Let's start off the month of May with a peek into a New Classics author's life, and don't forget to download his freebie for your kids to enjoy!

A PEEK INTO MARK'S LIFE

(Note from New Classics. Book One of his first series, Arty Goes West, is the New Classics featured book with a free study guide to download. Now, let's hear from Mark!)

I’m often asked why I write westerns. That question is an easy one to answer. While I attended elementary and middle school, most of the television programs I watched were Saturday morning westerns. Before I went outside to play, I buckled on my two six-shooter cap guns, pulled on my cowboy boots, and placed a cowboy hat on my head.

As I grew up, I listened to cowboy music and read western books. I was hooked!

I read plenty of other books besides westerns—including stories about Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Long John Silver, and Tom Sawyer—but I continued to read westerns because I liked them best. I still do.

I have read hundreds of books by authors such as Alexandre Dumas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Jack London, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Agatha Christie, Charlotte Bronte, and others like them. I could have written mysteries, romance, science fiction, or fantasy; but I wanted to write westerns. I like writing westerns.

My books contain mystery, romance, and comedy because those elements exist in real life (yours and mine). My goal as an author is not just to entertain you. My goal is to transport you to another time and place, where you’ll meet new people. Some of those people will be good; some will be bad. If I do my job the way I should, all of them will be real to you.

You don’t have to like westerns in order to enjoy my stories. A good story is a good story regardless of when and where the action occurs. You just need to experience what the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the “willing suspension of disbelief.” When you open one of my books, I don’t want you to settle back and read; I want you to saddle up and ride!

READ A FREE SHORT STORY!

Saddle up for a fun read with "Uninvited Guests," a short story you can easily read on your mobile device like a phone or tablet. Just click the button below.

Here's a teaser:

Billy, George, and Clint thought cleaning up an abandoned shack and turning it into their hideout would be fun. They were right, and they enjoy spending time in a place that's all theirs. No one else comes to the shack, and the boys plan to keep it that way. Then one day they find horses in the corral. What will they do about their dangerous guests?

Uninvited Guests

. . . is an award-winning author who has published eight middle-grade western fiction and five westerns for older readers. He aims for historic accuracy and the truth that God was as present in the old West as He is today. Learn more at MarkLRedmond.com.

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