At last! Coyote Smart is now available on Amazon in paperback form. The Kindle version should be available in a few days. To find it on Amazon, just type in your browser, www.CoyoteSmart.com. That will direct you to the right page on Amazon.

“The dying season begins each spring along the 2,000 mile stretch of the United States and Mexico border, but the term is not used in reference to the parched land or the animal carcasses that waste in the dry gulches and deep gullies littered with cans, bottles, clothing and syringes.

Instead it applies to human beings: poor, desperate people in search of a dream. In many cases, the dream turns into a deadly nightmare because of men like Maxwell Collin Ridgeway III, kingpin of the largest smuggling organization in the United States.

Ridgeway is COYOTE SMART, a fact that could be easy to miss by his humble beginnings as the son of an illegal alien. Turning against his own people, he is determined to be powerfully rich and inhumanly brutal, and he is successful at both —until he meets a young lawyer named Faith O’Brien England, who sees him as the most despicable, vile human being she has ever met.

Their encounter may be brief, but what it brings changes his life …and eventually hers.”

Seems like Coyote Smart is a bit stubborn. I thought by now it would be ready for purchase, but it looks like it may be another couple of weeks—just in time for Christmas. The first two books went amazingly according to schedule, but I think you will see the main character in Coyote Smart is a brutal, evil individual so I guess he has gone into action again working to make this one hard on me.

Now, I know that he is fictitious, but I have told you before that my characters come to life for me. He is going to be one you love to hate so I am probably very anxious for you to get that chance.

As I have said before, I think this book is the best. I hope you will agree. As soon as Amazon lets me know that it is ready for purchase, you will be the first to know!

The physical proof of Coyote Smart arrived Saturday, but a quick review showed an error. So, now I wait for another copy—the life of an author!!! This will slow the release down probably a week, but it should still be out in time to go under the Christmas tree!! Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Don’t eat too much turkey. I’m taking this Wednesday off to enjoy the holiday. See you back here on Monday for an update on Coyote Smart!!

Good news for Kindle readers. The Kindle version of Coyote Smart has been formatted and will be available shortly after the book is published on Amazon.com. Stay tuned…

I am anxiously waiting the physical proof of Coyote Smart to arrive on my doorstep hopefully this week! In honor of the launch of novel number three, we’ve done a complete makeover of the blog. I hope you find it easy to read and navigate.

Also, you can see the brand new book trailer for Coyote Smart. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the play arrow. The video will open in a cool lightbox and then click play again. If your browser doesn’t play well with lightboxes, the video is also on the Book Trailers page.

It won’t be long now until you can order the hard copy or download to your Kindle!

Hope you liked the cover, but most of all I hope you like what is inside the cover. Coyote Smart is really quite different from the first two novels, and I personally think it is by far the best. But like I have said before, I always like the current one the most.

My maternal grandfather was always partial to the baby of the family, which gave everyone a turn at some time, although some received the favor for a shorter period of time. So, I guess I am a bit the same.

Coyote Smart may be the favorite for the longest period since I plan to slow down for awhile. This makes three books being released in a twelve month period so it is time to smell the roses. I have a couple of ideas going for another, and I am certainly not stopping this journey, but it’s a lot of work and long hours, not to mention the marketing aspect, which I certainly need to work on.

Of course, if sales were extraordinary and this one became a bestseller, I’d probably be persuaded to spend many more hours at my desk bringing new characters to life.

COYOTE SMART is in full swing. I have approved the cover, and the “inside” should be ready for me to consent to soon. I will get drafts of exactly how it is going to look with title pages, chapter headings, fleurons and other important pages. Next will come the manuscript in “set up,” camera ready form.

After reviewing each stage of production I will change or approve and go to the next step which eventually will be a draft copy of the book.

That is when I get really excited because I know then that it will only be a few weeks until the book is released. It is a great feeling to see my “baby” for the first time and hold her in my hands.

Months of solitary writing and research are finally ready to share. The “nursery” is open and I am proud. Each “kid” is different and special, but I really think this one is “gifted and talented.”

Therefore, you need to weigh in and decide, but I think you will agree!! COYOTE SMART should be ready just in time for Christmas. See, now you can stop worrying what to buy for that difficult person(s) on your list.

