All finished but some last-minute polishing on Chronicles of Luna City — the book that my daughter and I wrote together! Nothing so inspiring as a deadline! Date for availability will be November 20. Two books in a year – go us!
The cover for Sunset and Steel Rails! Page and pre-order page to be put up shortly.
Well … a deep subject as the old gag goes. I spent much of my working day yesterday polishing off the next-to-last chapter of Sunset and Steel Rails; just one more chapter, to deal with an emotional climax in the life of the heroine – just as the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is putting the whole place under water. This has me reading and rereading accounts of the hurricane itself, and teasing out certain details. I sat out a typhoon once, in Misawa in the late 1970s, and one of the things that I remembered most vividly was how very powerful the storm winds were, and how exhausting it was to try and walk against them, even when slacked off to about 75MPH, when we were all permitted to leave quarters. Misawa – about ten miles inland, was maybe a foot above sea level on the main part of the base, so … the authorities paid attention to disastrous possibilities.
Eh – the book will likely top out at about 300 pages, once the editing and the review by the Alpha reader is finished, but I hope to have it done and ready for launch this coming holiday season. This is the book about a proper young Bostonian who comes west as a Harvey Girl, marries Magda Becker’s scapegrace and apparently-confirmed bachelor brother Fredi, and discovers belatedly that a) he is much better husband materiel than previously assumed and b) she is more closely related to the extended Becker-Vining clan than she thought at first. Her motivation for a sudden career change and departure to the Far West is due to the machinations of her sociopathic older brother … but enough of that. Dramatic possibilities galore and just leave it at that.
The rest of the afternoon was given over to printing up flyers on nice expensive heavy paper for this week’s first Book Event of the Season. Likely I have killed much of the printer ink in the color and black cartridges by this exercise … but, the Giddings Word Wrangler event is one that I am thrilled to be a part of, since it was by application and invitation, and it is in association with a library … ah, libraries. When I was a kidlet and a young adult, I practically lived in libraries. Now I also live in a library, but it is an ordinary house with a lot of books stuffed in it. Yes, the last time I moved from overseas, the guys packing the household goods had a bet going, on how many boxes of books there would be. IIRC, it topped out at 63, and that was in 1990, so one can only imagine how many more there are now.
There is also stuff to do with the Tiny Publishing Bidness – other people’s books besides my own. Wrapped up a book for a regular client, have a big meet scheduled to maybe wrap up another one, some potential new client books to spec out … yeah, the days are full. And then there is the semi-regular brush and tree-trimming collection in my neighborhood. Blondie and I spent several days with a pruning saw and dragging branches from small trees out to what is now a substantial pile in front. As it is still eye-bleedingly hot in this part of Texas, this constituted a perfectly exhausting effort on our part.
Finally, our Pullet Surprise; yes, the backyard chickens – still no eggs yet, although the three of them are supposedly closing in on maturity, and ever-more-close-to delivering on the promise of eggs, which is why we started down this line of back-yard farming in May. It seems, alas, that the science of sexing juvenile chickens was not all that advanced at the poultry farm where we purchased the girls. The biggest of the three so-called pullets – which we had previously assumed was just older and more developed – is a rooster. We’ve both gone and compared pictures of mature Barred Rock roosters with our chicken critter … Yep; we can’t escape science. Got spurs developing, longer tail-feathers, impressively dark red crest and magnificent jowls, and a bigger and more impressive set of neck-feathers. Not good in one way – we wanted eggs, dammit, but good in another. The other two girls will be protected against hawks, feral cats and other chicken-slaughtering wildlife, and if we do want to start chicken-raising in a mild way; well, here is the raw materiel. Larry, Maureen and Carly – welcome to our (slightly adjusted) enterprise.
We rather like the chickens, BTW. Maureen is entirely agreeable to being picked up, and having her chin scratched, Carly is not quite so cooperative, and neither is Larry – but he does like having his chin rubbed, too. And that was my week ….
Ok, so I have set aside time this morning to filling out forms and money orders for various fall events. Yes, it is that time of year again – and as a matter of fact it is starting for me this week, with the 10th Annual Texas Word Wrangler Book Festival in Giddings this Thursday and Friday. This is all happening at the Giddings Public Library & Cultural Center, 276 N. Orange Street, Giddings. I’ll take the camera and make another Road Trip adventure out of it. We are planning to stop at Buckee’s in Bastrop, by the way. Besides having the funniest roadside advertising around, they also have the most palatial restrooms on the planet outside of some dump like … Versailles or Buckingham Palace.
October 3 – another road trip; this one for the Author Extravaganza at the Llano County Library, which will be all day at Llano County Library, 102 E. Haynie in Llano.
November has two events – the Bulverde-Spring Branch Craft Fair, which will be in the Activity Center at 30280 Cougar Bend, Bulverde, on Saturday the 14th. This is just as much for my daughter’s origami creations as it is for my books.
And then on the 20th and 21st, I’m planning on a table in the Hall of Authors – which is the corridor at the New Braunfels Civic Center for Weinachtsmarkt. So – yay, and wish me fortunate traveling. Likely there will be at least two more events in December, but they are not firmed up at this point. I hope to have two new books out this year – Sunset and Steel Rails, and a contemporary collection of humorous essays and short stories about Luna City, Texas – a place that the railway bypassed in 1885, but which has grown in eccentricity ever since.
Yes, I meant to write this up almost at once, but the event on Sunday afternoon took up all of my energy for the day – and on Monday I had other work to do, and by Tuesday I had a touch of the crud that seems to hit people who otherwise don’t go to crowded events in events and conference centers very often. So – there were a fair number of other others and venders whom we had seen before. My table was next to Allan Kimball, who lives in Wimberley and writes travel guides – Texas Redneck Road Trips is one — and a series of historical fiction novels. I don’t think that we sold all that many copies of our books between us, but the conversations with Mr. Kimball and other authors were interesting. If the event was not all that great from a sales point of view, the networking might prove interesting in the long run. We both agreed enthusiastically that the awful miniseries Texas Rising which was inflicted upon the poor, long-suffering audience last month was a perfect horror, beginning with the location shooting, the costuming, and the flagrant abuse of historical fact. No, the Alamo does not and never did have a crypt. Even Pee Wee Herman knows that. (I would have done a full review of that turkey, but I only had stamina to watch more than the first episode, and Mr. Kimball thought even that was too generous – he bailed after the first fifteen minutes.)
The venue was a former large retail space in the Wonderland of America Mall, at Fredericksburg and 410 – which was nice in one way, being indoors, and in a retail location anyway. But perhaps a Saturday might have been better. Malls are not quite the going thing any more; of two of the half-dozen big ones in San Antonio, one has been repurposed by Rackspace, and the other torn down and replaced by free-standing shops. Another near us has been staggering on for years, as a half-empty retail zombie … you’d think that since open air destination shopping centers seem to be doing very well, thank you, that malls ought to be as well, but not so. No idea why, save that perhaps the rent is too high for all but well-established chains, or high-end merchandise. Wonderland has gotten around that by renting to doctor’s offices and schools of this and that on the lower floor, and having a super-Target and a Burlington Coat Factory outlet on the upper level, but still … there was a miasma of mall glories past, lurking about. That, and dust or mold in the AC vents, which gave me stuffy sinuses the next day. And that’s the way it was, last Sunday in the Alamo City.
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