MACHINE GUN - Vietnam War Story

 I was in graduate school working on a Master’s in geology in 1969 when the first Vietnam draft lottery was held. Having already graduated with my bachelor’s degree, I no longer had a 2-S deferment from the military. My draft number was 38, and I was called to the military shortly after the lottery in December. I believed in our country but didn’t believe in what I considered to be an absolutely senseless war. Because of this, I declined repeated offers to go to officer’s training school. I went instead to basic training and advanced infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, and was on my way to Vietnam by the summer of 1970 as a private. I spent just short of six months in the boonies patrolling the Jolly Trail system near the Cambodian border. During my months in a “free fire zone,” I made 52 combat assaults out of a helicopter, earning an Air Medal and the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, for which I am very proud. Amazingly, I was neither killed nor wounded. Since I was and still am a crack typist—a skill that serves me well now as a writer—I got a job back in the rear as a clerk-typist when an opening came up. After coming home, many years passed before I told anyone that I was a Vietnam vet. This is because Vietnam vets were all thought to be drug-crazed baby killers and all manner of other nasty things. I don’t know, but I think this was also true for both World War II and Korean War vets. I’m so glad that the perception of people serving in our military has changed for the better.

Machine Gun

I watched a program on the cable channel Encore about Jimi Hendrix and the Band of Gypsies.  On the show, he played a song called Machine Gun, and it evoked a memory of Vietnam that I hadn’t thought about in years.

I went to Vietnam in 1970 as an infantry mortar man.  For a while, in addition to my M16, I humped the base plate of an 81 MM mortar in the mortar platoon of an infantry line company.  I was in Charlie Company, 1^st of the 8^th Cavalry, First Cavalry Air Mobile.  We were operating off a hill bulldozed bald amid a jungle of green that could literally swallow you whole.  The Cav had just made their first sanctioned incursion into formerly off-limits Cambodia, and we had dealt a near-mortal blow to Charlie.  For the following months, Charlie played a game of duck-and-run while we tried desperately, and with little luck, to finish him off.

After several months of fifteen days in the jungle, five days on the firebase, and almost no success in encountering the enemy, Brass devised a new tactic of having us fly around in helicopters until we started taking ground-to-air fire.  Once we did, the choppers would swoop down and drop us off in hopes of making contact—something that rarely happened because of Charlie’s weakened state.

During this time, Brass also decided the 81 MM mortar was too unwieldy for rapid deployment, and all of us in the mortar company suddenly became infantry foot soldiers, grunts, 11-bravos, also known as 11-bullet-stoppers.  I was given a twenty-six-pound M-60 machine gun to carry since I already had experience toting a twenty-three-pound base plate.  I had never shot an M-60, even during basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana. This is because mortar men weren’t ever supposed to use the gun.

Around this time, artillery began shooting sophisticated listening devices into the jungle using specially designed 105 MM rounds.  Intelligence mapped the locations of these devices, and we soon had a good idea of where there was movement—of a military nature—in the jungle.  The devices weren’t always correct, and we once found a large family of monkeys instead of Viet Cong or North Vietnamese regulars.  This wasn’t always the case.

Reports of intense enemy troop movement in a nearby swamp had the Brass salivating.  My company was soon loaded into choppers, flown to the area, and dropped out of the birds. I mean this, literally.  With no landing zone cut into the jungle for us to land and deploy, the choppers hovered 10 feet above a large swampy pond while we jumped out.  This was no easy feat while carrying 100 pounds of gear.

We soon found ourselves in a maze of trails and something very anomalous— there was movement around us.  Charlie wasn’t even trying to cover it up.  This could only mean one of two things: We had caught the enemy very much by surprise, or else they had us outnumbered and knew it.  We were all pretty nervous because one thing we had never really done was catch Charlie by surprise.

