Down the Santa Fe Trail The Santa Fe Trail consisted of eight hundred miles of barren land, sandy deserts, and high mountain passes. Travelers had to battle hunger, thirst, and occasional raids by Comanches. Once you reached your destination, a whitewashed city at the foot of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, you were never sure […]
Think Like A Cowboy It’s 1954. In the western cowboy novel, Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon, six Old West cowboys and a 10-year-old boy meet for a weekly cribbage game. While the old men spin tales of days gone by on the trail, a real life adventure stirs around them. The boy with the red […]
Ridin’ the Divide by Stephen Bly I thought I saw a coyote try to cut across my trail … A bag of bones, a pointed nose, a scrawny, matted tail. Most coyotes ain’t worth rememberin’ or wastin’ too much pity. But I hadn’t spied a civilized thing since I left El Paso City. […]
Finding the Romance in Novel Research by western author Stephen Bly When a cowboy writer does novel research, the sight of a landmark can spark an idea for a full-fledged novel … or just a poem. Southeast of Four Corners, New Mexico is Shiprock, an impressive example of a volcanic neck or a […]
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