C.J. Petit
Most biographies start with birth and then roll through the years as they drift by but that would bore me to death, and I lived through it.
The interesting part of my life began on September 23rd, 1995 as we were driving back to Omaha after watching the Notre Dame - Texas game in South Bend with relatives. The #21 Irish beat the #13 ranked Longhorns 55-27; and in a real oddity, scored points in just about every way conceivable in the game of football. They scored touchdowns on passes and runs, kicked a field goal, intercepted a pass for a TD, returned a punt for a touchdown and even added two points for blocking a Texas extra point.
As we were driving along westbound I-80 somewhere in Illinois in our Jeep Cherokee, I absent-mindedly rubbed th
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Ron Schwab
Ron Schwab is the author of the popular Western series, The Law Wranglers, The Coyote Saga, and The Lockes, as well as several standalone novels, including Grit, a winner of the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Best Western Novel, and Cut Nose, a finalist for the Western Writers of America Best Western Historical Novel. He is a member of the Western Writers of America, Western Fictioneers, and Mystery Writers of America.
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Ron’s earlier published works included the suspense novels, Crocodile Fears and The Buddy System, both printed under a pseudonym, Michael J. Stewart. He is a member of the Western Writers of America, Western Fictioneers, and Mystery Writers of America.
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Ron Schwab
Ron Schwab is the author of the popular Western series, The Law Wranglers, The Coyote Saga, and The Lockes, as well as several standalone novels, including Grit, a winner of the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Best Western Novel, and Cut Nose, a finalist for the Western Writers of America Best Western Historical Novel. He is a member of the Western Writers of America, Western Fictioneers, and Mystery Writers of America.
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Ron’s earlier published works included the suspense novels, Crocodile Fears and The Buddy System, both printed under a pseudonym, Michael J. Stewart. He is a member of the Western Writers of America, Western Fictioneers, and Mystery Writers of America.
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N.B. Sorensen
N.B. “Red” Sorensen is an award – winning Author. His book The Man Called Red received the Finalist Award for 2016 Readers Review Worldwide competition in the Autobiography Category. The Man Called Red was self - published December 1st 2015. Red lost his wife in 1992 from cancer. He has 6 children, 9 Grandchildren, and 20 Great Grandchildren. He is supposed to respect his elders, but it’s getting harder and harder to find one now. You can visit Red at nbsoren1@telus.net or on Face Book.
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T.R. Pearson
Thomas Reid Pearson is an American novelist born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is the author of seventeen novels and four works of non-fiction under his own name, including A Short History of a Small Place, Cry Me A River, Jerusalem Gap, and Seaworthy, and has written three additional novels -- Ranchero, Beluga, and Nowhere Nice -- under the pseudonym Rick Gavin. Pearson has also ghostwritten several other books, both fiction and nonfiction, and has written or co-written various feature film and TV scripts.
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Peter Brandvold
Peter Brandvold has written well over one hundred action westerns under his own name and his pseudonym, Frank Leslie. Born and raised in North Dakota, he has lived all over the West. He currently lives in western Minnesota with his dog. Follow him at Amazon and here peterbrandvold.blogspot.comand here: facebook.com/peter.brandvold.
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Steve Hockensmith
Steve Hockensmith is the author of the New York Times bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls and several other novels, including the Edgar Award finalist Holmes on the Range. He lives in Alameda, California.
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Duane Boehm
Duane Boehm grew up on a farm outside of Petersburg, Illinois. All the time spent driving a tractor gave him plenty of opportunity to let his imagination run wild and not tear up too much equipment. The two passions he developed early in life were the love of playing guitar and reading books.
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He eventually moved to a mini-farm outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee with his wife and replaced planting corn with trees and raising dogs. For a number of years he worked as an IT consultant and continued with being a part-time musician and songwriter. He dabbled in writing short stories with the idea in the back of his mind that someday he would write a novel. One Christmas after watching "A Christmas Carol", he was inspired to begin his journey as a -
William W. Johnstone
William W. Johnstone is the #1 bestselling Western writer in America and the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of hundreds of books, with over 50 million copies sold. Born in southern Missouri, he was raised with strong moral and family values by his minister father, and tutored by his schoolteacher mother. He left school at fifteen to work in a carnival and then as a deputy sheriff before serving in the army. He went on to become known as "the Greatest Western writer of the 21st Century." Visit him online at WilliamJohnstone.net.
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B.N. Rundell
Born and raised in Colorado into a family of ranchers and cowboys, B.N. Rundell is the youngest of seven sons. Juggling bull riding, skiing, and high school, graduation was a launching pad for a hitch in the Army Paratroopers. After the army, he finished his college education in Springfield, MO, and together with his wife and growing family, entered the ministry as a Baptist preacher.
