Western

K. L. Emanuelson is an Army veteran. She was a working cowgirl for many years, a horse trainer and a riding instructor. As a Beowulf scholar, she's presented at academic conferences and been published in the proceedings. She's entered the poetry, essay and short-short fiction divisions and won, at the Colorado Veterans Arts competitions, but now focuses upon writing her novels. She shares her ranch in the beautiful, historic Bijou Basin with her horses, dogs and cats. She's a historian with a focus upon pre-Viking early 6th century Scandinavia and the 19th century American West.

My family moved here from Chicago in 1976. I write novels about ordinary people experiencing life-changing events. I write in all genres of fiction, often influenced by my own extraordinary adventures and infinite imagination. I grew up on the Southside of Chicago in a large, struggling family, working full-time while attending four colleges. I studied Cultural Anthropology, English, Journalism and Theater, eventually earning a B.A. degree in Diversified Studies from the University of Colorado - UCCS in 1982. I later enjoyed a modestly successful career in Hollywood as an actor, writer, and producer in independent films interspersed with stints working for motion picture studio executives. My close friends call me "Hollywood." A cancer survivor, I also write screenplays and original music.

Mike Torreano has lived in Colorado Springs since 1977. A retired Colonel, USAF, he is also a retired financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual of 35 years.

Nicholas S. Casale grew up in Palmer Lake, which is a small town in Colorado. Shortly thereafter, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and began working as a paralegal.

From a young age he was attracted to history, myth, religion, and spent several years searching for the religion that best matched his personal beliefs; he is now a practicing Messianic Jew and is happily married to the woman who taught him Hebrew.

He first started writing stories when he was 6 years old. He invented a simple character named "Mousey," who was a mouse and a wizard. While his stories have grown more sophisticated since then, he has always had a love for the themes of that original story; the idea that the weak may overcome the strong through cleverness and imagination.

John Wesley Anderson, MBA, is a published author, storyteller, and TEDx speaker. He enjoyed a 30-year law enforcement career, retiring at the rank of sergeant after 22 years with the Colorado Springs Police Department, followed by 8 years serving as the elected sheriff for El Paso County, Colorado. After being term-limited as Sheriff, John retired from public safety and was employed in homeland and corporate security for ten years in the private sector. He retired from the Lockheed Martin Corporation in 2012 to launch a consulting business allowing him the freedom to pursue his love of history, writing and the arts. In 2022 John was honored to receive the Golden Quill Award from the Friends of the Pikes Peak Library District. Although John has traveled around the world, including several adventures on a catamaran sailing the Caribbean, three corporate security assignments into a combat zone on the Horn of Africa and landing on an aircraft carrier at sea in the Pacific Ocean, he remains most fascinated by the rich history and art discovered in his own backyard in the American Southwest.

John Dwaine McKenna is the author of four fiction novels, three of which have been awarded EVVYS for excellence in fiction by the Colorado Independent Publisher’s Association, or CIPA. He writes a weekly newspaper column called the Mysterious Book Report for the Tri-Valley Townsman in Sullivan County, New York where he was born and raised in the beautiful southern Catskill Mountains. During his career, he was a salesman, serial business owner, an investment advisor, and a compliance officer for a nationwide investment firm headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. He retired in 2000 and revisited his writing talents, which had lain dormant since his college days.

He and his wife June have lived in Southern Colorado for nearly five decades.

Bert moved from Illinois to Colorado Springs in 1974 with his wife Nancy and sons Jeremy and Chad. He now has nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He started as a freelance photojournalist covering action sports and started writing as well as photographing nearly twenty years ago. He has worked as a photographer and writer for rodeo/bull riding, and a track photographer for Pikes Peak International Raceway. As a freelance writer and photographer, he has sold hundreds of articles to dozens of magazines and sold thousands of photographs. He has covered the rodeo, bull riding, and performance horse world for many years and has written on subjects as diverse as the meat packing industry, water rights, and family ranching.

