December milestones

Two projects months in the making each came to fruition today with the preliminary release of The Mine audiobook and the completion of the first draft of The Mirror.

Narrated by Aaron Landon and published by Podium Publishing, the audiobook is now available to pre-order at Audible.com. The unabridged first novel of the Northwest Passage series will be released on January 10, 2014. It is ten hours in length.

The Mirror, the continuation of The Mine and The Show, will now undergo several rounds of editing and proofing. I expect to publish the fifth and final book of the series by March 31.

A new look for an old book

One thing I've learned in nearly two years of writing and publishing novels is that you should never let an opportunity slip through your fingers. So when I was given the chance to update The Mine's original cover with a flashier version, I took it.

Podium Publishing, a Toronto-based publisher of audiobooks, produced the new image. The cover will closely resemble the one used for The Mine audiobook, which is currently in production.

Many thanks to Cannon Colegrove for his work on the original cover, which was based on a photograph by Steve Jurvetson of the San Cristobal Mine, an abandoned mercury mine near San Jose, California.

Looking in The Mirror

There is something both satisfying and sad about bringing a continuing story to a close. The satisfying part goes without saying. Authors have the opportunity to tie up loose ends, revisit familiar places, and reexplore comforting themes one last time. Last month I began doing all of these things when I started work on The Mirror, the fifth book in the Northwest Passage series.

In this novel, Ginny and Katie Smith, the 19-year-old twin daughters of Joel and Grace Smith, will travel from 2020 to 1964 and see Seattle at the dawn of the sixties. They'll see the Beatles, the civil rights movement, and a changing culture through modern eyes and find new purpose in an era they knew only from their grandparents' stories.

They will also put a final stamp on a family saga that began in The Mine and continued in The Show -- much like Kevin Johnson did in The Fire, the recently published sequel to The Journey. They will give fresh perspective to a story I have enjoyed writing since starting The Mine two and a half years ago.

The sad part is no less obvious. Ending a story means saying goodbye. In The Mirror, I'll say so long to the extended Smith family, which includes not only the Greens and Vandenbergs of the early 1900s but also the Gillettes and Jorgensons of the rest of the century.

Whether I do the same to the Northwest Passage series is still an open question. Sometime next year, probably in the spring, I'll decide whether to continue the distinctive series with a new cast or start down an entirely new road.

Whatever the case, I will strive to give readers the very things they have come to enjoy in this particular collection: times and places they can explore, themes they can embrace, and characters they'll never forget. I expect to finish the first draft of The Mirror by the end of the year and publish by April 1. Stay tuned.

Review: The Great Gatsby

Like a lot of people, I don't read many classics. Classics are books we remember fondly (or maybe not so fondly) from high school -- not ones we actually take time to read as adults. Of the more than four hundred novels I've read in the past twenty years, only six were drawn from the Modern Library's celebrated Top 100.

Prompted by my community's Big Read program, however, I recently revisited No. 2 on the Modern Library's list: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless portrait of the Jazz Age. What I found was a book that has held up well since it was published in 1925 and still contains relevant messages for modern society.

In what is considered his greatest work, Fitzgerald introduces readers to the young, enigmatic Jay Gatsby, a self-made man who has everything but the one thing he wants: socialite Daisy Buchanan, the wife of fellow Long Island millionaire Tom Buchanan.

Told from the perspective of Nick Carraway, a young bond salesman who serves as sort of a middleman between his neighbor Gatsby and his second cousin Daisy, The Great Gatsby grabbed my attention from the first page and never let go. Fitzgerald's portrayal of prosperity, greed, arrogance, and recklessness is without peer.

To augment my enjoyment of the novel, I listened to the unabridged audiobook, read by actor Jake Gyllenhaal, and watched the recently released movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. Both were excellent but were no substitute for the text. Fitzgerald's haunting prose still resonates and probably will for another century. Rating: 5/5.

An overdue thank you

As I head into the fall and begin to market my fourth novel in earnest, I feel indebted to a group of people who have helped me to get even this far. Bloggers have been more than accommodating in getting my works before the public. They have been indispensable.

