Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

It’s been one of those weeks – very little time to work on the book stuff, what with the press of work, a couple of emergencies to do with the prospective work to be done on my house, necessary work for the Tiny Publishing Bidness, involving editing, designing a book layout, and in hand-holding various clients. I still work for a living, one way and another – it’s just the work that I do, I have freely chosen to do, on my own schedule, which in the long run, makes a lot of difference. And we just gained another client who would like one of our higher-end, quality products, which is all to my business partner’s liking, as we shall make a very tidy profit from it … as well as kick-starting our appeal to those who like and can afford our high-end editions. And I have a thick packet of papers to sign and have notarized, with regard to the sale of that land in California, which I finally had a solid purchaser for, after three long years of being on the market.

I sent off the semi-monthly newsletter, opened pre-orders for The Quivera Trail, fiddled a bit on various websites that I am a contributor to, went to Seguin last Saturday for a funeral,  downtown on Monday to take some pictures of an art show on the Riverwalk and Friday, I had a trip to one of the more interesting industrial areas on the fringe of downtown – which no one would ever find unless they were hopelessly and irretrievably lost off the IH-10 … look, it’s an unmistakable indicator that when you are in a place where all the ground-floor windows in the neighborhood have barred windows, and there is concertina wire threaded across the top of a 6-7ft tall chain-link fence around any lot containing anything of value – that you are in a slightly sketchy neighborhood. Just saying – it is OK in broad daylight, but not a place you want to be fumbling around in after sunset or before sunrise … not without your good friend Mr. Colt, or Mr. Smith-Wesson, or Mr. Beretta, anyway.

But on the upside, I think that I have found the next ready-to-be-gentrified old neighborhood in San Antonio … that stretch of Blanco, south of Hildebrand. It’s adjacent to several a very nice old neighborhoods – Woodlawn and Monticello – but obviously still affordable and full of nice old decrepit but repairable houses. A few of them along Blanco are already under repair, amid a a scattering of determinedly upscale restaurants and businesses, before trailing off into the semi-industrial wilds closer to downtown.

And this very week, I was invited to another book club meeting in Fredericksburg, late in October when we can count on the weather having cooled down a bit. This meeting may also may also involve a walking trip around town to the various sights where scenes in the Adelsverein Trilogy were set, and an overnight stay in a guest house. The book club members are all coming from Houston, so they might as well get something extra special for their long trip.

And finally – the project – which began as kind of a joke, regarding rebooting the Lone Ranger story as a straight-up historical adventure (after carefully filing off all the superficially identifying serial numbers) turns out to be strangely appealing. Especially if I made it more or less G-rated and aimed to appeal to boys; the suggestion of my daughter, who has noticed that in today’s bookstores, boys tend to be rather underserved when it comes to teen and tween adventure novels. I’ve already been able to work out half a chapter … so there will be that to look forward to.