AMAZON TOSSED A BRICK INTO THE POND!

Yesterday I received a notice that the major seller of my e-books, Amazon, has changed their promotional policies; actually added a new program that has some merit.  It caused me to pause and rethink my previous stance – outlined in my most recent post to this blog site.  A shift in strategies was required to take advantage of their new program. I was required to enroll several of my novels in their KDP Select program to qualify for their new COUNTDOWN DEALS; in essence, canceling my plans laid out in the previous post.  So, I’m back to gifting a few novels to those poor and impoverished individuals that can’t afford the three buck price tag.

  

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I’ve run this story several times over the past few months.  Bear with me… there are some readers who need to know the back-story of my period western.  AS AN ASIDE :  Surprisingly, my period westerns, HALF BREED & BOOMER sell quite well in the Philippines. So do the contemporary western themed novels, UNTAMED, PARTNERS, and CRYSTAL COWBOY. No wonder that publisher in Manila contacted me with a book deal. It was lame but still an offer…

HALF-BREED – BACK-STORY

Back when I owned one of my weekly newspapers, (over my career I owned 8) I was sent an article about an Apache half-breed named Chato who was murdered in the streets of Tombstone in 1880. I researched the event and couldn’t find any record of the crime. I handed it off to my editor and he couldn’t verify the story either.   

At the time I was reluctant to run the piece because my policy was to print news and features; not fiction.  A few years later while researching something else, I saw a short blurb on the ‘Chato Affair’.  It had occurred in the streets of Tucson – not Tombstone. By this time I had sold the newspaper and had moved on to another business.  I looked into the Chato killing and discovered it was indeed a true occurrence in 1866; the year Arizona territory was established. I also learned there were no laws on the books at that time (1860’s) to punish those that murdered an Indian or half-breed. I advanced the story to the late 1880’s, fictionalized the events surrounding the killing of Chato and wrote my period novella, HALF-BREED. 

   

During my research I discovered the law enforcement of that era was marginal at best.  In addition, Tucson was very corrupt and some of the law enforcement officials were in the pockets of the Tucson Mob. Most ranchers took the law into their own hands to prevent and punish thieves.  This was one of the elements that prevented Arizona Territory from becoming a state of the union until 1912; the last of the contiguous states to be admitted.