Los Diablos Tejanos: the Texas Rangers — #Giveaway

As a Texan, I’ve always been fond of the Texas Rangers, an elite law-enforcement agency that functions as the state’s own FBI. Like their predecessors who patrolled Texas’s wide-open spaces during the 19th Century, the 150 men and women who compose the force today are a tough, savvy bunch no one wants to find on their trail. Texans revere the organization not only for the outfit’s history, but also because today’s Rangers serve as an outstanding example of upstanding devotion to an ideal.

Texas Rangers, c. 1890

Unofficially formed in 1823 and made official in 1835 by an act of the newly formed Republic of Texas government, the Rangers are the oldest statewide law-enforcement body in the U.S. At first the tough, hard-bitten men were a paramilitary force tasked with protecting the frontier from Indians and desperados. Mexicans called them los diablos Tejanos — Texas devils. They were poorly paid and expected to furnish their own horses, weapons, and ammunition, but their never-say-die attitude quickly became legendary. Admittedly, sometimes they abandoned the letter of the law in pursuit of their objectives, but they always got the job done.

Fearful of the organization’s reputation, the federal government disbanded the Rangers in 1865, during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era. Texas re-commissioned the outfit in 1874, after the state emerged from martial law under Union occupation forces. Shortly before the turn of the 20th Century, the Rangers acquired the motto that still follows them today: “One riot; one Ranger.”

Except for one brief-but-notorious period of corruption in the 1920s, the organization has performed its function with stellar character. The Rangers always get their man.

The Ghost of
Peacemaker Awards Past

Little did I realize they sometimes capture awards, as well. On June 1, when the western authors professional organization Western Fictioneers announced the winners of the annual Peacemaker Awards, no one was more surprised (or pleased, I must say) than I to discover “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” had received one of the honors, for Best Short Fiction. Last year’s Best Short Fiction Peacemaker went to Livia J. Washburn’s “Charlie’s Pie,” so I feel my story is in good company.

I also feel Prairie Rose Publications, which published both western historical romances, is acquitting itself admirably on the western fiction front. Another PRP release, Prodigal Gun, was named a finalist for the Best First Novel award. Prodigal Gun is the first novel-length western historical romance ever nominated for a Peacemaker.

Over the past eighteen months, a number of books and short stories published by Prairie Rose Publications have been nominated for or received awards of all kinds. If that’s any indication, PRP is off to a great start. Founded in August 2013 by Livia Washburn Reasoner and Cheryl Pierson, the company is and always will be dedicated to publishing traditional westerns and western romance written by women. Nevertheless, in less than two years PRP has expanded to include young adult, inspirational, paranormal, and medieval lines. The “little publishing company” releases some darn fine fiction. I’m proud it publishes mine.

The hero in “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” is a Texas Ranger booted from the force when his partner’s death turns him into a loose cannon bent on revenge...as soon as he does his brother-in-arms one last favor. When he discovers the woman his partner asked him to protect is a nun, all hell breaks loose.

Excerpt

If Dulce had ever been in San Miguel, like as not she disappeared with everyone else when the hole in the border burned to the ground. Somehow, the saloon escaped the flames, thank God. A man got mighty thirsty crossing half of Texas.

Quinn tied Bull’s-Eye to the scorched rail beside a chestnut and buckskin carrying Mexican saddles and no brands. The long-gun scabbards on both horses sat empty. Chewing his lip, he slid the Winchester from Bull’s-Eye’s boot, pulled the brim of his hat lower, and sauntered inside.

Two trail-worn hardcases held up the bar at the back of the dingy room. They glanced over their shoulders, and then returned to their beers. The tight-lipped cuss guarding the liquor claimed to know nothing.

Quinn grabbed a bottle and retreated to a table in the front corner. He was three-quarters of the way to the bottom of the bad whiskey when hope arrived on painted wings.

A small flock of bright birds fluttered in through a door behind the bar. They paused to chirp and preen for the disinterested hombres with the saddle guns and beers, and then headed for Quinn.

He grinned.

