What Terrifies You? SAVING MIGUEL by John Bradford Branney



SAVING MIGUEL by John Bradford Branney. Click for Books

What really frightens you?

Does the boogeyman scare the living crud out of you? Do you have nightmares about lions and tigers and bears, oh my? How about that thing that hides under your bed? You know what I am talking about, that thing that has lurked under your bed since you were a small child. Yes, it is still there. Does it still spook you? As a grown up, will you let your arm drape down over the side of the bed or are you still afraid that the thing will pull you under the bed by your arm? What about Jason or Freddie Krueger? Both of them were quite frightening in the movies. What about the scare potential for the nightly news? There is some scary stuff on the news, and that is real!


Yes, I just added the nightly news!
There are stories on the nightly news that makes Freddie Krueger look like the Singing Nun! There are things going on in the world that can make your hair stand on end and unfortunately, these things are not make believe like Jason or Freddie!


Have you ever asked yourself why certain things frighten you more than other things? What is the secret ingredient that makes you terrified? What pushes your fright button? 

Some people believe that fright comes from those things that we perceive we have no control over. When we watch Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street, the victims seldom have control over Freddie or Jason and you as a movie watcher have even less control than those actors in the movies. I remember the first time I watched Nightmare on Elm Street. I was literally yelling at the television set at the clueless victims who always seemed to be doing the most idiotic thing possible to get killed. They were so dumb when it came to avoiding Freddie Krueger that you almost wanted them to get caught! I screamed at them to stay put and lock their doors, but of course, they had to go investigate what made that noise.                                                                                                                                                                  The actors did not listen to me at all. I had no
control over them or the script or the movie. Fresh meat, how sweet! I can still hear Freddie Krueger’s hideous voice growling.  


We do have some control over that thing that lives under our bed. What can we do? First, we should not drape our arm over the side of the bed! And what control do we have over our  spooky neighbors? It seems our only control over them is for us to move or hope they move or wait and see what they do next! The spooky neighbors could be harmless or they could be like Norman Bates in Psycho.           

Yes, we agree that there are real life things in this world that are truly frightening and depending on our experience, temperament, and lifestyle, certain things will frighten each of us more than other things. Let me meander back to the frightening events we see on the nightly news. When I first came up with the concept for my novel SAVING MIGUEL in 2011, the world was on the brink of economic

disaster. Global Economic Armageddon was on everyone’s minds. I have to admit, but this non-human, non-boogeyman called Global Economic Armageddon frightened the living daylights out of me, more than Freddie Krueger or Jason or anything else I could think of. I saw the possibility that my entire life’s work and savings could go up in smoke because of the greed of others. I was frightened by this possibility and I was not alone. To watch my family’s financial means disappear in a matter of days or weeks was absolutely terrifying to me. Global Economic Armageddon was more frightening than that thing under my bed or Freddie Krueger! Global Economic Armageddon could happen and I had no control over it!     


So, to help me cope with my own personal fear, I decided to write a novel about it, a novel that was both terrifying and hopeful. In the novel, I had to create a world that would exist after global financial markets collapsed, after hundreds of millions of people no longer had livelihoods and jobs. That is a a very frightening world, if you ask me! I modeled this world after the devastation in Communist Russia after the Berlin Wall fell, a world where the basic needs of human beings no longer existed and crime to survive became a normal way of life. I took that model and expanded it to the world-at-large.

Below is a scene from SAVING MIGUEL. In this scene, the head of the military and spy organizations for the Monarchy, Chief Security Officer Stewart had to visit the city without military escort after dark. Here is what happened.   

The noise from the collision with the gate had attracted seven homeless citizens who now walked down the middle of the street towards Stewart and his vehicle. Stewart saw these dark shadows approaching him and took a gander over his shoulder, pinpointing the location of his vehicle if he had to make a run for it. Stewart deftly chambered a round in his ten-millimeter semi-automatic pistol. When the seven shadows came closer, the tall one in the middle spoke first.

“Give us your valuables!”

“I don’t have any valuables,” Stewart replied, slowly backing up towards his vehicle.

The seven citizens continued to slowly advance while Stewart glanced over his shoulder, ensuring no one was behind him.

“Give us your valuables or we will take your life.”

