Cheyenne author Josh Mitchell signs copies of his new book June 10 at City News

Cheyenne newspaper reporter and author Josh Mitchell will be signing copies of his new book, My Life in Executive Session, from 4-6 p.m. on Friday, June 10, at City News, 1722 Carey Ave., in downtown Cheyenne.

A blurb from the book's promo material:

When investigative journalist Warren Bradley goes to work for a newspaper in Jupiter, Arkansas, he wants to report the truth about the corrupt politicians in the small town. But his boss is part of the local good-ol'-boys system and censors the real news. Bradley uncovers too much and is fired in an attempt to make him leave town. Instead of hitting the road, Bradley starts an online newspaper and is finally able to report the truth. Set in the rural South, the novel has many colorful characters and unforgettable scenes.

Find out more from the publisher at www.westsouthpublishing.com

Robert Greer addresses NAACP banquet -- and signs books -- June 4 in Cheyenne

The multi-talented Robert Greer will come to the Cheyenne Holiday Inn on Saturday, June 4, to speak at the annual banquet of the Wyoming NAACP. His theme will be the contributions that African-Americans made to the history of the West. He will sign copies of his books from 6-7 p.m.. Dinner will follow, with Dr. Greer's speech at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35 per person, $50 per couple. You can purchase tickets for the event by calling Abe Stevenson at 307-634-8304 or Bennie McLaughlin, 307-634-5527.

When he's not writing, Dr. Greer is a professor of pathology, medicine, surgery and dentistry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. He also holds a master's degree in creative writing from Boston University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Miami University of Ohio, his alma mater.


Greer has lived in Denver for thirty years. In 1986 he founded The High Plains Literary Review and continues to serve as its editor-in-chief. He is the author or co-author of three medical textbooks and over 125 scientific articles. His short stories have appeared in dozens of national literary magazines and his short story collection, Isolation and Other Stories, published in 2000 by the Davies Group Publishers, is also wonderfully illustrated. 

Greer has been involved in cancer research at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center for more than thirty years. In 1983 his research group was the first in the world to report a synergistic link between smokeless tobacco use and human papillomaviruses in certain cancers of the mouth. That research foundation is the basis for the plot of his novel, The Devil's Hatband, the author's first novel featuring Denver bail bondsman and detective CJ Floyd. Several of his novels are set in Wyoming.


Spoon, Greer’s 2009 novel of the contemporary American West, won the Colorado Book Award for literary fiction. It also was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award and received the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union 2010 Media of the Year Award. Wyoming’s Craig Johnson, author of Another Man's Moccasins and The Dark Horse , had this to say about the novel: "With Spoon, Robert Greer tells the story of a modern-day range war in wildfire prose both taut and lyrical."

Greer also reviews books for a Denver National Public Radio affiliate, KUVO, and raises cattle on a ranch in Platte County, Wyoming. 

Penny Zeller book signing April 2 in Sheridan

Author Penny Zeller will be at Sheridan Stationery this Saturday, April 2, from 1-3 p.m., signing copies of her newest release Kaydie, which was just released last week. Kaydie follows McKenzie in the author's Montana Skies Historical Romance Series. Below is a short blurb about Kaydie:

Since the death of her abusive husband, Kaydie Kraemer’s life has been easier, but she’s wary of men and builds a wall of protection around her, staying with her sister McKenzie as she awaits the birth of her baby. Haunted by her painful marriage, Kaydie is determined never to fall in love again, and it will take the grace of God to change her mind—the same grace that works in the heart of ranch hand Jonah Dickenson, a confirmed bachelor who has unhealed wounds of his own to overcome.

Here is the link to the book trailer: http://youtu.be/Vwihs6rsqDk

"The Western Novel: History, Lore and Practice" March 11 in Buffalo

Presentation by two Wyoming Arts Council roster writers. Bring them to your community through an Arts Across Wyoming grant. Go to http://wyoarts.state.wy.us.

C.J. Box's COLD WIND debuts March 22

Cheyenne mystery writer C.J. Box soon will hit the road with his new book, COLD WIND, set for a March 22 release. The book tour features 20 stops so far. C.J. gets an early start with a March 4 presentation at the Teton County Public Library in Jackson and a swing through Arizona, including sessions at the Tucson Festival of Books March 11-13 in Tucson.

