Friday, June 1, 2012

Red Trail

My two-volume "Tales of the West" short story collection is now complete: the second volume, RED TRAIL, has arrived. 

"An intense and often violent story collection... These seventeen character driven short stories of the Old West and the American Frontier by award-winning author Troy D. Smith reveal the good and the bad in men and women as they fight to survive harsh circumstances and deadly situations."

This volume includes "The Sin of Eli," originally published in the 2011 Western Fictioneer anthology The Traditional West and winner of the Peacemaker Award, and "Blackwell's Run," which was a Peacemaker finalist. It also includes the first fiction I ever had published, "Mourning Glory," which appeared in a 1995 issue of Louis L'Amour Western Magazine. Taken together with CHEROKEE WINTER -available HERE- the total is 32 short stories, some of the best I've produced in the last 17 years. I was greatly honored by having two of my literary role models allow me to include blurbs from them in this collection:

FRANK RODERUS: "Troy Smith has a rare and wonderful gift. His words do more than take you to another time, more than allow you to live another person's life… they also open that person's heart and allow you to feel its beat.

Smith is able to evoke the emotions that will touch your heart, using characters you will remember and think about long after his story is read and its pages closed. His work is a treat. Enjoy!"

RICHARD WHEELER: "He is a formidable writer, and one of the most knowledgeable."


Reviewer Ron Scheer had this to say about the first volume:

"Troy D. Smith puts the story in history. Figures from the history books often emerge in his western stories, but not until you’ve been totally swept up in the imaginative world Smith has invented. There’s western myth enough in them, but you realize that this writer really wants you to know the past as it was...

Westerns often sidestep the matter of real pain and suffering. Smith’s stories do not. He often puts us in the company of the walking wounded. Shame and guilt may haunt their lives. They may carry the weight of betrayals, atrocities witnessed, and secrets untold. Only occasionally is there healing, as in 'The Purification of Jim Barnes,' where a returning Vietnam veteran undergoes a tribal purification ceremony.

No surprise that Troy Smith’s stories are up for this year’s Peacemaker Awards. His work gives real stature to the western short story."
I invite you to give one or both of these volumes a try.

RED TRAIL can be found at amazon -HERE -and smashwords -HERE.
  

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