I don’t read a whole lot of frontier fiction. As deeply immersed as I am in this stuff, it’s all too easy to get thrown out of the story by anachronism, historical errors and the like. A good Mountain Man novel is surprisingly hard to come by. The Big Sky and Fair Land, Fair Land by A.B. Guthrie; Mountain Man by Vardis Fisher; Lord Grizzly, by … [Read more...] about A Fine Fandango

It is an axiom of frontier backcountry travel that it is wise to pause now and then to study your backtrail. Hostiles may be trailing you. And you might have to traverse in reverse, and the terrain always looks different going that way. I didn’t set out to take a scout down the backtrail last week; it just happened. Blame a $1 sale at my … [Read more...] about Scouting The Backtrail

In the heart of downtown Bend is a wonderful “pop culture” store called Pegasus Books. Owner Duncan McGeary is an author and a friend who has managed to make a living and a career out of his youthful enthusiasms. Pegasus Books is something of an anomaly and an anachronism in the hipster heart of 21st Century Central Oregon. He was there long … [Read more...] about The Savage, Sexy West Of Sanjulian

Summer of 2019 was already shaping up pretty damn good in the world of Frontier Partisans literature and cinema, what with a Deadwood movie, the return of Yellowstone and a mountain of research books to read. But this piece of news blows the whole thing up: Craig McDonald’s tale of Hector Lassiter and the Punitive Expedition is hitting the streets … [Read more...] about Once A World

Kevin Smith over at The National Review took a swipe at an iconic American movie on Monday: The greatest Western of all time . . . isn’t. Though The Searchers is regularly hailed as the finest exemplar of its genre and one of the best movies of any kind (seventh-best of all time, according to the decennial Sight & Sound poll), John Ford’s 1956 … [Read more...] about Searching For ‘The Searchers’

The frontier of the Old Southwest has been something of a blank spot on the Frontier Partisans map. That’s something I intend to rectify in WoW2, because the Creek Nation Civil War and the fight over the rich black soil of the Deep South stirs up tales every bit as compelling as those that sprang from Kaintuck or the Mohawk Valley of New … [Read more...] about A Paradise Of Blood

Russia fascinates me. Every once in a while, I plunge into the forests and steppes of the Wild East and lose myself there for weeks. I recently found myself sucked into the 2017 miniseries Trotsky, which I found on Netflix, and I wrote on the strange, surreal dieselpunk fable for Running Iron Report. This, of course, led me down other trails and … [Read more...] about Cossacks and Nazis

“Well you are a bit of a tit, aren’t you?” — Col. Hiram Huncks to Balthasar de St. Michel * I am, betimes, a foolish fellow. When Christopher Buckley’s The Judge Hunter came out a few months ago, I grabbed it up off the new arrivals table at the bookstore, because I will always pick up a book with a tomahawk, a flintlock, and goose-quill … [Read more...] about ‘A Bit Of A Tit’

John Rambo rides again. Sly Stallone is saddling up — literally — for a coda to the Rambo movie franchise that will now span 37 years. According to Variety, Rambo: Last Blood (get it?)… “…centers on Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo crossing into Mexico and taking on a violent cartel when the daughter of one of his friends is kidnapped. … [Read more...] about Drawing ‘Last Blood’

A friend of mine believes that it is important in one’s professional life to have a quick, intriguing “elevator pitch” to define yourself. He likes mine: “I’m a storyteller...” Gets people intrigued, wanting to know more, etc. You get the picture. Well, here’s one that simply can’t be beat: “I’m a conflict archaeologist.” Ain’t nobody gonna hear … [Read more...] about Conflict Archaeologist