Archive for Schurtz

Seven Ox Seven Part Two, Escondido Loosed

Posted by P. A. Ritzer //
 6 August 2015

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (3/17/15) Contact Le Lourdes, 720-207-2867, le.lourdes@sevenoxpress.com

Seven Ox Seven Part Two, Escondido Loosed

After the burning at the end of P. A. Ritzer’s Seven Ox Seven Part One, Escondido Bound, Luke, Elizabeth, and Tom face the crucial decision of whether to remain in or leave Escondido Canyon. In Volume One of Seven Ox Seven Part Two, Escondido Loosed, published on June 12, 2015, Ritzer returns to these characters moments later. He presents them still burdened with the necessity of choosing and then follows them into the choosing and its consequences. Staying, they are certain, would mean more of the unpredictable and often petty harassment that has proven dangerous and may yet prove fatal. Leaving could provide safety and relief but would require an abandonment to their tormentor of the fruits of their labors, of their plans and hopes, of what they have committed to. Could a sudden change in their circumstances relieve them of the need to decide whether to stay or leave? Could it signal the beginning of a new and better way? Or could it prove to be the agent that exposes fault lines in the foundation of their enterprise, the foundation of faith, integrity, loyalty, and sanity?

Seven Ox Seven: A Story of Some Ways in the West. Part One, Escondido Bound rose to Number One on Amazon.com for Historical Fiction and Western after it was selected for the Kindle Daily Deal on May 18, 2012. It was also chosen for the Kindle Big Deal, from August 9-23, 2012. It has been recognized by Writer’s Digest and honored with numerous awards, including the USA Book News National Best Books Award, two National Indie Excellence Awards, the IPPY Best Regional Fiction Bronze, and the Hollywood Book Festival Award. Seven souls risk everything on a life-changing gamble in Seven Ox Seven. The Stuart-Schurtz party venture into a strange land, seek a mysterious canyon (which may not exist), and face whatever the West Texas frontier of 1877 will throw at them. The age-old quest for home lies behind this radical disruption of their lives. P. A. Ritzer started work on the story in 1992. In 1995, he drove across the Great Plains into the legendary American West of Kansas and Texas. Over the years, Seven Ox Seven grew into a trilogy. Part one (Escondido Bound) was published in hardcover in 2007, in ebook in 2009, in paperback in 2011. Ritzer’s own western odyssey lends a certain authenticity to Seven Ox Seven. He knows the day-to-day journey into the unknown, the nights in darkened campsites, the concern about provisions, the seeking for that which may not be attained. He also brings to the story extensive research of primary and secondary sources and of the people and the land in which they live.

Cover and Author Photo at sevenoxpress.com, click News, click Media Downloads. Seven Ox Seven Part Two, Escondido Loosed: Volume One will be available through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores or can be ordered from Seven Ox Press, P.O. Box 472467, Aurora, CO 80047-2467; telephone 720-207-2867, info@sevenoxpress.com. For more information visit sevenoxpress.com.

Title: Seven Ox Seven Part Two, Escondido Loosed: Volume One;   Auth: P. A. Ritzer;  Category: Fiction/Historical, Fiction/Westerns;  Size/Binding: 6 x 9 paperback;  Pages: 216;  ISBN: 978-1-933363-05-9 (paperback), Retail Price: $12.95; 978-1-933363-06-6 (ebook), Retail Price: $ 7.99;  Publication Date: June 12, 2015

Distributed by Pathway Book Service

7OX7Pt2V1-Release.3.17.15

New Edition of Seven Ox Seven Part One, Escondido Bound

Posted by P. A. Ritzer //
 5 August 2015

New Edition of Seven Ox Seven Part One, Escondido Bound

Seven Ox Press published a new edition of Seven Ox Seven Part One, Escondido Bound by P. A. Ritzer on July 4, 2015. The title of the new edition has been simplified from the original Seven Ox Seven: A Story of Some Ways in the West. Part One, Escondido Bound. This new edition follows upon Seven Ox Press’ move of its distribution from Midpoint Trade Books to Pathway Book Service on May 13, 2015. It also follows the publication of the second installment of the trilogy, Seven Ox Seven Part Two, Escondido Loosed: Volume One.

