Steve Dancy Tales Promoted in True West Magazine

The Steve Dancy Tales are being promoted in True West magazine with a full page advertisement. The collector issue celebrates the Arizona Centennial, and also recognizes Prescott, Arizona the Top Western Town for 2012. This is a great connection with a great magazine because the latest Steve Dancy adventure, Murder at Thumb Butte, occurs in 1880 in Prescott. Pick up a copy. It's filled with little known facts about Arizona's road to statehood, the gunfight at the OK corral, the 12 guns that tamed Arizona, and the Top Ten True Western Towns of the year.

Murder at Thumb Butte reviewed at Bookviews

Alan Caruba at Bookviews writes: 

"When it comes to westerns, novels that evoke a fabled period, few do it better than Jim Best. His latest is Murder at Thumb Butte ($12.95, Wheatmark, Tucson, AZ, softcover) and I guarantee that you will also want to read The Shopkeeper and Leadville. These are part of a “Steve Dancy” series and, in the case of Murder at Thumb Butte, it is the spring of 1880 and Dancy has traveled to Prescott, Arizona to gain control of a remarkable invention. He has barely unpacked when he learns that his friend, Jeff Sharp, has been arrested for a midnight murder and Dancy launches an investigation to find who really did it. The problem is, the whole town of Prescott wanted him dead! He turns to another old friend, Captain Joseph McAllen of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to sort out the suspects and find the real killer before Sharp ends up swinging from the gallows. Best is best at dialogue and his novels move along at a swift pace with some of the best dialogue you’ll find. Nothing fancy, but it reflects real people in real situations. Treat yourself to one or all three of the series."

Link to Review

Here comes 2012, ready or not!

Mostly not. We returned to our home in Arizona late last night, and have been lazing about trying to recover from a week with all of our grandchildren. Right after Christmas, we flew to Florida to meet up with our son and daughter's families in Orlando. We had six adults to handle six kids, so we figured we had an even chance. Wrong. Nothing energizes a young child more than waking to the promise of another trip to Disney World or one of the other fun parks in Orlando. What ensued for the rest of the day would unduly age any grandparent ... especially one used to quiet days of writing. My back hurts, I'm tired, and my wallet's thinner, but I don't regret a single second.


In quiet moments, mostly in air terminals, I read Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. My favorite part so far is the chapter on the development of Toy Story. It's a perfect case study in characterization and storytelling. Every writer should read it.


Anyway, lots to get done, including a few New Year's resolutions. I won't share these because they are too revealing of my flaws.


First up for 2012 is publication of Principled Action, Lessons From the Origins of the American Republic. This non-fiction history book should be available in February.

I'm also starting work on the next Steve Dancy Tale. No title yet, but I've worked out the broad plot line and a suitable title will pop to mind as I continue the research.


Another big, immediate task is recovering my Macintosh computer. The disc drive went belly-up with 25,000 photos, and lots of iMovie files. I suspect I won't get a full day of writing for a week or so.


Here's wishing you and yours a magnificent 2012. We all deserve it.

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.

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

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.

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.

     

Read the full article at What Would The Founders Think?

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.” — Honoré 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