Tag: standalone western (Page 1 of 2)

Shadow of a Crow is a traditional western novel brought out by Thorndike Press as a large print original in March of 2026. By my count, this is my thirty-ninth traditional western and my forty-third novel. If I add to that total more than a dozen fiction collections, a few books on writing, a couple of booklets on Wyoming fiction and writers, and a couple of poetry collections, I am past sixty in my total. Some people think that is quite a bit, but I know writers who have written hundreds of titles and under various names, so I would like to maintain a note of modesty here.

Riders of the Skull is my thirty-fifth western/frontier novel. I wrote it in the spring of 2023, and it was published in December 2024 as a large print original (first edition) by Thorndike Press.

This novel is unlike most of my others in that it does not follow the point of view of one main character but includes a couple of other sub-plots that converge with the main character’s story in the town of Guest. The main character is Jord Blaine, a rider for the Skull ranch who falls out of favor when he does not want to participate in the persecution of Creole (non-white) homesteaders. In one of the sub-plots, a detective named Motte is assigned, along with his amiable colleague Lorna, to try to find a girl who was abducted from an Indian boarding school. In the other sub-plot, Tyler McBroom, a traveling salesman of farm and ranch equipment, runs off with the mistress of a shady businessman in Billings, Montana.