NEW RELEASE AND GIVEAWAY OF "CHIEF OF THIEVES" by STEVE KOHLHAGEN

I've been gratified by the reception for Chief of Thieves this week. Reviews, support, the whole ball of wax. Writing is great fun. Getting it out there, gratifying. Knowing that others enjoy the work is better than not!

Now i'm getting "Will this be a trilogy?" Turns out i can't answer that for anybody who hasn't read the book---it gives too much about the ending away!  ;-)

Speaking of giving it away, we're giving away a signed copy of Chief of Thieves to one person who comments on this blog. All you have to do is leave a comment, and presto! You have a possible gift with no downside.

Thanks to all for your support.

Chief of Thieves, Sunstone Press, is now available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

www.StevenWKohlhagen.com

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STORYTELLING REDUX by KEN FARMER

A flow of words is no proof of talent or wisdom.

Stories are how we understand and explain the world, they are basic to the human thinking process. They are the oldest form of communication, of teaching, of healing, of entertainment. The first stories were hieroglyphs, petroglyphs and geoglyphs. 

STORYTELLING IS THE OLDEST FORM OF COMMUNICATION KNOWN TO MAN.

Hieroglyphs were pictures or symbols drawn onto rock or other surfaces to stand for an object, sound or idea. It's actually a Greek word meaning sacred writing. The ancient Egyptians are well known for writing hieroglyphs on papyrus. However the Mesoamericans like the early Mayan and also Mediterranean cultures used hieroglyphs and painted them on protected surfaces protected from the sun and the elements. Some of the oldest hieroglyphs found in caves in Europe have been dated to over 60,000 BCE and the oldest petroglyphs established at around 10,000 BCE.

Petroglyphs, however are pictures or symbols that are carved into some types of rock by pecking, chiseling or sanded off to reveal different colors underneath. Of course they are much more permanent than hieroglyphs. The word itself means 'rock carving' and can be dated by style or by microscopic analysis of the weathering or wear of the edges of the cuts. 

Some petroglyphs found in New Mexico are thought to be over seven thousand years old. Others have been determined to be only several centuries old.

The third form of early communication using pictures is geoglyphs or earth pictures. These are large scale depictions and are sometimes referred to as intaglios. They are created by removing or adding surface rocks, stones, gravel soil or vegetation of a different color that the surrounding area. They can be miles in size such as the Nazca lines in Peru created some two thousand years ago.

Stories are a tree to hang knowledge on as fruit.

All these things far predated the written word. The human mind thinks in pictures, so the best storytellers can visualize with power to create word pictures to enable the listener to formulate (see) the story in his own mind. The oldest profession known to mankind is…nope you're wrong, it's Storytelling and it knows no age or ages.

Stories are linear in nature, but are best presented by an abstract person.

But, what is a story? I ask this question in almost every workshop I teach. Get all sorts of answers from an experience; a plot;  a fantasy; a presentation and so on. When you break it down to its simplest terms…It's a sequence of events. One thing happens first, one thing happens second, one thing happens third. Of course then you can get into story arc, narrative, meaning, subtext, ect. But, it's still a sequence of events that are colored by the storyteller with word pictures and…emotions.

A good story comes from the heart…not the head.

Word pictures - Power visualization...As a demonstration of how we really think and remember, I used to have my acting students play a game in class called the noun game. Now, most nouns name things, right? Apple, orange, horse, man, gun, sun, sky, river and so on. I might have ten or twelve students in the room and I would start by telling them to visualize the item I would name like an Apple. I don't give a darn if they pictured a Granny Smith, a Golden or a Delicious, just picture an apple. Going around the room, the next person would repeat the word I started with and add another in the same genre or something associative like, Orange. The next would repeat those first two and add one; banana. Then maybe the next would get creative and say banana split; the next; ice cream and on around the room…Sometimes it would get real interesting if someone started with body parts. 

Each person had to repeat everything named before and add one. We got as high one time as fifty-four noun-pictures before someone missed. Often, I would stop them around thirty or so and have the next tell an improv story using all the nouns in their proper sequence—"I was sitting under this Apple tree, eating an Orange when my buddy, Jim, came by and offered to trade a Banana for my orange. I said, I'd rather have a Banana Split, do you have any Ice Cream?—Get the point? The stories often got hilarious as each succeeding student had to make up a different story…all using the same noun-pics in the proper order.