Our company had about 100 men divided equally into four platoons.  We set up a camp, and my platoon started out on patrol.  As soon as we were out of sight of the rest of the company, we began hearing even more movement.  After months in the boonies, we were all attuned to the sounds of the jungle. Now, there was no doubt that many enemy soldiers were very close to us and paralleling our movement through the jungle.  This bothered me and everyone else because we were on Charlie’s home turf—likely smack-dab in the middle of a large enemy camp and staging area.  We could hear movement in every direction, and if I told you that I was anything but piss-in-my-pants scared, I’d be lying through my teeth.

Jungle warfare is like no other.  You can be 10 feet from the enemy and never see him.  You must rely on your nose, ears, and wits because otherwise, you may as well be blind.  My nose, ears, and wits told me we were about to have the living shit kicked out of us, and I expected, any minute, to be shredded by AK 47 bullets.  The platoon leader decided on a quick ploy.

I was the machine gunner, the “Gun.”  When Super Sarge tapped my shoulder and pointed to a slight concave just to the side of the trail, I knew my time had come.  We quickly prepared for what we called an instant ambush.  Charlie was following close behind.  My assistant gunner and I set the M-60’s bi-pod and started stringing every round of ammo we had into the gun’s chamber, locked and loaded, ready to kill—and just as likely, I knew, to be killed. It didn’t matter that I’d never pulled the trigger on an M-60. What mattered was that I was getting ready to.  Just as quickly as the sergeant tapped my shoulder and motioned what he wanted, he left the two of us alone on the trail to mow down anyone coming up from behind.  From the sounds we heard, we wouldn’t have long to wait.

I could tell you that we ambushed Charlie, wiped most of them out and sent them dropping their weapons and running for cover.  That didn’t happen.  What did happen is almost as strange but still true.  It was monsoon season in Vietnam.  Every day, the skies would part, and rain would fall in torrents—almost like being under a waterfall.  My finger was on the trigger of the M-60, my heart in my throat when it began to rain.  My assistant gunner and I lay there on our bellies for an interminable time, rapidly flowing water soaking our fatigues.  When the rain stopped, there was no sound.  I mean none.  Charlie had taken the opportunity to clear out, and we never heard him again.

 That night we camped in the middle of the swamp, mosquitoes and leeches sucking our blood.  It rained so hard that Charlie could have gotten close enough to cut our throats, and we wouldn’t have seen him.  The next morning, the Captain let me shoot the M-60 for practice while we waited for the choppers to extract us. We stood single file, knee-deep in a wide pool of stagnating water. With five hundred rounds locked and loaded, I stood like Rambo, the big gun at my waist, and began mowing vegetation across the pond. I didn’t take my finger off the trigger until the sound of imminent death finally ceased, and the pungent odor of spent rounds wafted up into my nostrils.

It was the first and last time that I ever shot the big gun, though I’ll never forget the sound it made or the power of life and death I felt, and that will never leave me for as long as I live.

Tonight, while watching the piece on Jimi Hendrix, I remembered that sound and that feeling, and it chilled my soul.

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You can also check out his Facebook page.

Cyndi, Sandy, and Elvis

I bought my first motorcycle, an act I now realize symbolized newfound freedom, from Dave B. after divorcing my first wife. Dave now lives near Baton Rouge and was my best friend when we both worked as geologists at an Oklahoma City oil company. The rock and roll world of the last oil boom was hell on marriages, including Dave’s and mine. Both freshly divorced, we became running buddies.  A recent email from my old pal reminded me of one of our adventures.

We both had company cars and what seemed like endless expense accounts. The loose money was great for attracting attention. Between us, Dave and I knew practically every female that worked in downtown Oklahoma City. One night, six oil and gas secretaries persuaded us to spend some of our money and take them to see an Elvis impersonator. We were easily convinced.

Three of the young women were crazy about the recently departed Elvis. The band, backup singers, and Elvis impersonator sounded exactly like Elvis. Well, if you'd had a few drinks and were sexually excited because of being the center of attention of six adoring ladies.