The tour:

Laramie, WY
Tuesday, March 22

Cheyenne, WY
Tuesday, March 22

Denver, CO (two locations)
Wednesday, March 23

Orange, CA
Thursday, March 24

Houston, TX
Friday, March 25

Dallas, TX
Saturday, March 26

Oklahoma City, OK
Sunday, March 27

Lexington, KY
Monday, March 28

Cincinnati, OH
Tuesday, March 29

St. Louis, MO
Wednesday, March 30

Minneapolis, MN
Thursday, March 31

Des Moines, IA
Friday, April 1

Phoenix, AZ
Saturday, April 2

Albuquerque, NM
Sunday, April 3

Fort Collins, CO
Monday, April 4

Casper, WY
Tuesday, April 5

Billings, MT
Wednesday, April 6

Sheridan, WY
Thursday, April 7

Cheyenne, WY
Friday, April 8

Longmont, CO
Monday, April 11

Boulder, CO
Monday, April 11

For details, visit http://www.cjbox.net/appearances and check back in coming weeks for changes and additions.

Tim Sandlin's fourth book in the GroVont saga due out in April

Tim Sandlin sends news "that the GroVont Trilogy is back in action in anticipation of Lydia, the fourth GroVont book, which will be out in April. After a long coma, Sex and Sunsets, Western Swing, Skipped Parts, Sorrow Floats, and Social Blunders may be once again bought at your local bookstore. Buy a set from Valley Books in downtown Jackson and receive a signed copy of The Pyms: Unauthorized Tales of Jackson Hole for free." 

Tina Welling reads from "Cowboys Never Cry" Oct. 16 at Valley Bookstore

Tina Welling will deliver a brief talk and read from her new book, COWBOYS NEVER CRY, at Valley Bookstore in Jackson on Saturday, October 16, 7 p.m. Book signing to follow. Wine and cheese served.

Tina Welling's new novel to be released Oct. 5

"Cowboys Never Cry," a new novel by Jackson writer Tina Welling, will be released tomorrow -- Oct. 5.

Tina is a long-time faculty member for the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, the recipient of a Frank Nelson Doubleday writing award and is on the Wyoming Arts Council's artist roster. Wyoming organizations may want to write an Arts Across Wyoming grant to bring Tina to your community for a reading, presentation and/or writing workshop. Get more info at http://www.wyomingartscouncil.org/.

Here's some background on the new book, as well as some reviews:

Cowboys are not Cassie's weakness...until the most famous cowboy on the planet sets his boots in her path. In truth, Robbin's far different from the image he projects. Disillusioned with fame, he has retreated to his dad's ranch to reconnect with the land and people he loves...and something about Cassie stirs deeper changes than he'd bargained for.

As much as Cassie tries to avoid Robbin, she's drawn to his struggle to become a better man. Are they about to play out a classic romance, with the glorious Teton mountains as a backdrop? Or will their notions of each other prove as false as the cowboy mystique once the charm has worn off?

"As satisfying as sage in summer rain." Sandra Dallas

"A novel of richness and depth. Cowboys Never Cry is a poignant story of love and loss and the healing that can come from the most unexpected people in the most unlikely circumstances. Looming over the story are the beauty and grandeur of Wyoming's Grand Tetons and the almost magical influence that nature exerts on human lives. If you haven't yet read Tina Welling, you don't know what you've been missing. Start here! Start now!" -- Margaret Coel, author of The Spider's Web

"Tina Welling has done it again. Cowboys Never Cry is a big-hearted romp set against the gorgeous landscapes of the American West. Cassie Danner is a tough, generous, grieving protagonist. She also has a sense of humor as grand as the Tetons. This novel is a heady gallop through the tangled thickets of love." -- Alyson Hagy, author of Ghosts of Wyoming

Read more about Tina and her books at http://www.tinawelling.com/

LCCC Literary Connection features Rick Bass, Robert Caisley and Sasha Pimentel-Chacon

The Laramie County Community College Foundation has released the schedule for Literary Connection Oct. 8-9 in Cheyenne. Events will be held in the LCCC Health Sciences Building. Here are the details:

The Literary Connection each year features guest authors who talk about the skills of writing and the process of literary development, present guest lectures, answer questions and sign copies of their books.

Presenters this year are fiction writer Rick Bass of Yaak, Mont.; playwright Robert Caisley of Moscow, Idaho; and poet Sasha Pimentel-Chacon of El Paso, Texas (shown in photo).

