Craig Lancaster

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About Craig Lancaster
Craig Lancaster, a Montana-based novelist, writes stories set in the contemporary American West.
"I have these incredibly vivid memories of visiting Montana with my folks on family vacations, and following my dad, an itinerant laborer who worked in the oil and gas fields when I was a kid," he says. "It was such a vast, beautiful, overwhelming place. From the first time I saw Montana, I wanted to be a part of it."
Lancaster's work, hailed for its character-driven narratives, delves deeply below the surface, getting at the grit and the glory of lives ordinary and extraordinary.
"It's all too easy to turn people into caricatures, but the truth is, we humans are pretty damned fascinating," Lancaster says. "For me, fiction is a way at getting at truth. I use it to examine the world around me, the things that disturb me, the questions I have about life--whether my own or someone else's. My hope is that someone reading my work will have their own emotional experience and bring their own thoughts to what they read on the page."
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Blog postSeveral months ago, one of my journalism and writing heroes, Tom Zoellner, invited me to review Saving Yellowstone for the Los Angeles Review of Books. I was a bit cowed by the prospect, to be perfectly honest. I don't have any standing, in senses literary or academic, to critique the work of Dr. Megan Kate Nelson, the book's author. I hadn't yet read her previous book, The Three-Cornered War, which had been a Pulitzer finalist. I was, upon first consideration, well out of my depth and not part3 days ago Read more
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Blog post*—If I'm doing it right, there's both overlap and freestanding territory. For years and years, I didn't do it right. My daily view for the final stage of my newspaper career (2006-2013). Facebook, I've noted before, isn't good for much, but it's damn near essential for a few things: easy keeping up with far-flung friends and relatives, recipes, irritating others with your daily Wordle grid, cat memes, birthday greetings (the most heartwarming day of the year, every year), etc.
Incre1 month ago Read more -
Blog postChatting with the creative writing club at Billings West High School. My favorite bauble. I've been fortunate enough to have had some terrific honors bestowed upon me. Fifth-grade spelling bee champion. Sixth-grade student council president. I mean, do I have to go on? We're talking biggies here.
It was just about this time of year in 2017 that, perhaps, the one that means the most to me came around. The Billings Education Association—the union for public school teachers in the plac1 month ago Read more -
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Blog post(By Karolina Grabowska via Pexels.com)Love it! What's the next question?
No, seriously, the great Chris La Tray asks some provocative questions and ponders the meaning of National Poetry Month (which we're now in) in his latest Substack piece.
Quoting Chris:
This might be the wrong place to ask this question since you glorious subscribers are obviously anything but ignorant philistines in such matters1, but is poetry really an “important place” in the2 months ago Read more -
Blog postLike many people, I've come to loathe Facebook in as many ways as I find it an indispensable means of keeping up with close friends and loved ones. Perhaps it's the indispensability that I loathe most.
I also post things there deliberately, knowing that I'll be shown them again, year after year, so I can remember certain days with some degree of precision. Two years ago, March 30 was just such an occasion. Somewhere between Wiscasset and Bath. On this day in 2020, the moving trucks2 months ago Read more -
Blog postFront: Laura Ehret, Jon's wife. Flanking her, left to right: Felicia Smith and Ana Waggoner. Back row, left to right: John Lose, Steve Waggoner, some galoot, Frank Christlieb. Elisa and I are just back from a two-week vacation, one spent doing all the things one should do when granted such a release from ordinary life. We saw our favorite basketball team (a loss, but whatever), we ate good food, we hugged loved ones and old friends, and we explored a bit of the Texas coast. A damn good t2 months ago Read more
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Blog postHere's a hard life lesson that writing has taught me: patience. It's a quality I don't naturally have in reserve, and that struggle to find it has benefitted and afflicted me in equal measure in what I do, how I relate to people, how opportunities have come to me, and how I've blown things by being too over-eager.
