Sage nodded and then looked at Steve and Eps. "Well, what are you guys?"
Steve said, "I'm the wise uncle you go to for advice about baseball and advanced calculus and—"
"And I'm the crazy uncle who'll teach you about chemistry and explosives and—"
Scotty tightened his grip on the little girl and growled, "The heck you will." Then, seeing the disappointment on Sage's face. "OK, well, maybe but only if there's an adult present—and that doesn't include you, Eps."
Sage's smile returned.
Eve was smiling. "And I'm the grown-up. If you ever change your mind or have any problems that these brainy men can't deal with—like boys—" Sage made a face. "Well, you may not think so now, but you will."
She rolled her toes over Rick gently. "And this lug is here for, well, the things he's good for."
Eve's voice sobered, "We may not always be living in this house or even all living in the same city—that's why Scotty is adopting you—but all of us are your family."
"This means you have The Deal," Scotty said, and Rick could hear the capitals in his voice. "The Deal means that we will always take you in and never tell you to leave. You'll always be loved and taken care of for the rest of your life."
Sage asked, "What do I have to do? What if I'm rude or fail in school?"
"It doesn't matter," Scotty answered. "Even if you turn into an ungrateful, nasty, horrible brat, even if you fail every class, even if you crash the car when you learn to drive…nothing you do will ever break The Deal."
He looked at the other two, "Right?"
In unison, Steve and Eps said, "Right," and then Eps added, "But you still have to take your turn doing dishes."
Sage looked around the room, "Well…" She screwed up her face in mock concentration. "What if I wanted to go to The Dancing Crab and get All You Can Eat blue crabs with corn and brown paper and the wooden hammers?"
Scott said, "Then you'd be perfect." He put his hands on her sides and tossed her a few feet to land squealing on the sofa. "Let's go to The Crab."
THE END
Author’s Note
I am not a member of any Native American tribe (so far as I know but the family has been on this continent quite a long time). I have attempted to be as accurate as possible with the land, traditions, and culture of the Northern Cheyenne with one major exception. I specifically stopped my research into the Arrows, the Arrow Men, and all the other elements of their religious beliefs with what was known (to white anthropologists) around 1905.
From what I’ve gathered, the tribes are all undergoing a tremendous and joyous rebirth of traditions and religious customs at the present time; and, frankly, while I thought it was acceptable to use outdated and probably incorrect reports of someone else’s religion as a plot point, I didn’t think it was the same when an outsider goes poking around in current beliefs. In addition, from several online posts, I gathered that these matters were not to be discussed with outsiders, and I decided to be incorrect rather than intrusive.
So, if I’ve made mistakes, I apologize, but if I was just way out of date, that was intentional.
I’ve also taken liberties with the day-to-day events in and around Wounded Knee in April 1973. I found a lot of contradictions in the various histories so I made my own timeline—Warrior is a thriller, not a serious history.
As for the other "religion" in this book, I would like to ask all the bikers to chill out. Sturgis was not a big deal in 1973 (a one-or two-day hill climb) and the parade of massive motorcycles through the Black Hills really hadn’t begun.
—Terry Irving
Acknowledgements
I wrote this book right before my publisher, Exhibit A, vanished into legal limbo and, while I did receive an advance for it, I’m fairly certain that no one there actually read it. Two years later, when I set out to publish it myself, I received some major help in editing and proofing from Barbara Flanagan—one of my wonderful Reading Ronin.
The cover by the incredible Nick Castle, is as good as the original Courier cover and I want to thank him for allowing me to keep using that gorgeous Courier cover after Exhibit A went belly-up and it became a Ronin Robot Press book.
Now, as I write this, I am crowd-funding Ronin Robot Press on www.Pubslush.com and I’d like to sincerely thank the following people who have given me a helping hand as I try to fight my way through the puzzle palace of publishing. So far the List of Honor includes:
Sandy Irving,
Page Godwin,
George Rivera,
Tom Tarvin,
Barbara Flanagan (again!)
David Guilbault,
Christy Birmingham,
Bruce (Fang) Davidson,
Turner Bridgforth,
Sharon Gibson,
Robert Early,
Charlie Seymour,
David Bohrman,
John Wulff,
Ken Tillis,
Pat Alder,
Katie Sullivan,
Jesse Lakes,
Sam Foley,
and Bill Pastuszek.
(the rest will have to be thanked in Taxi Dancer, my next book,)
Special thanks to the absolute #1 Fan of All Time: Don Critchfield, who shall now appear as a really cool character in Taxi Dancer and not the guy who gets killed off in the first chapter. Any writer with a brain in their head would give anything to have someone like Don in their corner.
Thank you all for your encouragement and thanks to all the people who have bought Courier and Day of the Dragonking and even the more than 4,000 people who have downloaded these books for free because you read them, reviewed them, and told your friends about them.
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COURIER
By Terry Irving
Rick Putnam is running for his life. A Vietnam Veteran riding a motorcycle for a national news network, he's picked up something too hot to handle. So hot that a reporter and a camera crew has already been killed and a rogue CIA kill squad is on his tail. Stick with this charismatic character as he fights his way all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania in his battle for the truth.
"An action-packed tale of murder and political intrigue set in the politically turbulent 1970s… Irving portrays [courier Rick Putnam] as a classic pulp-fiction hero: a chiseled, chain-smoking ex-soldier who's always ready with snappy quips…Irving's story is relentlessly paced, punctuated by bursts of action and violence, and driven by artfully unfolding suspense…An exciting and gritty…thriller."
