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The historical fiction novel, Hammer Comes Down: Memoirs of a Freedman is available in Print and for Kindle.



Wanna read the press release? Click here: .



The electronic edition of Hammer Comes Down will be half price until 25 October. Or get a 35%-off for purchase of the print edition. Visit the Hammer for more options.



Here are two advance reviews. This one from :

"I found the story to be engaging and the writing tight...an enjoyable read.

Jason Cobb struggles to understand his place in the uncertainty of new found freedom.

His haunting declaration: 'You could have it legal and not be free at all.'

In the classic style of Leveen’s, The Secrets of Mary Bowser or Leonard’s, Only Good Ones. Hammer Come Down: Memoirs of a Freedman is a powerful tale of an epic journey by Jason Cobb: an undertaking that promises a new beginning and an inauspicious future. Kae Cheatham writes eloquently and delivers a top notch story worthy of high praise."

–Mike Kearby, author, A Hundred Miles to Water

And another on GoodReads This is an excerpt:

"...This is a profound and moving work, that goes deeply into the heart and soul of the slave-holding South, and the not-much-better culture of the North...."

I hope you'll help get this book off to a great beginning by purchasing one of the editions, or at least "liking" . Every little click helps.

I can really be a nitpicker about grammar, stylistic approaches and, quite often, words—especially in historical fiction. I try really hard to use the proper words. I don't mean words to convey a proper meaning, but words that would have been in usage at the time of my historical fiction. I posted about this in the , but in my recent work with two historical manuscripts, I've found more words used before their time.

In Hammer Come Down , a person talks about the workout with his horse. Workout? The story takes place in 1836. I checked my Merriam-Webster. Workout became general usage around 1894. I don't hold strictly to the M-W time dates, but they list dates pretty close to realistic times. e-mail and cyberspace, for instance, are dated at 1982. If my Hammer story was set in the 1890s I might let it go. I figure the word could have been in use for 2 - 5 years prior to its date in M-W. But 1830 to 1890 is too much of a jump.

I had already dropped sawbucks (circa 1850) for saddle packs or panniers, but I frowned over bedroll. Ach! A word from around 1867. Too far out for my 1836 story.

I imagine I've missed several words that should have been changed, but I've been particularly sensitive and diligent with the Hammer story because it's told in first person. In a third person presentation I might let words in narration slide; but when the only voice is that of my 1836 character, I’ve tried hard to not have him saying words he wouldn’t have known.Am I being too picky? Do other historical fiction writers do this? Do readers care?




Visit the Event Listing to see more about this book.

Release Date 17 October

I decided to put On Promised Land out in print edition, with a few changes here and there. The cover is giving me fits. A single front image for an ebook doesn’t always translate to a good front-spine-back needed for a print project.



I also wanted to check a few details in my text, and looked for the pamphlet sent to me years ago by Tuskoma Brown Miller. Miller was one of the people instrumental in founding the Seminole Nation Museum in Wewoka, Oklahoma (~1974); I met him in 1983 and he encouraged me to write about the Seminole—especially the black Seminole. The pamphlet was a reprint of a lecture he had given at the Smithsonian in 1976. I couldn’t find it any where, and became resigned to the possibility that I accidentally tossed it when I recently did some major rearranging.



Yesterday, as I hummed a �49er song, I thumbed through books on the top shelf in my bedroom, and...there it was, tucked at the end of my Blue Cloud Quarterly collection. Those chapbooks, and this pamphlet are the same size, same color. But now I have it!



Hopefully, the cover for On Promised Land will handily fall in place, too.

I went into Kindle Boards to add the new title, Hammer Come Down: Memoirs of a Freedman, to my signature, and discovered I’d run out of characters. I had to take all the long links and get them shortened and then add them back so I had room for the new titles. I'll use the smaller links here, when I update the footer.



As if I didn’t have enough to do!



Also updated the background for this blog. With the sudden cold, wet, snowy weather, I think the fire season might now be ending. We went from daily humidity ratings of 23%, to 65% Yea! Unfortunately, the super dry September kept the autumn color sort of sad and drab.

The WWW keeps expanding with even more opportunities for communicating and networking. I'm doing near-date advance promo for the release of the book and discovering new ways to get the word out. Along with the expected Facebook post, Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ posts, and such, both of those sites offer an “eventsâ€� section to highlight the happening. Linkedin also offers many ways to get the word out. I’ve become a since the last book release (), and that gives even more possibilities.



I also just bought a camera that has short movie creator software.

Book Trailer :) !!!

More work :(.

Does this mean I have to add a YouTube account to my social networks? You betcha. (sigh).



Well, back to work. No rest for the industrious.

The flame motif for my blog background is too timely. More than 500,000 acres of Montana have already burned, and most of the fires that started in July are still active. No moisture. No rain. Humidity below 40% on most days.



