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Upcoming Releases & a Local Legend (Contest)
Tuesday, November 28th, 2023

UPDATE: The winner is…Lisa Kendall!
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Upcoming Releases

Little Green Dreams Malcolm What Happens in Bozeman
Click on the covers to pre-order your copies!

In case you didn’t already know, I have new releases coming soon! Little Green Dreams arrives soon on December 12th (I moved the date up a week!); Malcolm on January 16th; and What Happens in Bozeman on February 20th! Malcolm is the next Montana Bounty Hunters: Dead Horse, MT, story, and What Happens in Bozeman is the next We Are Dead Horse, MT book. Little Green Dreams is a standalone title, for now. Depending on how readers enjoy it, there may be more stories that follow. Believe me, I have some ideas…

I hope you’re looking forward to them all and that you’ll take a moment to pre-order each one so you don’t miss them when they release! I promise there’s humor, sexiness, and small-town adventures in each.

The Gurdon Light

Central to my next release, Little Green Dreams, is a local phenomenon that occurs some 20-odd miles down the road from me called The Gurdon Light. The TV show Unsolved Mysteries even did an episode featuring the legend, which I mention in my story because it was a big deal back in the day that lent some legitimacy to the legend since they couldn’t find a scientific cause for the Light. And just so you know, I’ve seen it, too.

The Gurdon Light is Arkansas’s most famous legend. There’s a certain length of old, abandoned railroad track near Gurdon, Arkansas, where a mysterious light can be seen when you walk down the tracks. It’s a bright orb that appears to swing side to side. And it’s not shy. It appears often. Local universities have taken students out there to try to find the source of the Light, but they’ve pretty much ruled out things like swamp gas because the light doesn’t dissipate in the wind.

The legend the locals tie the Light to is a sad story. This is a snippet from the book where I explain the supposed origin of the Light:

“William McClain was a foreman working for the Missouri-Pacific railroad. Late one evening, he was finishing up when he was approached by one of his workers, Louis McBride. It was during the Depression…1931, as I recall. Times were hard, and Mr. McBride, although he had a job, wanted more hours because he needed money. The railroad had strict rules about how many hours a man could work, so Mr. McClain said he couldn’t give him any more. They got into an argument, and McBride raised his shovel and struck McClain in the head. Then he beat him to death with a spike maul—it’s a tool a railroad man uses, like a sledgehammer. It was an awful thing.”

Ever since Mr. McClain’s murder, the light appears on the tracks. Locals say it’s the railroad lantern he carried.

So, that’s the legend I piggybacked my book on. Although, I have a very different explanation for the phenomenon because, hey, I’m a storyteller and that’s what I do—I make stuff up. 🙂

Watch this very short episode from a local newscast, interviewing someone who has seen the Light.

Contest

For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me about a legend from your “neck of the woods!”

7 comments to “Upcoming Releases & a Local Legend (Contest)”

  1. Colleen C.
    Comment
    1
    · November 28th, 2023 at 1:12 pm · Link

    The Phoenix Lights… I have to say that two years ago, I saw something that made no sense to me twice within a few months… a huge ball of light in the darkness that was stationary and then flew too fast to be anything normal… seeing it once was a shock, but a second time was a surprise!



  2. Mary Preston
    Comment
    2
    · November 28th, 2023 at 4:46 pm · Link

    No legends, but my town name Toowoomba means ‘ swampy place’ in the local indigenous language. Two creeks run through town and with a fortnight of rain, the area is very swampy.



  3. BN
    Comment
    3
    · November 28th, 2023 at 5:50 pm · Link

    n/a



  4. Debra Guyette
    Comment
    4
    · November 29th, 2023 at 7:08 am · Link

    I used to live in Connecticut and three was a legend of the Leatherman who would travel around.



  5. flchen
    Comment
    5
    · December 3rd, 2023 at 12:57 am · Link

    I’m not sure we have a truly local legend, although I guess we’re not too far from an area called The Mystery Spot, which somehow seems to defy perspective, LOL…



  6. Lisa Kendall
    Comment
    6
    · December 3rd, 2023 at 12:09 pm · Link

    No local legends here or in my hometown. Moved to Texas from AR at 19 and been here ever since.



  7. Delilah
    Comment
    7
    · December 6th, 2023 at 9:06 am · Link

    LOL. I thought every town/region had its own legends. We have so many (I forgot about Hell’s Half-Acre).

    The winner of the GC is…Lisa Kendall!



Comments are closed.