Livia's brand-new urban fantasy novel WITCH GOT YOUR TONGUE is now available as an e-book for both the Kindle and the Nook, and the trade paperback edition should be available in the near future. I edited this book, and while I'm hardly an unbiased observer, I think it's terrific, especially if you're a fan of novels by authors such as Charlaine Harris and Kim Harrison. It's got action, humor, romance, drama, and more action. Livia has an interesting post over on her blog about how the book was written.
Our daughter Joanna and some of her friends even made a book trailer for it (a first for us), and a talented young artist named Alyssa Renae White did the artwork for the cover. Great stuff all around, I say.
Two more books from our backlist have been released as e-books for both the Kindle and the Nook. My novel THE WILDERNESS ROAD, originally published by Harper Paperbacks, is a frontier historical set in Kentucky in 1790. Despite this, the cover of the Harper edition features a cowboy who's a dead ringer for Charles Bronson in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST carrying a Winchester. Of course, who am I to argue, since it sold the best of the eight books I wrote for Harper. It's nice to have it available again, since I always thought it was one of my best books.
Livia's GHOST RIVER is one of several Westerns that originally came out in hardback from M. Evans under the name L.J. Washburn. That's the only edition until now, and it's also very nice to have it available again. It's a stand-alone traditional Western, and none other than Len Meares, the author of the iconic Larry and Stretch series under the name Marshall Grover, read it and declared it one of the best Westerns he'd ever read.
Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) I highly recommend you check 'em both out.
My Western novel THE HUNTED, which was originally published by Harper in 1997, is now available as an e-book for the Kindle and the Nook. Here's the description from the book's page on Amazon:
After the war, a lone Confederate soldier and onetime gunslinger emerges from a Yankee prison camp and faces a harsh frontier winter, outlaws, state police, and Indians in a quest to find his six children.
I like this one a lot and think it's one of my best pure traditional Western novels. Check it out.
My historical novel COSSACK THREE PONIES, which was a finalist for the Spur Award the year before UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS was also a finalist, is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. Like DUST DEVILS, this story started its life as a screenplay. I wrote the whole thing on spec, my then-agent circulated it in Hollywood for a while, but nothing came of it so I novelized the script and was able to sell it as a book. As a result, the story is pretty cinematic, I think, with lots of action and some sweeping battle scenes. The plot finds a Russian cossack who is accompanying a party of nobles on a hunting expedition in the American West falling in with a tribe of Blackfoot Indians and having various adventures with them. Lots of actual historical stuff in this one, as there is in UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS. (Note the term "actual historical stuff". I ain't nothin' if not an intellectual.) I think the story is a lot of fun, and those of you who take a chance on it, I hope you enjoy it.
Most writers have favorites among their work. UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS is one of mine. It's one of the few books I ever sold on the phone, just by telling the editor about the concept: the last gang of Old West outlaws gets arrested after robbing a bank, and they have to choose between going to prison or enlisting in the army to go to France and fight the Boche. Naturally, they choose to fight. But outlaws tend to have their own way of doing things . . . When the editor heard this, he said, "I'll get the paperwork started. Oh, and by the way, make sure lots of things blow up real good."
Another reason I like it is because I put myself in it as a character (you'll spot me if you read the prologue). And it was a finalist for the Spur Award given by the Western Writers of America. I think I did a pretty good job on the research, too. Mostly, though, I think that in this book I did about as good a job as I've ever done of capturing the voice I wanted to capture and hitting the notes I wanted to hit. In going over the Kindle edition, I found myself getting misty-eyed over some of the scenes . . . and I wrote the blasted thing!
UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. I've often described it to people as "just your basic Western/World War I novel where lots of stuff blows up real good". If that sounds like the kind of yarn that might appeal to you, check it out.
Livia's paranormal/historical romance novel ALURA'S WISH is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. This one's set in medieval times, complete with beautiful ladies, noble knights, swordfights, outlaws, swordfights, a couple of bickering djinn, swordfights . . . well, you get the idea. It's remotely possible that at some point in the writing, I may have said, "Why don't you put some more swordfights in it?" (Ah, you should have seen the looks when she was working on the Hallam novels and my contribution was to keep saying, "Why don't you have Hallam get hit on the head?")
Anyway, she did several of these paranormal romances for Berkley a number of years ago and they're all great fun. I'm sure all of them will be available for the Kindle in the reasonably near future. It's good to see this one back out there, under her name this time.
Livia's second Lucas Hallam novel, DEAD STICK, is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. I'd have a really difficult time choosing between this one and the third book, DOG HEAVIES, as my favorite in the series. This one is the most BLACK MASK-like of the three and has some great scenes in it. I'm very happy to see it in print again. (Well, it's an e-book, but you know what I mean . . .)
Not a forgotten book this week, but one that was almost impossible to get hold of for a good many years. It's my first novel, the first private eye novel set in Fort Worth, Texas (that I know of), and now you can get it not only in hardback and trade paperback but also as an ebook for the Kindle, and at a very reasonable price, too, I might add. Livia and I are working on getting the rest of our backlist available for the Kindle, so I should have some more announcements along those lines soon.
We recently bought a Kindle when Amazon dropped the price, and the first book I bought for it and read on it is Charles Gramlich’s Western collection, KILLING TRAIL. It was a great way to inaugurate my Kindle-reading experience.
KILLING TRAIL includes two novellas, “Killing Trail” and “Showdown at Wild Briar”; two short stories, “Powder Burn” and “Once Upon a Time with the Dead”, an excerpt from Gramlich’s unpublished first novel, a Western called THE BEAR PAW VALLEY, and a couple of essays, one about the Old West history to be found in the area where Gramlich grew up in Arkansas and the other about Louis L’Amour. All the fiction is outstanding. These are well-written yarns with good characters and plenty of action. “Showdown at Wild Briar” is probably my favorite of the bunch, because the hero has to escape from a particularly deadly trap and then finds an even worse plot twist waiting for him. “Once Upon a Time with the Dead” is a flash fiction piece, very poetic and effective. These stories have really whetted my appetite for the first full-length Western novel that Charles is bound to write one of these days, sooner rather than later, I hope. For now, you can start off with this collection, which I give a high recommendation.
As for the Kindle itself, I enjoyed reading KILLING TRAIL on it. When such devices were first introduced, I didn’t think I’d like them, but since then I’ve heard enough people whose opinions I respect say that they liked reading books on the Kindle so I wasn’t really surprised. I don’t know how to do much with it yet, like change the type size or navigate through a book other than one page at a time, but I’m sure I’ll learn all the little tricks. It almost certainly won’t replace reading actual books for me, but for things that are more easily available on the Kindle – or only available on the Kindle – I think it’s great.
