Over the Weekend

13. November 2016 · Comments Off on Over the Weekend · Categories: Book Event, Domestic

The first of our Christmas market events was yesterday at the Spring Branch/Bulverde Senior center, which is located on a side street in what passes for downtown Bulverde, Texas … which is not really one of those compact and easily recognizable towns – but rather one of those scattered along a half mile or so of several roads about twenty minutes’ drive north of San Antonio. This is the third year that we have done this event – and it was a good and reassuring start to the season, after a pair of disappointing events last month in Blanco and Johnson City. It is my daughter’s theory – and a good many other venders at those events agreed – people were either uneasy about the election, and not in any mood for Christmas buying. It was our fondest hope that with the election done, and Christmas creeping ever closer … that we would do well at this market.
And we did; I did as well this year in sales as I did at last year, which is pretty good, considering. We had a spot where we could set up three tables in a narrow u-shape, and market my daughter’s Paper Blossom Production Earrings from one side, and my books on the other. There was a good crowd out, and yes, they were in the mood to spend money. I even swapped three books to the vendor next to us in exchange for a covered bowl hand-turned out of local pecan wood – I have been longing for one such, after seeing them offered by woodworkers at other markets, but their prices were always too rich for me. But I liked the covered bowl, and the woodworker’s wife was thrilled to bits to pick out a book each for her daughter, granddaughter and grandson, which were approximately the same value as the covered bowl – so, all happy.

I wore the latest addition to my “author drag” wardrobe; brown poly-wool tweed walking suit, with hat, reticule and shirtwaist, all color-coordinated – and yes, very eye-catching, although the receptionist at the Center related with a giggle, that someone remarked to her that they had just seen Mary Poppins walking in. Another vendor exclaimed that I was just as “cute as a button” – a compliment that I don’t believe has been applied to me since elementary school. The whole thing was eye-catching – as intended – and not all that uncomfortable to wear. So – onto Weinachtsmarkt next weekend in New Braunfels and then to Johnson City for three days the weekend after that.
And The Golden Road is now up at Amazon, for pre-order and release on the 18th. I hope to have the print version available early in December. Fingers crossed…

Dressing the Part

30. October 2016 · Comments Off on Dressing the Part · Categories: Book Event, Domestic

A few years ago, when I was part of an enterprising indy author support group – which has since run out of steam as those participants have gotten what they needed, (primarily the mutual encouragement in the face of a world somewhat more hostile then to the aspiring independent author, and to share information, talents, and contacts along with the best and most creative strategies for marketing our books) one of the stalwart members had an interesting suggestion for garnering eyeballs at a signing or other book event. He suggested wearing some exotic attire with some connection to one’s book, or books; his own had to do with 19th century China, and he had a set or two of traditional mandarin robes with all the accessories, which he wore to fantastic effect at his local events. We agreed that yes – interesting suggestion, and well worth trying out, if applicable. (Most of us were scribblers of historical fiction in one era or another.) I tried, in a half-hearted way, to do a sort of semi-archaic cowgirl look, with long skirts, ornate boots and a vest, but it really didn’t take with me or with the crowd at book events. It just looked sort of vaguely Westernish by way of bouncing off hippy-chic. It had the virtue of being comfortable … except for the boots, but just really didn’t seem to grab attention at events.

So – on to another iteration of what I have come to call my “author drag.” This inspiration came about at the local Hancock Fabric ‘going-out-of-business-fire-sale’, when I leafed in a desultory manner through the pattern catalog and came up on a pattern for the Edwardian-style walking suit. Hmm, thought I – this has definite possibilities.
My historical fiction books are firmly set in the period from 1825 to 1900, in various locales in Texas and the west. The full hoopskirt and bonnet, or bustle and trailing gown is just not on. For one, in that get-up I could barely fit into the passenger seat of the Montero – our vehicle of choice for hauling stuff to book and market events. (Tubs of books at a minimum, tables, chairs, the pavilion, table dressings and racks at a maximum. Hoopskirt and corset? Helping set up, wearing all that? No … just no.) But a slim skirt and jacket, very much like I used to wear when at the office job, once I retired from the Air Force … OK, so the skirt is ankle-length, but that and a tailored jacket is doable, even accessorized with the requisite hat of flamboyant style and stupendous circumference. Yes … the more I thought about it, the more it seemed doable; comfortable for me, and eye-catching for events. Late 19th century, early 20th, in the style of what would be the everyday dress of those ladies who worked in various capacities at paid employment, like Margaret Becker Vining Williamson with her boarding house … or even those who were often found riding to hounds – like Isobel in The Quivera Trail. Something like a riding habit, perhaps, or a walking skirt … even a plain black dress and white apron, which was Sophie Brewer Teague’s work uniform as a Harvey Girl.

