Book Festival!

06. April 2014 · 2 comments · Categories: Book Event

In the shade of the Big Enchilada - the Central Library building.

In the shade of the Big Enchilada – the Central Library building.

This is only the second year running for the San Antonio Book Festival, sponsored by the San Antonio Public Library Foundation, which seems to have modeled itself on the Texas Book Festival – at least, the principles and requirements for books to be considered for it are identical. This means that independently-published books, like my own, and subsidy-published books like … well, Watercress Press authors are not eligible for consideration as part of the festival, only as exhibitors. In the eyes of strict book trade professionals, indy and subsidy-press books have literary cooties or something. (Insert Bette Davis-sized eye-roll here and a heavily sarcastic sigh of “What-ever!) This is ironic in the extreme, as Watercress publishes John Igo’s poetry collections, and he has a public library branch named for him.

So, off to the festival, where the exhibitor booths were set up in three or four rows of pop-up pavilions in the parking lot of the South West School for Art and Craft. The School, by the way – used to house the convent and boarding school run by the Ursuline sisters. This was the first girl’s school in San Antonio, and was considered to be a very fine one in the 19th century. (In the Trilogy, this is the school that Hannah and Lottie attend.)
It was chilly and overcast all day Saturday, which may have discouraged some participation – as well as some of the exhibitors – but on the other hand, better that then too hot, or too cold, as it was in December at Christmas on the Square at Goliad last December. Yes, it would have been more pleasant if the sun had come out … but outdoor events in Texas are a challenging thing, most times of the year, whatever that time is.

So – I sold some books, made some connections, plan to join the Texas Association of Authors, so as to be able to have my books appear at more book events, and maybe gained a few more clients for Watercress. All in all, a good day – but at the end of the day, a couple of classes of Chablis, a frozen pizza warming in the oven, and a couple of episodes of the old Upstairs, Downstairs show on TV were a well-earned reward.

Off and Away

14. January 2014 · 6 comments · Categories: Book Event, Old West, Random Book and Media Musings

Well, after procrastinating for a good few weeks, scribbling another Lone Star Sons adventure, and playing around with photoshopping a cover for another collection of essays, I got started on The Golden Road – this will be the picaresque California Gold Rush adventure that I always wanted to write. In The Adelsverein Trilogy it was alluded several times that Fredi Steinmetz had gone to California with a herd of cattle …who knew that cattle had been taken over the southern route from Texas to San Diego in the mid-1850s to supply the gold mines? I didn’t, until I read of it in The Trail Drivers of Texas. Anyway, it’s mentioned casually a couple of times that he knocked around the gold mines for a bit and then wandered home again.

So – in keeping with my plan to continue exploring the western Barsetshire, and write the adventures of various minor characters as they star in their own book – this is Fredi’s turn to cut loose. And the venue – California at the heights of the Gold Rush is also a pretty wild and woolly scene, with all kinds of interesting, eccentric, and later-to-become famous characters wandering around … here goes. It is in my grand plan to make this my book for November, 2015. It seems to take me about two years to research and write (sometimes simultaneously, as I have a wonderful idea for a plot twist, and then have to hurry to the reference materials to see if that twist is even historically possible.)

I wrote the first draft of To Truckee’s Trail in a white-hot blaze of energy over the space of three months – but then, that was a book that I had been thinking about for years, and limited as to space and time. The Trilogy did take only two years – but that was essentially one humongous story, later sliced into three helpings. The other books – all seemed to fall together at one or two years, from start to final edit, even when I was working on some of them simultaneously. There are authors who can spin out a book a year, but … those always seemed to me to be a bit mechanical, and the books produced were nothing that any but the most devoted fans could fall upon with happy cries of joy. The authors who take two years, or even three years – well, the work is most usually worth the wait. And yes, this schedule has been kicked around in writer discussion groups for as long as I have been paying attention to them. So – herewith begins the new adventure – and I will, as usual, post the occasional sample chapter, as they are written.

Looking to Spring

06. January 2014 · Comments Off on Looking to Spring · Categories: Book Event, Random Book and Media Musings, Uncategorized · Tags: ,

My author tableWell, I have been in colder places in my time, and places were it got colder longer, but most of them involved show, and shoveling massive amounts of it … or that year in Greenland, thirty miles north of the Arctic circle, which didn’t have all that much show, but was dark as the bottom of a coal mine for all the days of the winter months. I can handle temps in the teens and twenties very well, thank you, but I think I had better get out that Eddie Bauer parka, the insulated gloves, woolen hat and the warm scarf to wear when walking the dogs tomorrow.

