Dennis Wiens, host of the Unconventional Ministry podcast, published his interview of me recently.
In the 20-minute conversation I talk about the how and why of writing Someplace North, Someplace Wild.
I also answer Dennis’s questions about the book and some of my experiences that led to its creation.
Here are the options for listening.
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It may have escaped your attention that today, July 22, is National Day of the Cowboy.
Likely, you already marked this on your calendar. But just in case, I thought you might appreciate a reminder. 😎
An event labelled Day of the Cowboy might evoke images of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood.
For me, it’s the perfect opportunity to make a big announcement: I recently signed with Elk Lake Publishing to produce my novel, Someplace North, Someplace Wild!
That’s the fruit of a six-year project, and a big answer to prayer.
Someplace North, Someplace Wild is a contemporary western romantic suspense novel. The story reflects some of my own experiences, including two years of missionary service in a district of huge ranches in British Columbia.
What if a young cowboy—resourceful, honest but impulsive—left Texas for Canada to pursue his dream of punching cattle in the wild, got a job on a remote mountain ranch, met a beautiful girl, all while overcoming impossible odds … then out of the blue got arrested and deported because he’d been framed for murder?
And not only framed, the county attorney is crooked and he can’t trust the system.
What would he do?
That’s the premise for Someplace North, Someplace Wild.
For a quick summary of the book, read the back-cover copy.
Elk Lake is a traditional publishing house with a goal “to point people to Jesus Christ.” In my experience, that’s a rare clarity of mission in the world of fiction publishing. When I read that I was immediately interested in working with them.
I submitted the first three chapters of my book almost a year ago. That launched a back-and-forth process which culminated when I signed their contract offer July 3.
Here’s what will need to happen for the manuscript to become an actual, physical book.
Best case scenario, it could be ready by February 2024; worst case, June. Which is about a year shorter than most of the publishing houses I have talked to.
That seems like a long wait, but it gives me time to get ready for the launch. You’ll hear more about that in the coming months.
As for how to celebrate the National Day of the Cowboy, the organizers suggest attending a rodeo or studying cowboy culture at a museum.
Here are two further ideas from your humble correspondent. 😊
First, go to garybrumbelow.com, enter your email and click Subscribe.
Three promises: 1) I won’t share your email address with anyone. 2) I won’t flood your inbox. I expect to post once every 6-8 weeks. 3) You can unsubscribe anytime.
When you click subscribe you’ll receive a “Confirm your subscription” email in your inbox (if you don’t see it there, check your spam folder). As soon as you confirm, you’ll receive a free short story, “Death of a Steer.” It’s a yarn about something that happens to Cody Brandon, the protagonist of Someplace North, Someplace Wild, eight years before the novel begins.
(If you’re already a subscriber just enter your email and click as if you were not. Nothing will change in your subscription.)
Second, if you like the story, share it with your friends!
See you down the trail!
Gary
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This post is to introduce my readers to a little-known, powerful resource for anyone interested in writing. Or reading.
In March my wife and I were in Panama and I had occasion to recommend this little book to someone who identified herself as a reader of Tolkien. And I realized I should blog about it.
My friend and colleague Darrow Miller put me on to this volume that contains three lesser known works by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m writing here about the opening essay, “Tree and Leaf.” I thought I knew Tolkien until I read this astonishing composition. Reminds me of the first time I saw Crater Lake in southern Oregon and realized I had never seen the color blue until that moment. If you retain a sense of wonder and appreciate the careful use of language you need to read “Tree and Leaf.”
Tolkien begins very humbly. His first paragraph disarms the reader who, drawn into the charm of his prose, wanders into the essay heedless of the master’s spell. Too late, you realize you have been seized and carried off by beauty.
I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold. And overbold I may be accounted, for though I have been a lover of fairy-stories since I learned to read, and have at times thought about them, I have not studied them professionally. I have been hardly more than a wandering explorer (or trespasser) in the land, full of wonder but not of information.
Don’t let the term “fairy story” throw you. Think Lord of the Rings. He shows the natural connection between religion and mythology, between myth and history (“they are both ultimately of the same stuff”).
“Tree and Leaf” is to be read and re-read. It parts the curtain to peer into Tolkien’s imagination, his creation of Middle Earth. In fact, he notes in the introduction that this essay was written “in the same period (1938-9), when The Lord of the Rings was beginning to unroll itself and to unfold prospects of labour and exploration in yet unknown country as daunting to me as to the hobbits. At about that time we had reached Bree, and I had then no more notion than they had of what had become of Gandalf or who Strider was; and I had begun to despair of surviving to find out.”
I’m saving for other posts at least two themes from this essay: the work of the artist as sub-creator and the unlikely power of the adjective. I’ll end this post with just one more ravishing paragraph.
The analytic study of fairy stories is as bad a preparation for the enjoying or the writing of them as would be the historical study of the drama of all lands and times for the enjoyment or writing of stage plays. The study may indeed become depressing. It is easy for the student to feel that with all his labor he is collecting only a few leaves, many of them now torn or decayed, from the countless foliage of the Tree of Tales, with which the Forest of Days is carpeted. It seems vain to add to the litter. Who can design a new leaf? The patterns from bud to unfolding, and the colors from spring to autumn were all discovered by men long ago. But that is not true. The seed of the tree can be replanted in almost any soil, even in one so smoke written (as Lang said) as that of England. Spring is of course, not really less beautiful because we have seen or heard of other like events: like events, never from world’s beginning to world’s end the same event. Each leaf, of oak and ash and thorn, is a unique embodiment of the pattern, and for some this very year maybe the embodiment, the first ever seen and recognized, though oaks have put forth leaves for countless generations of men.
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