Limited Time Offers and Press Coverage

Limited Time Offers:

Free Shipping and Packaging (S&P) on Orders $50 or More

Our website, www.jimainsworth.com has been updated to offer free S&P on orders $50 or more. We are also offering special pricing on the 2014 Books and the Follow the Rivers series of books, as well as a great deal if you buy all nine books in the collection. 

If you have an order form and wish to order by mail, just complete the form without S&P (if over $50) and send it along with your check or credit card information to Jim Ainsworth — 2403 CR 4208 — Campbell, Texas 75422. 

We have also made it as easy as possible to order online from the website. However, if you have a special situation that doesn’t fit the site, e-mail jim@jimainsworth.com explaining your needs. You will be sent an invoice online and you can pay by credit card using a secure connection.  

If you have already placed an order and paid S&P and wish to add book(s) to qualify for free S&P, just send an e-mail explaining your situation. Any shipping charges already paid will be applied to the purchase of additional book(s) and free S&P will apply to the additional book(s). 

Send questions to Jim at jim@jimainsworth.com or myself at vivian.freeman@yellowrosetype.com.

Thanks for your support of Jim’s writing.

ntxe-news gave us good coverage on the books and launch party. Also Front Porch News Texas. Thanks to both.

Me and Marion Shepherd

I think they were a matched pair of Belgian mares, but they might have been Percheron geldings. Seems that Marion owned a pair of each breed at one time or another. He used to drive them by Mother’s house on Dogtown Road when he was breaking them to a sled. 

What I do remember is the night they bolted as we approached a deep creek. It might have been the squirrel that ran between their legs or the screech of that owl that flew over, but I think it was the noise of the wagon they thought was chasing them. 

It was their first time to pull a wagon; it was dark, and they imagined the strange loud contraption behind them was in pursuit and about to run over them. The faster they ran, the faster it ran. We had pulled off the asphalt highway to cut down on the noise the wagon wheels made, but that left us with no barrier to the creek. 

I was pretty confident they would stop when they saw the big drop-off, but I had to consider the consequences if they didn’t. The wagon would likely turn end over end and land on one or both of us, not to mention what the wreck would do to the horses. And all were prized possessions for my cousin.

Marion stood on the foot brake and pulled back on the reins with all his might. But the pull was a minor nuisance compared to the pair’s terror of the contraption chasing them.  They never slowed. Marion shouted through the wind. “Jump!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. The wagon was traveling as fast as panicked horses can run. I looked at the horses’ bobbing heads and pinned ears, at the fast approaching creek, and back at Marion. The expression on his face said he meant it. 

He shouted through the din. “Go out the back. I’ll keep trying to stop ‘em or get ‘em back on the road until you’re off, then I’ll jump before we go in the creek.”

I looked at the fast-moving dirt and weeds as I lay on my belly and hung my legs out the back. I thought I might be able to hit the ground running and avoid falling if I could get up to speed quickly enough—a foolish notion. I decided to wait until the last minute to jump. 

But the grass and dirt turned to asphalt as Marion turned one runaway’s head enough to bring the wagon back on the road. It leaned on two wheels as it left the ditch and loosened my tenuous grip on the wagon bed. Any choice about jumping was gone.

  

I slid along the pavement on my belly. The horses stopped just about the time I did. Marion stood on the spring seat and looked back at me. He later said I looked like a hobo thumbing a ride in the moonlight. The outer layer of skin was gone from my palms and little spots of blood appeared around embedded gravel and splinters from the wagon bed. 

The leather was shredded from my new leather-covered belt buckle and my front belt loops were missing. The knees of my jeans were torn out and my shirt cuffs were strings of thread. My denim jacket protected the shirt snaps, but they were all undone. The toes of my boots had taken the worst of it, but all in all, I felt pretty good as I stood and found nothing broken. 

It was a cool fall night, and I was happy to be able to walk, happy that the horses and Marion were unhurt. I got back in the wagon and we drove the horses to the barn without any more trouble.

Marion’s wife Pat was waiting at Aunt Hildred’s (Marion’s mother), and she scolded him. “You might have been hurt real bad.” He consoled her and winked at me as he told her there had been no real danger.