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Together, B.N. and Dawn raised four girls that are now married and have made them proud grandparents. With many years as a successful pastor and educator, he retired from the ministry and followed in the footsteps of his entrepreneurial father and started a successful insurance agency, which is now in the hands of his trusted nephew. He has also been a success -
J.R. Roberts
"J.R. Roberts" is the pen name of Robert J. Randisi under which he writes the Gunsmith series.
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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. -
Janice Cole Hopkins
Janice Cole Hopkins grew up in rural Wilkes County, North Carolina, with an Appalachian heritage. She loved stories and learned to read when she was five. She graduated from Appalachian State University with degrees in history and reading, and she also taught school, wrote and published in magazines, and dreamed of someday publishing a historical novel. Janice has always attended church and has done short and long term mission work. All the profits from her books go to a scholarship fund for missionary children. Sown in Dark Soil is a stand alone novel and is the second book in her Appalachian Roots series.
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Harold Robbins
Born as Harold Rubin in New York City, he later claimed to be a Jewish orphan who had been raised in a Catholic boys home. In reality he was the son of well-educated Russian and Polish immigrants. He was reared by his pharmacist father and stepmother in Brooklyn.
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His first book, Never Love a Stranger (1948), caused controversy with its graphic sexuality. Publisher Pat Knopf reportedly bought Never Love a Stranger because "it was the first time he had ever read a book where on one page you'd have tears and on the next page you'd have a hard-on".
His 1952 novel, A Stone for Danny Fisher, was adapted into a 1958 motion picture King Creole, which starred Elvis Presley.
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Lauran Paine
aka John Armour, Reg Batchelor, Kenneth Bedford, Frank Bosworth, Mark Carrel, Claude Cassady, Richard Clarke, Richard Dana, J F Drexler, Troy Howard, Jared Ingersol, John Kilgore, Hunter Liggett, J K Lucas, John Morgan (many more).
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Lauran Bosworth Paine (born February 25, 1916 in Duluth, Minnesota – 2003 in California) was an American writer of Western fiction. Paine wrote over 900 books, including hundreds of Westerns as well as romance, science fiction, and mystery novels. He also wrote a number of non-fiction books on the Old West, military history, witchcraft, and other subjects.
His apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extr -
Austin Grayson
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Austin Grayson was born in Wichita, Kansas. He married his high school sweetheart and they currently live happily with their two daughters and an adorable Labrador.
He studied cinematography in the University of North Carolina, but his true passion was always writing stories.
Ever since he could remember, everything inside of him was looking for adventure; in books, movies, life. Now he also gets to write about it!
When he’s not writing, Austin enjoys fishing, trekking, horse-riding and Spaghetti Westerns which he loves watching along with his family every chance they get. -
Charles G. West
Charles G. West first arrived on the western literary scene in March, 1998 with his first novel, Stone Hand, published by Penguin under their Signet imprint. The book was the first of a three-book series, featuring Jason Coles, master tracker. The public response to those first three books called for more western fiction by West, and as of January 2014, Signet has published forty-five.
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Inspired in his youth by great adventure authors like A.B. Guthrie and Vardis Fisher, West has always sought to be true to the men and women who braved the dangers of the savage frontier that was ultimately forged to become the American west. Novels by Charles G. West are classified as historical/westerns due to his diligent research in his subject matter, cho -
George C. Kenney
George Churchill Kenney was a United States Army Air Forces general during World War II, the commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area.
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William H. Joiner Jr.
Ft. Knox, Kentucky, is my birthplace. It's also the home of the U.S. Gold Reserves, so it's a crying shame that I left there without any.
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Other than summer jobs as a teenager, I have always been in business for myself. I have owned businesses that included: residential and commercial construction; brokering and trading commodities; owning and operating multiple insurance agencies; horse breeding, syndicating, training and racing; dog breeding and field trialing; owning and operating multiple gyms; owning and operating oil wells; brokering, researching title and consulting (regarding the buying and selling of oil and gas properties); as well as brokering and facilitating international fuel purchases.
I have traveled extensively outside the co -
James P. Beckwourth
James Beckwourth (April 26, 1800 – October 20, 1866) was an American fur trapper, rancher, businessman, explorer, author and scout. Known as "Bloody Arm" because of his skill as a fighter, Beckwourth was of multiracial descent, being born into slavery in Frederick County, Virginia.
