Riders & Kickers Finally Released!

Finally, after much tribulations, floods, panic, gnashing of teeth, and tearing of hair, Riders & Kickers, The Five Dollar Mail Anthology, is finally released!

It contains the holiday tales and various other short stories found on the website, plus Ask Wash and some general info about the Pony Express. It also contains two new previously unpublished stories: one co-written with longtime reader Erin Sackett, which is illustrated with never-before-seen illustrations by Diego Candia, and the other, a substantial novella by my husband Jim Shelley, who has done quite a bit of collaboration with me about story arcs for FDM over the years. To be honest, The Five Dollar Mail really wouldn't exist without Jim's support and creative contributions, so I love that he wrote a story of his own for this.

It also contains a sneak preview of the cover for what will be the third and final book in the trilogy, The Road Home, which I am finishing up writing now. 

Anways, Riders & Kickers is available both as an ebook, and also as a beautiful trade paperback (not linked on Amazon as of this writing, so if you want the trade, just do a search on Amazon for it. It's there.). I hope you enjoy it!

As always, thanks for reading!

-'gina

Statewide Marco Polo Match!

Head's up, y'all. My town is pretty much underwater right now. I have no doubt we're gonna be declared a federal disaster area before it's over, if it hasn't already.

I lived through Hurricane Hugo, and I ain't never seen anything like this shit that's going on here right now. I currently live on a high ridge made of sharp sand, so my place is okay, but I can't really go anywhere and I don't know how long power and internet is going to hold.

If it holds, I'm gonna keep to my normal posting schedule. If you don't hear from me, I'm sitting in the dark holding a flashlight and hoping I don't have to pull the kayaks out, and you'll hear from me when you hear from me.

On the upside, if I don't lose internet and/or power, looks like Riders & Kickers will be released next week!

Stay dry!

-Gina

The Road Home: No regular chapter this week, Updates

Howdy all,

Gonna forgo my regular chapter this week for a couple reasons. First and foremost, I have been working on Riders & Kickers. Four proofs on this thing. I got The Green and Lynch's Boys in two goes. Riders & Kickers is half the size of those and for some reason, has taken more work to get done.

I can't decide if I am more picky or if I am simply distracted. It's been a hell of a year, most of which has gone by in dreamlike and often painful blur.

Anyways, I kicked the third proof copy back this week, so keep your fingers crossed.

The other thing is that I am having to read over the chapters that will comprise the next, and final, book. Yes, we are coming up on the end of the trail. I've got to end this somewhere, and I want to make sure everything's tied up all nice and neat before I'm done. So like the other books before it, I have to re-read it to make sure it pans out right. We have a little ways to go...a couple more miles.  The idea of finishing makes me as sad as it does happy. I've been doing this so long, I'm a little scared to stop.

Between re-reading Riders & Kickers until I want to puke, and sitting down and reading chapters 200+ as if I were just a reader, I can't write. Too much going on in my head. Fortunately, I'm almost done reading. I think I'll be back on track next week. But I don't want to rush it. Gotta do it right. I really do feel like I am  riding tired through the purple dusk with a warm, yellow light shining through the trees ahead of me. A few more fresh horses, and we'll be home.

See you next week.

Gonna Be Late This Week

Murray

Howdy, all. I'm sorry, but I am running late this week. Hoping to have a post up Friday or Saturday. I had intended to work all through today on stuff, but as it turned out, my day started at around 3:30 am. We have a house rabbit, and he was unhappily and repeatedly thumping on the floor in an attempt to alert the household that we were all in mortal peril. Strange sounds were coming out of one of my kitchen cabinets,  and me and the husband ended up sitting in the dark with a flashlight, trying to figure out what was going on.

Murray here was going on. He had evidently discovered the hole in the floor where a bathroom renovation has been on hold since before Jim started chemo. And he was sitting in my kitchen eating a waffle cone.

So I set some humane traps and went back to bed. It was, after all, 3:30am, and I had gone to bed rather late.

Long story short, Murray ended up in my bedroom.  It's a little hard to relax when you know a wild animal is sitting in your closet, watching you try to sleep. Instead of finishing up my work, I spent most of the day trying to capture an opossum, calling wildlife rehab to make sure I didn't need to bring him in for dehydration, and relocating him safely to a nice place in my backyard, close to where he was probably living before invading my home.