So, the month-long holiday hurdles have been negotiated successfully, the turkey leftovers finally disposed of, the Christmas lights and ornaments all taken down – and here I am ready to face the New Year. As far as book events go, the biggie is the San Antonio Book Festival in early April. Watercress Press is going to have a booth in the exhibitor’s hall, and as one of their authors, I’ll be there. It’s only the second time the SA Public Library foundation has done this kind of thing so there is something to be said for getting in on a lower floor. And Watercress has been around for thirty years in San Antonio; one would think that a bit of respect for seniority would be due.

I’m rather looking forward to it, since I have been trying to gin up interest in my own books in San Antonio. I love the Hill Country, and I’ll go anywhere within reason to do a book event, but with the cost of a tank of gas, and considering the needs of the dogs, it would be fantastic to do a book talk within a fifteen or twenty minute ride of the house. Weirdly, the books seem more popular practically anywhere other than the place they were written – and in the case of The Quivera Trail, the location where they were set. For a while, The Adelsverein Trilogy was on sale in the bookshop at the Texas Institute of Cultures, but that was about as good as it got. Readers have also suggested  the Texas Book Festival – I’d be eligible to exhibit there as an indy author, but last time I looked into it, the costs for a booth there was way out of what I could pay – and again, there is that long drive involved.

But I am going to club together with my daughter’s Tiny Artistic Bidness, Paper Blossom Productions for a couple of market events; the spring market in Helotes for certain, and another in Bulverde possibly. I’ll post more on all of this as soon as we know for certain.

Christmas Book Special

24. December 2013 · 2 comments · Categories: Book Event

Packed and Sealed Tins All right, then – as promised, I have set up another special sale; the Nook and Kindle versions of all my printed books ( all versions of The Trilogy, Daughter of Texas, Deep in the Heart, The Quivera Trail and To Truckee’s Trail) are 25% off from this moment (on Barnes & Noble) or by sometime this evening (Amazon) – until the 29th.

This is especially for everyone who will be receiving a Kindle or Nook e-reader as a Christmas gift this year from their nearest and dearest. I got a Kindle myself last Christmas as a gift, and although I spend too much time staring at a computer screen and really prefer print books – it is absolutely invaluable whenever I have to go anywhere and spend time waiting. It fits neatly into my purse, I have a whole library of interesting books loaded into it and will never have to pass the time reading whatever tattered magazines are laying around.

Ice Cold in Goliad

08. December 2013 · 1 comment · Categories: Book Event · Tags: , , ,

Santa Onna Longhorn #1
That’s pretty much what it turned out to be over Friday evening in South Texas. When my daughter returned from briskly walking the dogs before dawn Saturday morning, she told me that the grass crackled underfoot. We set out for Goliad just after sunrise, expecting to spend a chilly day selling books in the open-air. Well, the pavilions set up around the edge of Courthouse Square in Goliad were all essentially in the open-air too. We took along our heaviest coats, extra blankets, bundled Nemo in a doggy overcoat, and I made a vain search for my gloves.
Courthouse Square
To our good fortune and relief, Estelle Zermeno, who has set up Miss Ruby’s Author Corral ever since I’ve been coming to Goliad for the Christmas event, had located an last-minute indoor venue for us – the premises of a closed restaurant, right on the square; a restored historic building with a bathroom, parking around in back and heat. Alas, that was about the last good bit of news about the day. Two scheduled authors had called off appearing, due to the cold and potentially dangerous drive, so it was down to four authors and a handful of friends.
Random Streetcorner
We had shelter at least, but the other vendors were out in the miserable cold – and to add to the misery, there were very few people come out to shop or cheer for Santa. On the good side of that, I got a very good picture of Santa-onna-longhorn, and his military escort, but there seemed to be only about two dozen children and their parents, where ordinarily there would have been hundreds. No posse of cowboys escorting Santa, hardly anyone with a Christmas-dressed dog for the afternoon dog costume contest. I believe I only had four or five potential customers come and look at my books all day.
Garlanded Cow and Urns
We packed it up by 1:30, when a light drizzle began falling, and it was so cold that we were afraid it would turn to ice, somewhere along the road back to San Antonio. I am certain that if we had been outside as well, we wouldn’t have stood it for even that long. There were just no customers at all; this marks the very first time that I came away from an event like this without having made a single sale – and I don’t think I was the only one, not by a long shot.

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