Every year, I touch bases with many of the authors I have interviewed and showcased on my blog. Come join me along with thousands of other book lovers for this special two day events.
2019 Tucson Festival of Books - Amigos and Ladies of the West
Tucson Festival of Books 2019, University of Arizona Campus – March 2 – 3, 2019 – 9:30am to 5:30pm
All day, both days at Booth 153 Amigos and Ladies of the West.
This year Amigos and Ladies of the West group includes Bill Markley, Chris Enss, Melody Groves, Rod Timanus, Kellen Cutsforth, Vonn McKee, Lowell Volk and Doug Hocking. Eight outstanding Western authors gathered in one place signing and selling their books.
The Black Legend
George Bascom, Cochise, and the Start of the Apache Wars
Author: Doug Hocking
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In 1861, war between the United States and the Chiricahua seemed inevitable. The Apache band lived on a heavily traveled Emigrant and Overland Mail Trail and routinely raided it, organized by their leader, the prudent, not friendly Cochise. When a young boy was kidnapped from his stepfather’s ranch, Lieutenant George Bascom confronted Cochise even though there was no proof that the Chiricahua were responsible. After a series of missteps, Cochise exacted a short-lived revenge. Despite modern accounts based on spurious evidence, Bascom’s performance in a difficult situation was admirable. This book examines the legend and provides a new analysis of Bascom’s and Cochise’s behavior, putting it in the larger context of the Indian Wars that followed the American Civil War.
Author: Doug Hocking
Author Genre: Westerns, Mystery, Historical fiction
Website: Doug Hocking
Author's Blog: Way Out West
Twitter: @HockingDoug
E-Mail: doug@doughocking.com
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Author Description:
Doug writes historical fiction bringing the Old West back to life while making another generation proud of the accomplishments and struggle of their ancestors. Each book is a history lesson wrapped in an riveting story.
Doug has led an exciting life. Born near New York City, a fact he very seldom admits, he learned to speak from his Cornish grandmother.
As an adult, he learned he understood Cornish slang and thought it normal speech. He also knew the whole story of Jack the Ripper and the Titanic. Grandmother was 10 and in Plymouth when the Ripper prowled. A uncle was swept away with the Unsinkable Ship. Still very young, Doug was taken West where he grew up on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in the Rio Arriba of New Mexico among piasonos and indios. At 18 he hitchhiked to Albuquerque and enlisted in Army Intelligence.
The next decade was spent in Thailand, Taiwan and at the Pentagon and at bases so secret the Army often wouldn't say where they were. This made it difficult to comply with orders to report, but Doug is a great intel analyst and interpreted the "indicators" to track them down. One soldier almost passed out when Doug asked directions: "That's classified!" "Hey, I'm assigned there, but they won't tell me how to get there." He became an interrogator. Doug stopped in Taiwan for several years and acquired an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from the University of Maryland. Returning to the US he studied Ethnography in graduate school and then returned to the Army in Armored Cavalry finding the cavalry more fun than musty tomes of forgotten lore. In Germany, he was eyeball to eyeball with the Soviet beast before it fell. His final tour of duty was the most difficult of all, trying to turn Military Intelligence lieutenants into officers. He also played a role in intelligence gathering and interpretation during the first Gulf War.
Since then Doug has earned honors with a graduate degree in US history and garnered his certificate as a field archaeologist in historical archaeology braving a summer at a wilderness camp with college students in southern Colorado excavating Fort Massachusetts. "Bears only poked their heads into the mess tent a couple of times." Doug has sold real estate, built homes, taught college and worked in the hospitality industry. He spends time exploring lost towns, ruins, old forts and trails, interpreting foundations and trash, ranging far. A trip to Guadalupe Canyon hard by the borders of Arizona-New Mexico-Sonora and Chihuahua found him stopped by Border Patrol who wanted to know his business. "I did the obvious and sold the man a copy of my novel."
At the urging of his mother, Doug began writing. His work appears regularly in Wild West Magazine and Roundup as well as True West. There are more books on the way: The Battle of Cienaguilla, Redwall Canyon, The Mystery of Chaco Canyon and Devil on the Loose.