The concert was entertaining, further enhanced when one young lady, in particular, began hitting on me, another on Dave. When we returned to my apartment, Dave and five of the women departed while Cyndi (not her real name) came inside with me for a nightcap. Hell, it was two in the morning! We both had our intentions, and for the moment, I assumed that they were the same.

We were sitting on the floor in front of a fire that I had hastily built in the fireplace, and we were groping around on the rug like a couple of boa constrictors in heat when the phone rang. I have waited to say that Cyndi was the girlfriend of a close friend of mine, Mike (not his real name). Mike was married, Cyndi only his girlfriend, and it is safe to say that he did not intend to marry her. Cyndi and I were both single.

"Have you seen Cyndi?" he asked, she's not at her apartment.

"Maybe," I said, our legs encircled and my hand under her blouse, still clamped on her right breast.

I began to smell a setup when he asked, "Is she at your place?" Cyndi, I suddenly sensed, had used me to make Mike jealous. Still very much engulfed in the throes of extreme passion, I said, "She was here, but she just left. I think she’s on her way back to her apartment. You need to go home," I told her after hanging up the phone and zipping up my pants."

"Are you sure about this?" she asked, standing and adjusting her own clothing.

"There's nothing I would like better than spending the night with you, but I think we would both regret it tomorrow."

Cyndi must have agreed because she was gone in less than five minutes, leaving me to contemplate my unexpected predicament. After all these years Mike is still my friend, as is Cyndi, although their relationship ended years ago. I never made it with Cyndi, though sometime later I had a little fling with Sandy, one of the other girls that Dave and I took to the concert. How did Dave do that night? I never asked, and he never volunteered the story.

Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

A Halloween to Remember

Halloween was on a Friday, so we planned the big bash for Saturday.  Not all of our guests got the message as three revelers showed up for the party Friday night. Born on the day before Halloween, I seem forever destined to be connected to that holiday.

Anne and I married early in 1980 and decided to host a Halloween party that year.

Jakob, an Israeli expatriate that was doing stonework around our house for us, showed up as a cowboy.  He was soon followed by Nancy, a geologist, dressed, strangely enough, as an Indian princess.  John, another geologist, showed up a little later, his only costume a mask. 

Nonplussed, Anne and I broke out the alcohol.  There was a championship boxing match on television that night - Oklahoma City's own Sean O'Grady versus James Watt, a Scottish boxer.  The fight took place in Glasgow, Scotland and to say that there was a bit of home cooking going on is but a mild statement.  After a few rounds, Watt head-butted Sean resulting in a horrible cut over his eye.  Watt should have been disqualified and O'Grady declared the winner.  Instead, the local judges ruled the cut caused by a punch rather than a head-butt. 

Those days there was no rule about excessive bleeding.  To say that there was a little blood strewn around the ring would be a true understatement.  The ring looked more like the inside of a working slaughterhouse, all the viewers, including myself, in shock and totally aghast.  The fight was soon called and Watt proclaimed the world champion. 

We went on to drink, carouse and to celebrate into the wee hours, neither Anne nor I in shape for the real Halloween party that continued as planned the next day. 

A few years later I met Sean O'Grady at a Christmas Party in Oklahoma City.  The room was crowded and I was standing against a wall, sipping my whiskey.  When O'Grady spotted me, he pushed his way through the crowd, looked me straight in the eye and said, "You look just like "Little Red" Lopez." 

He wasn't smiling and I could tell from his expression and the clench of his fists that he was getting ready to hit me.  Having seen his devastating punching power on more than one occasion, I immediately raised my right palm. 

"Believe me, I'm not "Little Red" Lopez.  I'm one of your biggest fans." 

Sean smiled and we proceeded to have a nice conversation.  Lopez, it seems, had beaten the teenaged O'Grady and he had never forgotten or forgiven.  I have posted a picture of "Little Red" on my photo page so you can see for yourself that I look nothing like the former boxer. 

That was the first Halloween party that I hosted, eventful like everyone else that followed.  I have another Sean O'Grady story but I'll save it for another day.

