CAPA 15th Anniversary Celebration

Last night my wife and I (we've become busy folks lately) attended Connecticut Author's & Publishers 15th Anniversary meeting in Avon, Connecticut. With food, drink, and music on the menu it was an enjoyable three hours. I meet quite a few members and relished the opportunity to spend some time with people who share the same writing interests as I do. I'm looking forward to CAPA's April meeting which has agent Gina Panettieri as its featured speaker.

KATE BUCHANAN

Katelyn Nelson and James Buchanan became high school sweethearts when they were each seventeen. Upon graduation, they left for the University of Montana, Jim on a football scholarship and Kate to study music. Five years later, Jim proposed to Kate and they married three years after that. Kate's and Jim's souls were spiritually bonded but their lives were emotionally separate. Kate became an accomplished guitarist playing before local and regional audiences while Jim had difficulty determining who he really was. A mixed-blood native of Scottish and Crow Indian descent, Jim played in the NFL for three years, then spent four years in the U.S. Air Force, and then began a career in law enforcement. Although Jim was uncertain about his career aspirations, he didn’t have any second thoughts about Kate. She was the love of his life. Tall and athletic with long brown hair, Kate could have passed for a model. She recorded a country western CD (see song list below) that was acclaimed by those in the professional music business and was on the cusp of national notoriety when, in 1995 she vanished. My novel ‘Montana Harvest’ (expected completion date of December, 2009) details the circumstances, events, and the official investigation into the disappearance of Katelyn Nelson Buchanan.

When You Talk To My Heart (Kate’s CD)

1) Tennessee Waltz (ballad)
2) Take This Train (country rock)
3) Silos In September (bluegrass)
4) When You Talk To My Heart (ballad)
5) Great Northern Lights (country rock)
6) Holes In My Pockets (bluegrass)
7) Mountains To Remember (ballad)
8) Any ‘ol Cave Will Do (country rock)
9) Stardust Trails (ballad)
10) He’s My Man (country rock)
11) Another Clip off the Chain (bluegrass)
12) Montana Skies (ballad)
13) Thirteen Eggs and a Pound of Bacon (country rock)

(all songs written by Katelyn Buchanan except Tennesse Waltz written by Redd Stewart & Pee Wee King, and When You Talk To My Heart written by Renee LaChapelle)

NATIVE AMERICAN GIs

http://naihc.net/NAIHC/files/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/000000000454/Native%20Veterans%20Returning%20from%20Iraq%20Ask.doc

Use the above web address or click on the heading of this post to go to a MS Word article which explains what returning Native American GIs are facing today. With a new administration in Washington perhaps attitudes will change for the better. It cannot get much worse.

The Rimrocks

Like a monument to the vast prairie, the sandstone cliffs just outside Billings, Montana are integral to my new novel, 'The Killing Zone'. A portion of the Rimrocks, called Sacrifice Cliff, was where fearless Crow youth rode their blindfolded ponies off the precipice with the hope that their offering would cure their tribe of a deadly Smallpox epidemic. On that plateau in my novel, under a summer’s night sky, Indian lore, hopes and dreams and criminal intent draw a group of companions into an unlikely encounter with a homicidal ex-convict and his gang of cohorts. With no witnesses except perhaps the spirits of the 19th century Crow horsemen, it’s a race for Sheriff Jim Buchanan to find and bring to justice the runaway murderers before they make their escape to Canada.