—Kirkus Reviews.
“Rick Putnam is a recent Vietnam vet in the early 1970s who works as a courier for a Washington, DC television station while trying to put his life back together after being injured in the war…Courier is a tense story set in the days before social media, when news professionals still need to develop film in a dark room and splice footage together. Author Terry Irving clearly knows the inside of the news business in a different time…"
—Reviewed by Kathleen Heady for Suspense Magazine
"The year is 1972, mix the White House, the Watergate burglary, the war in Vietnam and murder in Washington and you've got a terrific story…Kudos to one of television's best producers for writing the thriller of the year!"
—Sam Donaldson, former ABC News White House reporter
"…Welcome to Terry Irving's fast-paced thriller from a bygone age. The Vietnam War is winding down, a wounded vet takes a job as a motorcycle courier at a network's Washington news bureau, and finds himself
caught up in the backwash of a harrowing conspiracy. Terry Irving knows the landscape. I was there. So was he."
—Ted Koppel, former anchor for ABC Nightline
"To call Terry Irving's book a "page turner" is a gross understatement. As a journalist who covered Vietnam developments in Washington, and the Watergate scandal, this book is entirely believable, scary, and thrilling. Irving is in the top tier of political-mystery writers. And as a (ABC) network producer, he draws on a vast inside knowledge to keep readers glued to every page. If you like politics and a good mystery, you will love this book."
—Bill Greenwood, former White House Correspondent
"With all the power and speed of a motorcycle courier trying to beat a deadline, and the cyclist's
fine balance of thriller thrust and inside-the-newsroom detail, Terry Irving's new novel, Courier, will keep you entertained from start to finish."
—Dave Marash, former Nightline Reporter
DAY OF THE DRAGON KING
Book One Of The Last American Wizard
By Terry Irving
What if this world is just “magic” and somehow it is replaced by a stronger magic? In The Last American Wizard, the world Steve Rowan has known ceases to exist. He can no longer rely on anything he thought was real and his life as well as everyone else’s is now being controlled by a deck of tarot cards. A deck in which he plays the fool. The epicenter of this magical change…Washington D.C., of course.
"A clever, humorous fantasy…Mystically powered terrorists unleash volatile magic on the world, turning Washington, D.C., into a politically charged fantasyland ripe for human sacrifice.
A trio of suicide attackers with magical abilities bring down a 747 by summoning a dragon to rip it from the sky, using the hundreds of lives lost as a sacrifice to initiate the Change. The country morphs into a new landscape of swords and sorcery. Now computers and other machines are coming to life, and regular people have started to turn into mythical creatures and forgotten deities, creating a chaotic world easily seized by whoever—or whatever—set this shift into motion.
Hope appears in the nation’s capital where, along with transforming Democrats into potbellied elves, Republicans into cantankerous dwarves, and Tea Party members into trolls, the Change has granted struggling freelance journalist Steve Rowan the abilities of the Tarot Arcana’s Fool card, making him a powerful, yet unreliable, wizard. Realizing his potential, he is “hired” by the trivia-obsessed sentient computer Barnaby and coupled with the attractive, no-nonsense female Navy SEAL Ace Morningstar to uncover the puppet masters behind the plane crash.
Irving (Courier, 2014, etc.), a producer of Emmy Award—winning news television and a journalist well acquainted with the Beltway, makes good use of clichéd Washington stereotypes by mashing them together with fantasy tropes, breathing new life into political satire….
Like many first books in a genre series, the novel foreshadows a greater enemy behind all this madness while barely hinting at its identity, offering a wonderfully bizarre consolation prize as its denouement.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Terry Irving has written a science fiction/fantasy thriller that will have you laughing one moment and racing through adrenaline-pumping action the next. The Last American Wizard will twist you in knots while expanding your imagination. You will never look at magic the same again.”
—J.M. LeDuc, author of Sin
published by Suspense Publishing
The Author
Terry Irving is a four-time Emmy award-winning writer and producer. He has also won three Peabody Awards, three DuPont Awards and has been a producer, editor, or writer with ABC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC.
Exhibit A Publishing released his first novel, Courier, on May, 1, 2014 and subsequently went out of business on June 7, 2014.
Terry denies all responsibility.
Courier went on to win several awards, sell close to 10,000 copies, and form the nucleus of Ronin Robot Press.
Courier was re-released in January of 2015, and Warrior, the sequel, in July 2015. Day of the Dragonking: Book One of the Last American Wizard was released on April Fool’s Day 2015 (you need to read it to understand why I thought that was appropriate.) Last, but not least, Taxi Dancer, the first in a series featuring private eye Angel Pearl and set in 1930's Manila, is due later in 2015.
In addition, Ronin Robot Press is putting together an exciting lineup of the best new writers in Westerns, Romance, and Children’s Books. Check them out on Amazon’s Kindle eBooks and at www.roninrobotpress.com. Undefeated Love, a story of growing up in 1972 among the strange teenage subcultures of suburban Philadelphia by Bruce Bennett, was released in June 2015. Gold for San Joaquin by Cliff Roberts was the first Western released by Ronin Robot Press, followed by Texas Spitfire, a Western romance by Chloe Mayer, and Timmy and Stacey’s Adventure at the Carnival by Dennis Gager and Nathan Beckwith.
Many more are still to come.
Warrior (Freelancer Book 2) Page 29