This is particularly true with ten people I have worked with over the past 18 months. They include Casee at Literary Inklings, Lisa at 300 Word Book Reviews, Nicole at Forbidden Reviews, Carrie at the Mad Reviewer, Donna at More than a Review, Sharon at Sharon's Book Nook, Dianne at Tome Tender, Ailyn at Piece of My Mind, Judy at the Voracious Reader, and D.J. at Pick Your Poison Book Reviews.

These ladies have done more than review The Fire, released August 31. They have reviewed all four novels in the Northwest Passage series. That is the sort of thing you don't forget when trying to introduce your works to new readers in an increasingly crowded and competitive market.

A special thanks goes to each of these reviewers for taking a chance on an unknown author and another to those who are about to join their ranks. This writer is most grateful.

Review: Esperanza

If there is one thing I've discovered in producing four novels in two years, it's that writing leaves precious little time for reading. It leaves even less time for reading works outside my favorite genres, such as historical fiction and thrillers. As I learned last week, however, it's sometimes wise to make that time and wander out of literary comfort zones.

Sandra C. Lopez's delightfully written debut novel, Esperanza: A Latina Story, follows a Mexican-American girl through four turbulent years of high school in east Los Angeles in the late 1990s.

From the beginning, Esperanza Ignacio commands admiration and respect. She stays true to herself despite the demands imposed on her by a controlling single mother, two needy younger siblings, and several not-so-admirable friends, relatives, and classmates, who try to badger and bully her in unproductive directions.

As a reader, I had no difficulty imagining the obstacles the girl faced. Esperanza's world is a mostly bleak place, filled with bullying, broken families, alcoholism, poverty, and the myriad temptations of youth. Lopez does a masterful job in describing them all.

What makes this story compelling, however, is not the description but rather the uplifting tone. The author gives readers a protagonist we can root for from start to finish. She reminds us that even those living in challenging environments can succeed by remaining focused, optimistic, and compassionate.

I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. Rating: 4/5.

Back to the Bitterroots

The mountains are calling and I must go. -- John Muir

As one who has spent nearly his entire life in the Pacific Northwest, I am no stranger to mountains. I've lived in the shadow of the Cascades, the Olympics, the Big Belts, and the Blues. But I don't think I've ever been as impressed by a mountain range as I was last weekend when I got a birds-eye view of the Bitterroots.

I returned to Wallace, Idaho, on Friday -- officially -- to celebrate my wife's 50th birthday and cheer her on as she rode 150 miles in Bike MS, a fundraising event for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Unofficially, I returned to enjoy the mountain range that served as a backdrop for The Fire -- the recently-released fourth novel of my Northwest Passage time-travel series.

No matter where I went, I couldn't escape the majesty of the Bitterroots, which divide the states of Idaho and Montana and nourish numerous communities mentioned in the book: Wallace, Mullan, Osburn, Mace, and Burke. The mountains that once gave up their silver and gold so that these towns could thrive now provide unlimited opportunities for sportsmen, hikers, bikers, photographers, and history buffs.

Nothing, however, compared to the views from the Route of the Hiawatha, a 17-mile rails-to-trails bike path I experienced for the first time on Friday. When I emerged from the sheer darkness of the 1.7-mile St. Paul Pass Tunnel at the start of the trail, I saw the mountains and lush forests that had been devastated by the Great Fire of 1910, the climactic event of the novel.

I was able to see firsthand what drew so many to this corner of the United States a century ago and continues to draw them today. When I will have the opportunity to return to this magnificent setting, I don't know. But after weekend of taking in the mountains named for the Lewisia rediviva, Montana's state flower, I do know one thing: I will be back.

The series continues

More than five months of work come to fruition today with the release of The Fire, the sequel to The Journey and the fourth book in the Northwest Passage series. At 367 pages, this is my biggest work to date and, I believe, my best.

The Fire continues the story of the Johnson clan, who we left in the recovering hills around Mount St. Helens in August 1999. Kevin Johnson, 8 at the end of The Journey, is now a 22-year-old college graduate poised for an adventure of his own. He finds it in Wallace, Idaho, where he stumbles upon a time portal that takes him back to 1910, the year of Halley's comet and the largest wildfire in U.S. history.

