Westward, Home! by J.A. Campbell - review

Westward, Home!

J.A. Campbell
Into The West #6
Young Adult
E-book,
fantasy

cover - look at this cover!  as with the other covers in this miniseries, it fits the whole feel of the story.

I've been following the writings of J.A. Campbell for quite a while now, and haven't had one bad experience reading her fiction.  Now I usually keep my reading to the "adult" realm (being an advanced adult of 50something) but once in a while I get pulled into a good young adult story.  J.A. Campbell's stories usually do this, as well as Lili Saintcrow's Y/A writing.  It takes a good YA storyteller to keep my interest - because it's hard for a woman of 50 + years to stay interested in the doings of teens unless the teens are interesting enough to want to follow.

Fortunately, Tina of the Into The West series is a character I enjoy reading.  Written in the second person, her voice is strong and interesting.  And she still sounds enough like a teenager to make the story work.  It's hard to review short stories from a serial style of fiction without  posting serious spoilers.  The basic plot of the entire series is of a young woman who moves westward with her family when her father's work takes him to an area that is like a ghost town.  Desert climate, along with an extreme change in population is just one of the challenges that Tina faces.  Tina is a citygirl, a teen used to mall shopping, manicures, shopping for fun, fashion, cell phone/texting etc.  All the perks of big city living.  Tina also has a love of horses - which might be the one thing that she is looking forward to with being forced to live in a hot little town in Arizona with no malls, spotty cell phone service and all that sun that wreaks havoc on the skin, hair and nails that is so important to a teen.   So moving to a small town in a desert area must be culture shock.

Refreshingly, Tina's character isn't one of those sullen hate all family and adult types of teens.  This girl, though used to shopping, fashion, pampered nails and all is the type of girl who gets along with her family and is a friendly type of girl.  During the course of the previous installments of Into The West, Tina has been learning how to ride a horse ranch style, has been learning how to work on a ranch, has met a handsome young man from the past and become involved with a range war situation in the past, while trying to make some friends in the present and getting a little bit of help in all of this from a medicine man called Eli.  Most of this she has to keep quiet from her family - because, who would believe that she's been in and out of the past?

Westward, Home! is a fun ending to the series. Tina travels to the past one last time to help her new crush and his employer.  Tina and a new friend, Angie {the apprentice of medicine man Eli} end up in a few scary, suspenseful situations and in a turn from the usual they end up rescuing a man   instead of having to be rescued.  I have fun reading these type of adventures.  This was no exception.  This final adventure with Tina, Rowe and the rest of the characters was a satisfying read.

There's just enough danger and excitement to keep one on the edge of the seat without being overwhelming for a younger teen.  And the dialogue - the dialogue fits all the characters.  This is very important to me - this can make or break a book experience for me.  Campbell does an excellent job making her characters sound and speak like a cowboy, a young teen of the 21st century, a sometimes annoying younger sister and parents trying to be understanding while being firm.  And the budding romance between this young teen from the present and the young man from the past - just enough is hinted that you finish reading the book believing that somehow, they're going to have a future together.  It's sweet.

This is a young adult miniseries that I'm happy to have read.  I'm going to make sure that I keep this file saved so when my grandchilren are old enough we can share this story.  Afterall, I'm pretty sure that this is the type of story that can stand the test of time.  It'll be just as interesting in five or ten years as it is now.  And I'm looking forward to being able to read this to my grandchildren or let them read it on their own.

If you haven't yet experienced any of this series, start with Westward, Yo! the first of the series.  There are six altogether, and you pay less for all six than you would for a paperback at the bookstore.
The other titles in this series include.....

Westward, Yo! #1

Range Feud #2

Silver Rush #3

Desert Dreams #4

Sagebrush Song #5

Westward, Home! #6

J.A. Campbell is also the author of Senior Year Bites currently available and Summer Break Blues - soon to be released

Additionally, she's the author of the quirky vampire hunting dog series titled Doc, The Vampire Hunting Dog - some of the stories are available free online, and there is also a novella version available in print and e-book. Doc also has a facebook presence

Not only that - Ms Campbell will be releasing (hopefully soon) a fantasy titled Arabian Dreams about a horse that isn't your average horse and is currently working on other projects.  She can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and also is part of a website called Fabulous Young E-Pub. 

Explore her website - there are guest posts, contests, and links to other fun things.

All of J.A. Campbell's novels are available on a variety of online bookstores- Amazon, Amazon.UK, OmniLit, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble - just click on the links of the titles above.  I've put a different e-book link on each title.