So – this is me, breaking out the sewing machine and cobbling together a small wardrobe of period outfits for my “author drag” wardrobe; dresses, skirts, shirtwaists and jackets, made from fabric bought on sale and stashed away, with the hats and reticules to match: four day outfits in grey, brown, navy-blue and black, with a purple evening gown for those rare night-time events. The sewing machine has not got such a work-out in years, and my hat-making skills are proceeding apace. When you look for me at events – look for the lady in late 19th century period dress. Trust me, you can’t miss the hats.

Another Bit of Millinery

11. October 2016 · Comments Off on Another Bit of Millinery · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

Dressing in period costume for book events has turned out to be a very effective attention-grabber; much more effective than my admittedly half-hearted attempt to wear cowgirl/western get-up. I’ve always rather enjoyed costuming, making doll outfits and all that – so why not make a splash, sartorially-speaking? In a group of thirty or forty other authors, one has to stand out somehow, so a handful of us at TAA events have given it a go this past year or so by wearing a costume of sorts, relating to our various books. The closing of the Handcock Fabric store chain let me purchase the yardage for some period outfits at extremely reasonable prices, so there are a couple more planned period ensembles in the works: a purple evening gown, a plain black dress in the style of the Harvey Girls, a navy-blue walking skirt with a fitted bodice, and another Edwardian walking suit – this one in brown and cream woolen tweed. I got diverted in making a pair of hats to go with these last two, by a Butterick pattern which became available.

I did two of the four hats which the pattern included; a small 1880s style, with lavish embellishments of flowers, netting, ribbon and a plume, and a plainer, Edwardian one in brown velveteen, with a brown satin drape and large bow, and a simple trimming of two light blow flowers. I did not follow the directions exactly when it came to trimming the hats; the kind of netting required in the instructions for the Edwardian hat just was not available for a reasonable price, and the way the veiling was arranged on the late Victorian hat just didn’t look right as specified. And I added way more flowers, because – hey, lavish is the way to go Victorian.


I couldn’t find heavy woven millinery buckram, or 20 gage millinery wire locally – but very heavy-weight Pellon interfacing and 18 gage beadwork wire make workable substitutes. I found it simpler and less messy, working with a needle and heavy thread rather than fabric glue to make the hat frame, as fabric glue takes forever to solidify. But I think they came out quite nicely … and now I have to make the rest of the outfits to match …

Chilling in Boerne

03. October 2016 · 2 comments · Categories: Book Event, Domestic, Uncategorized

So that was a fun Saturday, although exhausting as it always is to pack the Montero, drive a certain distance, unpack the Montero, find a good spot, transport the canopy, tables, the tubs of books and the tub of table dressing and giveaway materiel, and the two camp chairs to it, and set up, ready for business. Then – four to six hours of face-to-face direct sales, broken by a sandwich from the HEB deli (No, lunch is a chancy thing at these events. There may be a food truck or a concession handy with something that we’d want to eat and don’t mind paying for … or not. We have wised up. We bring HEB deli sandwiches, and an insulated bag of bottles of drinking water.)

This is the second year for the Boerne Book Festival – last year there were about twenty of us, spaced out in a back room in the main building. If records and memory serve, we did sell a handful of books, but mostly, us authors were reduced to looking at each other after a certain point in mid-afternoon. I did have a table across from a local historian, Jefferson Morgenthaler, who did a very good book about the German settlements in the Hill Country – a book that I absolutely recommend, as he covered the same territory in non-fiction the same ground that I did in fiction. He is one of those local authors that I knew of, but had not met until that point – so last year’s event was not a totally wasted effort.

Neither was this year’s; they set us up on the landscaped grounds of the library, under the trees where a winding paved path went down to an amphitheater which was the venue for a couple of scheduled events, starting with a children’s ballet company performance: the mini-dancers performed as various forms of sea-life to the music of Saint Saen’s “Carnival of the Animals”. This was the most-well attended segment of the presentations in the amphitheater, I will have to admit, although the later presentations/discussions did have an audience. One of the authors wrote zombie thrillers and was of sufficient celebrity as these things go to have the local Barnes & Noble store with a representative sample of his books.

There were about thirty-five authors present, plus Alan of the Texas Author’s Association, who had a booth filled with books by members of the association. One of them was Clay Mitchell, who was a client of Watercress Press. Alice and I had done some substantive and line editing for his book, Amid the Ashes and the Dust, which is a terrific and evocative read, set in East Texas. Another was John Keeling, who has started a western series about cattle ranchers in Texas; the first book is called Take ‘em North: The 2E Brand Begins. We had a brief chat about writing about the post-Civil War long-trail cattle drives; always go back to the primary sources, we agreed. Just about anything about that enterprise that you saw in a movie or a TV show during the Golden Age of the Western (say from 1930-1970)  is liable to be howlingly inaccurate.

