Bottom of the Hill Publishing

admin August 11th, 2010

Where Free Men Gather, the first book of Dave P. Fisher’s The Poudre Canyon Saga trilogy will soon be available from Bottom of the Hill Publishing.

Mountain men, Voyageurs, pioneers, and explorers make up most of the branches of Dave’s family tree. His mother’s side was from Canada where the men plied the fur trade in the Canadian wilderness. Some ventured into the Rocky Mountains during the beaver boom in the 1820’s. Others moved down into the wilds of Northern Minnesota and established trading posts among the Chippewa Indians.

On his father’s side were soldiers, veterans of the War of 1812, and the Spanish American War. His natural grandfather died out West while working as a telegrapher for the railroad. His step grandfather, born in the 1800’s, was Blackfoot Indian from Montana. He was a hunter and horseman who brought a great deal of Old West influence into the Fisher family.

Dave brings his heritage and experience alive in every line he writes, Where Free Men Gather is his finest work yet. Look for Where Free Men Gather at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other fine books sellers available September 2010.

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admin May 10th, 2010

Bottom of the Hill Publishing has contracted with LSI for printing all Bottom of the Hill books for print. This agreement also includes book distribution through Ingram Book Company. This agreement with LSI and Ingram allow Bottom of the Hill to offer greater distribution and printing opportunities to authors.

About LSI and Ingram:

Ingram Distribution Channel

Using the distribution strength of Ingram Book Company your book always appears in stock and available to all Ingram customers. With over 30,000 wholesalers, retailers and booksellers in over 100 countries your titles will gain the maximum exposure in the market today.

Other Distribution Channels

We maintain relationships with the most comprehensive portfolio of booksellers serving consumers today as is evidenced by the list below. The practices of individual wholesalers and retailers determine whether your titles show as “in stock.”

Lightning Source Distribution Partners

• Ingram
• Amazon.com
• Baker & Taylor
• Barnes & Noble
• NACSCORP
• Espresso Book Machine

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admin May 4th, 2010

Bottom of the Hill Publishing has released Letters from a Cat by Helen Hunt Jackson for  Kindle.

Dear Children:

I do not feel wholly sure that my Pussy wrote these letters herself. They always came inside the letters written to me by my mamma, or other friends, and I never caught Pussy writing at any time when I was at home; but the printing was pretty bad, and they were signed by Pussy’s name; and my mamma always looked very mysterious when I asked about them, as if there were some very great secret about it all; so that until I grew to be a big girl, I never doubted but that Pussy printed them all alone by herself, after dark.

They were written when I was a very little girl, and was away from home with my father on a journey. We made this journey in our own carriage, and it was one of the pleasantest things that ever happened to me. My clothes and my father’s were packed in a little leather valise which was hung by straps underneath the carriage, and went swinging, swinging, back and forth, as the wheels went round. My father and I used to walk up all the steep hills, because old Charley, our horse, was not very strong; and I kept my eyes on that valise all the while I was walking behind the carriage; it seemed to me the most unsafe way to carry a valise, and I wished very much that my best dress had been put in a bundle that I could carry in my lap. This was the only drawback on the pleasure of my journey,–my fear that the valise would fall off when we did not know it, and be left in the road, and then I should not have anything nice to wear when I reached my aunt’s house. But the valise went through all safe, and I had the satisfaction of wearing my best dress every afternoon while I stayed; and I was foolish enough to think a great deal of this.

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admin April 27th, 2010

Drytown History

Drytown, originally Big Bend, Utah Territory, was a small community near the cross-country Overland Trail, used by travelers in the mid-to-late 1800s. Drytown was important, mainly because it was on the way to somewhere else.

What that means is that Drytown was a major transfer point, where supply wagons traveling east and west, off-loaded merchandise to other wagons that carried it to towns and ranches north and south of Drytown.

In 1864–the last year of the Civil War–the western part of Utah Territory became the state of Nevada.

In 1869, when the Central Pacific Railroad in its westward expansion reached Drytown, company officials renamed it Wadsworth, in honor of the respected Civil War Union general, James Wadsworth. The story is that, when he was killed in battle, both sides ceased fighting until his body was removed from the field of combat.

Many of the characters in the tales are real people. Others are fictional. They are a very accepting group of people and mix together with few problems.