While in the age of nickelodeons, high-wheel bicycles, telegraph offices, and tea dresses, the science major meets his great-great-grandfather, finds his calling as an educator, and becomes invested in two beautiful young women: Sarah, a first-year English teacher, and Sadie, the orphaned daughter of a bankrupt merchant.

Filled with humor, heartbreak, romance, and fantasy, The Fire chronicles one man's journey through an eventful but often overlooked year in American history.

The novel is available as an ebook on Amazon.com.

Riders with a cause

One of the things I like most about blogging is that I can draw attention to persons, places, and things that deserve all the attention they can get. One such thing is Bike MS, an annual function of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

In five weeks about a hundred people, including my wife, Cheryl, will participate in one of Bike MS's regional events. The cyclists will ride across northern Idaho to raise money to fight MS, an autoimmune disease that affects 400,000 Americans and 2.5 million people worldwide.

Cheryl raised more than two thousand dollars last year and hopes to double that total in 2013. Participants nationally have raised more than 600 million dollars for support programs, services, and research since 1980.

The Idaho cyclists will ride 150 miles in two days on the world-famous Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. They will pass a number of scenic and historic sites, including the mining town of Wallace, the setting for my upcoming novel, The Fire.

Those who wish to contribute to this worthy cause can do so by going to Cheryl's Bike MS page or giving directly to the national organization.

Covering another essential

Now that I've written The Fire and sent it to the first of several beta readers, I've had the opportunity to devote more time to the other things authors must do in preparing a book for market. One of those things is picking a cover. After weeks of consideration, I've decided to go with a comet theme for the cover of the fourth book of the Northwest Passage series.

In doing so, I'm taking my cues not from images of the Great Fire of 1910, the climactic event of the novel, but rather the title of a 1978 made-for-television movie. In A Fire in the Sky, the fire is a comet that is discovered just eight days before it makes face time with Phoenix, Arizona.

No comets collide with the Earth in The Fire, but one does take center stage in the first part of the novel. Halley's comet dazzles the community of Wallace, Idaho, and the world, for several weeks in the spring of 1910, presages historic events, and alters how several principal characters interact with each other.

The Fire, the sequel to The Journey, is scheduled for an early September release.

Walking in Wallace

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing a writer of historical fiction is creating a sense of time and place. How do you write about a time that occurred decades before your own and a place you've seen mostly from a freeway? The answer is simple. You research the time and, if you have the opportunity, you visit the place.

This week, I had the opportunity to visit the place. I paid not one, but two visits to Wallace, Idaho, the setting of The Fire, my next novel. I found the community every bit as fascinating in person as I had found it in literature.

The town is different, of course, than it was in August 1910, when it stared down the largest wildfire in U.S. history and captured the nation's imagination. It is smaller, less commercial, and far more touristy. It serves primarily as a stopping point for motorists, skiers, and bicyclists riding the famed Route of the Hiawatha and the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes.

You don't have to walk far, however, to see that Wallace is more than a pit stop on Interstate 90. It's a living museum, with numerous attractions that celebrate everything from its rich mining heritage to the actions of heroes like Ed Pulaski, a forest ranger who saved forty firefighters by leading them into a mine and holding them there at gunpoint.

Of most interest to me as a writer were the buildings in town. Many of the oldest structures still stand, thanks in part to preservation efforts and the city's designation as a National Historic District. When you walk through Wallace, you see the town not only as it is today but also as it was in the past.

You see the brick facades on Bank Street, the row houses on Cedar, the courthouse that withstood the inferno, and the original Northern Pacific Railroad depot, where hundreds once gathered to catch rescue trains. You see Wallace in 1910, when it became part of history, lore, and literature.

I hope to use what I've learned to convey the same sense of time and place when I publish The Fire. The fourth book in the Northwest Passage series is still scheduled for a September release.

Reviews and revisions

There is undoubtedly a point where every author stops reading the reviews of his or her works. The reviews become too numerous or, in some cases, too painful to read.

I am not one of those authors. I take the time to read every one. I love getting feedback from those who enjoy my books and constructive criticism from those who can help me improve as a writer. Both are important.

