Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in West Texas, westerns were just as good as bedtime stories to me. I grew up with all the greats… and the not as greats. The quality didn’t always matter because the spirit was the same. Freedom, opportunity, and possible lawlessness. Survival of the quickest draw. An untamed place where anything could happen. Someone once said that the western genre was America’s genre. It was invented here and our frontier spirit inspired the world. When I decided to write Hour Glass, I channeled the independent spirit of those westerns I grew up with. I wrote the first draft in sixteen days out of pure passion for the subject matter. 


I wrote

Hour Glass

By Michelle Rene,

Book cover of Hour Glass

What is my book about?

Set in the lawless town of Deadwood, South Dakota, Hour Glass shares an intimate look at the woman behind the…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Doc

Michelle Rene Why did I love this book?

This book is probably the closest title to my own. Doc is centered around everyone’s favorite dandy gunslinger, Doc Holliday. It is a truly entertaining and informative tale of the real Doc’s life before his legendary stand at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone. While Wyatt and Morgan Earp play important roles in the story, Doc Holliday is definitely your Huckleberry. 

If you love it like I do, the author wrote a continuation called Epitaph: An O.K. Corral Story. You won’t be sorry.

By Mary Doria Russell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Doc as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24, Dodge House. Beautifully educated, born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday is given…


Book cover of True Grit

Michelle Rene Why did I love this book?

For all of those lovers of old Westerns, I recommend True Grit. Mattie Ross, a fourteen-year-old girl from Dardanelle, Arkansas, sets out to avenge her Daddy who was shot to death. Mattie convinces one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest U.S. marshal in the land, to ride along with her. 

If this sounds familiar, there have been two movies based on this book. My grandfather and I always debate which version is better. Rooster Cogburn is played by John Wayne in the original and Jeff Bridges in the remake. Nothing against the Duke, but Jeff Bridges is my favorite. Either way, True Grit is an important work that holds up in modern times.

By Charles Portis,

Why should I read it?

16 authors picked True Grit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Tinsmith 1865

Michelle Rene Why did I love this book?

I should preface this with some bit of transparency. One reason I love Tinsmith is because I personally know the author. Not only is she a great writer, but she’s one of the only female tinsmiths working in the United States. She makes her own cookware, and it is amazing.

The main character, Marie Kotlarczyk, moves to the Dakota territories with her tinsmith family. When the family encounters disaster, Marie has to learn the family trade in order to survive. It’s not an easy task when women were not meant to do such things. 

Sarah puts so much of herself in this book, it’s enchanting. Since she’s a professional tinsmith, every scene is tangible. I can’t recommend it enough.

By Sara Dahmen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tinsmith 1865 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When her tinsmith father and brothers head West, Polish immigrant Marie Kotlarczyk has no choice but to go along. Family, after all, is family. The Dakota Territories are anything but welcoming to the Kotlarczyks, and as the months trip by, Marie must pick up the hammers she’s secretly desired but also feared. When she faces the skeptical people of Flats Town, the demands of the local Army commander, and her public failures, her inner voice grows destructively, forcing Marie to decide exactly who she is and what it means to be a woman smith.


Book cover of One Thousand White Women

Michelle Rene Why did I love this book?

One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the Western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians.

I will warn you that this is a rough one to read. There are a lot of scenes involving abuse, so if that is a trigger for you, perhaps skip this novel. That being said, Fergus paints an amazing picture of the American West. The story is phenomenal and the characters are so real, you feel like you know them personally. I read the novel years ago, and I still think about it from time to time.

By Jim Fergus,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked One Thousand White Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Based on an actual historical event but told through fictional diaries, this is the story of May Dodd―a remarkable woman who, in 1875, travels through the American West to marry the chief of the Cheyenne Nation.

One Thousand White Women begins with May Dodd’s journey into an unknown world. Having been committed to an insane asylum by her blue-blood family for the crime of loving a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope for freedom and redemption is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from “civilized” society become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. What…


Book cover of An Easy Death

Michelle Rene Why did I love this book?

Here’s a really tricky one. If you’ve ever heard of the True Blood series, you know this author. An Easy Death begins an unusual series for her. This is an alternate history western with a fantasy twist. Some people don’t see alternate history as historical fiction, but I do. This novel follows a similar vein to The Man in the High Castle, where one major shift in history changes everything.

After the assassination of FDR in the 1930s, the US collapses and is picked off by the UK, Canada, Mexico, and Russia. We find ourselves in the Southwestern states, now known as Texoma. It is here that the gunnie Lizbeth Rose tries to piece out a life, running security on runs from Texoma across the border to Mexico.

It’s an amazingly rich story woven into an alternate western setting. If you love to bend the rules of history, you will love this one.

By Charlaine Harris,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked An Easy Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, the inspiration for HBO’s True Blood, comes “a gripping, twisty-turny, thrill ride of a read” (Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author) following a young gunslinging mercenary on deadly mission through the American Southwest.

In a fractured United States, a new world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards. Lizbeth Rose has a wildly fearsome reputation but these wizards are desperate. Searching the small border towns near Mexico, they’re trying to…


Explore my book 😀

Hour Glass

By Michelle Rene,

Book cover of Hour Glass

What is my book about?

Set in the lawless town of Deadwood, South Dakota, Hour Glass shares an intimate look at the woman behind the legend of Calamity Jane told through the eyes of 12-year-old Jimmy Glass.   

After their pa falls deathly ill with smallpox, Jimmy and his sister, Hour, travel into Deadwood to seek help. While their pa is in quarantine, the two form unbreakable bonds with the surrogate family that emerges from the tragedy of loss. In a place where life is fragile and families are ripped apart by disease, death, and desperation, a surprising collection of Deadwood’s inhabitants surround Jimmy, Hour, and Jane. There, in the most unexpected of places, they find a family protecting them from the uncertainty and chaos that surrounds them all.

Book cover of Doc
Book cover of True Grit
Book cover of Tinsmith 1865

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Book cover of Dragon Disciples: Resurrection

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Christina Weigand Author Of Palace of the Twelve Pillars

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Why am I passionate about this?

My faith is a driving force in my life. Writing and dragons are my passions after my family. When not writing I mentor young people in their own writing. I’ve taken several writing courses and continue to study and work on honing my craft. Dragons serve as messengers of God in my books. I studied dragon lore and found the dragons an excellent vehicle for sharing God’s message. The dragons play a sentient, teaching, guiding role in the books they are featured in. That doesn’t mean there aren’t bad dragons to challenge the characters and the good dragons. 

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What is my book about?

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When the head of a Samaritan family is injured, it throws the family into turmoil. There isn't enough money for the hefty Roman taxes. The daughter, Chana, is taken as compensation and forced into slavery in a cruel centurion's home.

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