Mike Blackstone

Mike Blackstone is a great-grandson of Harry Arthur Gant. The publishing of Gant’s memoir, I Saw Them Ride Away, was one of the goals of his establishment of Castle Knob Publishing.

Little did he know how that straightforward-seeming project would consume so much of his life. He had so much fun, preparing the memoir for publication and following up on people he met along the way, that he wrote The Making of “I Saw Them Ride Away”. He describes the depth and breadth of sources and techniques available on the Internet for researching the most arcane information imaginable, and a great many surprises.

In 2013, he completed another project of long-standing interest, this one with no thought of selling the product. Fondly recalling the earliest days of his so-called career, he wrote up a description of working on a robot demo for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Since this demo preceded the first purpose-built robots at JPL, he calls it Generation Zero: My Best Job Ever. Feel free to view it freely – no charge!

By 2020, he had spent so much time and effort researching Harry Gant’s “footsteps in the sands of time” (really, the Internet), that he combined Gant’s original memoir with the results of his research into a second edition of I Saw Them Ride Away. Gant’s original Parts 1 and 2 are still intact, and Part 3 provides a great deal of background information on Gant, his family, and his life as a cowboy and in Hollywood. Most fascinating is the “missing chapter” that he didn’t include, but should have.

Also in 2020, Mike completed a project of adapting an ancient story to a newer setting: Neal’s Story.