Writing, it turns out, doesn't much care whether you're patient or you're not. The actual act of it comes at its own pace, and sometimes you have to be patient in the extr3 months ago Read more -
Blog postOne day, several months ago, I was parsing through my email and came across something sent to me through this very site (a low-traffic way of reaching me, for sure). It was from a man named Howard Marc Chesley, and it was a friendly request that I read his novel Free Marcus Katz!!! and offer an endorsement if I was moved to do so.
(A slight deviation before I go on: Requesting endorsements—blurbs—is one of the most humbling things any author goes through. In essence,3 months ago Read more -
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Blog postFretless, January 2022. Let me tell you a little something about this boy …
As of tomorrow, January 25, he’ll be 3 years old. And because I’m nearly 52 and have learned how fast time seems to go, I have to check myself sometimes against pre-emptively mourning what will happen if the actuarial tables are true for both of us: I’ll have to say goodbye to him and let him go. Most of the time, I can get my head straight, tell myself to enjoy the time I have with him, but sometimes4 months ago Read more -
Blog postThis is not a résumé.
Nearly fourteen years ago, I drafted my first novel in twenty-five days, in manic bursts of activity—late at night, after I’d come home from my swing shift at the Billings Gazette, pouring coffee down my gullet, then returning to it in the late morning and early afternoon, before work beckoned again. I was at a small desk jammed into a corner of a small loft condo, my back to the door (bad feng shui!), and for those nearly four weeks, I did little4 months ago Read more -
Titles By Craig Lancaster
Max Wendt has a family . . . but it's sliding sideways, and he has been complicit in its faltering. His wife and his daughter have pulled away from him amid his frequent absences, leaving him to bridge the distance between what he remembers and the way things are now.
Max Wendt has a job . . . but it carries him away from home most of the time, and its dynamics are quickly changing. There's a surprising new hire on his pipeline crew, strife among coworkers, and a boss whose proclivities put everything in peril.
Max Wendt has a friend . . . but this odd man Max meets during his travels perplexes him, prods him, pushes him, and annoys him. He sees something in Max that Max can't see in himself, and he's holding tight to his own pain.
Max Wendt has a problem . . . More than one, in fact, and those problems are flying at him with increasing velocity. Can someone who has spent his life going with the flow arrest his own destructive inertia, rebuild his relationships, and find a better way?
It’s been a year of upheaval for Edward Stanton, a forty-two-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s lost his job. His trusted therapist has retired. His best friends have moved away. And even his nightly ritual of watching Dragnet reruns has been disrupted. All of this change has left Edward, who lives his life on a rigid schedule, completely flummoxed.
But when his friend Donna calls with news that her son Kyle is in trouble, Edward leaves his comfort zone in Billings, Montana, and drives to visit them in Boise, where he discovers Kyle has morphed from a sweet kid into a sullen adolescent. Inspired by dreams of the past, Edward goes against his routine and decides to drive to a small town in Colorado where he once spent a summer with his father—bringing Kyle along as his road trip companion. The two argue about football and music along the way, and amid their misadventures, they meet an eccentric motel owner who just might be the love of Edward’s sheltered life—if only he can let her.
Endearing and laugh-out-loud funny, Edward Adrift is author Craig Lancaster’s sequel to 600 Hours of Edward.
Edward begins penning notes to the child (ever precise, he refers to the gestating being as "Cellular Stanton") as he navigates married life with Sheila, who is unhappy and unfulfilled in Montana; a work partnership with his friend Scott Shamwell, whose own life is teetering; and the emergence of a long-buried family secret and the effect of this revelation on his relationship with his overbearing mother.
Even as Edward's world expands, he must confront questions about whom to let in, how much to give, the very definition of family, the fragility of hope, and the expanses of love.
A thirty-nine-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Edward Stanton lives alone on a rigid schedule in the Montana town where he grew up. His carefully constructed routine includes tracking his most common waking time (7:38 a.m.), refusing to start his therapy sessions even a minute before the appointed hour (10:00 a.m.), and watching one episode of the 1960s cop show Dragnet each night (10:00 p.m.).
