Coming Attractions

I wish I had stirring or seductive (or perhaps stirring and seductive) music to play along with this post, together with control of the volume on your computer. Then I could do “Coming Attractions” like the movie theaters do … blast you out of the auditorium with teasers of things yet to come.

I don’t have sound, but I do have cover art for my next three books, thanks to the folks at STARbooks Press, and thought you might like to see what I’ve been working on.

Although it is not the next book due out, I wanted to feature the cover for Medicine Hair, as this is the fourth and final book of what I call the Cut Hand Series. I’ve had a lot of fun writing about the individuals who populate these four novels, and it’s going to be hard to turn them loose. But I think it’s probably time. I have had more great reader contacts on the Cut Hands books than all the other novels. Some of them are downright passionate about Cut Hand and Billy and Otter and John and Matthew. Just go to Amazon and check out the reviews and comments posted there. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate honest-to-God readers who’ve taken the time to let me know they enjoyed the books. Anyway, this is a copy of the cover art for this finale. Sorry, but the book isn’t scheduled for release until Spring 2015

Charlie Blackbear is the next book scheduled for release (Fall 2014), so it should be out soon. Because I don't have a back cover to show you, I'll tell you it's a contemporary novel along the lines of The Victor and the Vanquished. As a matter of fact, Wilam and Joseph from the V&V make a brief appearance in this novel. The following gives you an idea of what the story is about:

Charlie Blackbear is already a near-legend in his little corner of the world by the time he turns eighteen. He can hold his liquor. He’s chased down and caught most of the girls and a few women on the little reservation where his lives. The size of the package he carries has been whispered about since he was in middle school.

When he wakes up drunk in a motel room with a man going down on him, he shrugs it off as an alcohol thing and goes right back to chasing women. But when he takes a job with a logging crew and shares a room at the Boar’s Nest with his best friend, Daniel Warhorse, he fights a growing, unexpected, and unwelcome attraction to his childhood friend. When Moon Eyes, Daniel’s girlfriend, gets pregnant and this good-looking kid named Aden Jones starts showing up in Charley’s life, things get terribly complicated.

I sketched out the book, Johnny Two-Guns, a number of years ago in response to some event in my life. The novel still exists, while I can’t even recall what I read about or experienced that was the genesis of the story. Whatever the stimulus was, it likely occurred in Denver, as that was where I was living at the time I started writing about Johnny. This book, too, has a contemporary setting. STARbooks has not yet given me a date of expected publication for this one.

Anyway, these are the things traveling on down the publication road (where the speed limit is like a school zone, 15 mph), so I thought I’d share them with you.

By the way, I like the cover art for all three books. Let me know how you react to them.

Thanks for checking out the site.

Mark

New posts are published at the first of every month at 6:00 a.m.

More from ECHOES OF THE FLUTE

As I told you in the last post, ECHOES OF THE FLUTE, the third book in the CUT HAND series, is available on Amazon Kindle. The print version should be released by STARbooks Press on or around March 15. So it becomes an Ides of March publication. Does that bode ill, I wonder? Nah. That was Caesar’s problem, not mine.

At any rate, I have now posted the first chapter of the new book on this site for you to read. For this month’s regular blog posting, I wanted to bring a little more of the book into focus. In the following scene, John Strobaw (earth name: War Eagle), the half-breed grandson of Cut Hand, finishes work in the forge at Teacher’s Mead and decides to go for a swim. He is unexpectedly joined in the Yanube River by Matthew Brandt (Shambling Bear), the Yanube-Brulé orphan who grew up on the Mead after River Otter brought him there following the murder of his mother and brother. Matthew, who feels his Indian blood much stronger than does John, has just returned from one of his frequent jaunts, and this is their reunion. This scene comes in Chapter 2 of the book.

###

     Standing bare-assed in the water washing away the day’s grime, I caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of my eye. Before I had a chance to react, a naked form leapt from the riverbank and tumbled us over into the water. I shrugged him off and came up fighting.

     Matthew, laughing like a ten-year-old, splashed water in my face. “Hah, you would be a dead man if I was doh-kah.”

     My fear turned to delight. I rubbed the water out of my eyes and shook my head. “You’re not a hostile. You’re just a skinny tepee Indian living in the past.”

     “Tell that to the ah-kee-chee-dah at Greasy Grass.”

     “What do the soldiers at Little Big Horn know about you?”

     His naked chest swelled. “I was there.”

     “You were at Little Big Horn? At the Custer battle?”

     Excitement burned in his dark eyes. “I was there.”

     “That’s a big one.”

     “If you’re talking about my pipe, you’re right, but I was there fighting blue coats.”

     “You’re full of it. How many did you kill?”

     He sobered. “One. Maybe two.”

     “Seems like a warrior would know how many he killed.”

     His chin went up. “There speaks a man who’s never seen the elephant or fired a shot in anger. Things get all mixed up in battle. You never know what’s going on. Not even….” His voice dried up. “Not even exactly what you’re doing.”