“Now that’s an overused cliché, isn’t it, bloke?” Stewart replied. “I must apologize, but you can’t have either. I am keeping my valuables and my bloody life.”

Stewart raised the pistol and pointed it at the tall citizen, saying, “Lad, I strongly suggest you turn and walk away, otherwise you are going to have a bloody bad night!”

The citizen responded by holding up what looked like a tire iron and waving it in Stewart’s direction.

“That’s brill, just what I would expect from a doped up bugger,” Stewart asserted, “bringing a tire iron to a gunfight.”

The citizens did not appreciate Stewart’s attempt at levity, shaking logging chains and raising wooden clubs over their heads. Stewart made a run for it, sprinting for his vehicle while the seven citizens chased after him. Stewart had not run for his life in years and his legs were not working very well, but the adrenalin surging through his body made up for it. Once Stewart reached his vehicle, he turned around,

aimed, and fired the pistol at the closest citizen. The 180-grain full metal jacket bullet ripped through the citizen’s rib cage, penetrating his heart. By the time the citizen hit the pavement, his soul was already in hell. The loud explosion of the ten-millimeter pistol stopped the other citizens dead in their tracks. Stewart fumbled around in his pockets, desperately looking for his vehicle identification sensor.

Finally he found the sensor and jumped into the vehicle, firing it up.

The six citizens rushed the vehicle while Stewart threwthe vehicle into drive and stomped on the gas pedal. The powerful V 12 engine roared like a lion as Stewart turned the steering wheel and headed straight at the citizens. The vehicle hit the second citizen dead on, running completely over his body. Stewart then swung the steering wheel hard to the right, clipping the third citizen with the passenger side of the vehicle, knocking him down. Stewart aimed the vehicle for the fourth citizen and smashed into him head on, throwing the citizen’s body onto the front hood of the vehicle. Stewart drove past the three remaining citizens and screeched on his brakes.

Stewart jumped out of the vehicle just in time to see the three citizens running down the street away from him. Stewart took careful aim with the pistol and fired at the fifth citizen. He then quickly took aim at the sixth citizen and gently squeezed the trigger. The two 180 grain full metal jacket bullets raced through the city air at over thirteen hundred feet per second. The first bullet exploded into the back of the fifth citizen, shattering his T3 thoracic vertebrae and spraying shards of bone and bullet into his organs and blood vessels. However, the vertebrae only slowed the bullet down as it continued to corkscrew its way through the citizen’s body, passing through a lung and finally coming to rest on the inside of the rib cage, narrowly missing the heart. With a severed spinal cord, the citizen dropped to the pavement like a sack of potatoes, bleeding on the street and dying soon after from severe shock.

The sixth citizen fared much better. Stewart had rushed his second shot and only hit the citizen in the back of the shoulder. The bullet grazed the bone on the citizen’s clavicle and then came out of the flesh just in front of the shoulder. The drug-crazed citizen ran, completely unaware he had even been shot.

Stewart surveyed up and down the street, knowing that he had to get out of there and fast. Soon there would be more citizens showing up. Stewart shoved the moaning citizen off the hood of his vehicle. The citizen tried to crawl away, but Stewart came up behind him, aimed his pistol at the back of his head, and gently squeezed the trigger. The pistol belched flame and fury…

This was just a routine night in the city. Take away people’s livelihoods and this is what happens. But, in my novel SAVING MIGUEL where you find terror, sometimes you find hope.

 

How Far Can You Travel On Just Twenty Dollars?



Click to Read More about John Bradford Branney Books

How far can you travel on 20 bucks. You won't make it far at the airport or the bus stop and $20 might buy you three quarters of a tank of gas. 


For less than $20 my book WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR  will take you to New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming in the 17th Century for the best trip you have ever had for $20 and you don't even need to leave your house. Read on!  




The wild mustangs of Wyoming inspired John Bradford Branney to write his sixth book, WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR, a story based on the introduction of horses to the Plains Indians of Wyoming in the late 17^th Century. LEAVES begins with a vivid description of a violent attack, part of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt on a sprawling Spanish family ranch, out of which spins intricate bifurcated sub-plots emanating from separate hostile Indian massacres. Two sub-plots or themes are masterfully and skillfully coiled and twined and twisted like a Southwestern Indian basket. The reader is led through the maturation of the Spanish rancher’s son in his quest to be reunited with his younger brother. A parallel journey takes the reader along with a young coming-of-age warrior-to-be searching for the captured young Indian woman he loves--a journey on which he discovers a miraculous gift that changes the future of his tribe. That discovery takes a most unpredictable twist in completing the selvage of the basket that becomes this captivating story.  

