Thursday, December 22, 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah



Once again, we are in Omaha to celebrate the holidays with our daughter and her family. After Christmas we all fly to Orlando to meet up with our son and his family. All six grandkids together at Disney World ... won't that be grand.

My wife and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a fantastic 2012.







Monday, December 19, 2011

The Shopkeeper #1 Bestselling Western on Amazon


The Kindle version of The Shopkeeper has moved to the Number 1 bestselling Western on Amazon for print or eBook formats. The print version of The Shopkeeper has taken the 34th position. The Shopkeeper is also 23rd bestselling Action/Adventure book and the 27th bestselling Historical. Thanks to everyone who is buying the book. It encourages me to get working on the 4th novel in the Steve Dancy Tales series.









Amazon Western Bestseller List

Sunday, December 18, 2011

5-Star Books Selects Tempest at Dawn

5-Star Books has showcased Tempest at Dawn in their Historical Novel category. 


From the 5-Star Website: "How do we pick the novels featured on 5-Star Books? First, the book must have predominantly 5-Star reviews on Amazon.com. After that qualification, we look at the cover design, the number of reviews, what readers are saying in those reviews, when the book was published, and other subjective factors."



Fifty-five men came to Philadelphia May of 1787with a congressional charter to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead they founded the longest lasting republic in world history. Tempest at Dawn tells their story.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Learning About the Constitution



In order to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, we need to understand it. Luckily, there are some great learning tools available to every American. These include an online course at James Madison’s Montpelier Center for the Constitution, the webcast series Introduction to the Constitution from Hillsdale College, and several good books, including The Heritage Guide to theConstitution, Tempest at Dawn, and Decision in Philadelphia.


     





Saturday, December 10, 2011

The ideal life


“Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain

“Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.” — Vladimir Nabokov

Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.” — Philip Pullman

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” — Joyce Carol Oates

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”  – Ernest Hemingway

“I am simply a ‘book drunkard.’ Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.” — L.M. Montgomery

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” — Oscar Wilde

“Be awesome! Be a book nut!” — Dr. Seuss

“Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.” — Louisa May Alcott

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.” — Gustave Flaubert

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I owe everything I am and everything I will ever be to books.” — Gary Paulsen

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” — Stephen King

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you’d most like not to lose.” — Neil Gaiman

“Reading brings us unknown friends.” — HonorĂ© de Balzac

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.” — Virginia Woolf

“Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites that give us what we most need at that particular time. But we never lose the old favorites. They’re always with us.” — Lloyd Alexander

“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favorite book.” — Marcel Proust

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” — Jorge Luis Borges

“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin

“It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you.” Mark Twain

“I cannot live without books.” — Thomas Jefferson

Monday, December 5, 2011

Books are a perfect gift.


Some people can be hard to buy for—unless you give them a book that matches their special interest or taste in fiction. Suddenly, your thoughtfulness becomes part of the gift. Whether your relatives or friends are interested in the Civil War, romance novels, Westerns, railroads, guns, cooking, collecting old comic books, or some hobby, there's always a book around that will bring a smile to their face.

Books are the best entertainment value around. They provide hour after hour of personal pleasure, and then they can be passed on to another person. I also like that when I give a book as a gift, I can write a personal note that won't get tossed out like last year's Christmas card.

Children's books are great gifts. We always search for autographed storybooks for our grandkids. A great find is when the author and the illustrator both sign the book. We've done this for several years, so now our grandkids' bedrooms have dedicated shelves for signed books. The icing on the cake is that we get to read them a story from one of these books whenever we visit.

Here are links to bestselling books in a few categories. There are many categories a click away, but you can also search for books on a specific subject.


By the way, if you're thinking about a gift for me, I collect vintage Western books from the first half of the twentieth century. I especially like the ones with great illustrations on the dust cover. But if you give me one of these, do me a favor and write your personal note on a Post-It.

 

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Bighorn


About a month ago, my wife and I took a road trip with some good friends through many of the Westerns states.  We visited Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska.  One of the highlights was a visit to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

Every time I visit a historic site, I end up buying at least one book about the events that took place at the location.  I wanted to buy only one book about the battle because we had already visited so many sites that I was weighing down the motorhome.  The store at the National Monument had dozens upon dozens of books on Custer, the battle, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull.  I spent some time going through them and ended up taking two to the clerk for a recommendation.  The two books were The Last Stand, Custer, Sitting Bull, and The Battle of Little Bighorn, by Nathaniel Philbrick, and Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, by Stephen E. Ambrose.