Cowboys, Creatures, and Classics
The Story of Republic Pictures
Author: Chris Enss
AVAILABLE at Amazon
Take one well-oiled effective killing machine, add a familiar hero on the ground, in the air, and on horseback; stir in a ghastly end that’s surely impossible to escape, add action, add passion, made on a shoestring budget at breakneck speed, and you’ve got the recipe for Republic Pictures. Who, after all, cannot forget The Atomic Kid, starring Mickey Rooney, or The Untamed Heiress, with an un-Oscar-worthy performance by ingénue Judy Canova?
Exploding onto the movie scene in 1935, Republic Pictures brought the pop culture of the 30s and 40s to neighborhood movie houses. Week after week kids sank into their matinee seats to soak up the Golden Age of the Republic series, to ride off into the classic American West. And they gave us visions of the future. Visions that inspire film makers today. Republic was a studio that dollar for dollar packed more movie onto the screen than the majors could believe. From sunrise on into the night over grueling six day weeks, no matter how much mayhem movie makers were called upon to produce, at Republic Pictures it was all in a day’s work.
Republic Pictures was the little studio in the San Fernando Valley where movies were made family style. A core of technicians, directors, and actors worked hard at their craft as Republic released a staggering total of more than a thousand films through the late 1950s.
Republic Pictures was home to John Wayne for thirty-three films. Always inventing, Republic brought a song to the West. It featured the West’s first singing cowboy. Republic brought action, adventure, and escape to neighborhood movies houses across America. And they brought it with style. Scene from westerns such as The Three Mesquiteers and the Lawless Range gave screaming kids at the bijou a white-knuckle display of expert film making.
Republic Pictures became a studio where major directors could bring their personal vision to the screen. Sometimes these were projects no other studio would touch such as The Quiet Man (which brought director John Ford an Oscar) and Macbeth.
Killer Bs, Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures is for anyone who likes B movies magic. It is the honest account of an extraordinary production house, one whose ability to turn out films quickly boded well for its transition into television production. Not only were its sets used for such shows as Leave it to Beaver and Gilligan’s Island, stock footage from Republic’s movies was used on such shows as Gunsmoke and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
Author: Chris Enss
Author Genre: Western History
Website: Chris Enss
Twitter: @4par
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Author Description:
Chris Enss is a New York Times Best Selling author, a scriptwriter and comedienne who has written for television and film, and performed on cruise ships and on stage. She has worked with award-winning musicians, writers, directors, producers, and as a screenwriter for Tricor Entertainment, but her passion is for telling the stories of the men and women who shaped the history and mythology of the American West. Some of the most famous names in history, not to mention film and popular culture, populate her books. She reveals the stories behind the many romances of William "Buffalo Bill" Cody who moved on from his career as a scout on the plains to bring the enormously successful performance spectacle of Buffalo Bill's Wild West to audiences throughout the United States and Europe between 1883 and 1916. And she tells the stories of the many talented and daring women performed alongside men in the Wild West shows, who changed the way the world thought about women forever through the demonstration of their skills. Chris brings her sensitive eye and respect for their work to her stories of more contemporary American entertainers, as well. Her books reveal the lives of John Wayne, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, bringing to light stories gleaned from family interviews and archives. The most famous American couple of the 19th Century, General George Armstrong Custer and Elizabeth Bacon Custer draws her scrutiny as well. None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead reveals the personality of the fiery, lively Libbie and her lifelong effort to burnish her husband's reputation.
Chris takes readers along the trail with the Intrepid Posse as their horses thunder after the murderer of Dodge City dance hall favorite Dora Hand, and she turns her attention to the famous Sam Sixkiller, legendary Cherokee sherriff, but perhaps most extraordinary are the stories of the ordinary men and women who shaped American history when they came west as schoolmarms, gold miners, madams, and mail-order brides.
Old West Showdown
Two Authors Wrangle over the Truth about the Mythic Old West
Author: Bill Markley and Kellen Cutsforth
AVAILABLE at Amazon
Drawing on fact and folklore, dueling authors Bill Markley and Kellen Cutsforth present opposing viewpoints pertaining to controversies surrounding some of the most well-known characters and events in the history of the Old West.
