It's In The Blood

My great grandfather, Arnold Crance, somewhere in Upstate New York or possibly Northern Pennsylvania, circa 1927.

Many (many) times, readers will ask if some character in the Ryland Creek saga represents someone (particularly my family) in real life.

   My reply is always the same: all the characters in the Ryland Creek books are me, and none of the characters are me.

How's that for a bit of mystery?

What can I say? Writer, after all.

   That said, there was a family member who'd passed away before I was born--my great grandfather, Arnold, who shared some similarities with the character Uncle Arthur McCutcheon.

    Great Grandfather Arnold Crance was a horseman, woodsman, and a whipmaster. My father, when he was very young, can still remember my great grandfather coming down the road to the farm on a summer's day while herding a dozen loose horses, with Arnold riding bareback on another horse as he was too poor to afford a saddle.

    Another story had Arnold near Andover, New York--which is about 45 miles due west of Painted Post--when he was a young fellow. Another man challenged Arnold to a horse race--a contest where each horse was hitched to their owner's wagon. Both men agreed the first  to cross the bridge at the far end of the street would be the winner. The catch? That same narrow bridge could only fit one horse and wagon at a time, and a "high-speed" crash (well, high speed for the late 1800s, anyway) would mean disaster if not an outright fatality should the contestants collide. 

    Sort of adds an additional context to the phrase "finish line," but I digress.

    So, the race was on. Now, legend has it the other man jumped the gun, but that admittedly might be a bit of an embellishment from our side of the family. As the story goes, the horses were neck and neck for nearly the entire length of the race as they approached the bridge.

    But only one could win in this game of chicken involving horses. . . .

   Mere yards before they reached the bridge, the other man pulled his horse off the road, almost ending up in the creek for his troubles all the same. My great grandpa was declared the winner. I truthfully don't know what the wager involved--money or livestock or maybe some other barter. But one thing my father supposes (and a much safer bet) about this story: Arnold wouldn't have pulled his wagon off the road regardless if the other man hadn't taken the wiser choice. There's an intrinsic, familial sense that Dad is probably right about that.

    One would hope that family stubbornness--purportedly like longevity--would skip a generation. I've been told on good authority that's not the case in my case. (I like to think of it as perseverance.)

    That (ahem) perseverance is in the blood, I suppose.

    There are also stories of Arnold's considerable mastery with a bullwhip, but that would be a story for another time.

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A picture of my dad and Cousin Bobby on top of "Old Joe" in the mid-1940s.

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And a quick publication update:

For those who caught my last update, all Lulu authors were removed from Barnes & Noble's inventory. Further, due to some still-unexplained reason, the e-book version of An Exceptional Hound: Book II of the Ryland Creek Saga has been missing on Amazon since late August 2023. (I give Lulu all due credit for trying, but after that long absence, it was finally time to try something new.)

So, I decided to explore simply going with Amazon directly via their Kindle Publishing.

And that transition was relatively easy and painless.

Thus, as of today, the e-book version of An Exceptional Hound is now officially (and solely) available on Amazon's Kindle.

Over the next 30-90 days, I'll move all Ryland Creek saga e-books solely to Amazon.

Print versions of the Ryland Creek saga will still be available on Amazon, my author website, Lulu, and other major book retailers, excepting the aforementioned Barnes & Noble.

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