The Storyteller is the brush; Emotions are the Colors; the Character is the Canvas; the Palette…your Imagination.

The objective was a prelude to teaching them to not memorize dialogue…but to learn it through visualizing the story. Once they realized they actually saw pictures while they listened or read a story, learning dialogue was a piece of cake.

The best Storytellers never let the wheels show.

Many of my students could be off book—that means know an entire four or five page scene—in thirty minutes. Which is all the time I would give them before they had to perform the scene in front of class and on camera. The new kiddos were always amazed they could do it since they had always tried to memorize their lines by rote before they came to my class…Oh, as a plus, they naturally would also know every other character's lines in scene in addition to their own. Ah, the value of Power Visualization.

Storytelling is seeing what you say.

Word pictures and other descriptions by the Storyteller serve to bring the listener/reader into the story. They become part of it when the Storyteller uses words through the narrative and through the characters to enable the audience to see, hear, feel, taste and smell what's going on in the scene.

Don't ask me what I mean to express with my story…ask yourself what it means to you.

We as Storytellers serve to stimulate the imagination of out reader/listeners through the proper and judicious use of word pictures.

Reality can often be too complex…Stories tend to give it form and function.

I regard storytelling as an investigation of characters and the words they use to tell the story. Isn't it better to give the reader/listener two plus two plus one instead of five? There is no right and wrong, there is only interesting and less interesting. A great book should leave you with many experiences…and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading or listening.

A great book is never read…It is experienced.

www.kenfarmer.net

The Story of Yellow Bird and Elizabeth Wilson Ridge by Cheryl Pierson

I've had a bit of surgery so I'm re-posting one of my favorite posts--a TRUE love story between John Rollin Ridge and his wife, Elizabeth Wilson Ridge. These two people really were meant for one another, and stayed together despite some desperate times. Take a look...

This love story starts many years before the lovers ever met. It begins with something that happened when John Rollin Ridge was an eleven-year-old boy, and witnessed his father’s bloody murder.

John Rollin Ridge, called Cheesquatalawny, or “Yellow Bird,” by his fellow Cherokee tribesmen, was the son of John Ridge, and the grandson of a prominent Cherokee leader, Major John Ridge. Major Ridge was one of the most powerful and wealthy members of the eastern Cherokee tribes in the early 1800s. By the time John Rollin Ridge was born in 1827, the State of Georgia had discovered gold on Cherokee lands and wanted them relocated. Cherokee leaders, at first, were opposed to signing treaties with the U.S. Government, refusing to go.



But the State of Georgia confiscated Cherokee lands in 1832, including the homes and thriving plantation owned by some members of the tribe, including another prominent family, the Waties. Major Ridge and his son John opposed the removal, but because of the inevitability of the outcome of the situation, they and some of the other leaders reversed their stance on negotiating with the federal government. Major Ridge, and John Ridge, along with Stand Watie and his brothers, formed the powerful Ridge-Watie-Boudinot faction of the Cherokee council, standing in favor of the Cherokee Removal. Their signing of the Treaty of New Echota sold Cherokee lands and facilitated the removal of the Cherokee people to Indian Territory—what is now Oklahoma—an act considered treasonous by many.

Another faction of Cherokees following John Ross refused to ratify the treaty signing. This segment was known as The Anti-Removal National Party. The word was out—traitors were to be executed.

Blood Law (also called blood revenge) is the practice in traditional customary Native American law where responsibility for seeing that homicide is punished falls on the clan of the victim. The responsibility for revenge fell to a close family member (usually the closest male relative). In contrast to the Western notion of justice, blood law was based on harmony and balance. It was believed that the soul/ghost of the victim would be forced to wander the earth, not allowed to go to the afterlife, unless harmony was restored. The death of the killer (or member of the killer's clan) restored the balance. (From Wikipedia)


Members of this Ross group targeted Stand Watie and his brother, Elias Boudinot, along with their uncle, Major Ridge for assassination. On the morning of June 2, 1839, John’s father, John Ridge, was dragged from his bed by some of the tribesmen of The Anti-Removal National Party and murdered as his wife and children, including young John, looked on. This event would color John’s life until the end.

Mrs. Ridge took her family to northwestern Arkansas. Young John’s thirst for vengeance was tempered only by a young woman he met and fell in love with, Elizabeth Wilson.