Without so much as a howdy, one of them plopped herself into his lap, jiggling everything she owned. The half-light did her a favor. “You look like a man who could use some company.”

“Maybe.” He tossed a healthy shot of rotgut down his throat and slammed the glass onto the tabletop. “Looking for a girl goes by Dulce.”

A dove squeezed between Quinn and the wall and snaked bare arms across his shoulders. Long nails toyed with the buttons on his vest while a honeyed whisper dropped into his ear. “All of us can be sweet, guapo, if that is what you want.”

The whore in his lap ran a fingertip along his unshaven jaw. “We can also be very, very naughty.”

That’s when the nun walked in.

Sharp nails raked Quinn’s cheek when he dumped the dove on her ass and sat forward, blinking.

Yep. A nun, wearing a habit so white it almost glowed, except for the black apron and the dust on the hem.

He glanced at the near-empty bottle, then trained his gaze on the apparition’s ramrod-straight back as she marched across the room. The sister confronted the Tejano barkeep as though she did so every day.

When she spoke, Quinn could’ve sworn he heard Spanish mission bells. “Señor, I beg your assistance.”

Captain Jeffries was right. He needed to swear off the firewater.


To celebrate the Best Short Fiction Peacemaker, I’ll gift an e-book of “The Second-Best Ranger in Texas” to two folks who answer this question in the comments:

What makes a Texas Ranger hero sexy?

I’ll pick one commenter at random from Thursday’s comments, and another from Friday’s.

Prodigal Gun Giveaway Winners!

A hearty "Thank you!" to everyone who stopped by yesterday to help me celebrate the debut of Prodigal Gun. I'm blessed to have so many friends, acquaintances, and enemies. <grin>

I promised to give away two prizes. Without further ado, Random.org decided these folks are the winners.

The print copy of Prodigal Gun goes to...

KATHERINE LOWRY LOGAN!

The CD of Marty Robbins's Gunfighter Ballads goes to...

KEITH SOUTER!

Congratulations to both of y'all! I'll email you in just a minute to get your mailing addresses.

Thanks again for dropping by, everyone! You made the release of my debut novel very special.

All my best,
Katheen

Find Prodigal Gun here:

Print  *  Kindle  *  Nook  *  Smashwords (most e-formats)

#NewRelease: PRODIGAL GUN—All Royalties to Charity

By Kathleen Rice Adams

My debut novel, Prodigal Gun, bowed today. I am just tickled as all-get-out about that. Thanks to Livia Washburn Reasoner and Cheryl Pierson for taking a chance on an unknown author and for doing an outstanding job of putting the book together. Livia’s cover captures the characters, the setting, and the essence of the story beautifully, and Cheryl is an editing goddess (except for the occasional comma fight, but we both emerged unscarred).

Folks who know me will tell you I’m hardly ever serious (except about those dang commas), but I want to break with tradition for just a moment.

For twenty-three years, I was privileged to share life with a loving, generous man. Lee was so proud of all the anthologies with my name on the cover, and I think he was more excited than I about the publication of my first novel.

Sadly, he didn’t live to see the dream fulfilled. Lee died in June.

To honor Lee’s memory, all royalties from the sale of Prodigal Gun will go to charity. He would have liked that.

All right—enough of the seriousness. On to details about the book…and a couple of giveaways (one of which isn’t a book)!

Prodigal Gun
A dangerous man. A desperate woman. A love no war could kill.

Widowed rancher Jessie Caine buried her heart with the childhood sweetheart Yankees killed on a distant battlefield. Sixteen years later, as a Texas range war looms and hired guns arrive to pursue a wealthy carpetbagger’s agenda, Jessie discovers the only man she ever loved isn’t dead.

At least not yet.

Embittered by a brother’s betrayal, notorious gunman Calhoun is a dangerous man, come home to do an unsavory job. A bushwhacker’s bullet nearly takes his life on Jessie’s land, trapping him in a standoff between the past he tried to bury and the infamy he never will. One taste of the only woman he ever loved puts more than his life and her ranch in the crossfire.