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All of Eric's books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and on his iBook author pages, and his Website.

A Day at the Beach

For many years before writing Big Easy the first book in my French Quarter Mystery Series, I was a geologist. One of my first jobs was as a mudlogger: a person that catches and describes cuttings coming up the wellbore of a drilling well. My first job was on a wildcat near Laurel, Mississippi followed closely by another, even ranker, wildcat a few miles from the Mexican border in south Texas. People that work in the oil industry are a special breed, Texas oil people a whole new variety altogether. My first well in Texas took about six weeks to drill. It wasn’t that the well was that deep, or the drilling that slow. It was quite simply the well from hell.

Everything that could possibly go wrong did go wrong. The sand-shale sequence through which we were drilling was unconsolidated, the drilling fast and the hole soon crooked. Well, bores are never truly vertical because the drill bit rotates causing the pipe to corkscrew. A dogleg sometimes occurs that results in the borehole changing direction abruptly. This was the case in our well, and it created worlds of problems every time the crew made a bit trip.

My fellow mudloggers and I only worked when the drill bit was actually turning to the right. Two drilling superintendents had already been relieved of duty because of problems on the well. The new superintendent decided to try to fix the drilling problem before he became number three.

When dealing with problems encountered miles below the earth’s surface, it’s hard to estimate the time it might take to correct the problem. Because of this, the company placed Jack, Art and me on stand-by. This was okay with us because the company paid us and we didn’t have to work for it.

The quick fix to the drilling problem didn’t occur. By the third day, the three of us were tired of hanging around Weslaco and decided to take a field trip to South Padre Island for a little fun in the sun. After icing down several six packs of beer, we headed for the beach. By the time we reached sun and sand, we were all “two sheets to the wind,” as they say.

Jack was the senior man, but he was only about thirty. What bad habits that Art and I didn’t already possess, we learned from Jack. Art and I worked on the beer while Jack had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s that he tippled straight from the bottle. Jack was smart enough to let Art drive while he sat in the front seat giving us directions from a tattered Texas road map.

South Padre Island is a barrier bar that parallels the Texas Gulf coast and stretches for miles and miles. We were looking for a beach with lots of gorgeous and scantily clad females. After miles of driving, we’d only seen bare sand. Art finally spotted some people sunning on the beach and frolicking in the surf.

“I don’t see a road,” he said.

“There aren’t any trees or ditches,” Jack said. “Just cut cross country.”

This seemed like a perfectly good idea to both Art and me. It wasn’t. Within fifty feet, we were stuck up to the hubs in the sand. Thirty minutes of drunken effort beneath hot Texas sun failed to extricate us.

“Leave it here,” Jack said. “I’m hot as hell. Let’s take a swim.”

This also seemed like a good idea to Art and me. Following Jack to the beach, we proceeded to strip down to our boxer shorts and dive into the surf. In the manner of all good Texas oilmen, we were loud, boisterous, brazen and very drunk. Within minutes, the crowded beach cleared leaving only the three of us to frolic in the surf.

We had no towels, no umbrella, and no swim trunks. Our cold beer in the trunk was a hundred yards away through ankle-deep hot sand. After an hour in the humidity and beneath the south Texas sun, we’d all begun sobering up. A good thing as we were able to free the car when we finally returned to it.

Down the road, we found a recreation area with a hot dog stand and many souvenir shops. Even though we had our clothes back on, the crowd reaction was pretty much the same. They all apparently saw us for what we were: “oil field trash.” We ate a few hotdogs, ogled every girl in sight and then headed back to Weslaco.

I awoke the next morning with a pounding head, queasy stomach, and painful sunburn. Worse, we learned the well was drilling again.

I wish I could say I learned a valuable lesson from this experience. Well, maybe I did. I realized that it's a bad idea to leave behind an ice chest loaded with beer even though you intend to travel little more than a hundred yards away.

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Eric Wilder is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please take a look at his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages, and also his Website.

