Welcome to our site.

JE_Gessler_WGAW SL_Kotar_WGAW1

It has often been said that authors should write about what they know, so we open our webpage with our credentials. We have been involved in writing fiction and non-fiction that specializes in the 1800s for decades and were members of the Writers Guild of America, West, for ten years, but it has only been recently that we decided to actively publish and promote our work.

Aside from writing the highest-rated episode of GUNSMOKE in the 20-year history of the series (“Kitty’s Love Affair” – NOT our title, by the way; and there was no “affair”), we created, published and wrote many articles for “The Kepi Magazine,” an iconoclastic publication that specialized in the Civil War and 19th century life.

When it became apparent to us we wanted to expand our creativity into books, we began by writing a number of novels set in the 1800’s, two series of which we present here as e-books. The first trilogy we called “The Kansas Pirates.” Set immediately before the Civil War, the story centers around a family in Lawrence, Kansas. Plagued by the townspeople and his neighbors because he has a son they consider “possessed,” Seth Ward struggles to maintain his small farm and raise two children after the death of his wife. A young seafaring woman named Nelander, who lost her berth in San Francisco after her father, Captain Nelander, is killed, is making her way across the country when she runs out of money in Lawrence. Considered “peculiar” for her occupation and strong will, she is sent to the Ward farm to seek a job. Together, she and Seth fight prejudice and the mounting tensions of War in this three-part series released by Tirgearr Publishing.

The second series we present is a more traditional Western entitled the “Hellhole Saga.” This trilogy centers around the maturation of a young man appointed marshal of Hellhole, Kansas in the post-Civil War era when Northern-Southern feelings still burn as hot as men’s tempers. Although he comes with credentials – he outdrew the gunfighter who killed his mentor, the legendary Marshal Jack Duvall – Claw Kiley quickly learns how difficult survival can be in an untamed hider town.

Click an image below to purchase an e-book from Amazon.

The Kansas Pirates Saga

Pirate Treasure
Pirate Treasure The newly appointed ‘First Officer’ transforms a haunted homestead into a hopeful pirate ship right in the middle of the driest summer the Kansas prairie had to offer, and finds love unexpectedly along the voyage.
Strawberry Fields
Strawberry Fields The second novel in the Kansas Pirate Saga The unlikely love of the nautical woman and the practical homesteader blossoms with love, respect, friendship, hard work and strawberries!

Book III, “The Drinking Gourd” coming soon from Tirgearr Publishing!

 

The Hellhole Saga

First Draw
First Draw

Audition for a Legend

 

Strange Bedfellows

 

For those interested in the 19th Century from a research or historical perspective, we are also the authors of five texts that deal with uniquely 1800s issues. Our first book was “The Steamboat Era,” that covers the creation and development of “Fulton’s Folly” throughout the time it dominated transportation across the United States waterways. Included in our extensively researched text are the perceptions of the steamboat among those who witnessed, traveled on, or made a living with or on these marvels of American invention and imagination.

American Circus    Ballooning

The Steamboat Era

Riverboat

 

Small Pox   Cholera

Amblulatory Cardiac Monitoring