Rachel of The Reading Cafe offers two of the better reviews of late with a double take on The Mine and The Show, the Nos. 1 and 3 books of the Northwest Passage series. Each novel will be featured on an ebook site next week and offered at a reduced price, with The Mine going on sale Sunday and The Show Monday and Tuesday.

Work continues on The Fire, book four of the series. I have finished a complete rough draft and will spend most of the summer revising it. I expect to have the novel out by the third week of September.

IRDA winners

Today the winners of the third-annual Indie Reader Discovery Awards were announced. The Mine fell short of an award in the Popular Fiction category but was among the books receiving a positive review. A list of the winners in each genre can be found here. Author Hugh Howey will announce the results of the competition at the Book Expo America in New York this Saturday.

Lighting The Fire

One of the things I most enjoy about starting a new work of historical fiction is jumping into a time that is not my own. I learned a lot about 1941 when writing The Mine and 1918 when producing The Show and rediscovered my youth in The Journey, set in 1979 and 1980.

In each project, I was able to lose myself in an era that had its own conventions, vocabulary, and public issues. I was able to see a vastly different historical period through the eyes of a modern time traveler.

This spring and summer I'll have the opportunity to see a different world again. I've begun writing The Fire, the fourth book in my Northwest Passage series and the sequel to The Journey. Set in Wallace, Idaho, in 1910, this novel will follow Kevin Johnson, a recent college graduate in 2013, through an important but often overlooked year in American history.

In The Fire, Kevin, an accomplished but luckless science major, will fall in love, witness Halley's comet, find his calling as a teacher, and experience the largest wildfire in U.S. history. He will see the Pacific Northwest as his great-great-grandfather saw it and wrestle with the impact he has on everyone he meets.

I'm about halfway through a first draft that will likely exceed 100,000 words. This will be the largest book in the series to date and hopefully the best. I hope to finish a final draft by August and publish in September. The Fire will be available in Kindle format on Amazon.com.

Remembering a grandfather

Today the only grandfather I ever knew would have turned 120. Andy Hoeme was one of those elderly icons every family seems to have: a good-humored, sometimes cranky man of simple tastes and uncommon wisdom who seemed torn from the canvas of a Norman Rockwell painting. He was a man who rarely had to search for an interesting story and, as one who died 100 days shy of 100 years, had more than a few to choose from.

As I learned shortly before he passed, Andy was something of a rebel as a young man. Born into a family of nine children on the Kansas plains in 1893, he ran off to see the world at 18 and lived by his wits for more than a year. He sailed on rat-infested lumber ships, rode the rails, sheared sheep Thornbirds style, hunted moose, and explored Yellowstone on foot when horses and wagons, not automobiles, plied its freshly-minted roads.

He maintained this spirit of independence even at age 24, when, as a deserter at the height of World War I, he left a Texas Army base with his newlywed wife for an Indiana Jones-like life on the run in post-revolution Mexico and the unsettled Canadian frontier. Even as a family man, inventor, and entrepreneur, Andy (pictured above at left) seemed more like a character from a Steinbeck novel than a family album.

Much of what I know about this remarkable man I learned in 1989, when I interviewed him over a span of three days. Even at age 96, he was able to recall events seventy years in the past with the clarity of a historian. I hope to someday turn his stories -- since verified by documents, news accounts, and statements -- into a non-fiction book.

But today, I simply want to remember the man who taught me to fish, appreciate patience, and see life as an adventure. You are gone but not forgotten. Happy birthday, Grandpa!

Review: The Big Burn

I don't read much non-fiction. I can count the number of non-fiction books I've read in the past decade on one hand. Those I've liked tended to be those that read like fiction -- books like Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers, and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. I can now add The Big Burn by Timothy Egan to that list.

The 2009 work is many things: a history of the early conservation movement; an explanation of Theodore Roosevelt's role in that movement; a biography of Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service; and a riveting account of the Great Fire, which destroyed more than three million acres of forest in Idaho, Montana, and Washington and forever changed how our public lands are managed.

