The Mostly Monthly Midden
People think that blogs are a recent invention. Ha! What is a blog but a bunch of stuff that people once thought was valuable, most of which is no longer of any value except to archaeologists and other nosey people? And the most recent stuff is at the top. Blogs were invented tens of thousands of years ago. Archaeologists call them "middens".
This is an approximately monthly miscellany on what Kathleen and Michael are up to. About once a month, when your webmaster can catch them, they sit down and discuss what's new and interesting. Following the Internet Midden Standard, the most recent material is at the top. Usually.
March, 2008
Favorite Read of the Month
Pax Dakota
Interview: The Betrayal
Mike and Kathy are interviewed a lot. But this one is special. Recently, they opened their home to Karen Jones for an interview on The Betrayal, a great rarity.
February, 2008
Mountain and Plains Library Association Award
Wyoming authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear have been selected to receive the 2008 Literary Contribution Award from the Mountain Plains Library Association. Beth Avery, the Chair of the Awards Committee, says "The award is given to an author whose published writings most successfully further an understanding and appreciation of the Mountain Plains region." The MPLA Award banquet will be held at the annual conference, Thursday evening, May 1, 2008, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Gears, who say they are "deeply honored" by the award, will give the keynote speech at the conference.
November, 2007
Michael and Kathy will have an article in the Spring issue of Bison World Magazine. The title is The Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Children of Dawnland is complete, but still no publication date. Other publication dates have changed as well; the new dates are posted on The Books page.
Expect a mass market paperback of People of the Nightland in March, 2008.
Kathy and Michael's new thriller, Under a Green Sky, currently weighes in at 350 manuscript pages. It is due to the German publisher, Lübbe,, in February. No US publisher has signed up yet.
Characters' names get changed from time to time, just ike books. Special Investigator Christopher Keef is now "Skip Murphy".
Some upcoming events are listed on the Public Appearances page.
People of the Painted Canyon, and People of Dawnland are now under contract. The latter takes the characters of Children of Dawnland up to adulthood.
September, 2007
Under a Green Sky
A new thriller by the Gears is in process.
When a luxury cruise ship is found floating in the Atlantic with 4,000 people dead, three Muslim fundamentalist groups immediately claim responsibility. Even worse, the vessel was carrying a world famous Christian preacher and 2,000 loyal supporters on their way to the Holy Land for a controversial "Crusade" to recover the Holy Land for Christians.
As tensions mount, it is up to Dr. Maureen Cole and Special Investigator Christopher Keef to uncover the truth.
But as Christian suicide bombers begin picking targets, Maureen and Chris begin to understand that another, greater threat may be at play.
To Cast a Pearl has a new title, The Betrayal: The Stolen Life of Jesus. As noted, it is already in print in German, Italian and Russian.
Kathy's Children of Dawnland is complete. It takes place as a comet exploded over eastern Canada, 12,900 years ago. There are over a million elliptical depressions we call the Carolina Bays scattered from New Jersey to Florida. There is a "black mat" layer in the Earth at about this age, laden with iridium, glass sphericles, carbon spheriules, fullerenes and other material associated with large impacts on the Earth. This is about the time that Clovis activity stopped, and Kathy notes that Clovis sites occur below or in the "black mat" layer, but not above it.
The event lead to what we call the Younger Dryas Cool Episode, in which the slow deglaciation of North America was interrupted by a cooling period, and many large mammals such as the mammoth went extinct.
There will be a Teachers Guide. The book will be used in classes such as science and history for children aged 8 to 12.
Two scripts are in progress, for Children of Dawnland and The Betrayal.
Tor Books interviewed Kathleen and Michael at Red Canyon Ranch on People of the Nightland. (21MB file, Microsoft ASF format)
Mike and Kathy are working on contracts for two new prehistory books. People of the Painted Canyon, and People of Dawnland, which takes the characters of Children of Dawnland up to adulthood.
July, 2007
We've added a new excerpt, from People of the Weeping Eye and People of the Thunder. Release date for People of the Weeping Eye is currently April, 2008. There's no release date yet for People of the Thunder.
To Cast a Pearl is published in Germany, from Lübbe. Look for US publication from TOR in June of 2008.
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Michael is pleased to announce that he is now (unofficially) an Iron Butt motorcyclist! On July 13-14, he rode his BMW from Denver to Thermopolis, almost circumnavigating Yellowstone in the process. He rode 1445 miles in 22 hours and 44 minutes, and has the gas receipts to prove it. He qualified for the SaddleSore rating, but is 65 miles short of the BunBurner Gold rating. Once the association certifies his records, his name will go up on the Iron Butt Association's web site.
Kathy, meanwhile, has started work on a book for children ages 8-12, for Tor's Young Readers category. The working title is Children of Dawnland. It takes place some 12,000 years ago as a comet explodes over China, and glaciers begin to melt. Kathy says that writing for children requires a very different writing style.
Kathy is freshly elected to the Western Writers of American board for a two year stint.
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Twenty years in print! Not only Mike and Kathy, but Michael's The Warriors of Spider will have been in print continuously for 20 years as of March 20, 2008. Expect to see a special 20th Anniversary edition. And maybe similar treatment for Long Ride Home, Michael's first book sale? Mike says his writing has gotten a lot better since then. As Kathy observes, "If you're not getting better, you will be winnowed out."
Michael and Kathy have a new thriller under contract to Lübbe, their German publisher. The working title is Comes a Green Sky, and the tentative German publication date is Summer, 2008. No US publisher has been signed. Yet. The story line involves a fully automated cruise ship sailing the Indian Ocean — with everyone aboard dead. Mary Celeste version 2.0? Wonder how that will go over on the next Authors at Sea cruise.
February, 2007
An update on People of the Weeping Eye. The book has been pulled from the catalog. Tor now says the book is too long. They want to split it into two parts — something like Morning River and Coyote Summer. The current thinking is People of the Weeping Eye Winter and People of the Weeping Eye Spring. The two hardbounds would be released a season apart, and the mass market paperbacks in subsequent months. There is no planned date for release.
The manuscript for To Cast a Pearl has been delivered to Lübbe, the German publisher, and other European publishers. Tor Forge also has the MS, but there's no announced US publication date yet.
A long time ago, in a magazine far, far away, Ken Rand interviewed Michael and Kathy. That interview, and several others, has been collected into an anthology entitled Human Visions: The Talebones Interviews by Fairwood Press. Unfortunately, the Fairwood Press web site does not allow deep links, so go to the main page, click on "Catalog", then on "Anthologies". Your webmaster hasn't read the book, but would be very interested in reading Ken's interviews with Michael and Kathy, Jim Hogan, C.J. Cherryh, Spider Robinson, Fred Saberhagen, and Harry Turtledove. For starters.
There are a few new notes on Kathy and Michael's March book tour on the Public Appearances page. We'll have more details as we get them.