The town of Wadsworth is located 27 miles northeast of Lake’s Crossing, which now is Reno. Shorty’s Place is based on Shorty’s Lunchroom, a popular refreshment spot in mid to the late 1860’s Wadsworth. I got the idea for Shorty’s Place from a hectographed newspaper, the Wadsworth Bee, from the early 1870’s. The late Carl Shelly, former state senator, and owner of Shelly’s Hardware in Sparks, also was instrumental in the founding of the Sparks Museum. It was he who showed me the Wadsworth Bee, and wondered if it might give me some story ideas. It did.

By the way, most of the drinks served in Shorty’s Place are buttermilk, sassafras tea, and sasparilla. Which, as everyone knows, are the choice of all real cowboys.

Ballad of a Small Town, Adventures of Logan West has been released for Kindle and will soon be available in print.

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admin April 27th, 2010

Ballad’s Genesis

The idea for Ballad of a Small Town was born when I saw a copy of the Wadsworth, NV newspaper* from around 1869. In it was an ad for Shorty’s Lunchroom. Shorty’s Place grew out of that, and I put it in Drytown, which was still Wadsworth’s name in 1864–it was also called Big Bend, referring to the bend in the Truckee River as it headed north toward what we whites call Pyramid Lake. The Numa (Paiutes) call it Panunadu.

In January of 1996, Dorman Nelson, editor and publisher of Western Tales Magazine, bought “Letter From Shorty,”–a short story based on Shorty’s Lunchroom–but he had to shut down the magazine for various reasons. He advised me to continue writing, but to put my western short stories into a collection, with a unifying theme or character and make them into a novel.

Working on that idea, I found what I wanted in Logan West, a journalism graduate from Indiana, whose bride eloped with their best man. Logan heads west to write the novel he’s long thought about doing, takes his banjo along, and winds up working in Shorty’s Place.

Before the first story was finished, the idea for “the ballad” manifested. As a troubadour of sorts, it seemed natural for Logan to write a ballad based on his travels, and “Ballad of a Small Town,” was born. Each chapter is prefaced by an excerpt from the ballad.

Although I have a melody for the ballad in my head, I’ve left it to the reader to compose his or her own. Just remember, it’s being accompanied by a really mellow-sounding banjo.

*Newspapers of the day often were printed on a Hectograph. A special gel was poured into a shallow pan–much like a cookie pan–and a paper “master” copy was laid on top of the gel, face down. The master copy was rolled gently with a rubber roller and the gel took on the impression of what was on the paper master copy. After the master copy was removed, blank paper was laid on the gel and it was gently pressed down with the same roller. The information on the gel was impressed on the surface of the paper. One-hundred copies could be made before the gel lost its efficiency. Hectograph comes from Greek. Hecto means one-hundred, and graph means “drawn”.

Ballad of a Small Town, Adventures of Logan West has been released for Kindle and will soon be available in print.

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admin April 26th, 2010

Bottom of the Hill Publishing will help bring the cowboy poetry and stories of Hal Swift to print.

Hal has lived and worked in Indiana, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, California and Nevada–he knows the rural life and the West. His life experiences are many and varied.

A Navy Morse Code radio operator, he’s a veteran of the Japan Occupation Forces, and the Korean War. He’s worked as a musician, store clerk, security guard, disc jockey, reporter, and news editor. He’s gained national attention as a writer of Western short stories, and cowboy poetry. His book, “Cowboy Poems and Outright Lies,” published in 2001, is on the shelf of the Fife Folklore Archives at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, and is in the Dickinsen Research Center National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City. It also is in a section of the Washoe County Nevada Library, known as “The Nevada Shelf.”

Many of his poems are on various websites, available by going to a search engine and typing in Hal Swift, Cowboy Poet.
Although he’s semi-retired now, he still considers himself a writer and reporter of the human condition, past and present. He lives within a half-hour’s drive from Drytown–now Wadsworth, Nevada–where the events depicted in his novel, Ballad of a Small Town take place.

Ballad of a Small Town, Adventures of Logan West has been released for Kindle and will soon be available in print.

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admin April 26th, 2010

Bottom of the Hill Publishing specializes in helping authors publish and market their books in print and for Kindle ereader.

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