*REVIEW & GIVEAWAY!* First Herd to Abilene by Preston Lewis

FIRST HERD TO ABILENE

An H. H. Lomax Western, #5
by

PRESTON LEWIS

Genre: Historical Fiction / Western / Humor
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Date of Publication: February 5, 2020

Number of Pages: 449

Scroll down for the giveaway!

HISTORICALLY SOUND AND HILARIOUSLY FUNNY!

H.H. Lomax meets Wild Bill Hickok in Springfield, Missouri, and is responsible for Hickok’s legendary gunfight with Davis Tutt. Fearing Hickok will hold a grudge, Lomax escapes Springfield and agrees to promote Joseph G. McCoy’s dream of building Abilene, Kansas, into a cattle town, ultimately leading the first herd to Abilene from Texas. Along the way, he encounters Indians, rabid skunks, flash floods, a stampede, and the animosities of some fellow cowboys trying to steal profits from the drive. Lomax is saved by the timely arrival of now U.S. Marshal Hickok, but Lomax uses counterfeit wanted posters to convince Hickok his assailants are wanted felons with rewards on their heads. Lomax and Wild Bill go their separate ways until they run into each other a decade later in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, where Hickok vows to kill Lomax for getting him fired. 

First Herd to Abilene is an entertaining mix of historical and hysterical fiction.

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Hey, Y’all! How’s quarantine life going? Truth be told (since I’m a hermit) not much is different for me, except I cannot make a dash into the store when I wanna. *Le Sigh* I’m seriously missing the dollar store, at the moment.

Most of y’all know that I’m an author who lurves writing about alien invasions in Small Town, Texas. But I’m also an Instructional Designer with my own (award winning) boutique firm called Star eLearning. (If you happen to know someone who needs Instructional Design services, send ‘em my way, yo!)  Therefore, I work from home 24/7. So, I’m still mostly just doing what I usually do, except for wearing a ninja mask once a week on a short trek to town. This makes me feel uppity and ninja-like in all my masked glory.

But I digress…

In betwixt designing elearning modules for clients and writing on my current WIP (no, I ain’t gonna give y’all any deets on that), I’ve been luxuriating in reading A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness. Right when the plot is getting all juicy and vampirey (I just made that word up), here comes Kristine, all sneaky like, with FIRST HERD TO ABILENE by Preston Lewis in her tantalizing biscuit hooks.

She stroked the lush cover of Lewis’ western (knowing full-well that I’m a complete history nerd), and purred “trust in me…just in me…open your eyes…and trust in me…”

Well, not really like that... But she somehow (in her mystical book siren way) knew that this book would be a good fit for moi and my penchant for history. I minored in history at UH, ya see. Albeit with a study in Viking history, but how different are cowboys from Vikings, really? Basically, one shouts “vallhallah!” whilst the other calls out “yeehaw!” 

Well, there are one or two other differences, but this dude kinda has a little of both, wouldn't you say?

via GIPHY

I know, I know, I always make y’all listen to me yammer on and on instead of coming on out with the review. Dang! I’m gittin’ to it! Hold yer horses (or mules, donkeys, camels, etc.)!

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about FIRST HERD TO ABILENE by Preston Lewis, to be honest. It just didn’t sound like it had any UFOs or aliens in it, I guess. But not many books do, these days. However, I do lurve me some Texas (and cowboys ain’t bad, either.) So, I turned on my Kindle and commenced to read.

Aha…there it was. The hook. Right away. Lewis had the confounded, dadblasted nerve to straight up tell me in the Introduction that he’s writing about an actual historical figure who he’s been researching for many years.

“Well, heck,” I says to myself. “How am I supposed to put this book down now?” I huffed as I continued reading. “I hope Lewis is happy!” My nostrils flared as I took a big ole gulp of coffee and dug on into the story.

Before I knew it, I had slipped into the skin of H. H. Lomax, a man who knew the likes of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. A man who'd done and experienced all sorts of things in his younger years than most modern folks would have the chance to do in a lifetime. And since I'd slipped on into Lomax's boots, I was experiencing those things, too!

Ya see, Lewis has a way with spinning a yarn. I’d thought this particular type of storytelling had become a lost art. But I was dead wrong.

This book is penned in such a way that the reader has no choice but to become part of the story. This is the type of book that nerds yearn for. If one wants to get lost from reality, then I recommend grabbing a copy of FIRST HERD TO ABILENE by Preston Lewis. Reading this book is akin to taking a vacation from life.