Bear wasn’t pulling my dink. He was serious. I didn’t know what to say, so I asked him when he got back.

     “Half an hour back. After we said hello, Ma told me to go put on some decent clothes.”

     Ma didn’t permit breechclouts at the Mead. She considered them uncivilized.

     “Rachel Ann told me you’d walked down the river, so I came here instead of putting on pants.”

     “You back for good?”

     He shrugged. His shoulders had filled out, but the part about being skinny was true. He’d lost weight. He was leaner but harder.

     “Might stay a while,” he answered. “But who knows when I’ll have a hankering to move on again.”

     “Good. One of the coach horses that pulled in Thursday’s still limping. You can doctor him.”

     “That wasn’t the only place I was.” Something in his voice made me look at him. “I fought at the Rosebud with Crazy Horse. He’s a great man, Eagle. Never seen a man fight like him. We beat the War Chief Crook at Rosebud Creek.” He spoke as if remembering was reliving. “After riding all night to get there, we fought for six hours. Crazy Horse was everywhere. He talked to me—more than once. Said he was proud of me. We made the Americans turn back at Rosebud so they weren’t there to fight at with Custer at Greasy Grass eight days later.”

     Greasy Grass was what the warriors called Little Bighorn. I held my tongue, afraid of drawing him back from wherever he was.

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I hope that intrigues you enough so you want more. If you’re so inclined, please post your comments on any of my books on Amazon. They help me keep on writing. As usual, I also encourage feedback at markwildyr@aol.com.

Thanks for reading.

Mark

New posts are published at the first of every month at 6:00 a.m.

Echoes of the Flute, a Novel

A Golden Eagle
(War Eagle)

When I wrote CUT HAND, I had no intention of turning the book into a saga. But I was really drawn to the characters in the novel and was wrapped up their stories. In fact, after I submitted the final draft of CUT to the publisher, I experienced something akin to withdrawal pains.

Apparently, some of the readers felt somewhat as I did. If you check Mark Wildyr’s Amazon Author’s page, you will see sixteen comments on the book, most of them laudatory. Even those that are not so kind are helpful by highlighting something that might be improved upon. In addition, I’ve had many more customer contacts directly through this web page. The overriding theme of these comments were: Would there be a sequel?

I had already completed the manuscript for THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED, a contemporary story, which has since been published. In addition, I had another novel, also a contemporary tale, that required some polishing before I could submit it to the publisher. However, the messages from readers got me to reconsidering my priorities. In truth, I had already begun to stop thinking of CUT as an erotic story and considering it as a historical novel. The story of Cut Hand and Billy Strobaw may have come to an end, but certainly the era that fascinated me so had not run its course. Nor had the stories of Otter and James and Cut’s Son, Dog Fox. There was more to be told.

So I told it. I wrote RIVER OTTER, all the time wondering if I was whipping a dead mule. Could I capture the era again as I had in the first book? Were the characters—who were not bigger than life as their predecessors had been—interesting enough to hold a reader’s attention. As I sat at the desk laboring over the manuscript, I found myself becoming as wrapped up in this creation as I had the first. Yet, I still had doubts. Was I competent enough to keep the connection between the character as they moved from one book to the other, one era to another—pre-Civil War and ante? Would I be able to adequately show the change in attitude about homosexuals among the Indigenous peoples? Well, the book is out now, and from the contacts thus far, I’ve done a reasonably fair job.

I had fun writing the first book in early American terms and idioms. Well, they’re different in RIVER OTTER because Language is a living thing and changes almost in the same way we lose cells and create new ones. I knew before finishing OTTER that it would require another book to complete the telling of the story. And the language in that one would be different yet.

I have completed the first and second drafts of that third book, ECHOES OF THE FLUTE. I hope I have been true to the period in this one, as well. This is the story of Cuthan’s son, John Strobaw and the orphaned Little Bear, given the American name of Matthew Brandt, as they grow to maturity and struggle with who they are. Cuthan (who readers of the first two books will recognize as Cut Hand’s son, Dog Fox) and his American wife, Mary, have tried to raise their children as Americans, believing this would provide some measure of protection for them as the tribesmen’s way of life died out. How John (War Eagle) and Matthew (Little Bear) react to this, sets them apart as individuals. What unites them is a fierce attraction to one another at a time when man-love is becoming increasingly dangerous and less accepted among the tribes.

 

 

American Black Bear

(Little Bear)       

 

 This third book is due out in the Spring of 2014. I had intended it to be the last in the series; however, the manuscript did not carry me as far as I intended to go. So, the Good Lord and STARbooks Press willing, there is yet a fourth in the saga percolating around in my head. I really would like the story to end after Wounded Knee, which effectively ended the Indian wars, except in the Southwest.

So, as long as you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.

Note: New posts are published around the first of every month.

Comments are welcome, not only on this post, but also about any relevant subject the reader wishes to discuss.