With a price on his head, a debt to a wealthy employer around his neck, and a defiant woman tugging at his heart, Calhoun’s guns may not be enough to keep him from the grave. Caught between his enemies and hers, Jessie faces an agonizing choice: Which of her dreams will die?

Excerpt:

April 1877

A red-tailed hawk circled in the cloudless sky, dipping one wing in a silent salute before plunging to the earth like a bullet. Twenty feet from the gelding’s hooves, a jackrabbit barely had time to shriek.

The horse tossed his head and danced a few steps. Calhoun pressed his knees against the saddle and drew the slack from the reins. “Easy, fella.” He patted the chestnut’s neck. “You’re too big for him to carry off.”

Tugging the brim of his Stetson closer to his eyes to block the afternoon glare, Calhoun settled into a lazy slouch. Texas hadn’t changed—still big and open and empty. A man could ride for days with no company but his own.

He scanned the surrounding terrain. Rocks and scrub littered the sand on both sides of the dry wash. Occasional stands of oak and mesquite interrupted the grama grass and prickly pear toward the skyline, but nothing moved. No insects or reptiles. No birds. Not even a breeze. Only the gelding’s hooves thudding against parched dirt and the creak of saddle leather violated the silence.

Too still. Too quiet. Too…empty. Unease had dogged him for the past six months, ever since the trouble in Kansas. Now, deep in the Texas Hill Country, an army of ants crawled the fringes of his nerves.

Someone hunted the hunter. Who? His gaze darted from sand to scrub to rock. “Show yourself, you son of a bitch.”

The horse’s ears swiveled to catch the mutter. Good God, you’re talkin’ to yourself.

Rubbing eyes dried by heat and fatigue, he sucked a lungful of scalding air. Two weeks of hard travel could prey on a man’s mind. Both he and the horse could use a brief rest. If memory served, a watering hole and some blessed shade lay just over the next rise.

A familiar rancor swelled in his chest. Some memories persisted despite a man’s best effort to forget.

Boggs better have a damn good reason for yanking him away from the high-dollar comfort of Miss Lavinia’s in Silver City. A wry twist pinched one corner of Calhoun’s lips. Now there was a memory to savor. The heat in New Mexico Territory could burn a man clear to his bones without leaving a mark.

Wildfire in Texas left scars.

Paperback  •  Kindle  •  Nook  •  Smashwords

 

Do you have a favorite charity? Tell me in the comments! I’ll give a print copy of Prodigal Gun to one person who answers and a CD of Marty Robbins’s Gunfighter Ballads to another.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Insanity Defense ... by Kathleen Rice Adams

Authors — especially those who write fiction — can be classified in any number of ways, but among my favorite categories are “uncannily brilliant,” “deeply devoted to substance abuse” and “just plain nuts.” The jury remains divided about which camp I fall into, but at last poll the Twelve Angry Critics leaned toward acquittal by virtue of insanity.

After much rumination, I’m inclined to agree. There’s plenty of evidence, after all. What else but insanity could explain the devolution of an otherwise relatively well-adjusted, reasonably intelligent, fairly articulate person into a raving lunatic who engages in lengthy conversations with imaginary friends — or worse, imaginary enemies?

No one warned me about this unnerving possibility when I signed on to write fiction. Shouldn’t there be a clause in my contract somewhere? I’d like to see a label like the ones pharmaceutical companies are required to include with medications: “WARNING: Possible side effects of the writing life may include spreading hips, estrangement from family and friends, deteriorating eyesight, insomnia, abbreviated attention span, inability to abandon lost causes, crabbiness, extended periods of depression punctuated by brief euphoria, loss of interest in the real world, self-doubt, a tendency to woolgather at odd moments, and talking to people who don’t exist.”

It’s that last one that plays most decisively into the insanity defense. (Wouldn’t we all be ecstatic if spreading hips did?)

Talking to characters is what a jury might consider the smoking gun — at least in my case. By “talking,” I don’t mean the occasional rhetorical “Hmm. What would you do if…?” I mean carrying on protracted give-and-take conversations. Actually, arguments might be a better term.

