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Roland Cheek

Goodreads Author

Born

in Sweetwater, TX

Website

http://www.rolandcheek.com

Twitter

rolandcheek

Genre

Nonfiction, Fiction, Ebooks

Member Since

March 2012

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomroland_cheek

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There are, I suppose, febrile savants who reject any notion that a person can acquire the writing art outside those hallowed halls of academia. Yet storytellers captured audiences for millenniums before Oxford or Harvard were more than forest enclaves where wild turnips sprout.
There's dissent, of course, holding the cloistered academic life to be poor training grounds for the kinds of riveting stories audiences wish to hear or read. My particular PhD came from God's own university of wild places and wilder things. My Culture might best be described as the Campfire kind, backed up against the inky black of star-filled nights, regaling saucer-eyed guests with tales of wilderness adventure, while horses stomped at picket lines and coyotes howl ...more

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Popular Answered Questions

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Roland Cheek Writer's block, I've never experienced such a thing, therefore I can't respond.…moreWriter's block, I've never experienced such a thing, therefore I can't respond.(less)

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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Roland Cheek the concept:

I was sitting in a barbershop in my hometown of Columbia Falls, Montana while the former Sheriff of Flathead County--a man known to someti…morethe concept:

I was sitting in a barbershop in my hometown of Columbia Falls, Montana while the former Sheriff of Flathead County--a man known to sometimes jerk the chains of gullible listeners--held court while undergoing tonsorial polish.

Knowing that I guided folks from all over the world to adventure amid the Northern Rockies, the ex-sheriff asked if I was familiar with an old plane crash along the crest of the "Chinese Wall", in the vicinity of Salt Mountain. I told him I had photos of the wreckage. He said he jumped from a helicopter onto the crash site the day after it happened. "Want to know what I found in a a sidepocket of that plane?"

"Yeah, sure, Dick," I said, stifling a yawn.

"I found a vial containing twenty-six cut and polished, high quality sapphires."

"YOU WHAT!"

"Yup," he said, smiling smugly at the way he'd set his hook. "Of courses the FBI stepped in right away. Took the case away from me." He paused only a moment, before adding, "The sapphires were originally from Montana--Yogo sapphires it turned out, from their color."

"Were they legitimate?"

"Way I get it, nobody knows for sure. The FBI told me they figured the jewels were sapphires that disappeared from the Crown Jewels of Hesse during World War II. But since all English records were destroyed during the Nazi blitz of London, and since all German records vanished with the jewels, far as I know the case was never solved."

The barber brushed my storyteller for loose trimmings, then whisked away the cloth covering his shoulders. On his way from the chair, the former sheriff said, "There was one other thing, Roland: One of the occupants killed in that plane crash was an airman from the Malmstrom Airbase, there at Great Falls ..." I slipped from my jacket, then slid into the barber's chair while Dick continued: "... and that same airman was stationed at Frankfurt after Germany surrendered when the war ended."

When I made no further comment, he added: "Frankfurt is the Capitol and largest city in the German principality of Hesse."(less)

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Roland Cheek’s books

Average rating: 4.19 · 137 ratings · 13 reviews · 27 distinct works

	Learning to Talk Bear: So Bears Can Listen 4.36 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1997 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chocolate Legs: Sweet Mother Savage Killer? 4.67 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2001 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Echoes of Vengeance 3.71 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2002 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Dance on the Wild Side: A True Story of Love Between Man and Woman and Wilderness by Roland Cheek (Goodreads Author), Jane Cheek 4.09 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 1999 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chocolate Legs: Sweet Mother - Savage Killer? 4.29 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bloody Merchants' War 3.63 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2002 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Silver Yoke (Valediction For Revenge Book 6) 4.14 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Learn About Elk really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2013	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gunnar's Mine (Valediction For Revenge Book 4) 3.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2003 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	My Best Work Is Done at the Office by Roland Cheek (Goodreads Author), Bob Elman (Editor) 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Roland Cheek…

73 posts
Roland Cheek's Blog

Importance of Cover and Title

http://www.rolandcheek.com/YogoSapphi...

I made a couple of critical mistakes in coming up with a cover for the first book in our Yogo series: The first was my choice for the title; I wanted to try a book with a one-word title and thought everyone else would be as intrigued with the word "Yogo" as I am. They weren't. Hell, many Montanans didn't even know what it meant, let alone somebody from K Read more of this blog post »

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Published on December 16, 2014 15:51 • Tags: gemstone-discovery, greed, love, mining, sapphires

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Roland is Currently Reading

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In Our Hearts We Were Giants: The Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe—A Dwarf Family's Survival of the Holocaust

by Yehuda Koren

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Jun 14, 2022 04:05PM

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Sentence of Marriage (Promises to Keep, #1)

by Shayne Parkinson (Goodreads Author)

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Nov 17, 2021 06:31PM

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Airliner Down

by John Etzil (Goodreads Author)

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May 20, 2021 06:45AM

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