Richard Prosch

Award-winning Writer

News & New Releases

Two For Midnight Short Stories in Print

Echoes From the Grave

Like any all-American boy living in the early 20th century, Phil Dunlap wants to make money.

So when he sees an opportunity to sell phonograph records to his friends and family for profit, he jumps at the chance.

But the wrong Purple Oxford Record Labels aren’t what his listeners expect, and the voices in the grooves threaten an entire town with echoes from the grave.

Plus – Pap McGee spins a Christmas ghost yarn from Nebraska legend, gunplay, and restless spirits that walk the dark abandoned banks of Bitter Creek.

Available from Amazon in print and for Kindle.

Fall 2017 – New Short Stories Published

My short fiction is available this fall in two newly published venues.

First up, I’m happy to have a new science-fiction story published at the acclaimed webzine, Beat to a Pulp! Please check out “Nothing to Push Against.”

It’s a special story to me because it finds its roots in a near death experience I had a few decades ago. Thanks to editor David Cranmer for hosting me.

Second, “The Society of the Friends of Lester McGurk” makes its debut in a new western anthology from Sundown Press. This story about a team of secret agents working directly under the President is made for fans of The Wild Wild West and Mission: Impossible and is only the first in a new series.

Be sure to pick this one up. Along with my story, the rest of the book is bustin’ with acclaimed Western authors such as James Reasoner, Livia J. Washburn, Jackson Lowry, Kit Prate, Charlie Steel, Richard Prosch, Big Jim Williams, Cheryl Pierson, J.L. Guin, Clay More, and David Amendola.

Five More Nebraska History Titles

In the March, 2017 issue of True West magazine, I offered readers my five favorite Nebraska history titles in the “Building Your Western Library” column. From a teetering stack of dozens of paperback and hardcover entries (some no more than pamphlets, some the size of cement blocks) I pulled out my Top-20, then divided that in half. It took a while and a couple re-reads to whittle the stack down to five. Even then it was almost a coin toss as to which five made the final cut.

The runners-up follow here.

Some are harder to track down than others, but all are worth your time and perusal.

Oak View Park – Pinnacle of a Czech Legacy by Linda F. Wostrel

Born in 1859 to Czech immigrants in Iowa, had John Pospeshil not relocated to my hometown of Bloomfield, Nebraska in 1904, his name might well be forgotten. Inspired by the 1898 Trans Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Pospeshil landed in Bloomfield in 1904, and one of his first endeavors was not just to build a new Opera House for the young community, but to fabricate its bricks with a machine of his own invention. The success of Pospeshil’s brick machine and the Opera House with its legendary shows and entertainments led the entrepreneur to found Oak View Ranch in 1908, a working cattle concern that eventually hosted Oak View Park in Venus, Nebraska. It was a modern amusement park with electric lights, baseball diamond, dance hall, Olympic-sized swimming pool, gas station and airstrip. Through the ‘20s, the Park hosted a variety events including the Mason Brothers’ Wild West Rodeo. Family member Linda Wostrel fills a historical void with a thorough, well-researched book that’s packed with vivid photos and other period visual treats. Information on getting a copy of the book can be obtained from the author at: Linda Wostrel, 7405 South 168th Avenue, Omah, Nebraska 68136.

Western Story – The Recollections of Charley O’Kieffe, 1884 – 1898  by Charley O’Kieffe, with an introduction by A.B. Guthrie, Jr., Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 1960

On the northern edge of Nebraska’s sandhills, Charley O’Kieffe saw the last days of the vast frontier and the taming of a wild west his settler parents were part of. Good natured recollections and humorous stories are punctuated with a poignant sense of nostalgia and loss for a time and place that O’Kieffe brings to life in splendid fashion.