The wild red roan colt that inspired and starred in the book WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR. 


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A Book Review for WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR by John Bradford Branney

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Wyoming wild horses along the Powder Rim.

SAND and SAGE and the Wild Horse Herd

Wild horse herd along the Powder Rim in Wyoming. John Bradford Branney Photo.  

My newly released novel SAND and SAGE is a historical adventure based on the introduction of horses to the Plains Indians in the latter years of the 17th Century. Even though most of the characters originated in my mind through my own knowledge and experience, the storyline is based on historically documented accounts from Native Americans who claimed to have been there when the first encounter with horses happened.

This red roan colt was the inspiration for SAND and SAGE - 

I photographed this wild horse in 2002.  

I wrote SAND and SAGE using separate storylines for three different characters. As the plots developed in the book, the paths of these characters start to intertwine. One of the three main characters in the book was a young Spaniard named Santiago who was embarking on a journey to find his brother Luis who the Comanche Indians captured. Santiago held a deep grudge against the Indians for destroying his family and his life. He was not sure whether his brother was alive or dead, but he vowed to find Luis. 

The second character in the book was a young Indian named Ouray, an outcast within his own tribe called the Snakes. He also had an unfulfilled quest. His quest was to find Haiwee, the girl he loved, A hostile tribe of Indians captured Haiwee, and Ouray committed to finding Haiwee and exacting his revenge on the Indian tribe who stole her and also killed Ouray's mother. During his quest, Ouray discovered something so remarkable that it would change his life forever. 

The third character in SAND and SAGE was a red roan colt in a wild horse herd. The red roan colt, once domesticated, was surviving day-to-day in the wild world he found himself. I won't spoil the book by telling you how these three characters fared on their different quests. The short passage from SAND and SAGE below describes two main roles in the red roan colt's wild horse herd.

The big sorrel mare led the mustang herd up the slope of a rocky ridge. Horse hooves clattered against cobbles of broken sandstone. The big sorrel mare was the matriarch of the herd which meant the day-to-day decisions for the herd were hers. She decided where the horses drank and where they grazed and whether they stayed in one place or moved on. She was also the disciplinarian of the herd, at least this matriarch was. She did not tolerate any nonsense from the other horses and meted out her justice like a hanging judge. One might wonder why the herd followed this mare. One reason was fear. The other horses were afraid of the ill-tempered matriarch. The main reason that the herd followed her was she kept them out of trouble.   

Bringing up the tail end of the herd was a tall bay stallion. He was the monarch of the herd or the breeding stallion. His role was different than the matriarch’s. His role was to protect the herd and to procreate. The bay stallion spent most of his time off by himself, grazing at the outside fringes of the herd. He became more interested in the herd when a mare came into season. At other times, there was little for him to do, especially with the  feisty sorrel mare controlling the herd. The bay stallion and sorrel mare would hold their positions in the herd until younger and stronger horses challenged them. When the day came when a younger stallion overthrew the monarch, the bay stallion would leave the herd and live out his days alone. A lone horse on the high plains was in a bad way with less than a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. Hungry wolf packs roamed the countryside in search of their next meal.   

Wild horse herd along the painted claystone formation in the
Washakie Basin of Wyoming. John Bradford Branney Photo.

Why do horses live in herds? Horses live in herds because one, they are social animals and  two, the herd provides each member protection from predators. Within each wild horse herd, there is a social pecking order. Each horse in the herd plays a role. The stallion in the herd serves the purpose of procreating and protecting the herd against predators, but it is the matriarch, the dominant mare, that officially leads the herd. The matriarch picks where the herd waters and grazes. The matriarch leads the herd and makes most of the day-to-day decisions. She is the disciplinarian of the herd and usually has a way of dealing with any anti-social behavior within the members of the herd. Her punishment can include driving the offender out of the herd and she decides when the offender can return to the herd. Since the horse herd in SAND and SAGE was in continous danger from predators, banishment from the herd could be fatal for any offender. The red roan colt finds out about this firsthand. 

