personal internal struggle. If I do some wandering, some avoiding, it is all on me. There is no one to blame.

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This morning I sprang out of bed, dismissed the alarm, walked three steps to the coffee pot to touch the button, walked ten steps to pee and brush my teeth, warmed some milk, poured a cup of coffee, crawled back in bed to write morning pages facing east. My hand writing is neat, orderly, beautiful, marching with purpose across the page. The sky lightened and beckoned. I hadn’t intended to venture out into the cold air, but after I glanced at my phone (no one in my outside world needs me desperately) I got out of bed, put on warm clothes, poured another cup of coffee, and ventured out in heavy coat, scarf, and gloves. The walk all the way around the pond and compound was perfect… a one-cup walk. And the bracing morning air made me eager to return, warm and breathless, to my nest. 

I am almost transparent with bubbles.

 

Playa Summer Lake Residency Program, located in the Oregon Outback in Lake County, is a creative retreat space for artists of all mediums. It is well-suited for the solitary activity of writing and editing with studio space for visual artists, dancers, and musicians. The residencies are awarded for each application period via a selection committee. Apply now to take advantage of a beautiful setting with very few distractions. Read more at www.playasummerlake.org

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Amy Hale Auker cowboys on a ranch in Yavapai County, Arizona. Her day job feeds her writing. She is the author of 2012 WILLA-award winner, Rightful Place, and two novels, Winter of Beauty and The Story Is the Thing Photo by Kathy McCraine

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