Egan's treatment of the influential but relatively little-known event was interesting, informative, and balanced. More than once, I had to remind myself I was reading the true stories of individuals and communities swept up in the calamity of August 20-21, 1910, and not the creative narrative of a novelist.

Readers looking to better their understanding of important figures of the day and an event that shaped the American West won't be disappointed. Rating: 4/5.

Happy Ever After, Part II

The Happy Ever After blog at USA TODAY has gone through a few changes since it reviewed The Mine last April 21. It has a new URL and a new look, with slick graphics, Twitter links, and user-friendly navigation tools. But it remains the go-to venue for news and reviews of the latest and greatest reads in the romance genre. It's also still a place where authors can discuss their works and issues of interest to readers. Tomorrow I take my turn with a guest post on the differences between love stories and romance novels. Many thanks to editor Joyce Lamb for the opportunity to contribute to this influential forum.

Review: The Panther

John Corey is not the only thing that draws me to the works of Nelson DeMille, but he's the biggest thing. Few characters in contemporary fiction are as engaging as the cocky, witty ex-NYPD detective. So I didn't need much motivation to pick up DeMille's latest novel and catch up with the unorthodox but highly effective lawman. In The Panther, DeMille sends Corey and FBI wife Kate Mayfield to Yemen as part of a task force to bring justice to the mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole. The result is a roller-coaster ride of a story that keeps you on edge almost to the last page. Readers who love smart thrillers filled with intrigue and humor won't be disappointed. Rating: 4/5.

Show time

It's been nearly a year since a reader first suggested that I write a sequel to The Mine. She said, in so many words, that this is a story that must continue. Others echoed that sentiment in the months that followed. Some wanted answers to lingering questions. A few wanted to see more of their favorite characters.

So shortly after finishing The Journey, the unrelated second novel in the Northwest Passage time-travel series, I went to work on the book the readers wanted. Three months later, I am pleased to announce the release of that book. The Show, the sequel to The Mine, goes on sale today.

As noted several weeks ago in this blog, the two novels are joined at the hip. They share many of the same characters, settings, themes, and, oddly enough, time frames. The Show begins on December 7, 1941, the turning point of The Mine, and serves as both a prequel and a sequel to my debut novel. Each story is told from multiple points of view.

There are differences, however, and none are bigger than the protagonists. Whereas The Mine is the story of Joel Smith, a cocky, adventurous college senior who travels from 2000 to 1941, The Show is the story of his more humble, circumspect girlfriend, who navigates her way through three distinct eras in American history.

In the sequel, Grace Vandenberg, the orphaned daughter of missionaries, follows Joel into the twenty-first century but finds a future that looks an awful lot like the past -- her parents' past. She enters a mysterious time portal of her own and travels to 1918 and the world of the Great War, the Spanish flu, silent movies, and early prohibition.

The Show is available as a Kindle ebook on Amazon.com. Enjoy!

More gold for The Mine

As my daughter Amy made clear to me a year ago, The Mine is a romance novel. The relationship between Joel Smith and Grace Vandenberg is not only the heart and soul of that story but also the foundation of the Northwest Passage series. The Mine, however, is not only a romance. It is also, at least nominally, a work of science fiction. Yesterday, the Spacefreighters Lounge blog recognized both elements of the novel by naming it the Best Time-Travel Romance in its first-ever SFR Galaxy Awards. I am most grateful for the honor.

Another step closer

One of the things I most enjoy about the publishing process is picking the cover art. It is the first step in marketing a book and probably the most important. Cover art should not only invite potential readers to take a look inside but also give them an idea of what a book is about. I chose the image at right because I thought it simply and elegantly represented a theater setting from 1918. I hope readers like it. Work on the second draft of The Show continues. I plan to release the third novel in my Northwest Passage series by March 1.

Holiday promotion

In keeping with the spirit of the season, I will give away Kindle-friendly copies of The Journey on Christmas Day. The promotion, made possible through Amazon's KDP Select program, will run all day. Work continues on The Show, the sequel to The Mine. I completed a rough draft last weekend and hope publish the book, the third in the Northwest Passage time-travel series, by April 1. Thanks again to the many readers and bloggers who have supported my work in 2012. Merry Christmas to all!