My solar fencer stopped working. My old gelding has flicked his way through the non-transmitting wires and been wandering my yard at night. Nothing worse than hearing a thunk at three a.m., and look out to see him trying to get into the hay shed.



Well, it's my fault. The earth was too dry for the grounding rod to be effective. I finally ran a hose into the ground beside the rod. It took three hours of a slow stream before it made a difference.



I usually change my blog background each month. Without any forecast change, I might just keep the flames in place through October. Or maybe, if I put up a picture of water and rain and stormy weather, it just might conjure that to reality. Ha!

I've had to change a lot of plans this month because of the poor air quality around here. Although there are no large fires burning within 35-40 miles, west winds blow in smoke from the fires in the Bitterroots and from Idaho, Washington and Oregon. If the wind comes from the east, it's smoke haze from the Gallatin forest fire and even from the ones near Roundup and on the Crow rez.



Helena had one fire early this summer. A quick one that devastated the Scratch Gravel Hills, forced evacuations, destroyed several homes and buildings. This pic is one of several I took from my front porch. There's a major highway and I-15 between the fire and my area.



I didn't go to the Draft Horse Expo two weeks ago. There's another event in Deer Lodge this weekend, and I will attempt that.



This is a view of the same area with all the migrating smoke and haze.



My sympathies to all those who are actually in the fire areas. Here's hoping the weather soon changes bringing moisture...RAIN!!! I've forgotten what it feels like. :-(

Silki the Girl of Many Scarves: Summer of the Ancient (Book 1) by Jodi Lea Stewart



My rating: 4 of 5 stars





Many book/news reports are saying more adults are now reading YA books. I'm not inclined toward YA, but I'm always interested in a story involving American Indians. Silki the Girl of Many Scarves is a fun story, and the action at the end is really intense. The protagonist, Silki, has a unique and well-written voice; descriptions made each scene visual.



This is a fine story about friendship and family--with a lot of mystery and some Navajo culture included. The lovely illustrations were a plus.



Recommend.

Busy days, as I get Hammer Come Down: Memoirs of a Freedman ready for October publication. Read an ; and if you have a review blog, an eARC can be sent to you.

I also decided to put On Promised Land out in a print edition. I sell many soft-copy editions of my titles when I go to art shows, and I have several coming up this fall. Might as well take advantage. :-).

Back to work!

One of my favorite entertainments is watching soccer. Through my trusty satellite dish I follow the English Premier League (EPL), Italian Serie A, watch a few Mexican league games, and this time of year I'm a faithful follower of the North American, Major League Soccer (MLS).

At the beginning of the season, I was watching/listening to an MLS Houston Dynamo game. At the beginning of the game, I wasn't in the room with the TV and kept hearing the commentator talking about Tally Ho. I realized he was referring to the goalkeeper. Tally Ho? When I viewed the game, I learned the player's name is Tally Hall. I still got a chuckle from my mis-hearing, and once when I watched a Dynamo game on a Mexican channel, their commentators seemed to find the name Tally Hall (ho) amusing, too. (Mr. Hall is an excellent keeper with an impressive shutout record)

I started thinking of when I might give a character a name like this--one that the reader might misread, or get a sound image that could be amusing or disruptive. I think if I described a fairly unimposing character near the beginning of a piece but knew he would be important later on (say, page 98 and on), giving him a name with impact could be helpful. Readers would be more likely to remember a name such as Tally Hall than they would Ron Smith.

A few weeks ago I was again watching a Dynamo game, still aware of my reaction to the goalkeeper's name. They were playing the Chicago Fire, and that team made a substitution. Hunter, was the name on the new player's jersey. Then information came up about the young man…His first name is Hunter. Hunter Jumper?

Okay. Tally [Ho] Hall and Hunter Jumper in the same game.

I snickered and laughed about Hunter Jumper (the name, not the player). It's akin to Kandy Caine, Slim Pickens, or River Banks. Almost too humorous without having a purpose--in fiction especially. Of the books I've read where this play with names occurs, I usually start thinking the authors have rather inflated senses of self as they assume their wit is topnotch and universal. I also found myself distracted from the story.

Would I ever tag any of my characters like this? Maybe. A minor character with this type of impact name could be used to show personality traits of the story's more central characters: the protagonist could be polite and nonjudgmental; another character could react by being subtle and snide, asking, "Do you raise foxhounds?"; or the gregarious, no-tact person would say "I can't believe your parents did that to you!"

Too much of this, unless I were writing satire or attempting humor (neither of which I do), could appear I was making fun of my characters--or I that take myself too seriously. I'd definitely try not to be too clever.

Which brings to mind another soccer player...this one from the EPL Manchester United team...with a neat name, Tom Cleverly.