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Carol Grace
Carol Grace is the author of over 35 romance novels. In her former life she worked as a translator and an ESL teacher. She has traveled the world from Africa to Singapore for work and pleasure. Carol speaks French whenever she can, and sails the seas on cruise ships. When not on deck sipping tropical drinks and brainstorming ideas for her next novel, she gives writing classes. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it.
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What do the critics say about Carol Grace?
"Carol Grace is best known for her humor, witty dialog, compelling characters and touching romance."
"Read one of Carol's books and you're transported to San Francisco Bay or a ranch in Montana or even faraway romantic Italy. Wherever you go, you'll find love in the air by choosing a C -
Emilie Loring
Emilie Baker was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1864 to George M. Baker and Emily Frances (Boles) Baker. Her father was a playwright and publisher and her mother was a homemaker. Loring married Victor J. Loring, who was a lawyer. She began writing in 1914, published her first novel in 1922 at the age of 56, and continued writing until her death after a long illness in 1951. She was a prolific American romance novelist of the 20th century, known for her "wholesome love" romances and independent, spirited heroines. Beyond romance, her books also explore a selection of topics including, but not limited to marriage, love, American patriotism, freedom, and optimism. She died in Wellesley, Massachusetts on March 13, 1951. At the time of her dea
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Charles Hirsch
Librarian’s note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Frank Roderus
Frank Roderus wrote his first story—it was a western—when he was five. It was really awful, as might be expected, but his mother kept that typed and spell-checked short story tucked away until the day she died.
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Later, Frank became a newspaper reporter, thinking that books are written by authors which he most assuredly was not. He kept trying to write though, and eventually did it wrong enough to learn how to get it right. That first sale, a young adult novel published by Independence Press, was more than thirty years and a good many books ago.
As a journalist, the Colorado Press Association awarded Frank Roderus their highest award, the Sweepstakes Award, for the best news story of 1980, and the Western Writers of America has twice named Fran -
Eric H. Heisner
Eric H. Heisner is an award-winning writer, actor, and filmmaker who has a special affinity for the Western genre. With his first novel, West to Bravo, he continues to broaden his skills as a teller of stories from the mythology of the American West. Heisner resides in Austin, Texas with a ranch in Llano, TX.
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Leanne Owens
I live on our farm in Queensland, Australia, and write a variety of books, many of them involve horses. I'm an English teacher with a Master's in Education and I've done freelance writing for Australian horse magazines for decades, and also wrote and reported for Horse Talk TV. I love writing books that take readers on an emotional journey - lots of laughs, love, tragedy, romance, adventure, twists, and turns, but no swearing and no graphic sex scenes.
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I have many more books to write, so I hope if you read one, you'll read more, and enjoy the different characters and different stories that all deserve to live outside my mind. -
John Hansen
I grew up on a ranch in southern Idaho. It is here that I developed a love of the land and animals, unspoiled places that when I'm there I sometimes think; "This country probably looked this way a 150 years ago." I'm so grateful that places like this still exist in our modern times. My desire to write started at a very young age - about nine, as I recall. And too, my interest in western history began around this time. I was a voracious reader of the various western history magazines. I felt a connection of sorts to the characters in these magazines as my great grandmother single handedly captured several bank robbers who came to my grandparent's ranch wanting food and water. Writing, however, was something that I did in my spare time until
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Gary McCarthy
Gary McCarthy is the author of fourteen American historical novels and thirty-four westerns published by many of New York's major publishing houses. He has over three million books in print and continues to research and write his Canyon Country novels.
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Growing up with horses and living in California, Nevada and Arizona, Gary is well suited to writing about the American West. He received his B.S. degree in Animal Science and an M.S. in Agricultural Economics. He has a keen interest in Native American cultures, especially the Hopi, Navajo, Havasupai and Haulapai who live in Northern Arizona.
Gary and his wife Jane live in Arizona and have often ridden horses and hiked in the Kaibab and Coconino National Forests. Gary is always looking for n -
Scott Thompson
Lost in '96 is now available.
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Georgia Author of the Year nominee, for first novel, Scott Thompson was born and raised in the American South where his stories take place. His debut novel, Young Men Shall See, is a coming of age story set in the 1980s in a time of quiet social change and examines the generation in the South after the Civil Rights Era. Eight Days, released 2016 takes place in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, and involves a man who has died, but first must face his regrets and mistakes before finding eternity.
Thompson lives in the Carolina Low Country with his family. He is the winner of the Great American Novel contest in literature for 2010.