Sagebrush Song (Into The West #5) by J.A. Campbell - review

Sagebrush Song
Into the West #5
mg/ya fantasy (series)


J.A. Campbell


cover - all of the covers for this entire series have been beautifully relevant to the story covers.  I've never really been into western themes, but these are wonderful covers with beautiful imagery.  I'll include all the past covers with the newest, the final story's cover at the end of this post.  This editor might have dropped the ball on timely publication of Into the West, but the covers - those have been great.


Sagebrush Song is the second to last of this six part series about Tina - a young teen who has been reluctantly relocated to the wild west- and her cowboy Rowe, a young man who lives about 100 years before Tina...  They meet up and together take part in a bit of an adventure.

???

How is this possible?  Well, there's some time travel involved.  In the first four stories, Tina moved to a small town - pretty much a ghost town - with her family because her father's work made this necessary.  She's a city girl, a mall shopper, they type of young girl who polishes her nails, has manicures, face treatments, shops for fun, and pays attention to her looks.  Things are very different in the desert.  Now she's learning how to ride a horse for something besides show, has been helping out at a working ranch, and in the process learning more about desert/ranch life than she ever thought she wanted to know.  Once she inadvertantly goes through a canyon - one that everyone avoids because of strange, mysterious things that happen there.  Ended up getting mixed up with a cowboy and bandits...Turns out she was also quite a ways into the past.

In this past is a handsome young man named Rowe who works for a rancher who has been having some trouble with a rival rancher - trouble that includes horse stealing, shootouts, bandits and lots of danger.

In Sagebrush Song, Tina and Rowe have committed to a plan that will help Ol' Man Taggart keep his ranch and hopefully end the ranch war.  She's going to impersonate a young lady - meaning she has to behave demurely (something many young women of today have a hard time with, lol), wear a long dress and pretend to be a young lady relative of Ol'Man Taggart.  Angie - the Shaman in Training for Eli (medicine man of the local tribe) goes back in time with Tina and Rowe to help out with the plan.  Tina is planning to visit the sheriff to enlist legal help with Taggart's problems.  (Taggart's ranch is the very same ranch that Tina has been working at in her time)

Things don't go quite like they planned, in fact things get dangerous for the three.  However, where one door closes, another door opens....  They meet up with a few good men who are looking for a good cause.  Good thing, because while in town, a bad situation pops up...

In a short story format, Ms Campbell manages to tell a story complete with humor, the beginnings of first love, danger and suspense and sets things up for the final story in the series.  The dialogue between characters is deftly done - Rowe sounds like a cowboy from the early 1900's (how I would imagine one to sound) complete with the manners of that era, while the Medicine Man and his apprentice Angie sound how I would imagine tribal members of modern times to sound like - there's a small difference between Angie and Eli -  young Navajo and elder - which is appropriate.  All the side characters sound like they should.  

I'm not very good at summaries, trying to remember all that I like from a story.  But one of the things I remember enjoying quite a bit was the small little details Campbell included - such as Tina looking around the hotel room when staying the night in an inn.  This would be during their stay in the past.  There are enough details about the differences between now and then that I could just imagine what it would feel like to be in the past suddenly.  It would be strange - no electricity, running water, toilets that flush, so phones, etc.  J.A. Campbell did a good job of detailing some of this without overwhelming a reader with too much.

Sagebrush Song is an enjoyable read with humor, suspense, a few heartstopping moments, and the tender stirrings of a first love - one that might end up to be bittersweet, because the two live in two different time zones - not just a few hours apart, but decades apart!

If you haven't read the series yet, give this one a try.  There will be six parts in all - and each one is an enjoyable read - appropriate for young tweens to young adult.  If I could enjoy this series at 51 years of age - I think many people will like this series.

     



  



newest cover - final episode coming soon

(sorry guys - the new Blogger interface is even harder to format with than the old one, no rhyme, no reason, it's DRIVING ME CRAZY!)

Desert Dreams (Into The West #4) by J.A. Campbell

Desert Dreams
Into the West #4
e-book
J.A. Campbell
echelon press

cover love - I just love all the covers of this series. Each cover seems to get better, and they all tie into the series. This cover is especially scenic and reminds me of my long ago trip to Colorado/Utah area, where we drove through and around different canyons. The rock formations (I'm sure there is a more accurate terms for these particular canyon land) are way more colorful than they seem at first glance...