And, given that we’ve all been in a dadgum pandemic, we can all use a little bit of escape right about now. Though I’ve featured Preston Lewis here on Books & Broomsticks in the past, this is the first of his books that I’ve read. But, I assure y’all that it won’t be the last. 

I sorely needed that break from modern day (pandemic riddled murder hornet) life, and Lewis took me on a wild west adventure far away from my worries and troubles.

Lewis’ writing is witty, timeless, and intelligent. 

FIRST HERD TO ABILENE won a place in my 

Texas lovin’ pea pickin’ heart!

And that’s why I’m granting

FIRST HERD TO ABILENE

By Preston Lewis

5 Fantastical Brooms!

Preston Lewis is the Spur Award-winning author of thirty novels. In addition to his two Western Writers of America Spurs, he received the 2018 Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Western Humor for Bluster’s Last Stand, the fourth volume in his comic western series, The Memoirs of H. H. Lomax. Two other books in that series were Spur finalists. His comic western The Fleecing of Fort Griffin received the Elmer Kelton Award from the West Texas Historical Association for best creative work on the region.

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Signed Copies of First Herd to Abilene and Bluster's Last Stand
2ND PRIZE: 
Signed Copy of First Herd to Abilene

APRIL 28-MAY 8, 2020

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*Excerpt & Giveaway!* THE FLEECING OF FORT GRIFFIN by Preston Lewis

THE FLEECING 

OF FORT GRIFFIN

by

PRESTON LEWIS

Genre: Western Humor
Publisher: Wild Horse Press
Date of Publication: May 19, 2016

Number of Pages: 234

2017 Elmer Kelton Award from the West Texas Historical Association:

Best Creative Work on West Texas

Scroll down for the giveaway!

 When the young Englishman Baron Jerome Manchester Paget arrives in 1878 Fort Griffin with a satchel full of money to start a buffalo ranch and find a bride, a horde of colorful swindlers from throughout Texas arrive to help themselves to a rich serving of his naiveté to frontier ways.  

  With a passel of oddball characters and more twists and turns than a stagecoach trail, The Fleecing of Fort Griffin pits the baron against crooked gamblers, a one-eyed gunfighter, a savvy marshal, conniving females, a duplicitous cavalry officer and a worldly stump preacher. 

   To stay rich, the baron must stay alive!  And to stay alive, the baron must rely on a fourteen-year-old orphan and a rooster that serves as his guard animal.  Even so, the odds and the cards are stacked against the Englishman and his bold vision of becoming the baron of bison in West Texas. 

   Written by Spur Award-winning author Preston Lewis, a master of western plot twists and humor, The Fleecing of Fort Griffin takes readers on an unconventional and uproarious journey through the Old West and some of its unsavory characters.  

PRAISE FOR THE FLEECING OF FORT GRIFFIN:

“… a work of colorful and humorous fiction,”

                             Albany Review

“The Fleecing of Fort Griffin by Preston Lewis of San Angelo is one of the funniest westerns I’ve ever read.”

                             Glenn Dromgoole, Texas Reads

“If you're looking for a delightful tale, check out The Fleecing of Fort Griffin.” 

                             Bryan Eagle

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“A Stage Robbery”

Excerpt from

The Fleecing of Fort Griffin

Ten miles out of Fort Griffin, Shorty DeLong pulled back on the reins and eased the team up. Just ahead, the trail crossed a stream he called “Cuss Word Creek” because he cursed it every time he reached it. The creek was tree-lined and rock strewn, making it impossible for the coach to take at Shorty’s regular pace. Bordered by cottonwoods and big boulders, the crossing dipped to a swale where the footing was rocky and rough, but solid. While the creek offered more level sites for crossing, those places had quicksand bottoms that could not support a stage.

Shorty DeLong approached the crest and put his foot on the brake as he started down. It was steep and the stage wheels slid into pitted ruts, then bounced over stones buried like corpses in the corrugated ground. As he descended the slope, he came under the cool shade of the huge cottonwood trees. He bounced about on the seat, holding back on the reins and braking with his foot. As the stage reached the bottom of the slope and leveled out into the knee high stream, Shorty shook the reins and released the brake, catching a glimpse of three horses tied fifty yards downstream around a flaming campfire. As the stage started up the facing slope, the tired horses struggling, a man appeared on the trail, a bandanna covering his face and a rifle pointing at Shorty DeLong.