Schedule

Friday, Oct. 8
Free. Space is limited and pre-registration is required.
Continental breakfast will be provided.
8:30 a.m. – Participant Check-in
9:00 a.m. - Welcome
9:15 - 10:15 a.m. – Author Presentation
10:30 - 11:30 a.m. – Author Presentation
11:45 - 12:45 p.m. – Author Presentation
1:00 p.m. - Conclusion

Saturday, Oct. 9

$40 per person before Sept. 1; $50 per person after. Space is limited and pre-registration is required.
9:30 a.m. – Participant Check-in
10:00 a.m. – Welcome
10:15 – 11:00 a.m. – Author Presentation
11:00 – 11:15 a.m. – Q/A
11:15 – 12:00 p.m. – Author Presentation
12:00 – 12:15 p.m. – Q/A
12:30 – 1:15 p.m. – Lunch
1:30 – 2:30 p.m. – Author Presentation
2:30 – 2:45 p.m. – Q/A
2:45 – 3:00 p.m. – Conclusion
3:00 – 3:45 p.m. – Book Signing

You may register online for this event.

Novelist Carl Hiaasen on his "litmus test" for choosing books

Mystery novelist Carl Hiaasen on how he chooses a book to read:

When I’m deciding to read a book, I never open to the first chapter, because that’s been revised and worked over 88 times. I’ll just turn to the middle of the book, to the middle of a chapter, and just read a random page and I’ll know right away whether this is the real deal or not. You can tell right away, if it’s really good, it’ll be really good on page 158. Lots of people can write a good first page but to sustain it, that’s my litmus test. If I flip to the middle of the book and there’s a piece of dialogue that’s just outstanding, or a description, then I’ll flip back to the first page and start it.

Read the entire interview with the author on Entertainment Weekly's "Shelf Life" at http://shelf-life.ew.com/2010/08/12/carl-hiaasen-star-island/

Hiaasen will be signing copies of his new book, "Star Island," as Tattered Cover LoDo in Denver on Wednesday, Aug. 18. FMI: http://www.tatteredcover.com/

EWC fetes Spur Award winner John D. Nesbitt

Wayne Deahl from Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington sends this invitation:

Please join us this Friday, April 30, from 12:30-2 p.m. in the EWC Auditorium Lobby to recognize author and English professor John Nesbitt. His books recently received two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America.

The reception is free and open to the public.

John has won a creative writing fellowship from the Wyoming Arts Council and is on the WAC artists' roster.

Here's more info on the awards from John's March 22 blog post:

My novel Stranger in Thunder Basin won the Spur Award for Best Mass-Market Paperback Original. This is a great development for me, as I won in the same category last year with Trouble at the Redstone and was a finalist the year before with Raven Springs. All three of these novels have been published by Leisure Books / Dorchester Publishing.

In addition to winning in Mass-Market Paperback, I had the stunning surprise of also winning in the Best Short Fiction category. My short story "At the End of the Orchard," originally published by Hardboiled Magazine, won here. This story, about 9,000 words, is a mystery/noir piece set in a peach orchard and labor camp in the 1960s.

C.J. Box's newest Joe Pickett novel, "Nowhere to Run," debuts April 6

Early in his career (1992), Cheyenne's C.J. Box was the recipient of a Wyoming Arts Council creative writing fellowship. Many books later, C.J. just announced the publication of his tenth Joe Pickett mystery novel.

This comes from C.J. Box's e-mail newsletter:

The tenth Joe Pickett novel NOWHERE TO RUN by Edgar Award-winning author C.J. Box will be available nationwide April 6, 2010.

The early reviews are extraordinary, including a rare grand slam of starred reviews in all four pre-publication trade journals.

What they're saying about NOWHERE TO RUN:

• "...[A] terrible, beautiful tale of courage and compassion and culpability..."Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW


• "...Ranks with his best...[Readers] won't know what hit them."Booklist STARRED REVIEW


• "...Intense...well-structured...a perfect choice..."Library Journal STARRED REVIEW


• "...Exhilarating landscapes, high adventure, thrilling suspense, surprising moral quandaries..." Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW


• And this, from Michael Connelly, America's #1 New York Times best-selling author of 9 Dragons: "I love Joe Pickett and with NOWHERE TO RUN, he's on top of his game. So is C.J. Box. This one is his best yet."


• "Box's series is the gold standard," wrote Library Journal about Below Zero, "but never has he written a novel as harrowing as Nowhere to Run."