They first met when John was studying Latin and Greek with a local missionary. Elizabeth worked for the missionary. John wrote to his cousin, “There is a prettily shapely girl of about 16 or 17 years, who is very friendly and gives me a quantity of enjoyment in her company, whenever I get tired of dusty pages of legal technicalities.”

Elizabeth was part Native American, and John was half Cherokee. To her, he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, and she believed him to be a talented writer—one of the most intelligent men in the country. John was not only entranced by Elizabeth’s beauty, but the sweet honesty and goodness of her character, and her brilliance. They married in May, 1847, and though they were happy, their love couldn’t overcome the bloody images that John tried to forget, the tragedy that consumed him.


(Elizabeth Wilson Ridge--John Rollin Ridge's wife)
As an adult, he often dreamt of the morning of his father’s murder, awakening from sleep screaming. Elizabeth was at his side, calming him. She promised to help him fulfill his desire for revenge any way she could.

“There is a deep seated principle of revenge in me which will never be satisfied, until it reaches its object,” he told her.

Eventually, they traveled to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where they joined forces with other allies of the Ridge faction, all of them eager to track down and punish those responsible for the deaths of the Major Ridge, and members of Stand Watie’s family. In the end, thirty-two of the thirty-six men who had been responsible for the murders were found and killed.

John squared off against one of the four remaining assassins, Judge David Kell. When Kell advanced on John, John shot him, claiming it was done in self-defense. But John had no faith in getting a fair trial (Cherokee court) and he and Elizabeth ran to Missouri, settling in Springfield.

John became a freelance writer, selling articles to various newspapers to supplement his salary in the county clerk’s office. He and Elizabeth now had a baby girl, Alice.



>
(Alice Bird, daughter of Elizabeth and John)
The Ridges lived an idyllic life. But John’s health failed him at the age of thirty-nine. He became afflicted with “softening of the brain,” a disease that took its toll quickly through the spring and summer of 1867.

>
(John Rollin Ridge and his daughter, Alice)
John Rollin Ridge, Yellow Bird, died on October 5, 1867, leaving behind a collection of fine articles, sketches and poetry. In 1868, Elizabeth published an anthology of his poetry.

Elizabeth died in 1905 and was buried beside her husband in Grass Valley.
>>
The Maple tree on the right was planted by Elizabeth (Wilson) Ridge's - Rollin's wife. The tree was brought back from Gettysburg by Alice Bird in 1876. On 10/10/1976, a plaque was mounted on the tree for a dedication.

Inscription on tombstone:
John Rollin Ridge
California Poet, Author of "Mount Shasta"
And Other Poems,
Born March 19, 1827 In Cherokee Nation,
Near What Is Now Rome, Georgia,
Died in Grass Valley, October 5, 1867,
In Grateful Memory

I want to offer an e-copy of my book, FIRE EYES, today to one lucky commenter. Please leave your contact information along with your comment to be entered in the drawing.


You can find my works here:https://www.amazon.com/author/cherylpierson

OF HER I LOVE
I READ but a moment her beautiful eyes,
I glanced at the charm of her snowy-white hand
I caught but the glimpse of her cheek's blushing dyes
More sweet than the fruits of a tropical land;

I marked but an instant her coral-hued lips,
And the row of sweet pearls that glimmered between--
Those lips, like the roses the humming bird sips
On his bright wing of rainbows, when summer is green.

I timidly gazed on a bosom more white
Than the breast of the swan, more soft than its down--
To rest on whose pillows were greater delight
Than all else of rapture that heaven may own.

I gazed but a second on these, and on all
That make up the sum of her angel-like form,
And ere I could think I was bound in her thrall,
And peace fled my breast, as the birds flee a storm!
I am bound in love's pain, and may never be free,
Till the bond is dissolved in her own melting kiss:
Till her loveliness, like the embrace of a sea,
Enclasps me, and hides me in the depths of its bliss.

John Rollin Ridge

BUZZARDS OF THE PRESS by Tom Rizzo

If Union Army General William T. Sherman ever ran across the phrase “Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel,” he would have thumbed his nose at the saying.

No one knows its exact origin of the expression, but it was first used in the late 19th century and meant as an admonition against arguing with the press because of its power to shape and manipulate public opinion.