Desert Dreams is the fourth installment of the Into The West series of shorts. I like to call this a serial story, though Into The West is complete with the sixth installment. **if you haven't read ANY of this series, the beginning story is Westward, Yo!; it's a very good idea to start at the beginning of this series. At 99 cents per story, these e-books are reasonable and you get a lot for a buck.**There's an over-all story arc over the six stories and each of the short stories has it's own plot and resolution.
Fun for me is the cliff hangers at the end of each - I'm one of those who enjoy a good cliff hanger ending. In the last story (Silver Rush), there was the best ever cliff hanger. Tina (the main character) had this compelling NEED to find Rowe, so she prepared for a day or two in the desert and went through The Canyon to find him. Only things didn't go as she planned; she ended up wandering around and became disoriented. Silver Rush ended with her passing out and vaguely seeing someone looming over - friend or foe?
Luckily for Tina she was found by a friendly tribe of Native Americans. She meets up with Rowe and together they go on a trip to find a silver mine that will hopefully turn the tide concerning the range war between Matheson and Ol'Man Taggart. On this adventure Tina gets a bit more than she bargained for from a trail ride. Rowe and their guide teach her a bit of desert lore, how to find water, how to stay alive, etc. Their plan is to find the location of the silver mine, let Taggart know and stay out of the line of fire while performing their mission. Not easy to do.
While it's easy to sum up this installment in a paragraph, there is more than easily explained. I enjoyed reading about Tina's recovery from her desert/dehydration ordeal; the ride itself, with the sights and conversations between Rowe and Tina - they have the beginnings of a romance stirring. There's a couple times where danger lurks - a couple run-ins with human and animal enemies and Tina is put to the test on her survival skills.
Ms Campbell really seems to know how to capture how a normally intelligent and practical teen can make decisions that seem so good to her (Tina) at the time, yet are decisions that grownups - with our life experiences and wisdom wouldn't necessarily make. She's also pretty good at capturing the sometimes awkward and sweet beginnings of a romance without going over the top with the hot and heavy. Which is very refreshing. She has a way with words that tell a story without a lot of frills. There's enough description that you know Tina is in a desert, in a dangerous situation or having a sweet moment, yet you aren't overwhelmed with words. Sometimes authors go a little overboard with words. Ms Campbell does not, and she gets the point across. I enjoy her writing quite a bit - you might notice that I don't mention many young adult novels. I don't tend to read them, yet I've found myself enjoying each young adult novel written by J. A. Campbell.
I would recommend these short stories to many readers - especially to younger readers who find themselves needing to read something, yet don't like to read much. You're not going to get overwhelmed with formal dialog, formal writing and a lot of "filler" words. You're going to get a story that is tightly written and gets to the situations soon. I think a lot of different teens will enjoy this series. Best of all - the teens sound like teens. The dialog between characters sound refreshingly NORMAL.
Next in the series is Sagebrush Song Give this series a look - you won't regret it.

Desert Dreams #4 of 6

The fourth installment by J.A. Campbell of the Into the West series is now available from Echelon Press.
Desert Dreams can be purchased from...

Amazon.com
Amazon.comUK
Barnes & Nobel
OmniLit
SmashWords

I just bought my copy. I usually read adult fiction, yet I've been enjoying this series. Tina, a teen used to city life, malls, cell phones and parties has been moved to a small town ghost town because her father is working nearby. She begins to work with a local ranch, riding fences and getting acquainted with cows and cowboys where she meets Rowe, a very handsome cowboy. But Rowe is from another time - and though they've been warned about seeing each other (the whole time line thing), they can't seem stay away from each other. Desert Dreams continues their story.
Fourth in the six part series, Desert Dreams is a fun and enjoyable read.

Silver Rush by J.A. Campbell

Silver Rush

Into the West

J.A. Campbell

e-book - Echelon Press

Cowboy Boots, a rope, and the cowboy hat. I like these covers - even though I normally don't read westerns or think in terms of "cowboy/cowgirl" - there's no denying that having skills with a horse, boots and rope are good skills to have. I've always wished that I could ride horses or rope little cows (or my kids! lol) I like the representation of cowboy accessories on the cover.

Oh Boy! Now I absolutely have to make sure I get the next installment of Into The West. Because Silver Rush ends with a cliff hanger. At the end of the novella, I'm not sure if our Tina has actually been rescued or has fallen from the pan into the fire...

Tina - a typically "I'm pretty sure of what I'm doing" teen (weren't we all at that age? I know I was pretty sure I knew the best for me!) cannot get Pecos Rowe out of her mind. Rowe is the young cowboy that she ended up seeing both times she went back in time - once by accident, the second on purpose. This time she keeps having dreams - dreams that show up night after night.

Not only is she suffering from these nightly dreams, but her foray into town to a get together with other teens pretty much ends in disaster. Seems she's met the meanest bunch of kids in town. Luckily there's a couple that are nicer than the rest, and she does end up making a friend. Which is nice because her BFF from the big city doesn't quite sound so BFFish lately.