Boerne is one of those towns just about commute-distance from north-side San Antonio; with a very distinct identity, and a well-established historical district. The ambiance is one of very substantial proto-yuppie prosperity. A couple of new developments on the outskirts of town have sprouted up in the last few years, and the various businesses in the historic downtown have – for as long as we’ve been visiting – been very, very upscale. It is, in a word – a prosperous place.

My daughter and I did venture by turns into the used-book store, which is an outgrowth of the Patrick Heath Public Library; a lovely building on the grounds, with a two-level terrace at the back, and a beautifully-arranged selection inside. Seriously – this is a library used-book outlet, which was as well-sorted and set out as any high-end retail book store. My daughter bought Alison Weir’s bio of Henry VIII and I found a copy of the Crabtree and Evelyn cookbook, which I bought for sentimental reasons. And yes – I can’t resist cookbooks of a certain sort. I really used to love that company when they had an outlet in North Star Mall, across the street from the office building where I had a job, some years ago. Sadly, the Crabtree & Evelyn outlet vanished, seemingly between one week and the next. Eventually, there was nothing left in that mall which I was interested in, on my lunch hour, save maybe the Williams-Sonoma outlet. It all became high-end designer clothing, makeup and jewelry. I commiserated with the volunteer cashier at the bookstore about that. She was leafing enviously through the cookbook during the time it took for me to go back to our tent and get my purse. ‘Hah!’ I said. ‘You had your chance!’

So – a very good and reassuring start to the last-quarter-of-the year selling season. One of the readers that we sold a set of the Luna City Chronicles to, stayed for a while to lament about how her widely-geographically-spread friends visualized Texas … in a most unflattering way, of course. My daughter has marveled at how her English FB friends seem to think that we all live in little desolate towns, where tumbleweeds roll through deserted unpaved streets, and everyone lives in tumbling-down shacks with outhouses out at the back and gunfights in the streets on a regular basis.

No, it’s not like that – not anything like that at all… But perhaps we want to keep that quiet, because then everyone would want to move here, and that would quite wreck the place. Say, did I mention how hot it is in Texas during the summer? It’s boiling hot, miserable-hot, fry-egg-on-the-sidewalk hot. For five whole months, and sometimes six! No, stay away, stay away!

Anyway, the Daughter-Unit and I are planning out the next market events on our schedule; Johnson City and Blanco are a go for their markets, and Saturday morning at the New Braunfels Sophienburg’s Christmas marked in November at the New Braunfels Civic Center. Dates to be posted as soon as confirmed.

Sic Transit

05. July 2016 · Comments Off on Sic Transit · Categories: Domestic
A selection of books from the PTA book sale, including some issues of AH

A selection of books from the PTA book sale, including some issues of AH

Well, that was a bit of a shock this morning, when I went to my bookmarks menu to look for an article I recollect reading ages ago about Theodore Roosevelts’ first wife – and the bookmark for the American Heritage website turned up … well, nothing. As in – nothing found. I used to use their archive to find articles in my vintage hardbound copies of American Heritage, a collection that I started to rebuild through used book sales, in an attempt to reconstruct the collection of them that my mother had. Mom was a subscriber from the very earliest days, when Dad was a grad student on a tight budget. This must have been a substantial expense for them – as she had a subscription to AH’s sister publication, Horizon. Both were hard-bound, without advertising – and the collection filled almost half a wall of shelves in the house that burned in 2003.

My own love of history and enduring affection for writers who make ripping good read out of writing it can be directly laid at the door of those issues of American Heritage which regularly arrived in the mailbox, and which I devoured. (I swear also that reading Horizon in similar fashion also greased my way through college, since – whatever the topic was, I had gleaned some interesting tidbits from those pages, like the derivation of the word ‘chauvinism’ which a professor dropped on us one day, in mid-lecture. I was the only one in the class who knew it, and the professor confessed in some awe that I was one of a bare handful of students he had taught in his time who did.)

Mom did keep up the subscription, when it went to a quarterly, softbound and chock-full of advertising, and I dipped into the later iterations for a year or two at a stretch, but the updated version just didn’t have the same … I don’t know – wide-ranging gravitas that the early, hard-bound versions had. Mom remarked once or twice that in the later versions, they didn’t seem to go any farther back in time than mid-20th century, whereas the older issues romped freely from early colonial times on. It turns out that she was correct on this, and it was deliberate editorial policy in the publication’s later years.

And so – I pretty much lost interest in keeping a current subscription, which turns out to be just as well, and it seems that those who did have a current subscription were left flat when American Heritage suspended print publication four years ago, without even refunding subscribers. Possibly around that time they stopped adding content to the website. Four years ago … and I never even noticed until now, which is pretty sad, considering what an influence Mom’s subscription to it had on me. Some things just end with a bang, but some with a barely audible whimper and then sink without a trace from the internet.

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