In an entertaining and conversational style, Markley and Cutsforth take conflicting sides to debunk and in some cases, proliferate the myths, legends, and realities of some of the West’s most famous figures, including: - Billy the Kid
-Jesse James
-Buffalo Bill Cody
-Calamity Jane
-the Earp brothers
- and many more
The real lives of the historic figures in Old West Showdown are shrouded in controversy and myth. Was Jesse James a Southern Son fighting for the cause of the fallen Confederacy, or a blood-thirsty cutthroat justly pursued by the authorities? Was Billy the Kid a misunderstood youth or a cold-blooded killer? Did Buffalo Bill Cody truly ride for the Pony Express as a young man? Or, was he just a blowhard who trumped up his own past in an attempt to seem more heroic in the eyes of audiences attending his Wild West shows? These questions and many more will be explored in this exciting book.
Author: Bill Markley
Author Genre: Historical Mysteries
Website: Bill Markley
Twitter: @BillMarkley
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Author Description:
Bill's latest book, Deadwood Dead Men,released September 2013,is a historical fiction account of Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in August 1876 during the time of Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and others.
Western Fictioneers has selected Deadwood Dead Men as a finalist for its 2014 Peacemaker Award in the category Best First Western Novel. History, especially American history, and travel have fascinated Bill Markley since he was a boy growing up on the family farm in Pennsylvania. Moving to Pierre, South Dakota in 1976, to work for the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources was a natural fit for Markley, where he immersed himself in local history and participated in Civil War and Western frontier reenacting.
Markley has been in films such as Dances With Wolves, Son of the Morning Star, Far and Away, Gettysburg, and Crazy Horse. He worked in Antarctica, traveled the South Pacific, kayaked and backpacked in Alaska, chaperoned a Boy Scout troop to Japan, and has camped, hiked, and rode horseback through the West. Markley has written two books, Dakota Epic, Experiences of a Reenactor during the filming of Dances With Wolves, and Up the Missouri River with Lewis and Clark. His third book has just been released, American Pilgrim, A Post September 11 Bus Trip and Other Tales of the Road. He writes for South Dakota Magazine, Roundup, True West, and Wild West.
Markley's story "Kenneth McKenzie, King of the Upper Missouri" appears in WWA's anthology, Roundup! Markley and his wife Liz, live in Pierre where they raised two children.
Buffalo Bill, Boozers, Brothels, and Bare-Knuckle Brawlers
An Englishman's Journal of Adventure in America
Author: Kellen Cutsforth
AVAILABLE at Amazon
The travel journal of the wealthy young Englishman, Evelyn Booth, weaves a factual, enthralling, and entertaining narrative that follows his escapades throughout the United States of the late nineteenth century. Transcribed and edited (with relevant commentary for contemporary audiences) by Kellen Cutsworth, Booth’s journal reveals his career as a young care-free “frat boy” with unlimited funds, gives first-hand accounts that involve drunken nights, fist fights, illicit sex with prostitutes, sporting events, and full-blown adventures with the most well-known celebrities of the day, including encounters with famous scout and showman William Frederick ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody and the Wild West Cowboys; bare knuckled world champions John L. Sullivan and Jack “Nonpareil” Dempsey; Fred Archer, the most famous horse jockey of the day, and prostitutes, gamblers, and infamous houses.
Author: Kellen Cutsforth
Author Genre: History, Nonfiction, Biography
Twitter: @western_writers
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Author Description:
Kellen Cutsforth is the author of "Buffalo Bill, Boozers, Brothels and Bare Knuckle Brawlers: An Englishman's Journal of Adventure in America" (2015), "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Coloring Book" (2017), and the co-author of "Old West Showdown: Two Authors Wrangle over the Truth about the Mythic Old West" (2018). He has also ghostwritten several bestselling books for multiple authors. Kellen has published over 30 articles featured in such publications as: Wild West, True West, Western Writers of America (WWA) Roundup Magazine, and the Denver Posse of Westerners Roundup magazine. He writes a bi-monthly column in WWA's Roundup Magazine under the title "Techno-Savvy." Kellen is also an active member of WWA and runs their Twitter account. Along with being an accomplished author and ghostwriter, Kellen is also a veteran speaker and presenter and has done multiple programs for numerous history groups, libraries and genealogical organizations.
