Summary: A look at Sue Ellen Terry from The Sisters. What she felt and thought during her time with Adam. Author’s Note: I started this piece as a pinecone challenge in July 2023, then I developed it a bit more into a short story.

Rating: T    Wordcount: 3,314

Summary: The first Christmas with Inger brings some unexpected challenges to five-year-old Adam helping him learn the most important part of the Christmas season.
Rating:  G  Words 1,620
Written for the 2022 Bonanza Brand Advent Calendar

Summary: “…if anyone in the wide world had a reason to be angry it was me.” A WHB (what happened before) for the episode “The Stranger”. Leduque’s POV.

Rating: T (for language)

Word Count: 600

Summary: Just how did Hoss end up being the caretaker for two, little, troublemaking girls? The opening scene we were denied in Gallagher’s Sons. 

Rating: K+

Word Count: 1,259

Summary: A prequel to ‘A Rose for Lotta’. Ben Cartwright’s meeting with Alpheus Troy and the other mine owners did not go well. They want his timber and he won’t give it to them. The rancher knows Troy will do whatever it takes to keep his mine running, and when he arrives home to find out sixteen-year-old Little Joe is missing, he fears the worst.

Word Count: 19871
Rated PG-13 for typical Western violence 

Summary:  It is spring, and the winter has passed. Five-year-old Little Joe wanders off to find his mama who died a couple of months earlier. This is about the incident that is referenced by Ben to Little Joe in the episode “Between Heaven And Earth” written by Ed Adamson

Rating G

Word Count: 3,184

Summary:  A WHB & WHN for ‘The Last Haircut’, ‘Marie, My Love’, and ‘The Hayburner’ with a nod to ‘The Truckee Strip’ and ‘The Crucible’. Everyone in Virginia City knew Duke Miller had gotten away with murder, but there were few who knew he had done it before. At the heart of his hate lay one man and but a single goal: the complete and total destruction of Joe Cartwright.

Rated PG-13 for Western brutality and lots of angst and SJS

Word count: 72,114

Summary: As Ben Cartwright seeks to comfort Little Joe after he is forced to kill his childhood friend, Sharp Tongue, the older man recalls the curious circumstances that brought the two boys, Indian and white,  together – circumstances that threatened his young son’s life then as surely as now. A WHN/WHI for season six’s ‘The Far Far Better Thing’.

Rated PG-13 for Western violence and brutality
Word count: 29,541

Summary: It is October, a time of looking back and giving thanks for a harvest of blessings.  For Joe Cartwright, this is impossible.  The autumn marks one year since he lost his beloved brother, Hoss. Needing to escape, Joe heads out to visit to Carrie Pickett.  He never makes it.  Instead, Joe finds himself lost and alone and badly injured. Half-dead, he works his way toward a plume of smoke rising in the distance.  Little does Joe suspect that what he finds at the end of his journey will change his life forever.

Word count: 22,401

Rated PG

Summary:  Adam has been back from college for a few months but is having a hard time settling in with the ranch hands and his brothers. Through the wisdom of his father he learns some lessons about being a boss and a brother. A What-Happens-Years-Before the episode The Grand Swing.

Rating – K+, WC – 9978

Summary – Adam Cartwright and Lotta Crabtree were supposed to be strangers when her carriage broke down on the Ponderosa, but something in their demeanor seemed to say otherwise.  Based on the episode A Rose for Lotta. Dialogue in the last chapter is from the episode written by David Dortort.

Rating – T

Word Count – 7909

Summary: This piece is a WHN and WHB for season thirteen’s ‘Bushwhacked!’.  Even as a child I was troubled by Joe’s fever dream image of his beloved brother Hoss pulling out a pistol and shooting him.  I have read a lot of fan fiction’s based on Bushwhacked and though a few have tackled the issue, none have to my satisfaction.

This is my idea of how and why Joe might have thought his big brother was trying to kill him. 

