This week's sponsor is Robert James Russell, and we're featuring a full chapter from his upcoming western, Mesilla, a release from Seattle's own Dock Street Press. Our thanks to him for the support.

Our favorite quote about this book is from Peter Geye: "If Albert Camus had written westerns, they might have sounded something like Robert James Russell's Mesilla." - Peter Geye"

But, we think the prose says it best:

He unwound a piece of stained red cloth from around the upper part of his left thigh and he dropped the saturated tourniquet into a soaked pile beside him. He took two fingers and tore open his trousers and beneath the breach lay a bullet wound that fizzled deep, the skin encircling the wound lipped out as if it had been disturbed by some plated tremor deep below. He thumbed at it curiously as if he had familiarities with human anatomy then recoiled from the shocks of pain that shot back. He coughed and cleared his throat and squinted his eyes at the hole, imagining he could see the top of the stunted round glistening, and he wished he had dug the thing out in San Agustin when he’d had the chance.

Read the whole chapter, and help us in our fight to make internet advertising something worth looking forward to.