A SLATE CREED FUGITIVE WESTERN Glengarry Plantation. A house divided by war . Clete Slater returns from war to find his home occupied by Federal soldiers and his sister engaged to a Yankee. Disinherited and disowned he has no choice except to live by the words that have served his family generation after generation, Now, he will make the family creed A TEXAS CREED. Larry Names is a prolific author of sports histories and biographies, historical mysteries set in California's silent movie era, a mystery involving the JFK Assassination, and novels of the American West including the best-selling SLATE CREED FUGITIVE WESTERN SERIES. Historical documents, real places, and real people of the time give his stories such vivid authenticity that readers say they are so enthralled that they feel like they are actually a part of the story as living participants of real history. Sentenced to hang for a crime he didn't commit, Texan Slate Creed escapes and becomes a fugitive out to prove his innocence. His quest begins as he searches for the men who framed him, all the time moving through real history in real places and among real people. He encounters such renowned and infamous figures as: Jesse and Frank James, Cole Younger and Belle Starr General William Tecumseh Sherman Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving of the Goodnight-Loving Trail fame Clay Allison Mexican President Benito Juárez Ute Chief Ouray His search takes him to such places as: Matamoros, Mexico New Orleans, Louisiana Nashville, Tennessee Mammoth Cave, Kentucky The Cherokee and Choctaw Nations Denver and Bent's Fort, Colorado Fort Smith and Boston Mountain, Arkansas Join CREED on his journey to clear his name, so he may return home to Texas to live in peace and freedom. In 1976, I made a career decision, a life changing decision, to take up writing full-time. I had written one book by then, and it, THE LEGEND OF EAGLE CLAW, had not been published or even sold yet. That summer I quit my job at the Phoenix Gazette and went to Wisconsin with my future wife Peg to write a second book, THE SHAMAN'S SECRET. I didn't know it at the time, but I was writing a western. At least, my agent and dear friend the late Ray Puechner (Ray Peekner Literary Agency) sold it as a western to Doubleday in 1978. I had no desire to write westerns. I wanted to write all kinds of stories, not just westerns. But the editor at Doubleday, Jim Menick, gave me my start, and I am forever grateful to him. In so many nice words, Jim told me I couldn't write worth a plug nickel but my storytelling ability was on a level with Mark Twain. Wow! What a compliment! And what a slam! Can't write, but tells a good story. Okay, I could live with that. I figured I could learn to write, if someone was willing to teach me. Jim was willing. He taught me a great deal in a few short years before he left Doubleday for a job with Reader's Digest. He also led me into writing three more westerns for Doubleday: BOSE, BOOMTOWN, and THE COWBOY CONSPIRACY. By 1987, I was pretty much labeled a western writer. Ray Puechner told me to develop a western series and to join the Western Writers of America. I joined and went to my first convention that summer in Sheridan, Wyoming. That's where I met Tom Colgan who was the westerns editor at Berkley back then. I asked him if he would be interested in looking at a series I was developing, and he said he would. Thing was, I wasn't working on a series. I was thinking about it, but I wasn't actually working on it yet. I rushed home from the convention and started working on one. I started by picking a name for my lead character: Clete Slater. I gave him a family history and a family motto, which he called the family creed. Then I put him in Texas at the end of the Civil War. I looked at a map of Texas to find a place for his home. I came across Lavaca County, which is about halfway between Houston and San Antonio. It turned out to be the perfect place because Lavaca County had a great history that was well documented by a local historian. Much of that history is in the CREED SERIES, starting with A TEXAS CREED. The research was almost as much fun as the writing. Hope you enjoy it.- Larry Names, bharte54@yahoo.com, larrynames.com.