I must have been quite a sight with ragged jeans and shirt and the hide gone from my palms as I stood to leave. “I think he was just trying to get rid of me.” Pretty soon, we were all laughing. 

A few days later, we drove those green-broke horses into town for a parade. We stopped at Chute 1, my western wear and tack store, put the store banner on the wagon, and rode in a big homecoming parade. It was biting cold and the wind got up just after the parade, but we drove them the seven or so miles back to Shiloh. We were chilled to the bone. Aunt Hildred’s coffee never tasted so good and we took a rare afternoon nap on the floor beside her stove.  

Shep and I had many adventures like that. We took a mule-drawn covered wagon and five horses across Texas to prove our mettle to our fathers and grandfather who had made the same trip eighty years earlier. We participated in a roundup on a famous Texas ranch. Mostly though, we commiserated, laughed a lot, and shared our joys and miseries. We’re double cousins, you see, more like brothers. All our ancestors are the same. And we were great friends.

He called me Jimmy Horn and I followed the timeless and honorable Texas tradition of using his first and middle names—Marion Shepherd. Daddy and many others called him Shep. He was a man who attracted nicknames, fun names like Dabo, because he liked to laugh, tease, and tell funny stories. By the way, if he were here now, he could tell us the breed, sex and the names of those two runaway horses. 

I stopped at his little tire shop the other day on the way into Cooper. I don’t recall the last time I bought tires anywhere else. I rolled down the window to better let the memories wash over me. I choked up a little, did a little salute. Then I heard his strong voice. “Go on now, Jim. Go on.” The tone was like a command, so like Marion, a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. I made a little salute and drove on into town.

After I finished my business in Cooper, I stopped again, tried to picture him sitting in that little office, surrounded by friends who dropped by every day to shoot the bull. I tried to see him in the back, wrestling with a tractor tire men half his age and twice his size would have trouble handling. 

It all happened so fast. Seems like we found out he was sick one day and he was gone the next. It wasn’t that fast, of course, but we didn’t have time to get our arms around it. Course, no amount of time would have made us ready to let him go. 

At his full-church funeral, I read a tribute from his family written by his youngest daughter, added a few words of my own.

I choked up again, did my little salute. This time, the voice was less stern, gentler. “It’s all right, Jim. Go on now. You have to go on.” 

Goodbye Dreams, Hello Regrets

In A River of Stories, I wrote about my admiration for songwriters. I guess it has always been there, but writing novels has made me appreciate their talent more. They can paint a word picture and tell a story in one page that may take a novelist a book to tell.  Consider George Jones mournful rendition of “He Stopped Loving Her Today”. He tells a man’s life story in a few lines.

Of course, songwriters and singers do have the advantage of voices and instruments, while authors must make their words sing on the printed page. 

In Go Down Looking, I wrote a song for a character to sing. Sure that I knew nothing about the technicalities of songwriting, I sent it to a few friends who did know. One was kind enough to send a couple of suggestions, but I didn’t hear from the others. I assumed they didn’t want to hurt my feelings or that the song required so much work they didn’t know where to start. 

So I published the song on the pages of the book anyway. My justification was that Gray Boy Rivers, the character who wrote the song, was a rank amateur. He had a beautiful voice and could play the guitar a little, but was far from a pro. 

And the song was meant to be his final lament—not a pitiful wail, but a look back at his life and the mistakes he made. He sang it first for a brother he had hurt, and intended to sing it to all the people he loved as an apology for hurting them. 

I knew the song was a little long, but it was the story of his life, after all. He was only thirty-four, but he mistakenly assumed his life was ruined—over. 

When Gray Boy looked in the mirror and saw a man he had never wanted to be, he began to examine where he had gone wrong. Charismatic and handsome, he had the world by the tail for most of his life.  Things came so easily for him that he saw no reason to slow down, to think less of his own needs and more about the people who loved him, to do something meaningful with his many talents. 

He had discovered that momentary pleasures fade fast and sometimes create an urgent need to replace them with more pleasures. He felt it was too late to discover what life is really all about. His dreams had turned to regrets.

