Everyone knew who he was. His name was Riley O’Connor but he was known as Jade.

“I don’t know if I could do it, but he did the right thing,” men confessed to their wives who shuddered thinking of the awful choice a man had to make. “If he had anything that could be called luck, it would be that they didn’t have no children.”

Boys played like they were Jade. “I don’t want to do it but it’s what I have to do,” they said, their make-believe six-shooters aimed at a friend’s heart. Sometimes they killed Indians with sticks that were make-believe knives like the one Jade had.

The settlement was too small to have a name or a street, just footpaths called Barefoot and Moccasin Streets. It was a place on the freight wagon trail between San Antonio and El Paso, a track that narrowed to the springs like a river narrowed to its source and then threaded out again as travelers chose the shortest, smoothest, easiest or safest way and those depended on the Indians, the weather and the time of year.

Where the trail narrowed people had pulled close, held together by fear. The trail ran past a store, a church, a saloon, a blacksmith shop, to the springs. The houses looked another way as though they were not part of the movement and commerce.

The store supplied wagon trains, cavalry patrols, scouts, adventurers, outlaws, cowmen. One cowman, called the general by his cowboys and the Big Augur in the settlement, built a house near the store for his wife, daughters, teenage boy, and his stove-up father, Shep, so they would be safer during Indian raids. One daughter had been killed by Indians. One son just curled up and died; no one knew why. Cletis, the teenager who survived, lived in town with his mother but carried messages to the bare wood, dirt-floored house that was his father’s headquarters. The general visited them when he came in a wagon for supplies, accompanied by a few cowboys for his protection and their chance to toss a few drinks and bounce the whore.

Another cowman was called El Jefe by his pistoleros who spoke with a Spanish accent. Proper names were scarce between the Devils River and the Pecos. Jefe built a house for his wife, young children and his wife’s parents on the other side of the trail from the general, and lived in a rag house near the chuck wagon. Their cowboys needed a place to howl and that meant a saloon with a shack in the back. Trail traffic required a blacksmith shop, and all those sinners needed a church. It was a free country.

Check it out, and check out all of the eBooks featured in Read an eBook Week.

For readers on their mailing list, Kobo sends out discount coupons frequently (including sending out a $4 discount coupon today!).

Find Dusk Before the Dawn at Kobo here.

Kindle provides a download of a free sample on their site.

I Insist I am not Dead

My best efforts to exceed

the frame of my flesh

have led only to

renewed efforts.

Daily, God’s slow heavy hand swings closer

to brush me off his arm like a stinging fly,

and I am called, in humility, to be thankful

he doesn’t choose to crush me instead.

We are living well here, in spite of everything.

For as long as we can we will try to live forever.

Land Again

Coming down quickly

we all experience descent disorientation,

fighting to keep our feet firmly beneath us

as we explode to land again.

We will limp uncertainly for weeks,

wasting little time to re-immerse ourselves

in conversations we left behind when we first

turned expectant eyes toward flight.

How long is it we’ve known each other now?

The years coil around us so that when

god splits open our souls he can gauge our age,

reading striations like the rings in older trees;

we have to be laid bare for judgment.

I expect that we will linger

for long days in the sun,

bolted upright to rocks to provide

sustenance for eagles.

They will carry our names back to their children,

and when they unhinge great golden beaks

our memory will rain out into eager mouths

so that they might carry us in flight again

to all the lightless desolate regions of the earth.

© 2010 by Joe Zoccoli

Dusk Before the Dawn, Ketchersid’s first novel, is now available for Kindle, Nook and other formats. This book was a Finalist for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year awards in 2006.

Also, look for The Last Klick by Robert Flynn to be available in Kindle format soon. Originally published in 1994, this is the story of war correspondent Sherrill O’Connell, who heads to Vietnam to escape the death of his daughter. What he finds there is a world of unreality, distorted by the new media. Because of an instinctive reaction to sudden danger, he becomes a hero. His own story becomes the good news that Americans want to hear.

Simply use our contest entry form or forward your proof of purchase of the book (email receipt or scanned) from Amazon (print or Kindle), Indie Bound, Barnes and Noble or any outlet to contests at josaramedia dot com any time through January 31, 2010 (extended to February 26, 2010!) to be entered. With your entry, you will also be able to download free stories and essays from these excellent authors, plus receive a coupon for a discount on the eBook edition of Larry Ketchersid’s first novel, Dusk Before the Dawn. Among the free downloads will be:

• A sneak peek at Jade, the forthcoming work by award winning author Robert Flynn; set in the old West, the title character Jade is a Indian fighter, torn between his anger at himself for a life and death decision, his hatred of the Indians who forced his hand, and a beautiful half-breed who makes him question everything he stands for;
• A download of a chapter from New New Media by Paul Levinson;
• A pre-release chapter from Forgotten Soldiers, a forthcoming book and movie written by Chris Schaefer.  Forgotten Soldiers tells the story of the U.S. Army’s Philippine Scouts, the men who fought America’s first ground battle of World War II.  The story is told in the first person by men who were captured by the Japanese and subjected to the Bataan Death March.

The signed books you will be entered to win are (click on the cover images to read reviews of each book):

Echoes of Glory by Robert Flynn: A fictitious Texas county that embraces its legends, but not its actual history is threatened when a Sheriff is challenged in an election by a local hero , and a drama professor  announces that he will write a play depicting the true story of Second Platoon, which many fear will expose the dark underside of Mills County.
Author’s Blog

New New Media by Paul Levinson: YouTube, blogging, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Second Life and other “new new media” are transforming just about every aspect of our culture from the way we elect Presidents to how we watch television.  New New Media details the benefits, opportunities, and dangers of these transformations.
Author’s Blog

Bataan Diary by Chris Schaefer: the true story of Frank R. Loyd and a small group of men who refused to surrender to the Japanese on Bataan during World War II. They endured terrible diseases, starvation, and a Japanese manhunt to capture them. Aided by Filipino farmers, they lived by their wits and their survival skills, and they ultimately joined the guerrilla band of Corporal John Boone to help defeat the Japanese. It is also the story of their families at home in the United States who supported the war effort, worked in government jobs, and raised their families alone, not knowing if their men were dead or alive. Author’s Website

I’ve read many books about the Great War and about Stalingrad and the other horrors of World War Two, but THE LAST KLICK, because it comes out of a contemporary sensibility, presents a greater challenge to the feelings. The madness of jungle warfare is matched moreover by the wicked idiocy of press and television. The United States seen from Vietnam is even more distorting than the experiences of combat. Written with passion and great skill — SAUL BELLOW

Twenty odd years ago, I had the pleasure of spending a few days traveling around Vietnam with Robert Flynn who was then a freelance correspondent for True Magazine. Now, after finishing THE LAST KLICK, I know what he was really up to. He has done a wonderful job of recreating the sights and sounds and smells fo Vietnam, and he has captured the ambitions, pretensions and cynicism of the international press corps that covered the war. — STEVE KROFT, 60 Minutes (CBS)

At Smashwords, eBooks can be viewed or downloaded in multiple formats, such as HTML, ePub (open industry format, good for Stanza reader, others), LRF (for Sony Reader), Palm Doc (for Palm reading devices) and other popular formats.

Dusk Before the Dawn was a finalist for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award.