| 2 | > |
Recently, I received an email asking, “Who is Michelle Tanner? Is she whole cloth from your imagination? Is she based on a real person? Will she ever find love?”
Those are valid questions. Let’s start with, who is Michelle Tanner? She is a fictional frontier woman who lived her life like men lived their lives in the period of history between the Civil War and turn of the century. Michelle lived in that time we call, the Old West. A proud, fiercely independent woman who refused to be boxed in by the traditions of her time. She wasn’t all that unique, there were more than 1000 women during those years that fit the same mold as Michelle Tanner.
Is she whole cloth from my imagination? Yes and no.
Was she a real person? No, Michelle Tanner did not exist. However, she is a compilation or combination of several women who did live in those wild years. So, in a way, the question is she based on a real person? is a resounding sort of.
I stitched together facts and characteristics for Shell from both heroines and villains, or is it, villainesses? There’s Bandit Pearl Hart, Laura Bullion of the Wild Bunch (never saw that in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, did you?) Bell Star, who out famed her outlaw husband, Sam Star. Bell was also pals with Cole Younger (maybe more than pals, yeah, more than pals, poor Sam). Bell worked as a prostitute between train, bank, and stagecoach holdups (poor Cole and Sam…shame on her). We have Claire Helena Ferguson, the girl sheriff of Utah. Calamity Jane Cannery, yes that is the right spelling, or is it? Some report it as Canary, but isn’t that small bird that sings? Either way, Martha Jane was a boisterous, adventurous woman, who was the best self-promoter in the Old West, she’d make a good friend for Michelle. Ellen Liddy Watson, also known as Cattle Kate, was a Wyoming woman rancher who worked her own cattle on her own land. She may or may not have been a cattle rustler, but she was lynched for being a rustler by a competing rancher. (Then again, the winner writes the history, so who knows?) Lillian Smith and Anne Oakley were rivals with shooting irons (though not gunfight-wise); their competitions were at targets, not each other. Then there’s F.M. Miller, who was appointed as a U.S. Deputy Marshal out of the federal court at Paris, Texas. There are several other US Deputy and full Marshals out there, more than I have room to name here.
There’s a mite of each of these women rolled up into Michelle Tanner, and a few others I didn’t name. Michelle would have fit right in with any of these women. Most of the erstwhile mentioned females lived on equal footing with men. Often, they dressed like men, spoke the same way that the men spoke (profanities and all), smoked, chewed, and drank like them. They even earned the respect of the men they worked with or against, as the case may be.
That brings us to the last question, will Michelle ever find love? I don’t know, I’m not sure she wants love. However, if she does, there is a good chance she could. Pearl Hart was married twice, once to an abusive bugger and once to her true love and thieving partner. Likewise, Jane Cannery had two husbands and a long-term love affair with a madam of a…house of ill repute…in Deadwood. Despite her insistence that she and Wild Bill Hickok were lovers, there is no evidence of that affair. Cattle Kate had a husband, though the marriage was kept secret so she could file claims on the land adjoining her husband's. Many of the other women mentioned were married or had long-term love affairs. But Shell professes to have no interest in such foolishness. Only time will tell us if she is as disinterested in home and hearth as she appears to be.
Now, to me personally, Michelle Tanner is as real as any of those women of history whose stories I have read. I can’t wait to see what happens next for Michelle! I’m hoping to crank out two additional novels featuring the fiery redhead in the near future! I have four stories featuring her for sale over at Bookapy/ZBookstore. Two are novels, Michelle Tanner Going West, and two are novellas over yonder as well. Michelle Tanner Going West is being posted here one part at a time each Monday for the next seven weeks.
You can meet Michelle Tanner in Michelle Tanner Going West.
Michelle Tanner Going West Part One Ambush at Kansas City
Today, I’ve published the first part of my eight-part novel, Michelle Tanner Going West. I will post the following parts every Monday for the next eight weeks. There will be a link to the Zbookstore/Bookapy purchase page for the full novel at the bottom of each part. No pressure to buy or not to buy is always up to the reader. I haven’t decided whether I’m putting this behind the paywall. I think not, at least not until after the entire book is up, and maybe not then.