The Luckiest Outlaw –The Life and Legends of Doc Middleton by Harold Hutton, Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Hutton partially explored the horse-thieving days of Nebraska’s legendary James Riley, aka Doc Middleton (1851 – 1913) in his book Vigilante Days. A few years later the author produced this more in-depth exploration of the notorious character’s life and loves, motivations and ultimate legacy. To say Middleton was a complex man is an understatement, and Hutton’s profile manages to be both objective and warmly empathic. A fair look at a controversial figure.

Whit’s Town – A Pioneer Editor, His Newspaper & His Community by Ramon D. Hansen

A true labor of love and years in the making, Hansen packs the first half-century of Bloomfield, Nebraska’s history into one 700+ page hardcover tome. One of the first students at the nascent University of Nebraska in 1870, Whit Needham founded the Bloomfield Monitor twenty years later. The Monitor was the rural community’s first newspaper, and remains a weekly standard in Bloomfield. Hansen uses Monitor archives to immerse readers in another time, but with deft insight and precision manages to offer readers a clear sense of historical place and progress. From early “wild west” shootings and railroad concerns to World War One and the Flu Epidemic, through the dustbowl and America’s entry into World War Two, Hansen exposes the human side of history like nobody else. Write for information on getting a copy to:  Ramon D. Hansen, 109 Thorpe St., Carthage, NY 13619

An Unspeakable Sadness – The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians by David J. Wishart, University of Nebraska Press, 1994

Breathtaking in scope, with stunning attention to detail, Wishart’s 1994 work about the Indians of Nebraska and the loss of their lives, cultures, and tribal lands is important for the scholar and layman alike. Chronological narratives, maps, graphs and first-hand accounts make the Ponca, Omaha, Pawnee, Otoe, and Missouria come alive. A revelation not to be missed.

 

 

New Stories in Saddlebag Dispatches

The Summer and Autumn issues of Saddlebag Dispatches, a quarterly journal covering the Old West and edited by Spur Award-Winner Dusty Richard, published my fiction in 2016.

dispatches_summer_postSix miles away from the stagecoach line and Eustace Novacek, a man who liked living alone on the Nebraska frontier, still couldn’t visit the privy in peace. He was used to the breeze whistling through the vertical cracks of the leaning frame outhouse, and he didn’t mind the snow accumulating in the corners. But on a winter’s night, when the wood smoke from his cabin got lost in the wind before it could cover the stink of the latrine below and the temperature dropped faster than his pants, he shouldn’t have to share an evening constitutional with a needy, pestering varmint.

Again the white paw came under the door from outside.

“Eustace and Cats” appears in the Summer Issue (Vol. 2, Issue 2).

Order a Copy Here

dispatches_autumn_postBarney Bogart, dressed like a cowboy with long sleeves, vest and chaparrals, and riding an old roan, didn’t think of himself as a bad fellar—which is probably where he and Stank Carmichael differed.

Stank, riding at Barney’s side on a gray gelding and dressed like a citified dandy (complete with brown English bowler), saw the two of them as rough and tumble outlaws. “Real owlhoots on the dark ways prod,” he’d sometimes say.  “Jail broke desperadoes.”

The two hadn’t so much broke jail as simply walked out of a Colorado cell during the guard’s drunken lunch hour.

Be that as it may, they were now headed for Stank’s home town of Emoryville on the green flint hills of Kansas.

It was Sunday, and mischief was in the air.

“Killing Hilda Kempker” appears in the Fall Issue (Vol. 2, Issue 3).

Order a Copy Here
 

 

 

 

Crime Story Print Collection: Season of Ice

season_book_coverFrom the 1965 east-coast blackout to depression-era Nebraska; from the trash-piled streets of Manhattan to rural-South Carolina; here are 17 stories of innocent criminals, guilty bystanders, mob hit men, dead farm girls, and small-town cops. Justice is brutal. Long dead secrets won’t stay in the grave. And just about everybody has something real to fear. New tales of crime and suspense join Prosch fan favorites to keep you turning pages well past midnight.

Now available at Amazon