Coyote Smart

Introducing COYOTE SMART!! Well, what do you think? I love the cover, and hope you do as well. I like to think of the inside of the book—the manuscript—as the art and the cover as the frame. I think about how I want the cover to be and give the artist lots of input because after all it’s the tease for the book.

This time when I thought I had it all well established in my mind how I wanted the cover to look, the artist surprised me with something totally different and I loved it. We tweaked a few things, but I think he captured the essence of Coyote Smart. I hope you agree!

Readers of Keeping Faith & Promises Kept will notice a distinct difference that the cover portrays — a slightly ominous feeling. Although there is a touch of romance in this book, this novel is packed with suspense.

Fall is fast upon us, which was obvious by the beautiful harvest moon shining so brilliantly not long ago. I’m not complaining because I am tired of hot weather, and I welcome some cool, crisp air. But summer is good for me in one respect—it allows me an excuse to write, write, write! For some reason, I never feel guilty staying in and devoting hours to my novel when the temperatures exceed ninety degrees. Because of those high temps, I was able to complete Coyote Smart.

Now, the speed of life will pick up a bit as I begin traveling and visiting schools. I tell myself it will be summer again before I start another book, but who knows? I do find it much easier to write consistently, not taking long intervals between chapters. When I put it down for extended periods, this old brain tends to forget where it was going with the main thought.

Also, I need time to market Coyote Smart, and hopefully make it the best to sell so far. Notice I didn’t say bestseller, although I can always dream. And you can help!! If you read it and tell just one friend who tells a friend, I could be on my way to that dream. I’ll be soon adding more information to the blog, along with a picture of the cover. Join me for another exciting journey. You get first class seating right here on the website!

I hope you have enjoyed my first two books and are anxious to read Coyote Smart, which hopefully will be released in early December—just in time for Christmas. If you read Keeping Faith and Promises Kept, you’ll find out what Faith has been doing in the last several years since the second book ended. Plus, you’ll get to know new characters as they develop along the pages, especially the cruel and ruthless Maxwell Ridgeway III.

Like my other books, this is a work of fiction, and although it too deals with a delicate and a controversial topic like the first novel, it is meant to be a literary adaption of life at the border, not a manifesto about a political or social issue.

Clearly, illegal immigration is a multi-faceted and very complex matter to say the least, and, unfortunately, it has become a subject that divides folks across the nation. There are, however, far too many pieces in the immigration puzzle for me to try to solve it, even if I were smart enough, which I’m not. So, in this novel I don’t attempt to offer solutions to the problem except to indicate a need to secure the border and punish the human smugglers, known as coyotes in the states and polleros in Mexico.

Instead, I do try through words to portray a picture of lives touched by the complicated border dilemma. To do this I have created characters who reflect the best of the best, along with those who are truly flawed, all engaged in an intricate plot of survival.

This is a story that starts out about life and death along the U.S./Mexican border, but it is not confined to a 2,000 mile stretch of unforgiving land and broken dreams. Instead, it takes you on a long and winding journey where the weak and strong collide, good and bad meet, reason outlasts power, and love is stronger than the forces of evil.

Wiley Coyote ~ Warner Bros.

My friend, the moonshiner, sent me this icon of Wiley Coyote a couple of weeks ago, and of course it was perfect since I was introducing Coyote Smart, my third book. Only trouble is, Wiley is a goofy, cartoon character, and Maxwell Collin Ridgeway III is anything but.

Yet as Mark Twain, one of my favorite authors wrote in Roughing It, the impetus for the character that animation director Chuck Jones created for Warner Bros. in 1948, the coyote is “a living, breathing allegory of WANT.” I think you will see this to be very true in Maxwell’s character.

The icon also reminded me how important it is to reach an audience, and if it takes a silly cartoon character to do this, then I’m willing. Although the third book is very different from the first two, it also has several of the same characters. Therefore, it advantageous to have read the first two in order to fully enjoy Coyote Smart.

So before this next book is released later in the fall, please put Keeping Faith and Promises Kept on your reading list. No, better yet, PLEASE READ MY BOOKS! Hey, after all, you had all summer!!