The nightly dreams have Tina convinced that there's something she has to tell Rowe...so despite repeated warnings from the Medicine Man, Eli - Tina makes a trip back through time. Even though she thinks she's prepared for hot weather, things aren't going very well for her and after wandering around in heat for a long time.....well. spoilers.

Even with the (evil!) cliffhanger ending, I once again enjoyed a peek into Tina's story. The characters are interesting and Tina's wandering around in the desert seemed so real that I really wanted some water!

Because I'm such a slow e-book reader, at least I don't have long to wait. The next installment will be coming in June, and I'm already planning to get it.

You can read an excerpt and buy a copy at Smashwords

the two previous books are also available there, and at Amazon, Omni, etc.

coming soon - new Into The West title, Silver Rush

Right at this very moment (2 30 a.m., pst) Silver Rush is available for purchase at Smashwords...

Very soon it will also be available at Amazon and the other online book buying stores.

I'm hoping for very soon, since I have my preferences for online buying... but if it takes too long, I'm going with whoever is available at the moment. :)

short {partial} blurb from J.A. Campbell's website:

"Tina is finally starting to adjust to Arizona. Being a cowgirl in training is hard work and it keeps her busy. She still wishes she were home in Jersey, and going to Prom with her friends, but at least she has something fun to do. Then her parents decide to take her to a youth group. Things go bad right away...."


This is the third installment of the Into The West mini-series, written by J. A. Campbell, who has also finished two full sized novels that will soon be published in e-book form. Details on those as soon as I find out. In the meantime I'm enjoying reading the adventures of Tina - misplaced city girl learning how to be a cowgirl and a survivor of hot weather. Oh, and time travel...

Range Feud

Range Feud



J.A. Campbell



e-book



Last night I finished reading Range Feud, the second installment of Into The West, a series by J.A. Campbell. This is part of the new Electric Shorts series by Echelon Press, a series geared toward the reluctant reader from 7-17, although this series is for ages 13-17.



The first installment was Westward, Yo! where we meet Tina Harker, displaced city girl. She's had to move to a ghost town in the boon docks because her father has work there. This is hard on Tina because even though she's been riding horses for a while, she's a total city girl; malls, make-up, lotions, cell phones, etc. boys, etc. Now she's working on a ranch for fun, and getting into trouble....(not citygirl trouble)



In Westward, Yo! Tina went back in time, was kidnapped by bandits, met a cute young man named Rowe, and had quite an adventure. She and her family met a medicine man named Eli who gave her a turquoise worked into a bracelet. In Range feud, this turquoise bracelet proves to be important.



Because Tina is a teen, she has to prove to her self that she wasn't imagining things before, so she goes back into this mysterious canyon - the canyon that seemed to lead her to a different time before.....



right into another adventure - only this time Rowe is in trouble...



I had fun reading Range Feud. Rowe's character is fun, he's of course, oldfashioned, with old manners...Tina is running around in jeans and odd to Rowe clothes....even so they manage to get to know each other a little better. There is the beginnings of a sweet romance here, if a little ill-fated perhaps with the different time zones. There is just a glimpse of Tina's family this time, enough to see Becky teasing Tina...but there are six more installments to go, so hopefully we'll see a bit more of this happy family relationship. It's refreshing to see a imperfectly happy family - one without the angst or traumas that are apparent in other teen novels. (or adult novels, someone always has a traumatic background...hell, I do too!!! lol)

There was a satisfying little adventure, the romance beginning, and some talk of legend. Eli makes another appearance. I am looking forward to the third installment - wondering what's going to happen with Rowe and Tina, if they'll even get to see each other again. Is Tina going to learn more from Eli about canyon legend, is she even going to listen to his advice? There is only about three weeks to go to find out more, so I'm waiting patiently.

Because I was tired when I originally wrote and posted this review (on a few sites) I forgot to mention one of the most important things about this story. The main character is a girl, one who loves city life and malls, etc...but she isn't the stereotypical Mall-Rat city girl that you find portrayed in movies and t.v. shows. Tina is a girl who had a definite feminine side and also has brains that she's not afraid to use. She comes across as a strong young woman who happens to be growing up into a strong young adult. Even though she does make rash decisions she also deals with the consequences, and when there's trouble, she thinks and tries to over come the problem. This is good modeling for the girls of today - you can be concerned about your looks, your clothes and accessories and still not sound or behave like a brainless twit. I like this example of young female teen, one who doesn't just sit around waiting to be saved.


Both books Range Feud (#2) and Westward, Yo! (#1) can be found at

Amazon

Amazon.UK

Barnes & Noble

Omni Press

Smashwords...


Go get your copy, it's young adult, and a fun read. J.A. Campbell writes interesting, fun stories.