But when a single mother and her nine-year-old son move in across the street, Edward’s timetable comes undone. Over the course of a momentous 600 hours, he opens up to his new neighbors and confronts old grievances with his estranged parents. Exposed to both the joys and heartaches of friendship, Edward must ultimately decide whether to embrace the world outside his door or retreat to his solitary ways.
Heartfelt and hilarious, this moving novel will appeal to fans of Daniel Keyes’s classic Flowers for Algernon and to any reader who loves an underdog.
A basketball coach gets caught between his team, his family, and the expectations of a town with a thirst for winning. A traveling salesman, stranded far from home, explores the dark corners of his life on a late-night bus ride. A prison inmate clings to his dignity and self-righteousness in a place where everything else is stripped away. A teenage runaway finds unexpected shelter. Mismatched lovers flail away from each other.Craig Lancaster’s debut collection of short fiction, originally released in 2011 to enthusiastic reviews, mined his home terrain of Montana and took on the notion of separation—from comfort, from ideas, from people, from security. Now updated with two new short stories and a selection of even shorter fiction, as well as a an introduction from the author, this collection goes deep into farms, cities and suburbs, into love and despair, into what motivates us and what scares us, peeling back the layers of our humanity with every page.
Sam Kelvig, a third-generation resident, will do just about anything to protect Grandview from the influx of new oil money and the strangers chasing it. Meanwhile, his restless wife, Patricia, wearies of the constraints of marriage to a man who is so tied to his community; Sam's estranged son, Norby, has reluctantly returned home despite the family's struggle with accepting his sexuality; Henrik, Sam's volatile brother, is looking for any easy opportunity; and Blanche, the family matriarch, only wants a bit of peace before she dies. As Jamboree goes into full swing, the disputes and desires of the Kelvigs--and their friends and neighbors--collide, fueled by both longtime resentments and an irrepressible hope to preserve their family and hometown.
2016 High Plains Book Awards finalist
In The Summer Son, award-winning author Craig Lancaster delivers a powerful novel that invites readers into a family where conflict and secrets prevail, and where hope for healing and redemption abides.
This second edition of the book, a finalist for the 2010 Utah Book Award in fiction, includes a foreword by the author and a personal essay about family.
Carson McCullough has given his career to a singular pursuit--putting out a small daily newspaper that keeps his employees engaged and his hometown informed. But as time and technology conspire against him, Carson's Argus-Dispatch is shuttered by a new owner with a different view of its future.
Stung by the abrupt end of his career and burdened by regret and grudges, Carson and his one true companion, a yellow Lab named Hector, set out on a road trip. As the miles pile up and Carson erratically drives into the residue of past decisions and the consequences of current actions, he confronts questions of love, faith, self-worth, and, perhaps most pressing, whether he can redefine himself after his identity is stripped away.
In his seventh novel, Craig Lancaster (600 Hours of Edward, The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter) returns to the broad themes of his award-winning work and goes deeper yet, straight into the heart and mind of a good man who has lost his way and is struggling against himself to set things right.
From the bestselling author of 600 Hours of Edward comes the story of two small-town characters whose fates are inextricably linked.
Hugo Hunter, a would-be boxing champion, is thirty-seven, soft around the middle, and broke—his glory days long gone. Raised by his beloved grandmother, he is rough around the edges but has a kind heart. Watching Hugo ringside for nearly twenty years, sportswriter Mark Westerly has struggled to keep a professional distance while he’s served alternately as Hugo’s friend, mentor, and conscience. As Hugo lands on the ropes again, Mark steps in to try to save him and, along the way, gets an unexpected second chance of his own when he meets the gentle and lovely Lainie.
In this moving tale of human folly and kindness, can two people who’ve lived so long under the weight of their pasts finally find redemption?
Für den zweiundvierzigjährigen Edward Stanton mit Asperger-Syndrom war es ein aufregendes Jahr. Er hat seinen Job verloren. Seine geschätzte Therapeutin ist in den Ruhestand gegangen. Seine besten Freunde sind weggezogen. Sogar sein allabendliches Ritual, eine Folge der alten Fernsehserie »Polizeibericht« zu sehen, musste er aufgeben. Durch all diese Veränderungen ist Edward, der sich auf ein Leben mit geregelten Abläufen verlassen will, höchst irritiert.
