Spotlight & Giveaway: Dead Man’s Hand by David Nix

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author David Nix to HJ!

Hi David and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Dead Man’s Hand!

 
Hello! Thanks for taking a moment to meet Jake Paynter.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Jake Paynter is a doomed man. Haunted by an abusive childhood and the atrocities of the Civil War, he seeks the isolation of the Plains Cavalry. Now, he is to be hanged for killing his captain and fleeing the Wyoming Territory. When his troop escort is attached to a wagon train traveling from Missouri to Wyoming, he plans to escape the first chance he gets. However, complications ensue. Despite his best efforts at isolation, he begins gathering friends along the way. Gus, the retired buffalo soldier who tracked him down. Stacy, the rough, half-indigenous daughter of the wagon train master. The Emshoffs, a German immigrant family who shows him humanity. And Rosalyn, the daughter of a despised Missouri senator who might have feelings for him. When the wagon train is harassed by organized bandits, Paynter learns that Rosalyn’s duplicitous brother, Lucien, carries a fortune in gold with which he intends to start a ranching empire in Wyoming. Over the course of a harrowing journey along the Oregon Trail, the settlers begin looking to Paynter for leadership despite his disinterest in leading, and for salvation despite his doomed state. However, no heroics will be sufficient to save his neck when he arrives in Wyoming for trial – unless his new friends have something to say about it.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“What a man fights for spells the difference between honor and dishonor, duty and disgrace, valor and simple violence.”
 

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I grew up in Wyoming along the Oregon Trail, so I’ve walked the areas where the story takes place. This story was inspired by those walks and tales told to me by old-timers.
• I found a treasure trove of folks on YouTube who show how to clean, load, and fire all the antique weapons in the story. Who knew?
• Because an Arapahoe band plays an important role in the story, I consulted with the former CEO of the Northern Arapahoe tribe to ensure I represented those characters truthfully and respectfully.
• The story features several flashbacks to the Civil War with the First Kansas Colored Volunteers, the first and most accomplished all-black regiment in the war.
• One scene in South Pass City takes place in a general store that is still standing 150 years later – a place where I have shopped.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Jake Paynter is a loner haunted by his past and eminently dangerous. However, he pours out himself for others and desperately avoids violence – until he can’t. Though others see these qualities in him, he cannot see them in himself.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

At one point, the wagon train is attacked by the harassing bandits and mayhem ensues. The scene is told from the point-of-view of a secondary character, Stacy, the rough and tumble daughter of the wagon master. As chaos rains down, she attempts to calm an infant by singing words she didn’t know she knew. It gets me every time I reread the passage.

Snippet:
To her back, her newfound charges cried loudly with fear of the violent unknown, while baby Lily wailed with terror in Stacy’s arms. Unable to think, she lifted Lily to her shoulder and rocked her. Memories flashed. A young mother from South Carolina had tried to teach her a lullaby on a journey two years earlier. Stacy had resisted the attempts mightily and would’ve sworn she didn’t know the words. But like a roll of thunder across the plains, they came from a distance into her mind and began to settle on her lips even as she watched the horror of the battle unfold.
“Hush up, baby, don’t say a word,” she sang into Lily’s ear, “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”
A farmer wearing a straw hat staggered out of his wagon, clutching his chest. He stumbled toward the center before crumpling to the dirt to lie still.
“If it can’t whistle and it can’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
A rider attempted to leap through a gap between two wagons, only for the horse to become impaled by a pike lifted by a farm boy no older than fifteen. When the fallen horse pinned the rider, the boy’s father drove a pitchfork through the man’s neck.
“If that diamond ring turns brass, Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass.”
Tears began rolling down Stacy’s cheeks and into the baby’s soft hair as a second rider breeched the gap to cut down a woman with a saber as she tried to spear him. Mrs. Janssen. Glen yanked the man from his horse and killed him with two crushing blows of his fist before adding a third in contempt.
“If that looking glass gets broke, Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat.”
A woman with her sleeve ablaze fell back from the flaming wagon crying while two others tried to extinguish the flames with their bare hands.
“If that billy goat runs away, Mama’s gonna buy you another today.”
Two men dragged a third man into the box, shouting for Maddie to do something as she pressed her hands against the gushing wound of yet another man.
With no more words to recall, Stacy repeated the lullaby over and over as mayhem reigned inside the wagon box.

