GUEST POST CALEB PIRTLE III

I was really pleased when Caleb accepted my invitation to be a guest here. He has consistently supported my work. Each new book that comes out, he’s promoted it on his page. I was especially thrilled when he named me as one of the Top Ten Writers of Women’s Adventure You Need To Be Reading.  And added ‘Her books are filled with action, intrigue, adventure, and danger’. With an accolade like that, I can’t wait to share news of Caleb’s latest book with you.

You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when a reader likes your books? I’m suffering a shock feeling right now, as I’ve just researched Caleb and he’s an author of note and then lots, lots more. I’ve included his bio below so please take a look at that too. He was far too modest to include that in the blurb he sent me.

Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon was published last month – I’ve downloaded it just now. This is Caleb’s description.

This is a story that has haunted me for a long time. It’s true. It happened during the East Texas Oil boom in my hometown of Kilgore. After all of these years, the story has finally found life, forming the backbone of my new novel, Lost Side of An Orphan’s Moon, the third book in The Boom Town Saga.

It’s historical. It’s a mystery. As I wrote about the book:  Who is the small boy who stepped off the train with a paper note attached to his coat that said: My name is Ollie Porter. My daddy is Oliver Porter. He works in the oilfields. Does anyone know where he is? Is the boy connected to the fancy dancer or, perhaps, the killer? Or is he just a waif in search of a home? 

The true story is just as mysterious. The boy was a fresh face in the midst of strangers, a new face chilled by the rains, and the rains showed no sign of ever stopping. He stepped from the train, lost and alone. He had been that way for a long time. He was only nine years old.

I found his story on the back page of a Kilgore newspaper printed in 1932. The pages were yellowed. The words were fading. The story had already faded. The story was gone. And I grieved for the boy.

The newspaper story was a short one. One column. One paragraph. Small headline. An afterthought, maybe. Newspaper layouts always had a little hole from time to time.

Some reporters filled it.

He wrote of a frightened little boy who shyly stepped off the train and into mud that was piled ankle-deep on Kilgore’s streets.   On the boy’s jacket was a tag, and on it someone had written the lad’s name and the name of his daddy.

His fare had paid his way to Kilgore. He would go no farther. And he had no idea where to do next, surrounded by strangers and faces he had never seen before.

His mama had packed him up like a suitcase and sent him for hundreds of miles down an endless railroad track to find his daddy. His daddy was working in the oilfield. That’s all his mama knew.

His daddy could feed him. She couldn’t. She was penniless and destitute. The boy’s only hope was to find his daddy.

Did he? I never knew, and the missing pieces haunt me.

In Lost Side of an Orphan’s Moon, I write the fictional account of a lost boy on an oilfield town’s street. In every piece of fiction, there is always a nugget of truth.

Buy link:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B088KV1VFK

About Caleb Pirtle III

Caleb Pirtle III lives in the present but prefers the past. He is the author of more than eighty books, including four noir thrillers in the Ambrose Lincoln series: Secrets of the Dead, Conspiracy of Lies, Night Side of Dark, and Place of Skulls. Secrets and Conspiracy are also audiobooks on audible.com. All of the novels are set against the haunting backdrop of World War II. His Lonely Night to Die features three noir thrillers in one book, following the exploits of the Quiet Assassin, a rogue agent who has fled the CIA. He takes the missions no one else wants. He is expendable, and he knows it.
His award-winning Boom Town Saga includes Back Side of a Blue Moon, the story of a con man who comes to a dying East Texas town during the Great Depression, promises to drill for oil, and falls in love with a beautiful woman who just may have killed her husband. In Bad Side of a Wicked Moon, the lawless have come to the oil patch, and justice has left town.
Pirtle also wrote Friday Nights Don’t Last Forever, the story of a high school quarterback whose life spins into turmoil during his entanglements with illegal college recruiting, and Last Deadly Lie is the chilling story of the gossip and scandal that threatens to break a church apart in the midst of greed, jealousy and murder.
Pirtle is a graduate of The University of Texas in Austin and became the first student at the university to win the National William Randolph Hearst Award for feature writing. Several of his books and his magazine writing have received national and regional awards.
Pirtle has written two teleplays: Gambler V: Playing for Keeps, a mini-series for CBS television starring Kenny Rogers, Loni Anderson, Dixie Carter, and Mariska Hargitay, and The Texas Rangers, a TV movie for John Milius and TNT television. He wrote two novels for Berkeley based on the Gambler series: Dead Man’s Hand and Jokers Are Wild. He wrote the screenplay for one motion picture, Hot Wire, starring George Kennedy, Strother Martin, and John Terry.
Pirtle’s narrative nonfiction, Gamble in the Devil’s Chalk is a true-life book about the fights and feuds during the founding of the controversial Giddings oilfield and From the Dark Side of the Rainbow, the story of a woman’s escape from the Nazis in Poland during World War II. His coffee-table quality book, XIT: The American Cowboy, became the publishing industry’s third bestselling art book of all time.
Pirtle was a newspaper reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and served ten years as the travel editor for Southern Living Magazine. He was editorial director for a Dallas custom publisher for more than twenty-five years.
He and his wife, Linda, live in the rolling, timbered hills of East Texas. She is the author of two cozy mysteries.

I am so proud to have you as my guest this week Caleb.

Lucinda