I’ve tried, really tried, to finish Blowing Cool, the sequel to my neo-noir thriller Bloodbath. I’ll get a little momentum going, then lose it. I have another novel or novella in the works called Hurricane, about the great Florida hurricane of 1935. That got off to a terrific start, then hit a wall, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.

But the West . . . I always come back to the West, and the Western landscape always gets my storyteller’s imagination going.

Recently I got the idea to do a collection of Western short stories centering around Christmas.  A storyline popped into my mind, I started work on it and couldn’t stop.  And before I finished that first story a second one popped into my mind.  Now I’m working on the sixth and last tale in the series.

They’ll be available on Amazon soon, in plenty of time for Christmas gift giving!

My muse is just a Western gal, I guess.

[The painting “Snow Aspens” is by Alexander Volkov — prints are available here.]