Readers should read this book….

If they love complex heroes, redemption stories, and epic journeys. They should read this book if they want to hear all the voices of those who are part of the tapestry of the American West, including those who are often neglected.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

The second and third novels in the Jake Paynter series are locked and loaded for release in May and August, respectively. I’m working on an outline for another western series set during the lawless days of the California goldrush featuring a hero who can’t remember who he is.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Two e-books of Dead Man’s Hand.
One signed copy of Dead Man’s Hand, open to anyone. I’ll pay the postage.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What quality of Jake Paynter so inspires the trust of others, even though he is a federal prisoner condemned to die for murder?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from Dead Man’s Hand:

Expecting a bandit attack, the settlers look to Paynter for salvation. He starts with trying to train them to quickly form a wagon box. The first attempt goes terribly wrong in this scene.

Scene:
Every enduring civilization in history had learned that an effective defense begins with the building of a walled fortress. In the absence of brick and mortar, the prairie schooners were the answer. Every night for at least the next ten days, the settlers would need to practice building a makeshift fortress from their wagons as rapidly as possible. A sudden arrival of the enemy would leave no time to stake out a circle in advance and then fill it with slow-moving vehicles. To that end, Jake rode up and down the line all day, wagon by wagon, providing detailed instructions to the owners about what they would do at day’s end when he gave the signal to circle up. The farmers listened carefully and nodded understanding, threatening Jake with a false sense of security. He knew better, though. The gap between understanding and experience is measured in miles, not inches.
“They ready for this?” asked Cornelius as he rode alongside Jake just ahead of the Ashleys’ lead wagon.
Jake shielded his eyes against the sun, which was drawing very low on the horizon. “What do you think?”
Cornelius heaved the remnants of his tobacco twenty feet off the trail. “Nah. I predict the grandfather of all fiascos.”
Jake wanted to disagree, but his good sense was nodding too hard to do so. “This far enough, then?”
Cornelius squinted at the sun and then scanned the landscape. He spurred his horse off to the right. “I believe this will do. Loose the hounds, Mr. Paynter.”
“Check your watch.”
Cornelius examined his gold pocket watch. “Seven-oh-four precisely.”
Jake pulled his revolver from his recently recovered holster and fired two shots overhead. According to his instructions, the first nine wagons were to reach Jake and cut an immediate ninety-degree right turn. The first five would pass Cornelius’s horse and make another sharp right turn. Meanwhile, the last four wagons in the train would wait until the train halted and then make a ninety-degree right turn as well, and meet the lead wagon as they came together. The resulting formation would make an approximate box shape. Finally, each owner would steer their respective oxen alongside the adjacent wagon at the last second to draw the rigs as near to one another as possible, head to butt. Though the animals would be stuck together like blackberry jam, it was the simplest formation possible, and merely a starting exercise in the following of instructions and the guiding of rigs.
That was not at all what happened.
Ashley’s Conestoga and the next wagon made decent turns around Jake. The third however, nearly ran him over as it cut the angle. The next two followed suit, while the sixth swung too wide and doubled back on the seventh to compensate. To avoid a collision, the seventh wagon circled to the right until meeting the eighth, whereupon all three ground into a nose-to-tail stalemate. Meanwhile, the remaining wagons kept coming at a breakneck pace, driven by the panic of those who respond to change by refusing to alter course. One after another, the trailing rigs peeled off to the right and left to avoid smashing their oxen into the seven-eight-nine logjam. At some point, the four that were supposed to form the bottom of the box decided they had waited long enough and turned sharply, but in the opposite direction before realizing their mistake and swerving back toward the train.
When the dust settled and each rig ground to a necessary halt, Jake surveyed the damage. Thirteen wagons had created an island of knotted mayhem with teams of oxen facing in all cardinal directions. Some were trapped entirely inside larger loops. The remaining five that had been leading the train formed a similar knot some thirty yards distant, less entangled but fully exposed, nonetheless. Jake put his face in his palm and muttered words typically reserved for the worst of occasions. He looked up as Cornelius arrived at his side.
“A fiasco, as I predicted.”
“How long’d it take?”
Cornelius checked his watch. “Eighteen minutes.”
A dam of frustration broke inside Jake. He rode to a spot equidistant between the two islands of stranded vessels and waved his arms. “Everybody! Come here! Right! Now!”
Forty or so adults and a few children shuffled away from the wagons to mill around him. Most wore sheepish expressions. When they had gathered, Jake peered down from the mare at the assembled group and shook his head.
“I honestly don’t know what to say. If we had practiced for a month to make the most intractable mess possible, I don’t believe we could’ve done better than this.” He lifted his arms in opposing directions to indicate the two piles. Most eyes found the dirt.
“How long again, Mr. Blue?”
“Eighteen minutes.”
“Eighteen minutes,” he repeated, “to render this entire expedition unfit for travel. Damned impressive!”
He let their shame hang in the silent breeze for ten seconds. Then he exhaled a loud breath. “If we are to survive what’s comin’, we need to form up within three minutes. Our box must be absolute perfection, with no gap bigger than what a horse can jump through single file. This…” He waved his hands again toward the wrecks. “Is how we all die.”
His audience stared at their collective feet, thoroughly cowed. Even Lucien. Satisfied that he had made his point, Jake clapped his hands together and gathered calm. “Look at me.”
They glanced up as if children expecting a visit to the woodshed. He forced his frown to recede as best he could. “I shoulder the blame for this. Perhaps I was too sloppy in my instructions. Maybe I was too lofty in my expectations. So, tomorrow I’ll do better. And I expect the same of you.” He looked to Cornelius and Stacy. “Go help ’em sort out their rigs without someone getting crushed. Form up some kind of perimeter so we can corral the horses.”
“On it,” said Cornelius.
Jake prodded the mare out of harm’s way and watched the untangling of wagons and oxen with dismay. Ten days was not enough. Before he could descend into a morass of hopelessness, Gus rode up alongside him.
“Not too bad.”
Jake peered at him with incredulity. “Pardon? Not too bad?”
“Nobody died. No oxen were injured. Everybody tried. Not too bad.”
Jake snorted. “We got no chance.” Gus peered at him until Jake met his eyes. “What?”
“Remember how we was in ’62 when the regiment formed? Black soldiers, white officers, and only you and a few others with any actual fightin’ experience? Remember that?”
Jake did. What a collection of misfits they all made―men escaped from slavery, poverty, marginality, brutality, or all of the above, and a junior officer straight out of the Confederacy with a new blue coat and not a foggy notion of how to lead men. He remembered his hopeless dismay at the time, so akin to his present emotion. Two months later, they had defeated a larger force in their first engagement, the model of discipline under fire. Jake chuckled.
“Yah. I do. Thanks, Gus.”
“That’s my job, now. Keepin’ your head straight.”
“A thankless job, to be sure.”
“You know it.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

