The Rider of Phantom Canyon (20 page)

Don Bendell is a bestselling author whose style has been likened to that of Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey. He is a 100 percent disabled Green Beret Vietnam veteran and a 1995 inductee into the International Karate and Kickboxing Hall of Fame. Don's late wife of thirty-three years, Shirley, and he were the only couple in history to both be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Don owns the Strongheart Ranch in southern Colorado, named for his number one bestselling western, its sequel
Blood Feather
(Berkley/Penguin Random House, August 2013), and the sequels
The Indian Ring
(Berkley/Penguin Random House, January 2016) and
The Rider of Phantom Canyon
(Berkley/Penguin Random House, October 2016). There are over three million copies of
his twenty-eight books in print. Don hit number one on Amazon three times and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for one of his books,
Tracks of Hope: A Modern Day Western
(2011, GoldMinds Publishing, Nashville). He has a master's degree in business leadership from Grand Canyon University and has six grown children and eleven grandchildren, and is a widower after losing his wife/best friend/soul mate, Shirley, to the side effects of a stem cell transplant after conquering leukemia with blast crisis. She passed away on Valentine's Day 2014 with Don at her side. Don has horses, alpacas, blue-green and white peacocks, chickens, dogs, and cats, and enjoys his two-hundred-acre ranch, filled with Western art as a wonderful retreat where he can work full-time on his books and feature film projects, and babysit grandkids as often as possible.