"Scott Thompson’s Eight Days earns and deserves a place on everyone’s bookshelf. Rich -
Harlan Hague
Harlan Hague, Ph.D., a retired history professor, has published history, prize-winning biography, award-winning fiction, travel and a bit of fantasy. He also writes screenplays. Travel and writing are complementary obsessions that are also most rewarding. For more on who he is and what he does, see his web site at http://harlanhague.us. He will respond to comments and questions.
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William Wayne Dicksion
William Wayne "Bill" Dicksion's ancestors migrated to the American frontier in the seventeenth century. As a boy, he loved the stories his grandparents told about that great adventure. Writing is his way of sharing those stories. He is educated in science and literature. His other interests are geography, history, philosophy, and anthropology. His writing reflects these interests. He and his wife live in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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Kent Conwell
Kent Conwell grew up in the Texas Panhandle in the town of Wheeler, population 848. The West was an integral part of his life. The solitude of the Panhandle, which offered little more than school and work, encouraged his reading and writing as well as his exploration of the vastness of the rolling prairies, the emptiness of which carried the presentiment itself of mystery and death.
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A quest for adventure had been woven into his life by his grandfather, who had run away from his Tennessee home when he was 14. He bullwhacked his way to the Panhandle where he met his future wife who had traveled from Illinois to Texas.
After moving to Fort Worth where Kent was more at home at the stockyards than school, he earned a B.S. and began teaching. Late -
Ken Cruickshank
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Ken Cruickshank writes thrillers, fiction, historical fiction, and nonfiction. Unable to pen or type his manuscripts, he creates them using speech-to-text software. His goals are simple: He wants to captivate and astound readers with plausible yet distinctive stories they cannot put down.
Cruickshank's second thriller, The Emerald Cross, was released in July 2024. His dark psychological thriller, Eagle Bay, debuted in the summer of 2023. Both stories take readers on unexpected journeys, and their endings might be unguessable. In 2018, he wrote a memoir about persevering through life’s challenges while staying positive and hopeful with an eye to the future, Stand Up: a memoir of disease, family, faith & hope.
Ken invites readers to follow alo -
Cameron Judd
Cameron Judd (AKA: Tobias Cole) is a bestselling author of over forty historical and Western novels, including The Canebrake Men and Crockett of Tennessee. A former award-winning journalist, he continues to write his acclaimed column “Clips to Keep” and lives with his family in Greene County, Tennessee.
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Theodore V. Olsen
Theodore Victor Olsen (April 25, 1932 in Rhinelander, Wisconsin – July 13, 1993 in Rhinelander) was an American western fiction author.
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Olsen's family immigrated from Norway in 1901. Theodore Olsen was born on April 25, 1932 in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. He went to school in Rhinelander and began to write in high school. He began a western novel at that time. Olsen went to college in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. He finally finished his novel, Haven of the Hunted, and it was published in 1956. Olsen also began to sell western stories to pulp magazines at this time. Though Olsen would occasionally travel west, he lived his whole life in Rhinelander and would use exhaustive research to help accurately portray scenes of the west in his stories.
Olsen w -
Robert J. Randisi
Pseudonyms include W. B. Longley, Robert Lake, Spenser Fortune, Joshua Randall, Tom Cutter, J.R. Roberts, Joseph Meek, Cole Weston, Lew Baines, Paul Ledd and Jon Sharpe
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Robert J. Randisi is the creator and author of The Gunsmith, the popular Western series with more than 250 novels and more than 5 million books in print, which was written under the pen name J.R. Roberts. Under various pseudonyms, he has created and written the series Tracker, Angel Eyes, The Bounty Hunter, Mountain Jack Pike, and Ryder. Western novels that have appeared under his own name are The Ham Reporter, Targett, The Ghost with Blue Eyes, Legend, and Miracle of the Jackal. He has also edited the Western anthologies White Hats, Black Hats, and Boot Hill. -
William MacLeod Raine
William MacLeod Raine (June 22, 1871 - July 25, 1954), was a British-born American novelist who wrote fictional adventure stories about the American Old West.
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William MacLeod Raine was born in London, the son of William and Jessie Raine. After his mother died, his family migrated from England to Arkansas when Macleod was ten years old, eventually settling on a cattle ranch near the Texas-Arkansas border.
In 1894, after graduating from Oberlin College, Macleod left Arkansas and headed for the western U.S. He became the principal of a school in Seattle while contributing columns to a local newspaper. After leaving Seattle, he moved to Denver, where he worked as a reporter and editorial writer for local periodicals, including the Republican, th -
Daniel Greene
Daniel is the award-winning author of The End Time Saga and the historical fiction Northern Wolf Series. Whether it’s a saber charge in the American Civil War or a gun battle between two rival bands surviving a hellish landscape, he is known for his ability to embed every page with fast-paced action, thrilling suspense, and gritty realism.