Rated PG-13 for angst, some violence, and vile characters
Word count: 13,660

Summary: A WHB or prequel to ‘Between Heaven and Earth.’ Have you ever wondered what happened when Little Joe climbed Eagle’s Nest as a five year old boy that could have been so traumatic it resulted, not just in a fear of falling, but in total amnesia that lasted for nearly 20 years? This is my take on what happened when Ben Cartwright was told to ‘Bring Marie’.

Rated PG-13

Word Count:  31,167

Summary: In the episode “The Pure Truth” Hoss is suffering from spring fever ( the family is also suffering from the effect on Hoss ). Joe remarks to Ben and Adam that Hoss could step on you and not realize it and mentions Hoss breaking his, Joe’s, leg the previous spring. I thought there should be a story behind that.

Rating:  T Word Count:  1,860

Summary: In The Paiute War, Adam and Young Wolf, son of Chief Winnemucca, were once friends. What made Young Wolf end his friendship with Adam, although Winnemucca continues it with Ben and Adam? 

Rating – T, Word Count – 4799

Summary: A conversation between brothers returns Ben to a time in the past.

Rating:  T   Word Count:   4,135

Summary:   Adam re-assesses his life in the aftermath of his broken engagement to Laura Dayton. (WHB and WHN for “Triangle”, written for the 2017 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament)

Rating:  T    Word Count:  4,221

More than a Memory Series, links to all stories included within.

Summary: WHB for Winter Kill. Returning from Montana, Ben, Hoss, and Joe witness a rare natural phenomenon.

Rating: K Word Count: 1899

Summary:  It’s time for Adam to introduce Little Joe to the… um… fine art of negotiating.  And at least for the night, what better way to forget that Pa is probably going to ‘kill him’ when he finds out the whole truth. Written for the 2016 Bonanza Brand 10th Anniversary, Ranch House R Forum ‘Dirty Words’ Challenge.  If sexually explicit scenes offend you, please do not continue to the story.

Rating: R   (5,095 words)

Negotiation Series, links to stories within the series are included.

Summary:   In this What Happened Before to the episode “The Pure Truth,” we discover the origin of The Remedy.

Rating:  K+  (2,228 words)

Summary:  A prequel to “The Julia Bulette Story”. It attempts to explain the apparent connection between Ben and Julia.

Rating: T  Word Count: 2480

Summary: During the last quarter of 2015, members in the Brand Forums were challenged to write vignettes for all the Bonanza episodes. Members could submit as many Little Bits for as many episodes as they were inspired to write. Multiple members could submit Little Bits for the same episode. The hardest part of the challenge was to write the vignette in exactly 100 or 200 words.
Some Little Bits are dramatic while others are humorous. The submitting member is identified after each Little Bit. 132 Little Bits have been submitted to date and are listed in episode order.

Rating: K (16,000+ words)

Summary: There’s been some gossip in Virginia City about Ben Cartwright’s new wife.

Rating: K Word count: 581

Summary:  I have been fascinated by the characters of Cora and Enos Milford, the affectionate, bickering couple in “The Hayburner”. Clearly they are old friends of the Cartwrights, have great affection for them and knew Adam, Hoss and Joe as boys. I wondered how the Milfords and the Cartwrights might have first met and came up with this story, “It all Started with a Haircut” .

Rating:  K  (6,835 words)

Summary:  Inspired by The Mother of All Challenges, to write a story featuring one or more of the Cartwrights in any time period (prequel, season 1-14, sequel, AU),  in which Virginia City is an integral part of the tale.  

Rating:  K  (4,030 words)

This is my story.

Virginia City, Nevada — Home of the Comstock Lode.   A place where things happen twenty-four hours a day. Thirty thousand people called it home at the peak of the gold and silver rush. A boom town!

Summary: A WHN for Five Sundowns to Sunup / WHL for Death at Dawn story.

Rating:  K  (2,185 words)

Summary: An attempt to give background for “The Paiute War” episode and answer some questions. Why had Young Wolf developed animosity toward Adam? Why did Ring Nose agree to come back with Ben knowing he would be jailed or hanged for what had happened? Why was Wilson so intent on getting revenge on the Paiute and Adam?  

Rating = T  WC = 17,962