Read SAND and SAGE for the rest of the story.

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SAND and SAGE - An Adventure in Grasshoppers



Figure One - CLICK for SAND and SAGE 

My new historical fiction novel SAND and SAGE takes place in the latter part of the 17th Century in the Rocky Mountain states of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Just as some people fare better than others in today's society, some northern Plains Indian tribes fared better than others in the 17th Century. While some Plains Indian tribes feasted on bison, elk, and deer, a few tribes survived on 'less appealing' cuisine. The short passage below provides an example of one of these less fortunate tribes called Snake from my book SAND and SAGE. The Snake tribe is not trapping bison or deer or antelope in this passage from the book, they are trapping grasshoppers. You read it right, grasshoppers. Our young hero in the book named Ouray is helping his tribe gather these teeny beasts. I will meet you on the other side of my book passage.

Figure Two - Native American Grasshopper Trap
(Courtesy of ancestralarts.net).

A loud call imitating a yipping coyote signaled everyone to start walking toward the trap. The people marched forward, flailing away at the tall grass with tree branches and sticks. The people yipped and howled and barked like coyotes. The Snake People were making an awful racket. Winged insects by the hundreds burst out of the tall grass. Snapping wings crackled through the air. Ouray advanced, beating the grass with a bushy branch from a juniper tree. Bugs darkened the sky as they flew ahead of the people. A few insects landed on Ouray, hanging onto him with their sticklike legs. Ouray jerked the bugs off as fast as he found them, throwing them in the direction of the trap.

The march continued with people pummeling the ground and howling up a storm. The clacks and buzzes from hundreds of airborne insects joined the chorus of shouting. Hoppers took flight, staying in front of swatting switches and coyote calls. As the swatters neared the trap, the distance between each person decreased, reducing the avenues of escape for the grasshoppers. Ouray glanced to his right and noticed that the buhagant was way too close to him. The buhagant was flinging his tree branch around with no regard for Ouray’s safety. Ouray moved to his left, holding his right arm up alongside his face, just in case Sani got too wild with his switch.

“You are letting them get past you!” Sani screamed at Ouray. “Come my way!” 

Figure Three - Yummy 

Grasshoppers are supposedly tasty. I write 'supposedly' because I wouldn't know how they taste, and don't plan on finding out. Take a look at the photograph in figure three and tell me you could eat one. I remember swallowing a grasshopper whole once when I was riding my motorcycle. It went down my throat before I knew what happened. That's the closest I will ever come to dining on another grasshopper. Our German Shepherd Maggie May just loves eating them. She will pluck them right out of the air and crunch them right there on the spot. She would eat them all day long if she could. Maggie May needs to be careful because the average grasshopper has 82 calories each. Maggie May is not a good judge of cuisine. She eats a lot of things that I wouldn't touch. Let me leave it at that.  

Grasshoppers are healthy food. They are high in protein and fiber. A United Nations report promotes the eating of grasshoppers and "maintains that these critters are simple to cook, and especially tasty when roasted and seasoned with onion, garlic, chili or soy sauce. Their nutritional content makes them a hearty snack or addition to most meals". I don't think so. The United Nations report further contends that "the protein content in grasshoppers comes pretty close to that of a similar-sized serving of chicken breast, but with a bit more fat". I am not convinced yet, nor shall I ever be. I would have to be pretty hungry, i.e. starving to death, to partake in these crunchy insects. 

In my book, SAND and SAGE, the Snake tribe did not have a choice but to eat grasshoppers and grubs. The people were surviving from day-to-day. Most of the Snake people felt blessed to have the occasional grasshopper to eat. In my book SAND and SAGE, something came along that changed the fortunes of the Snake people forever!!  

Read SAND and SAGE to find out what that 'something' was. It is not what you expect. In the meantime, here's looking at you and bottoms up.  

SAND and SAGE - An Adventure About Horses

The Victors, a painting by Howard Terpning 

When I wrote SAND and SAGE, I had to imagine what it would have been like for the Plains Indians to first lay eyes on horses. To do this, I had to put myself in their shoes, I mean their moccasins. If I saw a horse for the very first time without any previous knowledge about horses, what would I think? Would I think it an elk? Or a 'big dog'? You can read SAND and SAGE to see how I handled the introduction of horses to at least one Indian tribe. In the meantime, here are some stories about horses coming to America. 

