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27 March 2018

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

THE FLEECING

OF FORT GRIFFIN

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

CLICK TO PURCHASE

“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.

Website ║ Facebook ║ Goodreads

║Amazon Author Page║

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GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!
GIVEAWAY!

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

(US ONLY; email addresses collected will be used by author for distribution list)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

VISIT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:

3/20/18	Excerpt 1	Chapter Break Book Blog
3/21/18	Review	Hall Ways Blog
3/22/18	Author Interview	Book Fidelity
3/23/18	Review	Missus Gonzo
3/24/18	Excerpt 2	The Love of a Bibliophile
3/25/18	Author Interview	StoreyBook Reviews
3/26/18	Review	Reading by Moonlight
3/27/18	Excerpt 3	Books and Broomsticks
3/28/18	Scrapbook Page	A Page Before Bedtime
3/29/18	Review	Forgotten Winds

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21 December 2017

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

BLUSTER'S LAST STAND

The Memoirs of H.H. Lomax, #4

PRESTON LEWIS

Genre: Historical Western Fiction / Humor

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

Scroll down for the giveaway!

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

CLICK TO PURCHASE

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.

Website ║ Facebook ║ Goodreads

Amazon Author Page

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GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!

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)