Newspapers, of course, don't use ink these days. And, they don't wield as much weight as they once did. 

During America’s Civil War, newspapers and reporters were convenient targets of angry criticism--some of it more than justified. Reporters often got the facts wrong. Others purposely lied. Some even made up stories about battles they never saw. In fact, newspapers often played an unwitting role in the conflict.

Military commanders from the North and the South discovered nuggets of reliable sources of intelligence in many newspaper articles. For that reason, reporters and the military often found themselves in a confrontational relationship.

Sherman wanted reporters treated like spies.

Sherman had nothing but contempt for the press because he believed reports of various battles and identifying Union locations  revealed information he thought harmful to the Union cause. 

He despised reporters and labeled them as “buzzards of the press.” As far as he was concerned, reporters should be treated as spies. In fact, Sherman didn’t give a tinker's damn about the concept of freedom of the press. He once remarked, "Napoleon himself would have been defeated by a free press.”

Sherman once had a reporter for the New York Tribune arrested as a spy because the man filed a story violating a censorship provision. The general would have had the man shot but President Lincoln intervened. 

Union General A. E. Burnside took drastic steps to control the flow of news when he issued orders to close the Chicago Tribute and halt distribution of the New York World throughout the Midwest. But, Lincoln, as before, got involved and rescinded Burnside's actions.  

"If I had my choice," Sherman once said, " I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell  before breakfast."

On another occasion, he remarked, "I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are." 

When journalist and poet Florus B. Plimpton visited Kentucky in September 1861 to interview Sherman for the Cincinnati Commercial, Sherman showed him the door. Plimpton countered that he only wanted to pursue the truth. 

"Truth, eh?" said Sherman. No sir ... We do not want the enemy any better informed about what is going on here than he is."  

Despite the loathing, however, he was shrewd enough to recognize the value of published information. Sherman conceded he was able to determine the Confederacy’s intentions for the Western Theater in 1864 by reading published accounts of speeches given by President Jefferson Davis. According to Sherman, President Davis “… thus gave us the full key to his future designs … To be forewarned was to be forearmed, and I think we took full advantage of the occasion.”

Commanders on both sides often acted on clues contained in news stories.

The Civil War marked the first conflict where the news media played a major role. News organizations went head-to-head trying in an effort to scoop each other, attempting to publish exclusive stories about the war, battlefield outcomes, and military strategy in general.

Even the military realized the value of such published information.Both Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee made it a habit to read the enemy’s newspapers on a daily basis. They used the information to either make, modify, or manage strategic plans based on what they learned in the dispatches.

Grant made sure news summaries were created and distributed to his staff.

Grant had newspapers from Richmond delivered direct to his headquarters during the latter part of the war. He not only read them, he instructed his staff to condense news dispatches and telegraphed and distributed them to key strategists in Washington. 

 

His counterpart, Lee, picked out specific news stories that he believed contained indications of enemy movements and plans and had them forwarded to President Davis. Lee also used the information to initiate specific assignments, and to strengthen certain military units.

Operatives also played a role by planting false information that appeared in news stories.

For the most part, Southern newspapers exercised more discretion than their Northern counterparts. But, despite the distribution of so much valuable information through the press, neither side succeeded in developing an effective system of censorship or voluntary self-regulation.

The situation, however, also worked in reverse. Government agents, and others, figured out they could counter the distribution of valuable facts and figures by planting false intelligence to throw the enemy off balance. And, the ploy was often successful.

This battle to convey both valuable information and calculated misinformation wasn’t played out across just the news pages. The “Personals” section of newspapers were packed with intelligence data in the form of key words, dates, and coded names.

The telegraph helped newspapers assume more influence.

The telegraph gave the press the ability to receive reports from great distances and update the public on battle results, troop movements, casualty reports, and the political issues involved in the war.

Newspapers, in fact, were used by both the North and the South in an emotional war for public support--mostly through editorializing and by printing emotional on-the-scene reaction from those citizens directly affected by the conflict. 

Reporting, in many instances, was clearly biased. In an effort to bolster public morale, some newspapers falsely reported battle results and casualty rates.
 
The Civil War pushed the newspaper industry to new heights, primarily because of its ability to affect public opinion. During the next century--thanks to improved technology and the shift of population from rural to urban areas--the newspaper industry grew to assume a place of unequaled influence in American society throughout the next century.