I wrote the song almost three years ago. When Brad Davis received his invitation to my book launch party, he asked if I could send him the song again. He made no promises, but he said he saw potential in the lyrics. Brad is up for his second Grammy for his album, A Bluegrass Tribute to George Jones.  

He showed up at the book signing with guitar in hand and went immediately to a back room. Brad is a master guitarist, a songwriter, producer and performer, a husband and dad. He has his own recording studio. He is a busy guy who spends a great deal of time on the road. But he took the time to put the song to music on the fly, came out of that room, and sang it for the first time.

Brad is a perfectionist when it comes to music, so we met a few days later to discuss more needed changes. I appreciate that. But I will never forget that first rendition. I know the story, the real people behind the song, and it brought tears to my eyes.

Jim with John Mark Dempsey on KETR

An interview on KETR

A Tale of Three Books

You are invited to a book launch party for three new books on Tuesday, December 9 at the Texas A&M-Commerce Alumni Center from five p. m. to whenever. Hope you can come. Details can be found here.
 

Books will be discounted for the event and there will be refreshments, prizes, good conversation, maybe a song or two (Brad Davis, Grammy-winner and current finalist for Best Bluegrass Album for his A Bluegrass Tribute to George Jones has said he will make every effort to make the event and maybe sing a song or two). 

Q: Why three books?

A: It just happened that way. Not planned.

Rails to a River is my sixth novel. It was finished more than two years ago at the time of the signing for Go Down Looking.  I remember feeling pretty smug about that. I shouldn’t have. It took two additional years of revision and editing. It has had at least six titles, two different beginnings and three different endings.  

This book introduces Tee Jessup. As is my custom (because I can’t seem to do otherwise), I wrote about things I know—but I am not Tee Jessup. It’s not that I’m afraid of research; it’s just that I like to know a lot about what I’m researching. Little nuances can best be described if I have experienced similar occurrences, been to the places; or known people similar to the characters I write about.

There are some disturbing scenes in the first half of this book and in the climax—scenes that I did not experience, but have read about. There is more fiction here than in any or my prior novels.

Firstborn Son is my seventh novel. It was written online as a serial book—a chapter a week for the better part of a year—and was called Borrowed to the Bone. Many readers expressed frustration with reading a chapter a week and wanted the book in print. So here it is.

I had never written a serial novel before and had to title it before I started writing it. Although I like the original title, it no longer fits the completed novel. This book is different than any previous ones with different characters and a completely new family. Many of you will be curious about the characters. Ask me after you have read it.  

A River of Stories . . . it’s been quite a ride is my first story collection. I guess a more apt description would be stories, thoughts, presentations, eulogies, and more, but that would be too long. I wrote a little about the sea changes of life—what thoughts and feelings come to us as we hit certain age milestones and the changes that happen to us when we lose a close friend or relative.

During one of these sea changes, I wondered aloud, “If I were to write my final book, what would it be?” This is it. (I hope it’s not my final book, but it’s something I am proud to leave behind.

Some of the stories have been published in various mediums before, but this is the first time in print for most and the first time to be seen by readers, even family.

I kept it a secret because I was filled with doubt about whether I should be so revealing. I reached down deep to write about things I feel deeply about, memories I cherish—personal relationships, family, friends, animal companions.

I began this book with a story I wanted to write for years without realizing it. It has never been published anywhere. When I pulled together all the writings that meant the most to me, they inspired me to tell the new stories.  When I put it all together, the book was over six hundred pages. Paring it down sort of hurt, but it had to be done.

This book is written not only for family, but for those readers who have stuck with me from the beginning or came along late and read most of my stuff. I poured it out on the page—even venturing into my personal journey of faith, something I would never have dared to write about when I was younger.

There are also a few stories of cowboys, ranches and horses, checking off the bucket list, even some poetry.

Even though it is very personal, I hope you will enjoy it and be inspired by it. There is an index, a table of contents, (even a few pictures) so you can choose which stories appeal to you most. But I hope you will read them all.

When I saw that the index was thirteen pages long, I knew I had covered a lot of territory, a lot of people. Many of you may find yourselves in that index.

Join us on Tuesday, the 9^th  . If you can’t make it, you can order signed copies from me on my website, from Amazon, by e-mail or phone. Thanks.