An action-packed historical western for fans of William Johnstone and Louis L’Amour.
Condemned to die, he’s about to find a reason to live.
Jake Paynter is a doomed man. Haunted by an abusive childhood and his participation in atrocities of the Civil War, he seeks the isolation of the Plains Cavalry as a white officer for an all-Black buffalo soldier troop. Now, he is in irons and certain to be hanged for killing his captain after refusing an inhumane order. Despite his best efforts to maintain isolation, he starts to make friends on his journey to trial. The people of the wagon train begin looking to Paynter for leadership, and he reluctantly falls into the role.
The opportunity to escape arises when the wagon train is attacked by bandits, but Paynter’s growing ties to the travelers compel him to stay. As his trial approaches, Paynter must lean on his friends for salvation, but the laws of the west are swift and harsh, and a grueling confrontation with his past is on the horizon.
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Meet the Author:

When I was eight, my adventurous parents hauled our young family from the west coast to a Wyoming mountain town perched on the border of the Wind River reservation. That magical landscape infused my formative years with a wonder of local lore that was both historical and present, and revealed to me that often the greatest stories have been all but forgotten or were never told. After publishing science fiction and historical romance for ten years, it seemed a matter of destiny that I’d eventually return to the tales of my youth. The Jake Paynter series brings together fact and fiction to explore places, people, and themes precious to me.
I’ve called Austin home since 1998 with my wife and three children. The kids are grown now, but remain in and around the heart of Texas and consider themselves honorary Wyomingites. I’ve been away from that mountain town for a long time now, but never really left the place.
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