I call this non-fiction series of short essays a mash-up of Ted Kooser’s Local Wonders, Roger Welsch’s Shingling the Fog, and my own decades of environmental journalism. It includes some prose poems about stars and silence and prairie. I’ve written a few of the stories about animals I’ve known, or with I hadn’t. I’ve reviewed some of the books that have affected my thinking. I even tried to sum up what it means to me.

I read a lot of magazines, many of them professional journals for writers. But I also subscribe to Discover magazine, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. It’s amazing the articles that serve as jumping-off places for my essays. My library includes books by greats like Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, and our own Loren Eiseley. And then, of course in these times, my mind prowls around on the Internet where I find lots of cat and dog videos, but also some really fascinating tidbits–some of them frightening, some maddening, and a few soothing.

Landscapes is my orphan child. I really never made an effort to market it. As soon as it went to the publisher, I went off to write my next book, a novel that grew and grew until it turned into three. The Reluctant Canary Sings is the first of them.

Like my other books, Landscapes is currently on sale in ebook format (all ebook formats) during Smashwords’ summer sale throughout the month of July. You will also find it in ebook and paperback format at Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as most online ebook sellers.

If you like to browse your book before you buy it, and you live in Nebraska, you can ask for Prairie Landscapes at any of these retailers: the Bookworm and Our Bookstore in Omaha; Francie and Finch in Lincoln; The Sequel in Kearney; and A to Z Bargain Books in North Platte as well as a number of Nebraska libraries