Shortly after I retired from my professional career in higher education, a regional publisher contacted me to discuss some potential projects, including publishing some of my backlist. Additionally, he was marketing to the rodeo crowd, and asked me if I would be interested in doing a YA series on famous rodeo animals.
Since I’d done a YA series on famous animals from Texas history with this publisher, I agreed and turned around in three months a manuscript on the famous Wyoming bucking horse Steamboat. Though the manuscript was accepted, other factors worked against the publisher continuing his rodeo marketing, so the manuscript sat unpublished for a decade.
However, when Harriet and I started moving into independent publishing with our Bariso Press, I got the rights reverted on all the books and decided we’d start what we called “The Old West Critters Collection” of animal stories. Earlier this year, we brought out new editions of the first three books in the series and this week we are bringing out Steamboat’s the Name: My Life As a Bucking Bronc.
If you’ve ever seen a Wyoming license plate with the bucking horse, you’ve seen Steamboat, the horse used for the license plate silhouette because of his dramatic bucking style with arched back and lowered head. As I worked with my current publisher (a fancy name for Harriet) on the art for the cover, we never could come up with a bucking posture that did Steamboat or the license plate justice.
So, we decided to try something different and came up with a different and equally dramatic look for the legendary Steamboat. The artwork was generated by ChatGPT and DALL-E with some PhotoShop editing and typography.
This book and the three predecessors in the collection—They Call Me Old Blue, Blanca Is My Name and Just Call Me Uncle Sam—are testament to the impact of reading. When I was a child, I read the Robert Lawson YA novel Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos and was fascinated by the account from the mouse’s viewpoint. The book lingered with me and influenced my approach to writing the YA novels from the viewpoint of our animal friends.
Steamboat’s the name is now available on Amazon for $4.99 for the -Kindle edition at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTS8TM7W?lv and $15.95 for the paper edition at https://www.amazon.com/Steamboats-Name-Bucking-Critters-Collection/dp/1964830222/