The Spaniards arrived on the southern plains of North America in the early 1500s and brought horses with them. Prior to that, there were no horses in North America! It was around 1531 when Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca roamed the plains of Texas and northern Mexico on horseback and it was around 1541 when another horse-riding explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, reached the great bend of the Arkansas River in central Kansas. Over the next century, the seed stock from these first Spanish horses grew and expanded geographically. 

So, how did the Plains Indians come to possess horses? The first few horses and mules may have been obtained from the Spaniards around 1600 by settlement Indians near Santa Fe, New Mexico who then traded horses to the various tribes in the area, including Ute, Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche. Horses gradually spread north onto the high plains of Wyoming and Montana. I am sure each tribe that came in contact with horses for the first time had a different impression. Please read on.  

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Most documented folklore from Plains Indians does not specify where and when they first obtained horses. Interviews by historians with tribe members in the early 1900s does not help much either. Many of the tribe members interviewed had a belief that horses had always been a part of their culture! Fortunately, for history's sake, there are a few documented accounts by Plains Indians that help to unravel the where and when of their first horse acquisitions.

According to Shimkin (reference available upon request), the first horses reached the Wind River and Big Horn Basins of Wyoming sometime between the years 1700 and 1740. It appears that the Shoshone Indians first obtained horses from their southern allies and relatives, the Utes and Comanche, and by the 1720s the Shoshone had become full-fledged, horse-mounted warriors. The Shoshones then traded some of their horses to the Crow and other northern plains Indian tribes and that's how horses spread (Secoy: reference available upon request). 

Decades later, the Plains Indians had become some of the greatest horse people the world has ever known. Horses changed the lives of the Plains Indians forever. Their entire lifestyles changed with horses. They could hunt bison on horseback and they could now move a greater amount of possessions from camp to camp. Previously, dogs were their only beasts of burden. READ SAND and SAGE for an adventure into the introduction of horses to the Plains Indians and how it changed their lives.   



Horse of a Different Color, a painting by Howard Terpning

     

Wild Horses of Wyoming and WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR

The Red Roan Colt along the Powder Rim in Wyoming.
This horse was the inspiration for my new historical fiction novel
WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR

The wild horses of Wyoming inspired me to write my latest novel, WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR. I cannot be sure why I originally connected with these wild mustangs. I am an animal person, but it was not like I was a horseman or horse expert or anything like that. Sure, I had a quarter horse growing up and I did the 4H horse thing for two or three years, but once I discovered horsepower under the hood of cars and got my drivers' license, my interest for the four legged kind of horse severely waned. 

My interest in wild horses and horses in general has risen dramatically in the last twenty years. Below is one of my first encounters with wild horses in the desert in southwestern Wyoming. I will never forget that day. 

The Gray Stallion in a desert basin in Wyoming.   

As I slowly drove along the meandering road that overlooked the desert basin, I spotted several dark specks in the distance that contrasted with beige-colored desert. I stopped the vehicle and took aim with my high-powered zoom lens on my camera. Through the lens, the indistinguishable specks became the profiles of several multi-colored wild horses. I was too far away to get a good photograph, so I parked the vehicle, grabbed my backpack, and slid down the steep, shaly embankment that lead into the desert basin. I wanted to see just how close I could get to these animals.

Once I reached the sandy floor of the desert basin, I pushed my way through the chest-high sagebrush and greasewood. This was definitely deer tick heaven! As I slowly moved forward through the brush, ahead, I kept one eye on the ground, searching for sleeping rattlesnakes. Thirty minutes and a mile or so later, I reached a sandy ridge where I had originally spotted the horse herd. The horses had moved on. I raised my camera to my eye and scanned the desert in front of me. I was surprised when I found a gray stallion staring at me through the viewfinder, straight ahead. I snapped a photograph of the stallion and then another. As if he had heard the near inaudible camera shudder fire, the gray stallion turned and galloped away.    

After several years watching the wild horses and praying for their safety and well-being, I decided to write a book about the ancestors of the wild horses, the first horses that came back into North America and the first encounters of horses with Native Americans. The name of that book is, well, you guessed it, WHEN LEAVES CHANGE COLOR. Give it a shot and discover the rest of the story.

 

 

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