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Visit Tom Rizzo's blog where he writes tall tales mostly about characters and events of the mid- to late-19th century, from the Civil War to Frontier America.

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Roping the Spoken Word

by Richard Prosch

Recently, a friend of mine who drives a truck for a living asked if my stories were available in audio. Not only did I tell him no, but I had to admit I'd never really given audio books much thought.

As a kid, before falling asleep, I listened to old time radio shows. Gunsmoke, Escape, and Have Gun, Will Travel were my favorites, but I never made the move to audio books.

A quick search at Amazon revealed what I'd been missing. The wide variety of western titles and authors was encouraging, but when I started to plan my own foray into audio, enthusiasm turned to worry.

How much time would it take? How much would it cost? How best to proceed.

I have a friend who works as a voice professional for radio. Friend or not, his style had to fit the bill.

Unlike radio shows, so much has to be conveyed by one voice, the job can be tricky. With westerns, the tenor immediately sets the tone. Close your eyes and imagine the voices. Gabby Hayes or Clint Eastwood? John Wayne or Smiley Burnette? The music: lively or somber? The sound effects? Or lack thereof?

Then, along with all the technicalities of recording (levels and bit rates), the legalities of distribution (music and SFX usage rights) and paying for studio time, we had to crunch some numbers.

I discovered Audible and their extensive help menus and forums were invaluable. I contacted our friend Ken Farmer, who produces his own audio works. Finally, I took the plunge and simply worked through the curve.

"Branham'sDue" may take a while to show a real profit, but it was a real adventure to produce.

Many of us Fictioneers have heard our characters come alive via audio. Whether through Audible's royalty sharing program, our own MP3 files, or a publisher's arrangement, we're reaching for a new audience and additional revenue.

As I wrote, Ken Farmer helped me a lot. Ken has four books in his The Nations series available through Audible/Amazon, and samples are a click away at the link. Ken says the format provides good extra revenue, and I don't doubt it. He narrates the works himself, and with each story weighing in at 8 to 9 hours, there's plenty of entertainment there.

On the other hand, Gordon Rottman's publisher arranged to have The Hardest Ride recorded. The sample proves narrator James Simenc's voice is perfectly matched to the story.  Again, that's something to watch out...er, listen for. In this  case, Simenc needed to read a part of the book that had a lot of Spanish in it. Gordo wrote to me:   

As the POV was a Texas cowpoke, he didn't have to be native-level Spanish, but he needed to pronounce it well enough to be understandable to a Spanish-speaker and not mangle it. He turned out to be able to rattle it off very well. That's an important consideration for a narrator if there are even small bits of another language.

Georgia Woods of Hartwood Publishing has these suggestions if you attempt to go it alone:

In general, if you’ve never listened to audio books, you won’t know what to look for in a narrator or in general when it comes to how it should sound.  Also, you have to understand how the contract works, how the recordings work, and how to tell the narrator what’s wrong as well as being able to sit and listen at the computer and give timestamp information for every error.  It’s quite time-consuming, to be honest, so we don’t do it with books we don’t feel we can profit on, for sure. 

Audible can help.

Mike Long let them pair his novel, No Good Like It Is, with narrator Keith Newbill. Mike and Keith both market the story and have also thought more about getting the book into the hands of professional drivers, maybe on CDs.

Dusty Richards' publisher produced CDs of his Chet Byrnes stories and, unlike the examples above, went all out in old time radio style with multiple actors, music and sound effects.

Finally, Marc Cameron and L.J. Martin worked with Books In Motion to market their books as recordings. Larry says publisher Gary Chandler will accept original manuscripts and non-exclusive work. He adds:

They are a GREAT company, honest, and super to work with.

In this new world of digital publishing, where the western is ubiquitous as ever, yet strangely invisible to the general public, I think audio books offer a good avenue to reach our audience. 

Uniquely able to find markets that movies or television can't, mp3 downloads or CD recordings can get our stories and names in front of new ears --something that just might translate into new eyes and new book revenues in the future.

After growing up on a Nebraska farm, Richard Prosch worked as a professional writer, artist, and teacher in Wyoming, South Carolina, and Missouri. His western crime fiction captures the fleeting history and lonely frontier stories of his youth where characters aren’t always what they seem, and the windburned landscapes are filled with swift, deadly danger. Read more at www.RichardProsch.com