Bill Miles
Bill Miles has lived and worked as far north as the Arctic Ocean in Alaska and as far south as McMurdo, Antarctica, at jobs ranging from truck driver and bartender to advertising executive and legislator. Along the way, he's been a sky-diver, snowmobile racer, boxer, and pilot--with remarkably little success. He has one published book of short stories, ALASKA UNSALTED. Other fiction has been published in numerous literary journals. His non-fiction has appeared in the ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS, the ANCHORAGE TIMES, the CHICAGO TRIBUNE, and the LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW.
Excerpt from Phoebe’s Ransom
Friday, September 4th, 2009At the Dead Pines trail station, the crowd parted as if the Judge were the Lord Almighty himself. He tossed the traces to a man Phoebe hadn’t seen before and slid the Mauser from its sock. Her grandpap said, “This shan’t take thirty minutes.” He bobbed his head to acknowledge Doc Joel, also out from Cheyenne, the only other person in the nervous gaggle she knew by name.
The station was nothing more than a slant-roofed log box, whole lines of chinking blown out by winters’ winds and spring storms. A simple gallows had been erected, dirt freshly turned where barked Lodgepole pine logs were stuck into the ground. A …
