A belated invitation to an event tomorrow (Monday) night, Women Writers of the West, hosted by Terrain.org: https://www.terrain.org/events/reading-may-2023/, in which I’ll be reading with Melissa Sevigny and Kathryn Smith. Desert Chrome is now two years old. Which means I’m two years older! Continue reading →

Last week the Sarton Women’s Book Award announced their winners and finalists; Desert Chrome and I are honored to be among the finalists–thank you Story Circle Network! And Torrey House Press, always. The week before, I learned that I had another essay listed as a Best American Essays “notable,” this one in Best American Essays 2022. … Continue reading →

Tomorrow, Wednesday March 22, TJ Holmes and I will appear at Out West Books in Grand Junction to talk mustangs and Desert Chrome. https://www.outwestbooks.co/events Earlier in the month Kase Johnstun and Brandon Long released a podcast in which Kase and I talk about writing and wild horses and, well, you can listen to it here: … Continue reading →

Terrain.org is a stellar online magazine, with beautiful layouts of photography that illustrate the poetry, essays, and fiction it publishes. Sometimes the photos are pulled from stock. This time, the photos are by my son, Tyler Lausten (!), and my friend TJ Holmes. The layout is all Terrain. The essay is mine. https://www.terrain.org/2023/nonfiction/in-the-rut/ To read … Continue reading →

The cow elk has rested there for days after her struggle to free her right hind leg from the death trap of the smooth, “wildlife-friendly,” high-tensile-wire fence. Somehow she’d stepped between the bottom two wires and they twisted and tightened around thick, solid bone and she was already dead a day when I first saw the … Continue reading →

Continue reading →

This was almost funny, yet so not. For the month of November, I joined Rebecca Lawton (https://beccalawton.com) in her NOMOWriMo, which I wrote about in a previous post. That’s not the almost-funny part, although I am a bit tickled that I wrote the 500-words-a-day to which I committed plus another 10,000 words, because I had … Continue reading →

A real-life scenario that took place at the ranch, which I gave to my in-progress novel, Mustang Crossing: Checking wild horse records with Jake reminded Jessi of going through the cattle records with her father, which reminded her of doing the same when her mother was alive, and even Colter. While she preferred being ahorseback, … Continue reading →

With Desert Chrome out (now also available as an audiobook, read by me! https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798822620391to) and an essay collection circulating, I decided to pull an in-progress novel from a back shelf and get to work on it again. That’s when I saw that my good writer friend Becca Lawton (https://beccalawton.com) was offering NOMOWriMo to writers at … Continue reading →

Following are some of the places where you can now find Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West in audio! (The first, libro.fm audiobooks, supports indie bookstores.) The audiobook was just released, and other carriers will have it soon.  Please know that positive reviews and a lot of stars are most helpful to … Continue reading →