Ambush at Kansas City, part one of the novel, is set mainly in Kansas City. Michelle Tanner meets a living legend on a train bound west in 1864, and a friendship blooms. Follow along as a ragtag group of strangers becomes a family.
This is my original story in the Michelle Tanner Series and my first novel under my Ron Lewis pen. I love a good Western. I hope you’ll enjoy this one and consider it a good one.
Michelle Tanner Going West
Ron Lewis
Bain's name is a combination of my paternal and maternal grandfathers. John Henry and Bain being their given names were combined to create my bounty hunters full name. Two men that were very important to me as a child. I used the name for my days competing in SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) better known as Cowboy Action Shooting. At the time I wrote the first story about him, I chose the name because of the connection to my Grandpa and my PaPa. Since both my granddads were old, the first tale I featured John in he was old.
When I wrote his first adventure, this man, an aging former gunfighter turned gunsmith, must drag his guns out one more time. I don't remember much about what other's thought of the story, but I liked it, and I really liked Bain. The teacher, a wonderful woman now in her late 80's or early 90's, loved it and began to urge me to write more.
I continued to write about Bain on legal pads and kept them in a box. At some point, I can't quite remember exactly when I started writing longer stories about other characters. That notwithstanding, I returned to Bain often, writing about different periods in his life. I never attempted to get any of John Henry's stories published but kept those short stories in the same box as all my other writing.
In the late 70's I did try to get stories published. Had one novel that a publisher said, "Show's promise, make these changes, and we will review the book again." Unfortunately, I was going through a divorce at the time, then a remarriage and yet another divorce. So, five years after the fact I open my box to make those changes (and yes much too late to have the publisher remember it) and all my notes, short stories, outlines, and completed novels have been shredded.
This event set me back, about 25 years. Eventually, I rewrote the full-length novel, a western. Now, I'm exploring Bain once again. If you are a fan of westerns, you might check it out John Henry Bain Bounty Hunter, right here on Storiesonline. Follow me on Facebook, or check out my webpage.
A new western submitted for you're approval. John Henry Bain, Bounty Hunter ... The Texas winter of 1868-1869 was mild on the plains now known as the Texas Panhandle. On the lonely plains, ten fleeing bandits bent on freedom had no Idea how violent the Comanche defended their territory could be. The posse trailing them had thinned to just one relentless man, and the bandits figured they would lose him in the twisting canyon ahead. The ten desperate men rode into the Palo Duro Canyon, with John Henry Bain following a few hours behind. The bandits had thought that Bain was their biggest problem - until they encountered the Indians. Following them into the canyon, Bain tracked them. Would he capture them, or meet his end at the hands of the blood-thirsty Comanche?
I got my next tale of the old west back from the editor a bit earlier than I thought I would. I posted it for you guys to read and hope you like it. What is it they say about hope? It springs eternal, right. Any way this one is set in October of 1865 and features a character I'm pretty fond of, Deputy US Marshal Wounded Hawk a half-bred college educated Indian. Eighteen-sixty-five is probably a tad bit early for a man of mixed blood being a deputy marshal, but if you can't stretch the truth a smidge now-n-again why write at all? So, I hope you take a cotton to Hawk as well, pull up chair, sit down and check out this little account I call Beyond the Mountain.
Deputy US Marshal Wounded Hawk is ready to head back to Golden City, after taking a prisoner to Estes Park, Colorado. But when a group of bandits decide to pick that particular bank to rob, Hawk and the local Marshal's posse set out in pursuit. The half breed Marshal will need all his Indian tracking skills to catch up to this band of outlaws. But the posse are ill prepared for the gang leader's relentless pursuit of freedom.
I'd appreciate it if you took the time to read the story. If you like it hate it or even if you think it's the worst sort of trash ever written feel free to drop me a note saying so. Good, Bad, or Ugly your opinion matters to me.
| 2 | > |