After the burning at the end of P. A. Ritzer’s Seven Ox Seven Part One, Escondido Bound, Luke, Elizabeth, and Tom face the crucial decision of whether to remain in or leave Escondido Canyon. In Seven Ox Seven Part Two, Escondido Loosed: Volume One, Ritzer returns to these characters moments later. He presents them still burdened with the necessity of choosing and then follows them into the choosing and its consequences.

Seven Ox Seven: A Story of Some Ways in the West. Part One, Escondido Bound rose to Number One on Amazon.com for Historical Fiction and Western after it was selected for the Kindle Daily Deal on May 18, 2012. It was also chosen for the Kindle Big Deal, from August 9-23, 2012. It has been recognized by Writer’s Digest and honored with numerous awards, including the USA Book News National Best Books Award, two National Indie Excellence Awards, the IPPY Best Regional Fiction Bronze, and the Hollywood Book Festival Award. Seven souls risk everything on a life-changing gamble in Seven Ox Seven. The Stuart-Schurtz party venture into a strange land, seek a mysterious canyon (which may not exist), and face whatever the West Texas frontier of 1877 will throw at them. The age-old quest for home lies behind this radical disruption of their lives.

P. A. Ritzer started work on the story in 1992. In 1995, he drove across the Great Plains into the legendary American West of Kansas and Texas. Over the years, Seven Ox Seven grew into a trilogy. Part One (Escondido Bound) was published in hardcover in 2007, in ebook in 2009, in paperback in 2011 (new edition 2015). Ritzer’s own western odyssey lends a certain authenticity to Seven Ox Seven. He knows the day-to-day journey into the unknown, the nights in darkened campsites, the concern about provisions, the seeking for that which may not be attained, and through it all, the ongoing communion with those who lived out the pioneer experience in the time and place of Seven Ox Seven and left behind their accounts for any who might find, treasure, and learn from them.

Seven Ox Seven Part One, Escondido Bound will be available through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores or can be ordered from Seven Ox Press, P.O. Box 472467, Aurora, CO 80047-2467; telephone 720-207-2867, info@sevenoxpress.com. For more information visit sevenoxpress.com.

 

Read & Print PDF of Release

Texas Trails: SEVEN OX SEVEN Excerpt

Posted by P. A. Ritzer //
 19 August 2011

19 August 2011

   At the end of August 2011, we might look back to the Stuart-Schurtz party’s experience at this time of year 134 years ago, and consider the pioneer nature of this blessed republic, the United State of America.

Seven Ox Seven, Part One: Escondido Bound, pp. 171-172

Copyright © 2007 by P. A. Ritzer

   Many were the ways, broad and strait, trod out upon the trails of Texas.  Trails renowned and trails obscure emerged upon the land, born of the myriad imprints of foot, hoof, and wheel: first a single set of prints, then another, and another, countless prints matched to human wills, wills intent on their separate ways, some to loom large in the annals of history, multiples more to be forgotten.  Remembered or forgotten, these ways shared a profound importance, as each determined the ultimate success or failure of a singular human being graced with a supernatural destiny.  The trails were but lines worn into the face of the wilderness, now province, now state, now nation, now state; but the ways trod out upon those trails, each determined by a human will reaching through intentions toward desired ends, with allowance for circumstances, were journeys of consequence.

At the end of August 1877, members of the Stuart-Schurtz party joined their individual ways in a common goal to journey toward consequences common and individual.  Pulling away from home and its holds of love, of memories, of the fruits of labor, they merged their ways onto the Western Trail, their great journey made somehow small upon a trail renowned for epochal migrations of man and beast.

Small upon the trail, small upon the land, small against its time, and yet their souls opened large enough for all of it.  The key, of course, was freedom.  They were free, at least relatively free for human beings still bound in the temporal phase of life.  They owed nothing material to any other human beings.  What they had was theirs, and they had enough, enough to supply their needs and even some desires beyond need, though not so much as to compromise freedom with excess.  They had broken abruptly with the past, its concerns falling farther away behind them with each passing mile, each passing hour.  The concerns of the future lay far off in a place and time unknown to them.  Still, this was not a false freedom without responsibility, which becomes the most subtle and insidious bondage, but the true freedom of accepting responsibility, indeed of taking responsibility for their destinies, and of accepting the incumbent lesser responsibilities meted out in the routine and manageable doses of the trail’s daily chores, each with its immediate and visible reward, however humble, and all, in combination, laying the groundwork for the potentially life-changing reward at trail’s end.

 

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