Gravel Fossils and Alluvial Diamonds

As a geology student at what was then Northeast Louisiana State College, I concentrated on partying as much as I did “cracking the books.” Being a small department, all the professors and students knew each other and we all looked forward to the geology picnic held every spring at a camp on Lake Cheniere - hot dogs, hamburgers, and a keg or two of beer provided the usual fare.

One memory I have of these seasonal events is witnessing a geology professor – goaded by several grad students – attempting to drink the last gallon from the keg. He didn’t make it, and thank goodness final grades for the year were already posted.

The camp on Lake Cheniere was near a large gravel pit, a strip mining operation that had already removed tons of gravel for construction and road building. The pit was a favorite with geology students because it was a virtual endless repository of what we called gravel fossils. What kind of fossils? Silicified, Paleozoic fossils of the marine variety – brachiopods, corals, bryozoans, cephalopods, etc. Well, you get the picture.

How did these three hundred to five hundred-million-year-old fossils end up populating geologically young Louisiana alluvium? In the case of the gravel pits near Monroe, they were eroded and washed down dip from Paleozoic deposits in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas.

There were rumors that alluvial diamonds were also sometimes found in the gravel – rumors because I never talked to anyone that had actually found a diamond, or knew anyone that had. Still, the possibility is legitimate since Murfreesboro in the Ouachita Mountains is the location of a known diamond deposit, with diamonds exposed at the surface of the earth there.

Is it possible that a large, undiscovered alluvial diamond deposit exists in north Louisiana? Consider this – such a deposit is very real in South Africa where alluvial diamonds are found in gravel deposits, much like those in Louisiana. From 1926 to 1984 over 667,000 carats were produced from this part of South Africa known as the Ventersdorp Alluvial Diamond District.

Where would you look if you wanted to find this elusive north Louisiana diamond deposit? That gravel pit near Lake Cheniere might be a good place to start. Hey, and invite me along as I would love to find one of those elusive glitterers.

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.

Totally Naked Geology

All geology students are required to take a course called Field Geology. I took mine near Batesville, Arkansas where I learned how to use an alidade, brunton compass and map surface formations. The real purpose of the course, I learned much latter, is to immerse aspiring students of geology in the sight, taste, and smell of the earth.

Like every other profession, geology is mostly male dominated. That said, there are many excellent females in the business. Geologists are all a weird bunch (myself included) and female geologists seem to take this trait at least one step further.

What I mean is, don’t argue with a female geologist about anything unless you have your facts down pat. If you don’t, be prepared for an ass kicking. All female geologists have minds of their own, and beware the fool. Here is a story told to me by the former head of the University of Missouri geology department that exposes my point. Well, something gets exposed here.

Missouri’s field camp one summer had twenty-five males and only one female geology student. The camp was in the foothills of Colorado where the summers are always hot. Mid-afternoon, all the male geology students would doff their shirts while out in the field, mapping the local geology.

This went on for a week or so and it apparently played on their female counterpart’s psyche. She must have thought about it because one day when they began taking off their shirts, she doffed her own, bra included. Did I mention that she was quite attractive?

The students were spread out across the mountainous terrain, but news of their female counterpart’s topless display spread quickly, resulting in lots of ogling, staring at her through their alidades, and moving their stations closer to get a better look. Lady Geologist didn’t mind the attention and continued doing her job as if nothing had changed.

Once wasn’t enough but the novelty of Lady Geologist’s nudity wore off with her male counterparts before very long. When summer camp ended, she had a pretty good tan, and all the male students had new respect and understanding concerning the weaker sex.

Geologists, as I’ve mentioned, are a strange bunch. Nothing was ever said, or made, of Lady Geologist’s nudity and none of the professors running the camp reprimanded her for her actions. They already knew about female geologists and realized that she was just demonstrating that she could do anything that the boys could do.

http://www.ericwilder.com

A Short Geologic History of New Orleans

In 1718, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville founded the colony that became New Orleans. Sieur de la Salle had claimed the territory for the French in 1682 and France was looking for an outpost from where they could take advantage of the resources of the vast domain. They desired a location with access to the Gulf of Mexico at a spot they could easily defend from possible hostility from other countries. These two factors, high ground, and access, likely resulted in the choosing of the present location of New Orleans.