So I honestly spent the day so horribly exhausted I actually feel drunk. I can't work like this.

Artist's Interpretation by Robin White

Anyways, my friends thought the entire opossum story sounded like a children's book. Rabbit discovers opossum in house, opossum sneaks into closet and hides befriends a hat. Robin even illustrated it after it was determined by Pam that the story was better if the opossum was actually wearing the hat instead of just sitting on it.

Anyways, Murray is back in his own environment outside and I promise I won't clean up my closet, which is now in shambles, until I have posted this week's update.

See you soon!

-gina

Working Hard on Riders and Kickers This Week

Bender

Hi, all. I threw all my energy into typesetting the late but upcoming Riders & Kickers this week, and didn't want to stop. I had quite a bit to do on it, including a panicked call to my editor yesterday, but I'm back on track now and finally have the main manuscript ready to go and the pictures lined up and prepped.

I'm so bleary-eyed I can hardly see.

Lily

Now, I just have to tweak the typesetting and finish up the cover, and hopefully I'll have a proof in my hands by late next week. Keep your fingers crossed and think good thoughts.

I hate missing a chapter at this point, but honestly, I can't write right now. I get too wound up and hyper-focused with this stuff.

I did make some of my faux ambrotypes some time back for Wattpad, and realized that I don't think I have shown them to you. So here they are if you have not seen them.

Storm

Anyways, I am planning on posting a chapter next week, so here's hoping to get this over with quickly so I can get back on schedule.

Have a great holiday weekend and stay safe!

-gina

Hellbender by Laura Hollingsworth

Howdy, all!

I'm busy working on the layout for Riders and Kickers this week, so I'm taking the week off so I can concentrate on that. I'm hoping to get that out next month sometime, so keep your fingers crossed. But never fear, the amazing Laura Hollingsworth, the creator of The Silver Eye webcomic, has done a picture of Bender for us.

She gave me two preliminary sketches, one of him shrugging into his coat, and one of him standing still. It was a tough choice because they were both awesome, but we ended up going with the more animated "coat" pictures. I really love the movement in Laura's artwork. She really brings the characters to life.

Bet You Didn't Know That Today Is Thanksgiving, Did You?

Jim ringing the bell

Hi, all. I will have your regular chapter up by Friday at the latest. I'm just not really ready to post it. It's been a very busy week.

We're having a Thanksgiving supper at my place tonight and I've been trying to get things in order for that. I am having a hard time concentrating on writing this week.

I didn't talk about this on here because it was hard to talk about, and because I didn't want it to be that kind of blog. And because I was afraid and depressed and didn't want to bring it here. But what we are celebrating is my husband Jim's last PET scan. He is cancer-free. So we are celebrating, and I just want to focus on that today.

He wasn't cancer free for the last six months or so. He was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer, which had metastasized to his liver. .I've seen too many blogs that followed someone's fight that didn't have happy endings. Maybe it was superstition, I dunno. I don't like people to see me bleed, I guess.

He responded great to the chemo, thank God. He is cancer-free right now. The chemo kicked his ass...but while it was kicking his ass, he was kicking cancer's ass. That picture there is him ringing the bell in the chemo lab. When cancer patients finish their chemo, it's traditional to ring the bell. It's a great tradition. It gives a lot of hope to all the other patients, and gives everyone a goal to look forward to. We were so happy that it was finally Jim's turn.

So, if you're wondering what happened to the anthology, you'll be happy to know Marie has it in her hot little hands right now. The holdup was that Jim wanted to write a novella to include in the book. So while he was on chemo, he wrote a novella. It was slow going, because he had some pretty bad mind-fog, but he did it like a boss. In fact, quite a bit of the chapters you've been reading since November were written while I sat in an infusion center with him. I actually met McKenna, the author of Gunslinger's Grave, online while sitting in the chemo center with a laptop on my lap.

Anyways, that's what's been going on in our lives over here. If all goes well, the anthology should be out in a couple months at the most. And your regular chapter will be here Friday night at the very latest.

We have decided that today is Thanksgiving...so Happy Thanksgiving!