Doch dann ruft seine Freundin Donna an, weil ihr Sohn Kyle in Schwierigkeiten steckt. Edward verlässt sein geschütztes Zuhause in Billings, Montana, und fährt nach Boise, Idaho, um dort festzustellen, dass Kyle sich von einem lieben, kleinen Jungen in einen trotzigen Teenager verwandelt hat.
Als Reaktion auf seine wiederholten Träume von der Vergangenheit beschließt Edward, eine Kleinstadt in Colorado aufzusuchen, in die ihn einst sein verstorbener Vater mitnahm – nun mit Kyle als unerwartetem Reisegefährten. Die beiden streiten über Football, Musik und die Regeln des täglichen Lebens und treffen auf eine exzentrische Motelbesitzerin, die für Edward die Liebe seines behüteten Lebens werden könnte.
Ergreifend, herzerwärmend und mit viel Humor beschreibt Autor Craig Lancaster nach »600 Stunden aus Edwards Leben«, wie es für seinen liebenswerten Protagonisten weitergeht.
Edward Stanton, ein 39-jähriger Mann mit zwanghafter Persönlichkeitsstörung und Asperger-Syndrom, lebt allein und nach strengem Zeitplan in der Stadt seiner Kindheit in Montana. Zu seinen sorgsam ausgearbeiteten Routineabläufen gehört es, dass er täglich seine Aufwachzeit notiert, um die häufigste zu ermitteln (7:38 Uhr), seine Therapiesitzung niemals auch nur eine Sekunde vor dem vereinbarten Termin beginnt (10:00 Uhr) und jeden Abend um Punkt 22:00 Uhr eine Folge der alten Fernsehserie »Polizeibericht« ansieht.
Doch als eine alleinerziehende Mutter und ihr neunjähriger Sohn im Haus gegenüber einziehen, gerät nicht nur sein Zeitplan aus den Fugen. Im Verlauf der beschriebenen 600 Stunden freundet er sich mit den neuen Nachbarn an und rebelliert gegen die Einschränkungen durch seine Eltern und die Entfremdung von ihnen, insbesondere aber gegen die Demütigungen seines Vaters. Er erfährt durch die neue Freundschaft nicht nur Freude, sondern auch Leid, und muss entscheiden, ob er sich dennoch in die Welt vor seiner Tür hinauswagt oder sich wieder in die Einsamkeit zurückzieht.
Eindringlich und komisch geschrieben, wird dieser Roman insbesondere den Fans von »Blumen für Algernon«, »Supergute Tage« oder »Heute singe ich mein Leben« gefallen sowie allen Lesern, die ein Herz für Außenseiter haben.
Er schuldete eine Menge Leute etwas, aber ich war der einzige der noch übrig war um die Schulden einzutreiben. Ich sagte mir, dass ich mich nicht um ihn schere nur darum was er mir schuldet, was auch immer das genau war. Das habe ich wirklich versucht zu glauben.
Als Mitch Quillens Leben aus den Fugen gerät, fürchtet er, dass es keinen Ausweg gibt. Seine Ehe sowie seine Karriere scheitern und die Beziehung zu seinem Vater ist seit Jahrzenten ein Desaster. Als sein entfremdeter Vater Jim ihn plötzlich anruft, fordert Mitchs Frau ihn auf zu reagieren. Bereit für eine Veränderung macht sich Mitch auf den Weg nach Montana zu einer Kraftprobe, die den Verlauf seines Lebens verändern wird. Die Geschichte entfaltet sich inmitten der Kulisse zerklüfteter Berge und Täler: eine gewalttätige Episode dreißigjähriger Missverständnisse und falschen Schuldzuweisungen. In Craig Lancasters kraftvollen, neuen Roman Der Sommersohn, werden Leser in eine Familie eingeladen, in der Konflikte und Geheimnisse vorherrschen, jedoch Hoffnung, Heilung und Erlösung möglich sind.
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