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He is an avid traveler and physical fitness enthusiast with a deep passion for history. The works of George R.R. Martin, Steven Pressfield, Bernard Cornwell, Robert Jordan, and George Romero, have inspired his work. Although he is a Midwesterner for life, he's lived in Virginia long enough to consider it home.
He is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, the Historical Novel Society, and the Mili -
Preston Lewis
Preston Lewis is the award-winning author of more than 50 novels and nonfiction works. His honors include three Spur Awards from Western Writers of America and ten Will Rogers Gold Medallion Awards (six gold, two silver, two bronze) for traditional westerns, western humor, nonfiction articles and short stories.
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In 2025 he was named recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Will Rogers Medallion Awards for his contributions to the literature of the American West. In 2021 Lewis was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary accomplishments.
His books have been published by both national and regional publishers. In 2021 he and his wife Harriet Kocher Lewis established Bariso Press and have published ten books. Of th -
David R. Lewis
I am yet another embattled crusader in the writing wars. I live in the wilds of the Missouri outback with two cattledogs, a belligerent cat named Grizz, and my bride of 42 years, the coveted Laura. In my rather extended life I have been a musician, a metropolitan cop, a ranch hand and cowboy, and (shudder) a writer of radio and television commercial copy. Now before you run for the Pepto, let me say that there are some benefits to be had from such mundane labor. After a writer has ground through twenty to thirty thousand pieces of commercial copy, one of two things will happen. He will spend the last years of his life in Sunnydale Acres grinding his teeth and staring blankly at the sun, or he will have learned to write for Theatre of the Mi
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Leona Grace
My stories feature quiet men dealing with the problems life throws at them, and strong women overcoming adversity.
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I write in a broad spectrum of genres, from classic westerns to historical LGBT, romance to gothic fantasy, as well as contemporary crime, horror and mystery. But, whatever the genre or the setting, my novels end with hope for the future, and more often than not a definite HEA.
As for me? Well, I am a happily married wife, mother and grandmother, living in the north-west of England where the rain is wet and the people are friendly.
Until recently I was a specialist teacher of children between the ages of 5 and 16 in a variety of educational settings. Having taken early retirement, I now spend as much time as possible either workin -
Sandra Cox
Multi-published author Sandra Cox writes All Things Western and More. Sandra lives with her husband, a menagerie of pets, and an occasional foster cat in sunny North Carolina.
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James D. Best
James Best is the author of the bestselling Steve Dancy Tales: The Shopkeeper, Leadville, Murder at Thumb Butte, The Return, Jenny's Revenge, Crossing the Animas, and No Peace. His contemporary Best Thrillers series includes The Shut Mouth Society, Deluge, and The Templar Reprisals. Tempest at Dawn is a classic novelization of the United States Constitutional Convention. Principled Action and The Digital Organization are nonfiction books. James has ghost written three books, authored two regular magazine columns, and published numerous journal articles. As a conference speaker, he has made presentations throughout North America and Europe. He is a member of Western Writers of America, Western Literature Association, and the Pacific Beach Su
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Frederick Russell Burnham
Frederick Russell Burnham was an American scout and world traveling adventurer known for his service to the British Army in colonial Africa and for teaching woodcraft to Robert Baden-Powell, thus becoming one of the inspirations for the founding of the international Scouting Movement.
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Burnham had only a little formal education, attending high school but never graduating. He began his career at 14 in the American Southwest as a scout and tracker for the U.S. Army in the Apache Wars and Cheyenne Wars. Sensing the Old West was getting too tame Burnham traveled to Africa in 1893 where his background proved useful.
Burnham distinguished himself in several battles in Rhodesia and South Africa and became Chief of Scouts. Despite his U.S. citizenshi -
Charles Alden Seltzer
Charles Alden Seltzer was an American writer. He was a prolific author of western novels, had writing credits for more than a dozen film titles, and authored numerous stories published in magazines, most prominently in Argosy.
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David Vining
I am a fiction writer living in the Carolinas.
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Writing is a passion of mine, and I'll never stop. I'm always striving to tell another story that speaks to me in new and interesting ways, and my milieu seems to have becomes historical fiction with a fantasy bent.
I love the feeling of being dropped into a lived-in world with its own rules and following a character who has to navigate them. That can be the far flung future like a Gene Wolfe novel or the distant, forgotten past like a Conan adventure from Robert E. Howard. That can even be a biography of a real man long since dead like James Madison. In fact, it was through the reading of Irving Brant's six-volume biography of Madison that I discovered The Battle of Lake Erie, the small corner o