In Memory of Doyle Trent (Obituary for Doyle Trent)

Western author Doyle Trent succumbed to congestive heart failure on Sunday, May 11, 2014, in Colorado Springs.

He put up a might struggle. Beaten down by disease, he rose again and again until his heart would not take him any further down the road. He had been knocked down many times before in life, but like the cowboy he was in his youth, he always managed to get up and forge ahead. Despite tremendous obstacles, he fulfilled his dreams of turning himself from a poor, Depression-era kid into a cowboy, followed by a newspaper reporter and finally a successful writer of tales of the Old West.

Doyle was born on May 7, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri to Morgan and LaVerna Trent. He was fatherless by the age of five. He was one of four boys, who learned self-sufficiency while his widowed mother worked at any job she could get in order to put food on the table. Doyle didn't have many material things but he had a pot full of drive which led him to drop out of school at sixteen and go west to become a cowboy. With his buddies, he would take the money he earned as a ranch hand to rodeo. His specialty was bull riding.

Doyle lived that life until the Army claimed him. He seized the opportunity Uncle Sam had given him, received his GED and enrolled at the University of Colorado. The last semester, just before graduation, someone from administration called him in and said he should never have been accepted with just a GED. He finally conceded he had done the work and made the grades. He was awarded his journalism diploma.

Doyle was the oldest cub reporter on the staff of the small-town newspaper where he got his first job. That never bothered him. During his career in three states, he reported on everything from politics to crime and did one brief stint with the AP, covering the Missouri Legislature. He enjoyed reporting but always had an urge to write novels. For 20 years, he wrote them in his off-time before selling his first. That first book turned into 27 published books sold here and later in England, Germany and Canada. All were westerns. Just before he died, he fulfilled a dream of writing a modern day thriller, Flirting with the Undertaker which was published last month on Amazon.

Doyle met his wife, Joyce on a newspaper in Wichita, Kansas. Together they traveled the world; riding camels in the Egyptian desert, elephants in India, zip lining in Costa Rica, trekking through the Amazon Jungle in Peru and climbing the Great Wall of China.

He was a good and steadfast husband. He took his inner strength from the Code of the West, which reads in part, "Live each day with courage," "Do what has to be done," "Take pride in your work," "When you make a promise, keep it.", "Talk less and say more," and "Remember, some things aren't for sale." He was, as one book fan put it on the internet, "In a world of wannabe cowboy writers, he is the real McCoy."

He was preceded in death by his parents, brothers: Morgan, Glenn and Rex; his horse, Miz Rose and his dogs: Trinket and Daisy. Doyle is survived by his wife, Joyce; nieces: Audrey Ajlouny and Sherri Trent and nephews: Richard Scholes and Rex Trent, Jr.

Doyle will be cremated and interred with his mother. A private family graveside service is planned.

Charlie Mac was born and raised in Southern California. In the mid-90s Charlie was fascinated by a comment by actor Paul Newman who pointed out the in the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, no one actually saw Butch and Sundance die. For Charlie the interview was the seed for a great story. It took twelve years, but Legends Lost was completed and published in 2012.

Julie was born and raised in upstate New York. She married her high school sweetheart and accompanied him on his twenty-year career with the United States Air Force. Presently, she resides in the Pikes Peak region, where she’s a stay-at-home mom enjoying a career writing western historical romance.

Throughout her school years, Julie enjoyed reading and writing. A friend introduced her to the romance genre in the late 80’s and she was instantly hooked. She credits Judith McNaught’s flawless voice and Johanna Lindsey’s addictive and endearing Malory family as her inspirations to pen her own novels. Combining her fondness for horses, John Wayne’s cowboy persona, and the television series Dallas, she settled into writing western historical romance series early in her career.

Julie self-publishes her work on Amazon and designs her own covers. She is also the owner of the Cowboy Kisses blog. When she’s away from her computer, she enjoys taking care of her family and home, exploring the Rocky Mountains, and meeting fans of the romance genre.