Lukas Yates and the Roses
Author: Lowell F. Volk
Book Trailer: Lukas Yates and the Roses
AVAILABLE at Amazon
Lukas Yates comes to the aid of the families of Herbert and Brandon Rose crossing the plains of Texas. After Brandon Rose is killed by Indians Lukas rescues Shawnee Rose and her daughter Connie. Trying to locate Herbert and Elsa Rose who have Shawnee’s son and wagon, they miss each other on the trail when Herbert and Elsa leave the trail with their sick daughter Abigail. Agreeing to meet at Fort Bascom, New Mexico, they continue to the fort. Lukas, Shawnee and Connie arrive there before Herbert, Elsa and the remaining children. Lukas and Shawnee develop a liking for each other while traveling together. They have the obstacle of the resent loss of her husband and Herbert and Elsa intervention to overcome. Lukas considers leaving the families to go on his own. Having promised that he would stay with them till Colorado, he continues to help Herbert in search of land. While searching Lukas finds a rancher, Erin Roberts who lost his family to Indians and was alone on his ranch. Finding Erin, too sick to stand Lukas does what he can to help him, but needs more help so he fetched Shawnee to Erin’s ranch where she nurses him back to health. After Herbert arrives with the rest of the families and wagons, Erin helps Herbert get some property he holds title to and offers Lukas a partnership in his ranch.
Author: Lowell F. Volk
Author Genre: Western, Historical, History, Fiction
Website: Lowell F. Volk - Tales of the West
Author's Blog: Tales of the West
Twitter: @lowellv_
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Author Description:
Lowell F. Volk is a native of Minnesota, where he graduated from Madison Public High School in 1964. Lowell has a BS from California Lutheran in computer science and an MBA from the University of La Verne. Lowell retired from General Dynamics in 2004, where he was a Manager of Software Engineers which required extensive travel both in the USA and overseas. He currently is living in Pleasant View, Colorado, where he is active in several community activities. He is former President of Trinity Lutheran Church in Cortez, former President of the Pleasant View Fire District board of Directors, a former Major of the Montezuma County Sheriff’s Posse and currently an active member, and he was a former substitute teacher at the Cortez Middle and High School. Lowell and his wife, Mary Lou, have five children: Terri, Scott, Paula, Lowell Jr., and Kathy. Since his retirement, he has enjoyed horseback riding, deer and elk hunting, and writing historical fiction about early America.
Black Range Revenge
Colton Brothers Saga
Author: Melody Groves
AVAILABLE at Amazon
Gold fever hits eighteen-year-old Andrew Colton. August 1863, Andy rides into the southwestern New Mexico Black Range, where Birchville is headquarters for anything gold. Andy pans unsuccessfully for gold and, by first snowfall, he’s done. Apaches raid Birchville, then head into the mountains. Friend Thomas O’Malley convinces Andy to go with him farther into the Range to Mogollon, a mining berg. Apaches wound Andy and kill O’Malley. Andy stumbles into already-raided Mogollon where he meets Dawson, a runaway slave. Dawson hides Andy when his brothers come looking. Apaches buy Andy, capture Dawson. The Apache leader, whose only objective is revenge for his brother’s death, uses Andy as a lure for Andy’s brothers. The Apaches, the Coltons and Dawson fight for their lives.
Author: Melody Groves
Author Genre: Historical Fiction, History
Website: Melody Groves
E-Mail: melodygroves@comcast.net
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Author Description:
Growing up in southern New Mexico, my mind raced with characters from the Old West--gunfighters were my favorite. My novels reflect my fascination--and ties--with that era. As a New Mexico Gunfighter re-enactor, I entertain visitors at Albuquerque's Old Town, allowing them a glimpse into earlier times. My books reflect my passion for rodeo and appreciation of historic wooden bars. Yes bars--the front and back wooden structures. They are amazing--just like the rodeo performers. I rode bulls a few times and it's not easy. But riding provokes a feeling like no other--adrenalin at its finest. So, come with me on an amazing adventure.
Tuzigoot National Monument
Images of America
Author: Rod Timanus
AVAILABLE at Amazon
The native people, known today as the Sinagua, inhabited the Verde Valley of Arizona for centuries. From around 700 AD to early 1400 AD, they farmed the land and built large pueblo communities throughout the area. They accomplished this task using only primitive stone tools, materials from their environment, and the strength of their intellect and muscle. One of the largest communal dwellings, and later the most extensively excavated, is called Tuzigoot. This sprawling, hilltop complex contained over 100 rooms and was once home to several hundred people before it was mysteriously abandoned. Excavated and partially restored between 1933 and 1934, Tuzigoot is currently administered by the National Park Service after being designated a national monument by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. Today, although off the beaten track, it hosts more than 100,000 visitors a year.