Joe Pickett's in his last week as the temporary game warden in the isolated town of Baggs, Wyoming, but there have been strange things going on in the surrounding mountains, and his conscience won't let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. And then there's the runner who's gone missing -- an Olympic hopeful who'd been training in the region and then just...vanished.

Joe doesn't mind admitting that the farther he rides, the more he wishes he could just turn around and go home. And he is right to be concerned. Because what awaits him is like nothing he's ever dealt with, like something out of an old story, except this is all too real and all too deadly. When he'd first saddled up, he'd thought of this as his last patrol. What he hadn't known was just how accurate that might turn out to be.

Visit http://www.cjbox.net/ and read the story behind the story and to download the first chapter.

Outside Mag: "Biting characters" drive Mark Spragg's new book, "Bone Fire"

Cody's Mark Spragg was awarded creative writing fellowships from the Wyoming Arts Council in 1989 and 2000. He was the recipient of a Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award in 1999. Amongst all the accolades, Mark has written award-winning novels and screenplays and memoirs. His latest novel, "Bone Fire," hits the shelves in March.

Here's a review from the March issue of Outside Magazine (via Mark Spragg's Facebook fan page):

There’s plenty of horseback riding and bucolic prose in Mark Spragg’s novel Bone Fire (Knopf, $26), but there’s nothing sentimental about his story of northern Wyoming, set in the fictional town of Ishawooa. This is New West all the way – a place to escape from, not to. Those who populate the modest ranches include an art-school dropout caring for her grandfather, a ten-year-old growing up quick in the absence of his mother (who’s off selling New Age enlightenment at the behest of her “Guides”), and Crane Carlson, a sheriff suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Early on, a murdered teen is discovered in a meth lab, and Carlson’s plodding investigation forms the backbone of Spragg’s narrative. But it’s the author’s endearingly biting characters, not the slowly unpacking whodunit, that drives the book. You root for these people no matter how much dysfunction they leave in their wake, mostly because they’re always saying things you’d never have the guts to utter out loud. “You want me to talk with [your manager] about this attitude you’ve got going on?” a woman asks a motel clerk who’s just implied that he knows she’s there for a tryst. “No ma’am,” he replies. “Then try not being such a smutty little s***-head.” [wyomingarts edits]. Spragg, who lives in Wyoming, understands how people endure the state’s harsh lifestyle: Hard times go down easier when you’ve got a bitter sense of humor. – Christopher Keyes

Michael McIrvin's new novel hits the stands

Michael McIrvin of Cheyenne has a new book, "The Blue Man Dreams of the End of Time."

Here's a description of the book from Michael's publisher, BeWrite Books:

Sonny, a drunken convenience store clerk living uneasily in a relationship with twin sisters, woke up naked and blue. Not sad, but actually blue from head to toe.

A warped warning from a former CIA colleague? A message from a deranged hit man that he and those he loves are marked for death? Or is his blueness a more invidious omen?

Sonny's search for answers will lead him to a perverse reconciliation with his former bloody role in geopolitics - and his destiny - on the bloody trail to Chiapas.

Along the way he will befriend a people struggling to survive, reconsider the nature of terrorism and the drug trade, and decipher an ancient Mayan vision of the end of time.

He will also meet another former CIA operative who doubles as a jaguar shaman, a Mayan holy man whose prophesies include Sonny, and a mysterious boy whose role in his people's future is both mythic and deadly.

Sonny's flashbacks to his gore-stained government work in Mesoamerica, including the act for which he was 'excommunicated', constitute proof of power's inhumanity, but his darkest revelation is that violence and greed are the true mechanisms of history.

Michael McIrvin's high-octane, intelligent novel is an immaculately researched, powerful indictment of brutal counterintelligence, including torture and murder, an exploration of how ends are achieved by a nation-state. This book is frighteningly timely.

Pamela Nowak's second novel, "Choices" Signing Events

Choices is a historical romance about a rebellious officer's daughter and a rugged enlisted man who must make difficult choices as they shape their own destiny.

October 8, 2009, 6:00 pm

Barnes and Noble (Cheyenne, WY): Choices Launch Party and Signing

October 15, 2009, 6:30 pm:

Barnes and Noble (Southlands Mall, Aurora, CO): Denver Area Choices Launch Party
followed by Dutch treat wine & hors d'oeuvres reception at 8:00 p.m. at Wine Experience Cafe, Southlands. RSVP to elarson@wineexworldcellar.com

Cheyenne City News: Sat Oct 17, 11 a.m.-1p.m.