*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

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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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1ST PRIZE: 
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

(US ONLY)

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5/3/20	Excerpt	StoreyBook Reviews
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5/5/20	Author Interview	Texas Book Lover
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*Book Blitz* BAYOU CITY BURNING by D. B. Borton

BAYOU CITY BURNING

Harry & Dizzy Lark, Book 1

by

D.B. BORTON

Mystery / Detective / Humor / Historical 

Publisher: Boomerang Books

Date of Publication: May 30, 2019

Number of Pages: 390

Houston, 1961: comedy meets mystery and history. It's hard to be hard-boiled when your biggest fan and worst critic is your twelve-year-old daughter, especially when she's cracking your case for you and defending you from the bad guys, along with sidekicks human and feline. Houston is still a cowboy backwater, but Texas politicians dream big. P.I. Harry Lark is out to save the city for President Kennedy's moon mission. Dizzy Lark is out to save Harry. Jani 















Brooks of Romance Reviews Today calls Bayou City Burning “a terrific mystery loaded with humor, lots of excitement, and fascinating, well written characters” and rates it “a Perfect 10 book.”

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Visit D.B. Borton's website to read the Prologue, Chapter One, and Chapter Two of Bayou City Burning! 

Click to start reading now!

= = = = 

D. B. Borton is the author of two mystery series—the Cat Caliban series (Berkley, Hilliard and Harris) and the Gilda Liberty series (Fawcett)—as well as the recent novels Second Coming, Smoke, and Bayou City Burning (all from Boomerang Books). She is Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Wesleyan University. A native Texan, Borton became an ardent admirer of Nancy Drew at a young age. At the age of fourteen, she acquired her own blue roadster, trained on the freeways of Houston and the broad stretches of oil-endowed Texas highway, and began her travels. She also began a lifetime of political activism, working only for political candidates who lost. She left Texas at about the time everyone else arrived. In graduate school, Borton converted a lifetime of passionate reading and late-night movie-watching into a doctorate in English. She discovered that people would pay her to discuss literature and writing, although not much. But because she found young people interesting and entertaining and challenging, she became a college teacher, and survived many generations of college students. Later, during a career crisis, she discovered that people would pay her to tell stories, although even less than they would pay her to discuss stories written by someone else. Borton has lived in the Southwest and Midwest, and on the West Coast, where she has planted roses and collected three degrees in English without relinquishing her affection for the ways in which actual speakers constantly reinvent the language to meet their needs. In her spare time, she gardens, practices aikido, studies languages other than English, and, of course, watches movies and reads.

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*Enter to Win!* BLUSTER'S LAST STAND by Preston Lewis

BLUSTER'S LAST STAND

The Memoirs of H.H. Lomax, #4

by

PRESTON LEWIS

  Genre:  Historical Western Fiction / Humor

Date of Publication: November 15, 2017 Publisher: Wild Horse Press

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Events on the Little Bighorn might have turned out better for George Armstrong Custer had he listened to H.H. Lomax rather than trying to kill him.  To save his own skin—and scalp!—Lomax must outwit Custer and his troopers as well as face hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors swarming Last Stand Hill. 

At least that is how Lomax in his inimitable style tells the story in this humorous romp across Old West history.  Lomax’s latest misadventures take him from the Battle of Adobe Walls to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.  In between, he’s a bouncer in a Waco whorehouse, a prospector in the Black Hills, a bartender in a Dakota Territory saloon and a combatant in the worst defeat in the history of the frontier Army. 

Along the way, Lomax crosses paths with Bat Masterson, Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickok, General Custer, his brother Tom Custer and the troopers of the Seventh Cavalry as well as hordes of Comanche, Kiowa, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, not to mention the most dangerous adversary of all—a newspaper reporter with ambition.

Told with Lomax’s characteristic wit, Bluster’s Last Stand puts a new spin on the Little Bighorn and its aftermath.  Whether you believe him or not, you’ve got to admire Lomax’s luck and pluck in both surviving one of the darkest days in Old West history and writing about the disaster in the latest volume of The Memoirs of H.H. Lomax.

PRAISE FOR PRAISE FOR THE H.H. LOMAX SERIES

“A new series by Preston Lewis features a protagonist, H.H. Lomax, who isn’t much of a gunfighter, horseman or gambler.  Instead, he is a likeable loser who runs into old western celebrities like Billy the Kid and the Jesse James gang, and barely escapes.”  
—Wall Street Journal

“It takes a special talent to write first-person novels based on the premise of ‘lost papers,’ but Preston Lewis is an especially fresh and innovative writer and he knows how to do it.”

—Rocky Mountain News

Fans of the Western as a genre will delight in Lewis’ ongoing spoof of many traditions which fiction writers from Owen Wister to Elmer Kelton captured well enough to turn into key parts of our myths and folklore….Lewis’s wit is at times Puckishly wry, at other times bawdy in the manner of Chaucer.  It is always engaging.  
—Texas Books in Review

Several Old West historians have blessed the Lomax books as expertly crafted fiction. 
—Dallas Morning News

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What do you think most characterizes your writing? 

An editor once told me I wrote funny. Now that’s not necessarily something a writer wants to hear because you don’t know if it’s funny “ha ha” or funny “odd.” His point was, as he explained it, that I often have an off-center perspective that lends itself to humor. So, it was an editor that first helped me see the possibility of writing humor. And in fact, Bantam originally approached me about writing a humorous series that became The Memoirs of H.H. Lomax of which Bluster’s Last Stand is the latest volume.

How do you approach humor in your novels?

