I wrote my first short story eleven years ago for a flash fiction class, found my character Zebadiah Creed, and kept writing. In January 2017, at the age of fifty-nine, Five Star Publishing released An Eye for an Eye, Book One of The Tales of Zebadiah Creed worldwide, winning the American Fiction Award for Best Historical/Adventure. The Great Texas Dance, Book Two, was released in April 2020. Blue Rivers of Heaven, Book Three will be released in September 2022. I'm a member of the Western Writers of America and was a Spur Award judge for Short Fiction, 2019, and Best Traditional Novel, 2020. I’m currently writing my first stand-alone book entitled Sisters of the Field.
Because of the promise made to a friend left dead in Louisiana, Zeb finds himself lying on a rooftop of the Alamo overlooking the whole of Santa Anna’s army. As the Mexican red flag flies offering no quarter, he and Grainger, a fellow volunteer with the Texas militia, are called upon by Colonel William Travis to slip out one last message to General Houston, a desperate plea to thwart the bloody siege.
Zebadiah Creed tells a tale of the Texas Revolution, not as history, but a personal portrayal of men and the consequences of their decisions, sometimes made during the savagery of battle, most times made in quiet, their desperate acts allowing them no way out other than through loyalty and friendship, or ultimate betrayal.
After my first book came out, I was interviewed by a local reporter. When he asked what influenced me to write western fiction, I told him I really didn’t know. Why had I been compelled to write a story told by an old man about his younger days spent chasing those who murdered his brother? Then, I remembered, at eleven years old, I had read True Grit. A tale of revenge; a teen-aged girl, strong-willed, saddled up with an old, one-eyed codger of a US marshal hellbent on finding her father’s killer, as told through the voice of an aging woman. Portis wrote a simple tale with elegant prose with the use of first-person narrative. His influence had stayed with me all those years, buried deep, to be released through my own words, inspiring Zebadiah Creed’s voice, and his story.
There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by one of his own workers. Tom Chaney shoots him down in the street for a horse, $150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Ross's unusually mature and single-minded fourteen-year-old daughter Mattie travels to claim his body, and finds that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chaney. Then she hears of Rooster - a man, she's told, who has grit - and convinces him to join her in a quest into dark, dangerous Indian territory to hunt Chaney down…
What can you say about Cormac McCarthy that has not been said before, the poetry in his prose, his fearlessness to go to the human extreme of emotional tension and violence, the elegance of creating a world so real that one does not want to leave, yet cannot stay? The writer in me wants to write just like him, but... I cannot, I will not, for there is only one Cormac McCarthy, and the world could not stand another.
John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
The first volume in McCarthy's legendary Border Trilogy, All The Pretty Horses is an acknowledged masterpiece and a grand love story: a novel about the passing of childhood, of innocence and a vanished American…
This is what I wrote when, as a judge in 2020, I recommended All God’s Children win the prestigious Spur Award for Best Traditional Western:
“From the opening sentence, the opening paragraph, and page, Aaron Gwyn sweeps us into an early nineteenth-century America bursting at the seams. He tells the tale of two very different folks, a young man disowned by his family in Kentucky, and a young slave girl from Virginia who refuses to accept her lot in life. Both their paths lead them to Texas. For Duncan, to fight in the revolution and serve heroically with the Texas Rangers, yet can never have true love; for Cecelia, to know freedom and love on the frontier, only to have both brutally snatched away in an instant. Beautifully written in simple, classic prose, Gwyn offers us a fresh, yet timeless glimpse into two American lives that finally find, in themselves and in each other, solace amongst the violent growth of our nation.”
This sweeping novel set in the province of Texas is “a powerful depiction of the rough realities of frontier life [and] the vicious influence of racism” (The New York Times).
Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award for Fiction
In 1827, Duncan Lammons, a disgraced young man from Kentucky, sets out to join the American army in the province of Texas, hoping that here he may live—and love—as he pleases. That same year, Cecelia, a young slave in Virginia, runs away for the first time.
Soon infamous for her escape attempts, Cecelia continues to drift through the reality of…
I think I found out about Rudolfo Anaya on Facebook. Someone praised him, that he was the best writer to have lived in New Mexico and one of the first true voices to rise out of the bourgeoning Latino writers of the seventies. I immediately bought Bless Me, Ultima and entered a world so familiar, so American, yet so alien, where magic is not just expected, but necessary to live a full life. As I wrote book three of my own series, Anaya’s writing offered a profound influence in opening a world of dreams, a reality only a few can know and understand.
Wow, what an exciting, intense, emotional book about a sixteen-year-old girl, after killing most of the band of Comanches who killed her family and stole her sister, joins up with a cattle drive dressed a boy, to drive her cattle to market through Texas, Oklahoma, and into Kansas. Whew!! Oh, and along the way, she talks some of the cowboys into going after the rest of the Comanches with not too favorable results. And... she falls in love with her sidekick! One of the best “westerns” I’ve read in a while and was a finalist for this year’s Spur Award for Best Traditional Western. If I was one of the judges, The Comanche Kid would have been my top pick for the Spur!
An epic new western in the grand tradition of True Grit and Lonesome Dove. A 2022 Western Writers of America Spur Award Finalist for Best Traditional Western Novel.
"The best western I’ve read in a long, long time. Though a first novel, Daniels writes with the sure hand of an old-pro. His voice is authentic and riveting. I can’t recommend this one more highly!” - Peter Brandvold, author of over 70 westerns, including 11 Lou Prophet novels & 15 Sheriff Ben Stillman westerns.
Out of nowhere Comanches attack—and sixteen year-old Jane narrowly survives the slaughter of her family and the…
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of concerts across Wisconsin and the Midwest, and opening Shank Hall, the beloved Milwaukee venue named after a club in the cult film This Is Spinal Tap.
Jest established lasting friendships with John Prine, Arlo Guthrie, and others, but ultimately, this book tells a universal story of love and hope…
We Had Fun and Nobody Died: Adventures of a Milwaukee Music Promoter
The entertaining and inspiring story of a stubbornly independent promoter and club owner
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus at UW–Milwaukee, booking thousands of concerts across Wisconsin and the Midwest, and opening Shank Hall, the beloved Milwaukee venue named after a club in the cult film This Is Spinal Tap.
This funny, nostalgia-inducing book details the lasting friendships Jest established…