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Also just released by James J. Griffin, Ride to Redemption, the second novel in the Cody Havlicek Texas Ranger series, from Condor Publishing, Inc. Read more on James J. Griffin and his latest book by going to Jim's Top Five (preliminary)Choices... Alias the Cook In my opinion, this is far and away the best story of the bunch. The author is either Italian or did a whole lot of research to capture the language. I also suspect he or she has spent more than a little time in Boston's North End, or Little Italy. More importantly, the story illustrates perfectly the entire mystique of the Westward movement, the desire of so many immigrants to come to America and seek their fortunes in the wide open spaces of the western USA, to become a cowboy. The writing is the most evocative of all the submissions, the characters most alive. There are a couple of minor typos ("id" instead of "if", as well as the use of "doggie" for "dogie" (as we know, a "doggie" is a (small) dog, a "dogie" is a (motherless) calf. The author also has a horse "snicker" rather than "nicker". (These same two errors appear in another submission). However, these were not anywhere near enough to ruin the feel of the story, or to knock it out of first place. Alias the Cook is imaginative, original, and just a darned fine piece of work. Disturbing the Peace This is an extremely well-written, engrossing character study of the main protagonist, Sheriff Leo Coughlan. It starts out almost as a standard western short story, with the shooting of a young cowboy by the town bully, but quickly becomes much more than that. The author also has very cleverly titled the work, since upon reading Disturbing the Peace refers to much more than the shooting of the cowboy, but to what that event does to Sheriff Coughlan's well-ordered life. Bonus: no real typos, either. For the Love of a Woman I found this story well-written and appealing, and like the fact it is at least loosely based in fact, on the orphan trains which brought kids from the big cities of the East to the West. The characters were also well-written, and the reader can empathize with their feelings and frustrations. A couple of minor typos (course instead of coarse, born instead of borne), and the author needs to avoid capital letters for emphasis, using italics instead, but For the Love of a Woman is a fine human interest Western short story. Toby This story has almost everything. A grieving widower, friends who want to help him, and some nasty bad guys. But most of all, it has Toby, the title character. Some dog stories can be overly sentimental and maudlin, but the author hit this story just perfectly. I have to say, though, if Toby had died at the end I never could have chosen this story. I'm still traumatized over seeing Ol' Yeller as a kid. Flash of Light I chose this story for its lack of pretension. It's exactly what it's meant to be, a romantic tale in the style of the pulp short stories of the late 40s or the 50s. Besides, this is the only writer who made the protagonist's horse part of the plot, and showed quite well the feelings a cowboy wandering the west might well have for his equine companion, as well as the affection the horse would have for his rider. That alone gets a big plus in my book. There is one slight error, where the writer has the horse lapping up water (horses suck water, not lap it like a dog or cat), but then again the writer also knows the proper modern style for indicating thoughts is italics, not quotation marks. So that's it. Wish I could have added several more to the list, but then it wouldn't be a contest, would it? Jim
As a writer, Celia Hayes is passionately interested in the history of the American frontier. She was brought up in an eccentric, baby-boom family, which provided rich materiel for her memoir "Our Grandpa Was an Alien". She earned a degree in English Literature (California State University Northridge, 1976) before an un-slaked thirst for adventure and foreign travel led her to enlist in the United States Air Force. She trained as a radio and television broadcast technician, and served for 20 years in Greece, Spain, Japan, Korea, Greenland and Ogden, Utah, in a wide assortment of duties which included midnight alt-rock DJ, TV news anchor, video-production librarian, radio and television writer and producer, production manager, and base tour guide. In 2002, she became a regular contributor to the military-oriented weblog, "Sgt. Stryker's Daily Brief" (now "The Daily Brief") as "Sgt. Mom" writing essays and commentary on matters historical, personal, political, literary and military. Daughter of Texas By Celia Hayes
Like my earlier project, the Adelsverein Trilogy, Daughter of Texas started out as a single volume, intended as a sort of prelude to the Trilogy. That was supposed to be about the German settlers who came to Texas in a large number in the mid 1840s under the auspices of the Adelsverein, or Society of Noblemen of Mainz. They had an entrepreneur scheme, to bring over settlers from Germany, which would reward them with lots of land and acclaim for having done a very good deed; helping farmers and craftsmen settle in a new land, with lots of opportunities . . . unfortunately, the Mainzer Adelsverein went bust, after about two years, but not before essentially dumping 7,000 immigrants onto the Texas frontier. It was a fantastic story; to tell it in a way that readers could relate to, I made it a family saga. I created a German family the Steinmetz family; parents, three daughters, two sons and a son-in-law, who come and settle in Texas. I also needed to create another character, a man already established in