HeyJaredMichael Cardwell Mysteries
Author of the Frontier Series, a run-and-gun mix of western toughness, modern crime, and the kind of trouble that doesn't wait for back-up. Dust off your boots, saddle up, and ride along.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 10
- Latest publication
- Sep 14, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Aug 17, 2026
Latest issues
Even Writers Take Vacations (opens the original)
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Trailheaders,For the next few weeks, I’ll be trading deadlines, plot twists, and fictional dead bodies for the Eastern Seaboard Family Visit Tour.There will be family, food, a lot of highway miles, the ocean and dogs.The laptop is coming along, because apparently writers never completely understand the word vacation.I’ll see everyone back on the Trail at the end of the month. Until then, keep your powder dry, your coffee hot, and try not to solve anything without me.Michael
Monday Morning Book Peddler Issue No. 006: Nobody Warned Me About Newsletters (opens the original)
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Trailheaders,Nobody warned me about newsletters. This bothers me because I feel like somebody should have. When I decided to become an author, I understood there would be certain responsibilities. I would have to write books. This seemed reasonable. I would have to edit books, which seemed less reasonable but still related to the original agreement. (Actually, I farmed the editing out to Grammarly, my wife Roni and a team of people much more grammatically smarter than me.)I knew I would have to
News from the Trailhead, Volume 30: My Journey to Western Writer (opens the original)
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Trailheaders,I am a Western writer. This surprises me, since I was born and bred in Indiana on a hog-and-grain farm, and the closest I’d ever been to the frontier was in John Wayne movies.I have never owned a horse. I have never been on a cattle drive, and my experience with ropes has leaned more toward rappelling out of helicopters or crossing rivers in the Army.Nevertheless, I have written several books now filled with ranchers, game wardens, tribal cops, federal agents, pick-ups, rifles, bad
Rule #6: How to Write a Gunfight Without Shooting Your Scene in the Foot (opens the original)
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Trailheaders, Nothing kills a good gunfight faster than too much gunfight. Let me explain.You know the scene; you’ve seen it in movies or read it in books. Everybody fires twenty-five times without reloading. They all dive behind something, reload, and fire twenty-five more times. They shout tactical-sounding dialogue, but no one moves, and somehow nobody hits anything important. (Think of Stormtroopers fighting each other, blasting away and hitting nothing.)By page three of the gunfight, the re
Tuesday Blues and Coffee Brews: Research Is Better with Frybread (opens the original)
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Trailheaders,Well, I made it back from the frontier and found Montana to be just as enticing, engaging and exciting as ever. I think I underestimated the value of actually walking the ground where my stories take place. Google Maps and YouTube videos can tell you some things, and photographs can reveal others, but they can’t smell the wildflowers in the breeze, visit with the people, or try the food.Ground walked, check. Wildflowers smelled, check. People visited, check. Food tried, double-check
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