After nearly twenty-five years, my significant other has learned just to ignore the patently loony behavior. Crazy babbling and fixed stares no longer cause him to reach for the phone number of the nice men with white coats and butterfly nets. (Of course, this is the same man who frequently finds his life in jeopardy when he bursts into my writing space to tell me some horrendous, funny-only-to-men joke just as I’m about to craft the quintessential bit of dialog that will save the day, so his judgment is questionable, at best.)

But I digress (which ought to be another of those fully disclosed possible side effects). About those character interactions: Lately I’ve begun to feel like a temperamental director dealing with a herd of malcontents and unrepentant hams.

“Gah! Cut! Cut!” I yell, tearing out my hair by double handfuls.

“What? What did we do?”

“That’s a good question. Exactly what is it you thought you were doing there?”

“Improvising.”

“Improvising? You do realize there’s a script, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s all wrong right here. Nobody behaves like that. It’s bogus.”

“Bogus?” I shake my head and sigh with weariness that knows no bounds. “See — this is part of the problem: You’re from the 19th century; that word’s not in your vocabulary. Who gave you permission to take off on your own little tangent?”

Just about then, another character usually joins the fray. “You know, if I were the hero, I’d—”

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1910.
Courtesy the Munch Museum

“You’re not the hero,” I hiss, whirling on him. “If you’d spend as much time developing your own role as you do analyzing his, we’d all be the better for it.”

Depending on the character, at this point he’ll either sulk — meaning I have to expend valuable mental energy soothing his wounded feelings — or dive into a particularly vile tirade denouncing my writing ability. The latter does nothing to improve my relationship with a cast already doubting my fitness to be their leader.

Every so often, I find someone from a completely different project costuming himself or herself in the current project’s wardrobe and sneaking onto the set.

“You there — the Merry Man in the back. Aren’t you supposed to be on Stage 4 plotting with the rest of the gang in Last Train to Comanche Wells?”

“Uh… Well, yeah,” he’ll answer, shuffling his dusty cowboy boots. “But… Well, to tell you the truth, ma’am, they’re about to bore me to death over there. And it’s confusing — very confusing.”

“Incompetents and amateurs!” I explode. “Who’s in charge on Stage 4? I want him nuked.”

“Nuked?” (Misplaced Cowboy Guy only thought he was confused before.)

“Oh fer cryin’ out loud… Ask one of the Rigelians to explain it to you.”

About the time I begin chastising the hero from Chaste Through the Snow because he won’t stop pressing the heroine’s heaving bosom to his manly chest while for the umpteenth time uttering “Your eyes are like limpid sapphire pools” as she faints at the prospect of consummating their forbidden lust, I find myself consumed by heaving sobs of despair. It’s precisely at that moment the gaggle of slightly flighty but endearing, hard-as-nails southern belles escapes the pages of The Bougainvillea Ladies’ Luncheon Club and rushes to console me.

“Get away from me! I don’t want chocolate. Well, I do, but not right now.”

“Hon, what you need is a good roll in the sack with that hunk from Chaste.”

“You know, my deah mama always told me—”

“Oh for pity’s sake. Just gimme the damn chocolate and go back to fanning yourselves on the verandah, will you? Why can’t any of you behave?”

Half of them mutter “ingrate” under their breaths, and the others cluck knowingly and whisper, “This time the villain lives, but the writer is about to perish by her own hand.”

“I can hear you, you know.” Buncha know-it-all buttinskis. (I’m not above an occasional under-the-breath mutter myself.)

Perhaps insanity is a virtue after all. A rubber room looks more appealing all the time.

GIVEAWAY: Because I really would like to offload some of the ill-behaved louts in my head, I’ll send one of today’s commenters an autographed print copy of either Wishing for a Cowboy (in which my debut short story “Peaches” appears) or the soon-to-be-released Valentine’s Day anthology Hearts and Spurs. (I have a story in that one, too.) The winner may choose which book he or she would like to receive. Look for my debut novel, Prodigal Gun, later this year from Prairie Rose.