Texas but who could speak German, who would serve as their bridge between the life they had left behind, and the new one they must embrace . . . and incidentally, serve as a romantic interest for one of the Steinmetz daughters. So, that led me to create another family, the Becker family; long established in Texas and almost in passing, I gave this character an older sister. I described her as being a woman who kept a boarding house in early Austin, who had been married twice, and knew practically everyone who was anyone in Republic-era Texas. And I should emphasize that she started as a fairly minor character, fairly secondary but when I came to thinking about what my next book was to be I thought, why not write about Margaret Becker? Do the whole story of her life and her experiences: coming to Texas as a young girl, marrying the schoolteacher, and seeing the beginnings of the war for Texas independence from her home in Gonzalez. And then the whole of that war, the ‘Runaway Scrape’ where almost the entire Anglo population evacuated back to east Texas under horrific conditions and what she did to rebuild her life. I had written, almost in the first chapter of the Trilogy, where her brother says in passing to another character, that his sister had been left to raise four sons when her husband died of tuberculosis and what a story I could make of that? A story that was just alluded to in passing, but that could be another fantastically gripping story, of a woman meeting the challenges of that time. Tell the story from her point of view, move her experiences front and center, tell of the people that she would have met, and known over the years of her life, from the age of twelve? So I did . . . but when I had gotten up to about 350 pages of manuscript, the events of the war, the ‘Runaway Scrape’ and the death of her first husband and I hadn’t even gotten into the romance with her second, or very far into all sorts of interesting but relatively little-known happenings during the years of the Republic of Texas I decided that I would save all the rest for a second book about her life. So that’s where that stands. Daughter of Texas is available at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and in Kindle and Nook editions. The official launch is April 21st, the 175th anniversary of Sam Houston’s victory at San Jacinto. Now, the sequel should be available in December, 2011 I’m about two-thirds done with the first draft. No, I don’t have a problem with writer’s block why do you ask? Celia's Top Five (preliminary)Choices...
The 4:15 Fiasco - I really rather liked the twist: that the robbers inadvertently did the good thing and got rewarded! Flash of Light - Nice concise ending, and best closing wise-ass remark evah! The Double Eagle - nice classic western, loved the double-twist Alias The Cook - Original character and set-up (I had to flip a coin to decide between this and The Professor Goes West - similar easterner adapting to west theme) The K-Bar Incident - Didn't see THAT coming. This one, incidentally, could be done as a full-length novel.
Dave P. Fisher has spent half his lifetime as a working cowboy, rodeo rider, bronc buster, horsepacker, and guide. His adventures on the back of a horse have taken him from the wilds of Alaska to Oregon, and all through the Rocky Mountains . Dave began putting his cowboy knowledge and experiences into poems, and then into western novels and short stories. His latest publications are the western historical trilogy, The Poudre Canyon Saga. Book 1 Where Free Gather is out and can be found at bookstores and Amazon.com. Book 2 - White Grizzly is due out mid-December 2010, and Book 3 The Men From Poudre Canyon will be out the beginning of 2011. Information can be found at >> He is internationally published with over 300 non-fiction articles and fiction works to his credit. Along with winning top places in national western short story competitions his short stories have, to date, earned 8 Reader’s Choice Awards and others have been published in anthologies. His collection of Western short stories: Bronc Buster Short Stories of the American West was awarded the prestigious Will Rogers Medallion Award for Outstanding Western Fiction.
Book 1 of the Poudre Canyon Saga By Dave P. Fisher Claude LeSueur hurled his final insult in the face of Jean Pelletier igniting the young trapper’s white hot temper. A flash of fury and a naked blade left the son of wealthy fur merchant Maurice LeSueur gasping out his last breath on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Jean, together with his brother Andre, flee Canada and the hangman’s gallows, while behind them follow two murderous river pirates, Joseph Quesnel and his silent partner known only as ‘the wolverine.’ Hired by LeSueur to hunt them down Quesnel harbors his own secret hatred for Jean Pelletier and is hunting for his own purposes. Making their way into the American West where free trappers gathered and beaver shined the brothers melt into the world of the Indian and the mountain man. As the years pass the memories of Canada and Claude LeSueur become faded dreams until the day Jean’s past comes back and threatens the new life he has so carefully built. Learn more about Dave P. Fisher here>> Thank you for taking time to learn more about these highly qualified western authors who judged this years competition. And now what you've all been waiting for... THE WINNERS of the very first Rope and Wire Short Story Competition, along with comments from our final judge, Dave P. Fisher, are...
I would like to say a final Thank You to everyone who submitted an entry to this years competition. |
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