Greetings from the Dragoon Trail in central Iowa. As we travel down the historic trail and we approach July of 2026, a month which not only marks my 68th birthday, it also marks the 250th birthday of the United States of America. These milestones also mark my return to civil war reenacting after a very long hiatus from living history. Adding to this is the success of this blog, are the number of visitors who read our work here. The number of readers has surpassed 10,000 visitors this last month. I have to personally thank the many people who have supported what I do and those who have contributed to this blog. If you view this blog on your laptop or desktop computer, you can look at the right-side column and see the folks who support this blog, on the same side of the page, you will also see the people that I have supported as well. It's been quite a journey thus far. I have a couple of books coming out, one is called "The Scoundrels of Iowa" which is being published by Arcadia publishing. This book has been in the publishing phase for about seven months and there is no visibility on when it will be published. The other book is called "Trains Trails and & Outlaws" this book was originally published through a hybrid publisher called USA Book Promoters, but unfortunately the process of publishing through this hybrid publisher has been a literal nightmare, and I will not be using their services again. (caveat emptor). I removed the book from Amazon to be reedited by another book company called Jones Book store, so far I'm pretty happy with their responsiveness to me, and I'm praying for good results.
Moving Towards the Future:
So... Writing seems to be a struggle against many dark forces, and trying to tell the story of American history isn't very popular right now. But there are many of us who are willing to take many risks to be story tellers of our American journey and there are those who take the risk and find themselves in different strata of emotionally charged opinion and social status. Not to mention that there are clear hierarchies within the western genre community. The days western magazines are coming to a close and very few opportunities exist for western writers to get their work published. That's where blogs like this one and social media comes in. It's up to us to keep telling the story anyway that we can. But what I've learned from this experience, is that staying the course, ignoring the social media attacks, being true to the mission here and networking with others who cherish our history, has been a formula for success. So... I will stay the course for the history my country, because that's what is important to me
See you on the dusty trail!
Editor
G.C. Stevens
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