Bad Moon over Devil's Ridge now available on Kindle.

Bad Moon over Devil's Ridge is available on Kindle. It was originally my 14th Black Horse Western.

 

 

 

As I mentioned earlier on this blog this is the fifth Cassidy Yates tale, but I labelled the fourth one as being the third McBain book, so this one is now labelled as Cassidy Yates, Book 4. I hope that's clear because I'm already getting confused.

 

This story features Sheriff Cassidy Yates's long-lost brother Emerson. That's long lost in that Cassidy didn't know he had a brother until I started writing this story. Emerson is everything Cassidy isn't.

 

The thing I enjoyed about writing this book was alternating the viewpoint character with each chapter. I've often told stories from the viewpoint of several characters, but in this case I maintained the strict discipline of having one chapter relate Cassidy's adventures while the next one turns to the newspaper correspondent, Nick Kearney, and then back again. Making sure the plot advances for each character at the same pace while leaving both characters in tricky situations was a fun challenge and it was harder than I expected. I'm fairly sure I haven't tried it again since.

 

The book is now available from amazon.

 

When Sheriff Cassidy Yates rode into Eagle Heights he never expected he would be in jail by nightfall on an unfounded murder charge. Although Cassidy answered the charge, it was only at the cost of implicating his own wayward brother in both this murder and the kidnapping of the dead man’s widow.

Against an escalating conspiracy of fear operating in the town, Cassidy gains the help of a young newspaper correspondent in his quest to find the real killer and the kidnapped woman. But with gun-toting ranchers and numerous hired guns standing between Cassidy and justice, can he prove his brother’s innocence?

The Man who Tamed Lone Pine

The Man who Tamed Lone Pine is now available. It is my 33rd Black Horse Western.

This book features the return of Nathaniel McBain and Shackleton Frost. Having given Nathaniel the job in The Secret of Devil's Canyon of escorting prisoners to jail, which at the time felt like a job with endless possibilities for plots, I found that it wasn't quite the gold mine of possibilities that I'd first thought it would be. Every story idea I came up with seemed to revolve around the prisoner claiming he's innocent and Nathaniel being concerned enough to ignore his duty and help the prisoner clear his name.

So years have passed since that story without me writing about Nathaniel again until it occurred to me that if you have a man who escorts prisoners to jail, there are two basic plots available. In one the prisoner is a victim of a miscarriage of justice and in the other he's isn't. I decided to try the second one, although, as it turned out, the matter of the prisoner's guilt was only a small part of a bigger mystery....

When Nathaniel McBain and Shackleton Frost arrive in Lone Pine to escort a prisoner to Beaver Ridge jail, they are shocked to discover it is Shackleton's old friend Sheriff Ashton Clarke. Five years ago Ashton tamed the town, but now he's been charged with killing in cold blood. 

 

Ashton claims that someone from his past has framed him, and Shackleton believes his friend. Buts as more bodies are found and with all the evidence pointing to Ashton, the case against him begins to look unbreakable. If Nathaniel and Shackleton are to solve the mystery and save their friend, they will have to turn their backs on their duty and use their trusty sixshooters instead.