Happy October to All!

The mountains around us are a patchwork of gold and green, and our yard is filled with deep red Chokecherry trees and brilliant yellow aspens. In the sunlight, the leaves all seem to glow from an inner fire. It’s all just beautiful.

We just returned from celebrating our 40^th anniversary (sheesh, time to diet) and have been harvesting the last of the potatoes, which are delicious. Also been mourning the fact that the tomatoes we planted needed a much longer growing season than they received in this northern country. Of course, the raccoons sleeping on the plants probably didn’t help. But the fried green tomatoes we picked are excellent, especially as an accompaniment to buffalo burgers. By the way, the buffalo are looking shaggy, losing their summer coats, and preparing to grow a heavy, winter undercoat, which consists of some of the finest cashmere in the world. They always seem relieved that cold weather has returned.  When the biting flies vanish and the dust of summer fades, they run across the pastures kicking up their heels and bounding through the tan grasses.

HAPPY SEPTEMBER!

It's a quiet beautiful day in Wyoming. The aspens and cottonwoods have their first touches of yellow, heralding the arrival of autumn a bit early, but it's been a cool summer here.

We were just informed that we will be the recipients of the 2023 Frank Waters Award.

"The Frank Waters Award stands for exemplary literary achievement, as well as a canon of writing that communicates a deep understanding, celebration, and love of our human nature and peoples of all races." Previous recipients are: Barbara Kingsolver, Tony Hillerman, and John Nichols.

In college, we read several of Frank Waters’ books—MASKED GODS, BOOK OF THE HOPI, PUMPKIN SEED POINT—all classics, and each left an indelible impression on us. His dedication to conveying difficult Native American spiritual concepts, the haunting beauty of the western landscape, and the character of its people, was an inspiration. Each was described in some of the most beautiful prose we’ve ever read. It's a great privilege to receive an award that bears Frank Waters' name. We are deeply grateful to Friends of the Pike’s Peak Library District for this honor.

“Jean Auel meets Nora Roberts in this exciting new series.”

- Doug Preston, New York Times bestselling author of TYRANNOSAUR CANYON

Happy August! 

I wanted to let you know about the beautiful new reprint of IT SLEEPS IN ME. This is the first time the book has ever been in hardcover and I’m excited! 

The novel is based upon one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read, which was published in 1632 and written by a member of the Recollect Order. Father Gabriel Sagard arrived in New France in 1623 and had been living and ministering to the Huron tribe when he witnessed what is certainly one of the most extraordinary healing rituals in the history of North America. Darkly erotic, the andacwander so shocked him that he thoroughly documented it in his book The Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons.  I knew I had to write about it, and The Black Falcon series was born.

NEWS UPDATE!!!

Hello Everyone,

Well, it's been a stressful day today. Fans have been notifying us from around the world that their orders for RECKONING (coming in October) and THE ICE ORPHAN (coming in November) have been cancelled by retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others. This is one of those glitches that's very frustrating for everyone concerned. Here's what happened...

Our wonderful publisher, DAW Books, just sold the company to Astra Publishing. The unanticipated consequence is that Penguin Random House (which distributes DAW books) cancelled all orders for DAW Books scheduled to be published after September 1st, while PRH transitions the ISBNs to Astra. DAW was not made aware of this consequence beforehand, so it's as much of a surprise to them as it is to all of us.

It means that our fans must reorder RECKONING and THE ICE ORPHAN. We are so sorry for the inconvenience. But both books WILL be published on schedule in October and November! 

HAPPY SUMMER TO ALL!

It’s been an interesting month for us. As many of you saw on the evening news, Yellowstone National Park got about 40 inches of snow, then 2 inches of warm rain fell on top of it.  At one point, the Yellowstone River was flowing at 51,000 cubic feet per second. We had lots of roads washed away and several mountain towns around Yellowstone were flooded and isolated from the rest of the world. We are pretty much back to normal, but the cleanup, and rebuilding of roads and bridges, will take much longer. Some gates into the park are closed for the season. The mountains are still covered with snow. The good news is that all the moisture means the hills are covered with thick grasses and wildflowers. It must be a relief to the bison, elk, deer, and other wildlife.

We just returned from the Western Writers of America conference in Great Falls, Montana.

What a great trip!  We saw many old friends and made new ones. One of the highlights was a trip to nearby Fort Benton. They have a walking/driving tour of the river with excellent interpretive signs discussing the history of the town. We also spent a couple of days in the C.M. Russell museum in Great Falls studying the bison in Charlie Russell’s paintings. He was a master of wildlife anatomy.  Historical artists frequently painted animals they had never seen, basing their work on the images of other painters. As a result, there are some strange looking bison in paintings from the nineteenth century. Russell is the exception. Generally, his bison are beautifully accurate, especially in his later paintings.

Hello from rainy northern Wyoming! 

Like most of the West, we are in a severe drought, but it’s raining today. We can almost hear the trees and grass sighing in relief. Buffalo calves are being born, and their mother’s desperately need the high nutrition in spring grasses to feed those hungry newborns.

It’s been an exciting month for us.

Kathleen’s book, THIN MOON AND COLD MIST, about a female spy during the civil war who is hunted by a Union officer for her “war crimes” was just re-released by Wolfpack Publishing with a great new cover and has been the #1 bestseller in Civil War History on Amazon for several days now. It’s currently on sale for $0.99 cents, so if you’ve never read this civil war classic it’s a great time to do it. It’s been getting fantastic reviews.

Order THIN MOON AND COLD MIST

Also, Book 2 in the Rewilding Reports, THE ICE GHOST, comes out on May 17^th!  Publishers Weekly says, “Gear continues her inventive postapocalyptic trilogy featuring revived ancient hominds, with this jam-packed sequel to THE ICE LION.  …deep inside the massive mountain caves, perplexing relics and strange truths await…tense adventure will keep readers hooked.  Fans will eagerly await answers in the series conclusion.”  Book 3, THE ICE ORPHAN, comes out in November, 2022.