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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: mining, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 6 of 6
1. Review – Fly-In Fly-Out Dad

A year ago, I made a rare flight to Rockhampton. It was a mid-week, evening departure on one of those regional planes no bigger than a Lego model. What struck me most about the flight however as I waited in the boarding lounge, was the sheer number of men and women arriving into Brisbane that […]

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2. Cover Reveal: Rose Eagle

Last fall, Tu Books released Killer of Enemies, a post-apocalyptic steampunk adventure by Joseph Bruchac. Readers were introduced to seventeen-year-old Apache hunter Lozen, a kick-butt warrior who kills monsters to ensure the safety of her family.

Set to be released next month, Joseph Bruchac has written an e-novella that’s a prequel to Killer of Enemies, titled Rose Eagle.

Rose Eagle is set in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where readers are introduced to seventeen-year-old Rose Eagle of the Lakota tribe who is trying to find her place in a post-apocalyptic world.

Before the Silver Cloud, the Lakota were forced to work in the Deeps, mining for ore so that the Ones, the overlords, could continue their wars. But when the Cloud came and enveloped Earth, all electronics were shut off. Some miners were trapped in the deepest Deeps and suffocated, but the Lakota were warned to escape, and the upper Deeps became a place of refuge for them in a post-Cloud world.

In the midst of this chaos, Rose Eagle’s aunt has a dream: Rose will become a medicine woman, a healer. She sends Rose into the Black Hills on a quest to find healing for their people.

Gangly and soft-spoken, Rose is no warrior. She seeks medicine, not danger. Nevertheless, danger finds her, but love and healing soon follow. When Rose Eagle completes her quest, she may return with more than she ever thought she was looking for.

rose eagle coverThanks to the following blogs for participating in the Rose Eagle cover reveal:

Beyond Victoriana

Finding Wonderland

Rich in Color

We can’t wait to hear what you think of the cover!


Filed under: Book News, Cover Design, New Releases, Tu Books Tagged: black hills, cover reveal, dystopia, family, first love, friendship, genetic engineering, healer, healing, Joseph Bruchac, Killer of Enemies, lakota, medicine woman, mining, native americans, novella, rose eagle, science fiction, south dakota, steampunk

0 Comments on Cover Reveal: Rose Eagle as of 9/24/2014 3:28:00 PM
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3. Guest Post: Katherine Holmes

Today's guest comes to us from the wilds of Alaska and back again. Katherine Holmes makes a stop on her blog tour with some background info on her novel The Swan Bonnet.



We tend to absorb the history of our environment As it was for many, Alaska was romantic to me as a frontier, romantic while living in the city. Of a sudden someone would leave Minneapolis for Alaska. My brother went there to do legal work after he had worked with Indian Legal Aid in Duluth While he was on the south coast, I thought of moving. I read up on the state and became caught up in its history. The near extinction of swans in the United States had me thinking about settings and soon I was planning a story.

Learning about Alaska was like learning grammar through a foreign language. I've never read a history book about Minnesota though I have Midwestern ancestry going back to the mid-1800s. Mining hopes in Alaska were very similar to those on Minnesota's Iron Range in the early 20th century. The influx of people in Northern Minnesota had similarities to Alaska’s new population. Sometimes they were the same people. Like Alaska, the fur trade began Minnesota history. I'd heard much about the 1920s on the Iron Range from my mother. Boomtowns and sudden wealth mapped the region.

After being fascinated with two books of Alaskan history, I researched swans. I read how warehouses with thousands of swan pelts were discovered, more than 10,000 at a time. Eventually hunting laws were enforced and a successful environmental chronicle was documented. I began my Alaska story as a shorter fiction about an Irish immigrant couple who bought shore property where swans migrated. But soon the story led to a coastal town and characters emerged.

When I thought of the swans being killed in masses, I knew that few women were part of such a money-making venture. How much did women help such an environmental campaign in a lone setting when a particular species were illegal to hunt? It is known how women responded to Prohibition then.


I posted the book at Authonomy.com in 2009 while I began to re-work the historical detail. I was afraid the swan hat would seem far-fetched. But it wasn't historically. The West established its own dress. I actually hadn't seen Chaplin's The Gold Rush and later, when I watched the VHS, the women's fur hats were part of the entertainment.

Not until I was rewriting the book did I realize the inspiration for the swan hat. Of course, it was meant to be the white hat of the western. But I remembered from my grade school years the pheasant pelts one of my brothers brought home after hunting. He hung the pheasant pelts on the wall of his room and then in the basement. These pelts fit neatly on the head so that, with my friends, I wore a pheasant hat - until my mother found out and scared us about lice. There is some kind of method to storytelling after all.

About the author: After stints in publishing and as a reporter, Katherine L. Holmes obtained an M. A. in Writing from the University of Minnesota. Her poems and short stories have been published in many journals. In 2012, her short story collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, was published by Hollywood Books International. She has also published a children’s fantasy, The House in Windward Leaves.

Visit the Katherine on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherine.l.holmes

As usual, you can find me at www.FB.com/MarkMillerAuthor

The Swan Bonnet is available in eBook and paperback.
Get it on Kindle here:

Thanks for reading!

1 Comments on Guest Post: Katherine Holmes, last added: 8/10/2013
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4. Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert - a review

Scott, Elaine. 2012. Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert. New York: Clarion.