Author: Rod Timanus
Author Genre: History
Website: Rod Timanus
E-Mail: RodTimanus@aol.com
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Author Description:
ROD TIMANUS was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, raised in Cutler Ridge, Florida and currently resides in Glendale, Arizona. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Viet Nam and Germany from 1968 to 1971 as a Grenadier, an Operations Sergeant and Mechanized Infantry Squad Leader.
He has an Associates degree in Commercial Art from Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design from Paier College of Art in Hamden, Connecticut and a Certificate in Illustration from the Comic Art Workshop in Stratford, Connecticut.
His artwork, maps and diagrams have appeared in several books, including Eyewitness to the Alamo, Battlefields of Texas and Death of a Legend by Bill Groneman (Republic of Texas Press) and The Alamo Story by J.R. Edmondson (Republic of Texas Press). His work has also appeared in The Alamo Almanac and Book of Lists and The Davy Crockett Almanac and Book of Lists by William R. Chemerka (Eakin Press). He has contributed cover art, illustrations, and written articles for The Alamo Journal, official publication of The Alamo Society. From that career he began to write and illustrate his own books about the Old West.
He has retraced the last journeys of David Crockett, from Rutherford, Tennessee to the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer from Fort Lincoln, North Dakota to the Little Bighorn valley in Montana. On the Crockett Trail (Pioneer Press) is a history/travel book released in November of 1999, On the Custer Trail (Pioneer Press) was released in 2001, in time to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Also in 2001, An Illustrated History of Texas Forts (Republic of Texas Press) was released. Additionally, On the Lewis and Clark Trail (Pioneer Press), a retracing of the 1804-1806 expedition through the Louisiana Territory, was released in January 2003. He wrote and illustrated The Alamo entry for the 4-volume encyclopedia Americans at War (Macmillan Publishing) released in 2005 and, until his move to Arizona, wrote and illustrated monthly history articles for The Middletown Press newspaper in Middletown, Connecticut.
After relocating to Arizona he contributed sixteen entries to the two-volume The Settlement of America Encyclopedia of Westward Expansion (M.E. Sharpe) released in 2011 and had articles appear in The Wild West Gazette, The Tombstone Times, and The Arizona Republic newspapers. Additionally, he wrote the article I am Doc Holliday for The American Cowboy magazine online edition. In 2014, Creating Texas a Brief History of the Revolution (Lauric Publishing), coauthored by Jeffrey Dane, was published. The same year, Montezuma Castle National Monument (Arcadia Publishing) was released.
He is a member of The Western Writers of America, The Alamo Society, and The Arizona Historical Society.
An Astonishing Host of Curiosities
Author: Vonn McKee
AVAILABLE at Amazon
After Stanley McCullum’s freakish appearance gets him wounded on a battlefield, he finds acceptance and purpose with a traveling circus troupe. But the War Between the States rages around them and they are forced into hiding.
Murph Aikens’s Avengers plunder and torch the Kentucky countryside, targeting Confederate sympathizers, including Stanley’s family. When the gang attacks the McCullum farm, they discover there are unearthly horrors waiting.
Author: Vonn McKee
Author Genre: History, Nonfiction, Western
Website: Vonn McKee - Writing the Range
Twitter: @vonn_mckee
E-Mail: vonnmckee@yahoo.com
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Author Description:
Vonn McKee remembers vividly her first glimpse of real cowboys herding mustangs into a pen outside Prescott, Arizona. She was a four-year-old whose parents had moved her there in hopes of curing her asthma. "I can still picture the riders and horses-bays, pintos, buckskins- surrounded by dust and sunlight," she says. The experience (and, unfortunately, the asthma) never left her, even after her family moved back to her mother's native Louisiana. Vonn jokes that she is "descended from horse traders and southern belles." She spent summers visiting her father's family, who raised cattle and broke horses in North Dakota and, later, northwestern Minnesota. Inspired by seeing her grandfather stretched out on a sofa reading Zane Grey novels (some of which were passed down to her), she owned a complete ZG set herself by age eighteen. After years of working at everything from riverboat waitress to country singer to construction project manager, Vonn is incorporating her experiences-and some of the interesting characters she's met- into stories of the old West.
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