 I describe humor as a con game on your expectations or your intellect. So, I’ve developed my six “cons” of humor for novels: convention, contemplation, construction, contrivance (like this list), confluence and, worst of all, constipation. Convention is the parameters, stereotypes or clichés of your genre. Variances on those conventions provide opportunities for humor. Contemplation is a fancy name for research, where I am always looking for odd facts or information that can lend itself to humorous situations. Construction is the setup. Nearly all humor requires a sound setup for effectiveness. Contrivance is the use of plot twists or literary gimmicks to further the action and humor. Confluence is tying it all together into a coherent story rather than just a series of running gags. Then there’s constipation! Like life, sometimes in humor things just don’t come out right for everyone, particularly in these hypersensitive times. What is funny or amusing to one person may be offensive to another. I was once attacked by a reader who was offended by my flippant use of the word “Yankee” because it was demeaning. Seems as a child she moved to the south from the north and was called Yankee by her schoolmates, evidently scarring her emotionally for life. Weird! I happen to know a little bit about Yankees because I married a young lady from Pennsylvania. She is proud to be a Yankee, and we are proud to be parents of two half-Yankees.

What was the hardest part of writing this book?

Stopping the research and beginning the writing is always the hardest part. Research is the fun part. So, I have three writing milestones. First is completing page one. The start is always the hardest part, whether a book or a chapter. Second, when I get to page 10 it’s a milestone because now I am in double digits. The third milestone is when I get to 100 pages because now I am in three digits and I know I won’t have to go four digits, though I’ve written 450 pages on some manuscripts.

How do you go about your research? I had an aunt who was an expert quilter. She would cut out pieces of fabric, then arrange them and stitch them together in beautiful patterns and blocks. That’s what I do with research. Keep in mind in my historical novels I am writing about events that have been written about dozens of times. So, I first look for odd or unusual facts that haven’t to my knowledge been utilized in previous novels on this topic. Then I look for facts that intrigue me and facts that I think have some comical potential. Then I try to stitch them together in a narrative that I hope is as enjoyable to read as it was to look at my aunt’s quilts.

Are you a full-time or part-time writer? How does that affect your writing? 

I now write full-time, but before I retired I wrote part-time. I’ve come to understand that writers face two problems—time and money. Some writers can handle money problems and some can handle time pressures but few can handle both. For instance, I could not handle the pressure of having to make my living for me and my family fully from writing. I might have done it, but I didn’t know and I could not leave my family at risk for my potential failure as a writer. On the other hand, I can handle time pressures and can manage my time well enough to work a job full time and then carve out enough time to write fiction on the side. Now that I am retired, I have all the time I need to write.

What are some day jobs that you have held? Have any of them impacted your writing? 

I started out in newspapers so I learned early how to write on deadline and how to force myself to write, even when things might not be coming easily. Then in higher education communication and marketing I got a variety of writing experience from scripts to brochure copy to magazine features. I created and edited a university magazine, which is a good experience in working and editing with other writers.

How has your formal education influenced or impacted your writing?

I was blessed to attend Baylor during a golden period of journalism education at the university. I was fortunate to have studied under legendary Texas journalism professor David McHam, who I remain in touch with to this day. He was not only an exceptional teacher but also an inspirational man. He was responsible for my first two newspaper jobs and a guide for my subsequent graduate education. In addition to my bachelor’s degree from Baylor, I got a master’s degree in journalism at Ohio State, where I was a Kiplinger Fellow in reporting, and a second master’s degree in history from Angelo State University. At ASU I was again blessed to study history under legendary Texas historian Arnoldo DeLeon, who chaired my thesis committee.

What do your plans for future projects include? 

I would like to do a historical novel on the last six months of the Civil War in the Western Theater as well as some additional comic westerns using some of the characters from my The Fleecing of Fort Griffin.

What does your perfect writing spot look like? Is that what your ACTUAL writing spot looks like? 

My perfect writing spot is expansive and uncluttered, a contrast from my writing room. Ernie Pyle once wrote that Americans leave a messy battlefield, and I leave an untidy writing space.

Who would you cast to play your characters in a movie version of your book? I’m so out of touch with contemporary actors I can’t give a legitimate answer. The ones that come to mind were classic stars from my youth.

Do you have a mantra for writing and/or for life? 

Be always sure you're right — then go ahead!—Davy Crockett; and “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” John 8:32 (King James Version)

What do you want your tombstone to say? 

Husband-Father-Author

Preston Lewis is the Spur Award-winning author of 30 western, juvenile and historical novels, including Bluster’s Last Stand published by Wild Horse Press.   

Bluster’s Last Stand, a novel about Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn, is the latest volume in Lewis’s well-received Memoirs of H.H. Lomax series of comic westerns 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). 

           
Lewis’s historical novel Blood of Texas on the Texas Revolution received WWA’s Spur Award for Best Western Novel.  His western caper The Fleecing of Fort Griffin in 2017 earned him his third Elmer Kelton Award from the West Texas Historical Association (WTHA) for best creative work on West Texas. 

 His True West article on the Battle of Yellowhouse Canyon won a Spur Award for Best Nonfiction Article.  In addition to True West, his short works have appeared in publications as varied as Louis L’Amour Western Magazine, Persimmon Hill, Dallas Morning News, 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 a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Baylor University and master’s degrees from Ohio State in journalism and Angelo State in history.  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: Full 4 Book Set in the Lomax Series

2nd Prize: Bluster's Last Stand + The Fleecing of Fort Griffin

3rd Prize: Bluster's Last Stand

*all copies signed*

December 13-December 22, 2017

(U.S. Only)

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12/22/17	Review	Reading by Moonlight

  
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