Recently someone asked me, out of the blue, where they could find my books for sale. The question was a surprise, coming from this person. I thought that anyone with a question like that would simply “google it.”

Curious about what would come up, I did just that, a few minutes ago, here at my desk in the warm end of the workshop at the Hoarfrost, on a beautiful cold clear morning. And no, I am not going to thank the world’s weathiest man Elon Musk for the Starlink system that made such a process possible out here today. But that topic is another can of worms.

Kinds of Winter is my most recent book, published 2014, and out of the four books I have in print it is, I’ll admit, my favorite. It is available as an e-book, an audio book, and a paperback. All through Wilfrid Laurier University Press, or your local bookstore, or even (gasp) Amazon, apparently.

North of Reliance, first published in 1994, and re-published in 2016 as a second edition (no changes to my writing, some new and additional photos, and a new Preface) by Raven Productions in Ely Minnesota, is still out there for sale. Brand new copies appear to be On Sale now by the company that bought out Raven some years ago: Legacy Bound. I am not on great terms, let’s just say, with Legacy, but hey, they do have the remaining boxes of these books, and the books are made of paper and thus of trees, and thus before I start the process of bringing out a third edition of this book, I am steering you to Legacy. However, I don’t think they can ship to Canada, by the looks of things on their website.

Legacy, having bought out Raven, also holds most of the hardback copies of A Wonderful Country, , the 2005 edition, also a favorite book of mine. It is a collection of the stories of Bill Magie (pronounced same as McGee), an old-timer who lived a colorful life in and around the Canoe Country of the Minnesota – Ontario border. Bill was at various times in his life a wilderness surveyor, a pilot (with a license signed by Orville Wright — see my post here from last April), a canoe guide, and a kingpin in the long battle to preserve the Quetico-Superior canoe country as capital-W wilderness. Bill was a master storyteller — ribald and lively. I met him as a young man when I was attending Northland College, and I tape-recorded, transcribed, and edited his stories back in 1978.

Cold Nights, Fast Trails, my 1989 book about my early years as a dog musher and sled dog racer, seems to be still out there, in nooks and crannies of used books online. It was published by NorthWord Press, but it has long been out of print.

There you have a longer-winded answer to this question than I intended.

This will not be my post here for December, but more in the realm of connecting readers of this blog to these books of mine, and — as luck would have it — alerting you today to the On Sale status of both North of Reliance and A Wonderful Country, at the Legacy Bound website.

One final note for locals in the NWT: The fine folks at the Yellowknife bookstore have copies of North of Reliance and Kinds of Winter right on the shelf. They deserve your support, as do small independent bookstores everywhere, in my view.

Over and out.