High ground, you say? Everyone knows that a portion of New Orleans is below sea level. This is true but much has changed since the City was founded in 1718. The fact is the mean elevation of Louisiana is only 100' above sea level. To put this into perspective, Morgan City is 7' above sea level, Lafayette 39' above sea level, Baton Rouge 60' above sea level and the far northwestern city of Shreveport only 177' above sea level. Why then did Bienville situate the City of New Orleans at the second lowest spot in the United States, higher only than Death Valley that has an elevation of 282' below sea level? The answer is, he didn’t.

There were no topographic maps or GPS devices in 1718. Still, seasoned explorers Bienville and his brother D’Iberville understood the concept of high ground. They had located and chosen the site for New Orleans on an expedition more than a decade before the City’s founding. Although no records exist to confirm this assumption, a look at present-day Louisiana geography and geology indicates New Orleans in 1718 may have been at or near the highest elevation at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

New Orleans is part of the Mississippi River Delta, a geographic region that encompasses 13,000 square miles, fully 25% of Louisiana. Deltas are comprised mainly of silt. A look at the mechanics of the Mississippi River explains why. The Mississippi River drops 1,475' from its source in Minnesota to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. Water flows down the river because of gravity. Along the way, the Mississippi is intersected by many smaller rivers.

The Mississippi and the rivers that feed it transport many tons of alluvium picked up along the way because of erosion. The energy of the flowing river carries this alluvium in suspension. As the elevation nears sea level and this energy is dissipated, the river can no longer maintain its load and it is deposited in the form of silt. Often, extra silt is deposited at a meander in the river where energy is locally dissipated. This is a likely scenario for the location of New Orleans in 1718.

Just north of the small town of Donaldsonville the Mississippi turns abruptly eastward. Interestingly, Donaldsonville is near the point the modern Mississippi River threatens to abandon its present course and flow into the Atchafalaya River Basin. The Corp of Engineers has prevented this occurrence for many years by constructing special levees along the course of the Mississippi River. Near Donaldsonville, the Mississippi River flows eastward until it reaches a point just east of New Orleans where it again turns, this time abruptly southward.

Old New Orleans is located in a crescent-shaped bend in the river, a meander. The crescent that formed the Crescent City is really a meander. What happened in 1718 at this meander was a dissipation of energy that resulted in higher ground because of an unloading of sediment. Likely, New Orleans was the highest point near the mouth of the Mississippi River in 1718.

Why is much of New Orleans presently below sea level. The answer is subsidence. Geologically speaking, silt is very unstable. When loaded, it readily compresses and subsides. During the early days of New Orleans, there were no man-made levees separating the City from the Mississippi River. Because of this, the City was flooded with silt and knee-deep water every Spring. City fathers soon began building up the natural levees to prevent this from happening. The result is that much of New Orleans, without the yearly addition of silt from the river, has subsided in the centuries following 1718. Even with this subsidence, the French Quarter and the Central Business District, part of the original settlement, remains at or near sea level and was surely even higher in 1718.

Another reason Bienville chose the present site of New Orleans was access. Native Americans had shown the French a shortcut from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans - a strategic advantage over any foreign power that might attempt to wrest the region from France. This shortcut came through a pass from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Pontchartrain, and then from St. Johns Bayou to present-day New Orleans.

Everyone is aware of the tremendous damage done in 2005 by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. How can we alleviate a future disaster without moving the venerable old City? Here is my suggestion. Cut the levees near Donaldsonville and let the mighty Mississippi follow its preferred course: into the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf of Mexico. Will it change history? Only time will tell.

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Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He is the author of the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans and the Paranormal Cowboy Series. Please check it out on his Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBook author pages. You might also like to check out his website.