MKC Books

At long last, Dead White has gone from electrons to paper.

I approved the proofs last week for a trade paperback version. Currently it's available at Amazon. In about six weeks, they say, it should be available for ordering through most bookstores.

What's trade paperback? It is a larger (6x9) format than the mass market paperbacks you find on racks at the grocery store. It allowed me to get more text into fewer pages, as I tend to write long. The paper is also of higher quality so hopefully it will last longer too!

Electrons are the future; paper is the past. I like to straddle time. I hope you enjoy whichever version best suits you.

In Dead White, I mention that a copy of Harvey Dunn's The Prairie Is My Garden hangs on the kitchen wall at 22 Okerlund Road. And probably in many other places in the Dakotas.
 

Harvey Dunn was born near Manchester, South Dakota, in 1884. He attended what was to become South Dakota State University, where he was encouraged by an enthusiastic teacher to enroll in the Chicago Art Institute. He eventually settled in New Jersey, becoming a successful illustrator and teacher.

His prairie works, which are primarily what he is now known for, were done later in his life, long after he left the prairie of his birth. He didn't display them publicly until 1950 at an exhibit in De Smet, South Dakota. The response was gratifying enough that he decided to donate the paintings to the state of South Dakota.

The original painting of The Prairie Is My Garden is now housed at the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, along with many others of Dunn's best known works.

One of my favorite quotes of Dunn's: "Paint a little less of the facts and a little more of the spirit."

As you can see, I've added a new cover, in preparation for the print version of Dead White. I've uploaded the e-book version to the various retailer sites already but it may take a while to filter through the system. The print version will take longer, likely sometime in January, but I will announce it here.

The cover artist is Glendon S. Haddix of Streetlight Graphics. I sent him my ideas one day, expecting a long wait, and he really wowed me by designing my cover the very next day! And he nailed it the first time. No revisions.

I love the way he incorporated the isolated, rural landscape of the prairie with the frozen chain that's a key element in the mystery. And the red font for my name...a subconscious hint that murder's afoot? He even came up with the tagline on top. Picture me epically impressed.

Before I release the print version of Dead White, I am also contemplating minor revisions to the text, especially to the first chapter, which appears to have confused some people. Not good. Making readers stumble right out of the chute is likely to chuck me into the cattle trough!

The retablos in Dead White, made by Detective Okerlund's old partner, Sgt. Manny Trujillo, are part of a long New Mexico tradition. The painters themselves are called retableros or santeros, makers of saints. They may paint on tin or wood.

Here is a traditional Madonna and Child I picked up at an arts fair in Albuquerque. Artist unknown.

Here is of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico City, by Elizabeth Dell Golbach. I picked it up in Taos. This is the saint with the angel on the hem that Sgt. Manny Trujillo used to paint the retablo that plays a big part in the story.

There truly are saints for all occasions! Here is St. Liberata, patron saint to "relieve self of unwanted suitors and burdensome husbands." By Richard M. Montoya of Santa Cruz.

One of the inspirations of the book Dead White was the painting called Blizzard Bath by Oscar Howe. It makes a passing appearance in the story, as one of the prints Detective Marek Okerlund's mother had framed and placed in her bedroom.

As a graduate of the University of South Dakota, Janina Marek Okerlund may well have known the Sioux painter who was Artist in Residence there for many years. She would have seen his pictures hanging around campus and felt, as I did, that Howe touched the heart of Dakota.

Blizzards are part of the glory and the tragedy of the Plains. The Children's Blizzard of 1888, which struck just as children were leaving their schoolhouses, is still talked of today.

Now, we curse blizzards when they cross our path, revel in them from the safety of our homes, and brag of our escape from them. Or sigh as we fill out a check for the cost of removing their fury, wind-packed snow, from our drives and country roads.