“Stop the stage. This is a holdup,” commanded the robber.

Were it level land, Shorty would have run the man down, but this was incline and he couldn’t do much but obey. He jerked back on the reins. “I ain’t got a strong box.”

“I’ll take your passengers.”

“Just two of them,” Shorty replied, studying the robber. Even the bandanna could not hide the patch over the bandit’s left eye.

“Have ’em get out,” the robber commanded, “and no tricks. I’ve men in the rocks with rifles.”

Warily, Shorty looked to his side and saw a rifle pointed between two rocks at him. The boulders screened all but the gunman’s rifle and large sombrero.

The robber noted DeLong’s gaze at the sombrero. “I’ve another friend with a shotgun in the trees. You best unload the passengers.”

“Passengers,” Shorty shouted, “get out. I’ve a schedule to keep.”

The door swung open slowly.

“Hands up or you’re dead,” cried the robber.

“Do as he says boys,” Shorty warned.

The baron slid out first, satchel in hand, then Joe Loper.

“Well I’ll be damned if it ain’t Joe Loper and that damned Englishman,” laughed the robber. “Driver, your passengers are staying with me. Do they have a trunk in the boot?”

“Yep,” nodded DeLong.

“Then unload it, and you can be on your way.”

Shorty pointed at Loper and the baron. “What about them?”

The robber laughed again. “Unless you’re taking this stage to hell, they’ll be following a different road away from here.” The robber shook the gun at Shorty’s face.

Shorty gulped. “Sorry boys.” Quickly he tied the reins over the brake lever, scrambled from the driver’s seat and scurried to the rear of the stage, unfastening the tarp over the boot.

“Help the driver, Loper,” the robber commanded, waving the gun at the gambler. “I won’t shoot you in the back. For now!” He laughed.

Shorty jerked the trunk from the boot and dropped it on the trail. Loper and the baron grabbed a handle at the end of the trunk and moved it away from the stage.

“And Baron, don’t let go of the carpetbag because I need the money.”

Shorty inched back toward the front of the stage.

The robber waved his pistol at Shorty. “Get up there and get going unless you want to join them on their trip to hell.”

Shorty scrambled atop the stage, unwrapped the reins from the brake lever and nodded at the masked man. Shorty looked downstream at the three tethered horses, a yellow dun catching his eye because of the live rooster bound and hanging from its saddle horn.

“Boys,” said the robber, waving his pistol at his victims, “carry your trunk to my fire. There’s a shovel there you can use to start digging your graves. This is where we bury the baron.” The robber laughed.

            Preston Lewis is the Spur Award-winning author of 30 western, juvenile and historical novels, including The Fleecing of Fort Griffin, a western caper published by Wild Horse Press.  Fleecing won the 2017 Elmer Kelton Award from the West Texas Historical Association (WTHA) for best creative work on West Texas. 

     Lewis is best known for his comic novels in The Memoirs of H.H. Lomax series. 

Bluster’s Last Stand, a novel about Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn, is the latest volume in the well-received series that began with The Demise of Billy the Kid.  Subsequent books in the series—The Redemption of Jesse James and Mix-Up at the O.K. Corral—were both Spur Finalists from Western Writers of America (WWA). 

           Blood of Texas, Lewis’s historical novel on the Texas Revolution, received WWA’s Spur Award for Best Western Novel.  His True West article on the Battle of Yellowhouse Canyon won a Spur Award for Best Nonfiction Article.  In addition to his two Spurs from WWA, Lewis has earned three Elmer Kelton Awards from WTHA.

       Lewis’s novels have appeared under the imprint of national publishing houses such as Bantam, Zebra and HarperCollins and of regional publishing companies like Eakin Press and Wild Horse Press.  His short works have appeared in publications as varied as Louis L’Amour Western Magazine, Persimmon Hill, Dallas Morning News, True West, The Roundup, Journal of the Wild West History Association and San Angelo Standard-Times. 

       A native West Texan and current San Angelo resident, Lewis holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism from Baylor and Ohio State universities.  He earned a second master’s degree in history from Angelo State University.  He is a past president of WWA and WTHA.  Lewis is a longstanding member of the Authors Guild and an associate member of the Dramatists Guild of America.  

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1ST PRIZE: Signed Copy of The Fleecing of Fort Griffin + Choice of Any One Book from the H.H. Lomax Series 2ND PRIZE: Signed Copy of The Fleecing of Fort Griffin

MARCH 20-29, 2018

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