Though it may seem as if it were only yesterday, it's been nearly two years since the San José mine collapse in Chile's Atacama Desert. The first collapse occurred on August 5, 2010. For two days, an escape route remained open, however, the escape ladder was only 690 feet long. The distance to the surface was 2,300 feet. A subsequent and more devastating collapse occurred two days later on August 7, effectively sealing thirty-three miners underground. It was 9:55pm, October 13, 2010, when the last miner, foreman Luis Urzúa, finally emerged.

Buried Alive! offers a chronological story that is contextual and multi-faceted. Using a theme of cooperation (chapters are titled "Surviving Together," "Working Together," "Planning Together," "Living Together," and "Rejoicing Together"), Elaine Scott begins with an introduction of the various factors that draw men into the mine, including poverty, tradition, and national pride. Other chapters recount the extraordinary way that the miners, under the direction of Urzúa, known affectionately as Don Lucho, organized themselves fairly and purposefully to survive the ordeal, never knowing until they surfaced if they would survive.

Not covered much in televised accounts, was the real meaningful work that the men did to help themselves. They dug sanitary trenches, aided the drillers with useful information, and dug drainage and holding pools for the 18,421 gallons of water that were necessary to cool and lubricate the drill bits as they ground down to the mens' refuge, a 14-day project.

Scott also follows the cooperative scene at Camp Hope, the makeshift town including a school and medical facility, that sprung up to house the thousands of people living in tents above the mine - family members, would-be rescuers, Chilean military members, and more - all awaiting news of "los 33." And journalists were there to provide it,

an estimated 1,700 of them, representing thirty-three countries on five continents. The world had its eye, its ear, and most important, its heart on Camp Hope and the thirty-three men who were buried alive.

The cooperative (and, in the case of the drillers, competitive) spirit of the rescuers is chronicled as well. Rescue plans and offers of assistance arrived from around the globe.  The logistics of drilling so far down into the ground without mishap is explained in fascinating detail.

Most people will be familiar with the jubilant scenes of rescue, but it does not feel as "old news," rather, Scott's writing rekindles the emotions of the day.

An afterword tells the somewhat saddening stories of what has happened in the miners' lives since the rescue, but the overarching message of Buried Alive! is one of togetherness - for 69 days, the trapped miners, their families and the rest of the world were together in hopefulness.

 Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert is dedicated "To the thirty-three miners and those who worked, waited, and worried until they were finally free." I count myself among the millions of people who worried about the fate of these amazing men. This is a story that will live on for many, many years to come. Elaine Scott has done a superb job in telling it.

Extensively researched, sourced and indexed with detailed author's notes. Contains numerous photographs.
4 Comments on Buried Alive! How 33 Miners Survived 69 Days Deep Under the Chilean Desert - a review, last added: 5/14/2012
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5. We found a new site all about one of Jessie’s favorite saxophone players!


Jessica Hoshi a cheerful and optimistic girl

“Talitha-chan is so smart. We found that
super-neat saxophone video
yesterday and now she found Tom Scott’s Web Site and it’s got the Starsky and Hutch theme right on the main page. He wrote that! “

Shannon Ka Yoru an artistic and thoughtful girl
“Wow, look, he was nominated for 13 Grammy awards.”

Ranko Yorozu an athletic and strong girl
“And won three of them. Sweet. I’d be happy with one.”

Talitha Hayashi a shy and brilliantly intelligent girl
“We should put his site in our Fun Places to Visit list.”


Jessica Hoshi a cheerful and optimistic girl

“I’m gonna learn how to play just like him so I can win a zillion Grammys too, and I’m gonna write TV show music also.”

Ranko Yorozu an athletic and strong girl
“I believe it.”

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6. Alanna Kawa answers a question from Jessie’s Letters!


Alanna Kawa a loyal and compassionate girl

“We haven’t had a question in a while, Hoshi. Did we manage to get through that huge list we had?”


Jessica Hoshi a cheerful and optimistic girl

“Nope, we still got zillions of questions to do, but this one gets asked all the time. It says ‘is LadyStar ever gonna be a TV show or a movie?’”


Leila Hakumei

“heh. Most of the new people don’t know how long we’ve been here.”


Alanna Kawa a loyal and compassionate girl

“LadyStar was originally the background story for an episodic adventure game, and not long after that, we had a television show in pre-production.”


Jessica Hoshi a cheerful and optimistic girl

“Yeah! It was gonna be the same story as our books but with super neat animated magical attacks and stuff.”


Alanna Kawa a loyal and compassionate girl

“Since then, LadyStar was published as a manga, then as a Visual Novel. While those two projects were being developed, the story was becoming more complete and new characters were being added. Eventually, we pretty much had to make it a book series because there was just so much that had been added it would take thousands of comic book pages to tell the whole story.”


Jessica Hoshi a cheerful and optimistic girl

“Sugoi… a thousand page comic book. “


Alanna Kawa a loyal and compassionate girl

“So the answer is sure, we’d love to be in a movie or television show, but we’re pretty committed to this site and our readers, so anything new we try can’t interfere with what we’re doing now.”


Leila Hakumei

“That’s right. We’re all about our readers.”


Jessica Hoshi a cheerful and optimistic girl

“Thanks Alanna-sama and Leila-sama! If you have a question, we’ll be starting up my Jessie’s Letters page again real soon. Ja!”

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