The Press of Events

14. October 2016 · Comments Off on The Press of Events · Categories: Book Event, Random Book and Media Musings, Uncategorized

Well, here we go, my daughter and I, poised like divers at the very end of the board above the deep end of the pool, ready to plunge in to the long schedule of weekend markets that will keep us busy and occupied … and hopefully well-remunerated for our labors into mid-December. The projected schedule has every weekend in November locked in, and the first two weekends, or at least the Saturdays in that month. This is an exhausting schedule, one way or another: but these are book events and markets, markets and book events, mostly within an hour’s drive of San Antonio. This is when people are purchasing stuff – regardless of events political in the national sense and in the international.

It was my daughter’s insistence that we broaden our market schedule, since participation in back-to-back markets in San Marcos – both to do with the Mermaid Festival – proved to be so very profitable for her. The Boerne Book Festival a couple of weekends ago was marvelous for me, after a couple of rather discouraging experiences over summer … pro tip: the chances of book sales in mid-summer are rather slim, unless the event has been advertised to a fare-the-well – and your name is J.K Rowling, Stephen King or some other smith of words blessed and anointed with a regular lease on the NY Time Best-seller list. None the less – one must still keep doing them, just to keep the brand out there. The third Luna City book is out there already (and yes, I fixed the booboos with the Kindle version.) The next historical, The Golden Road – the adventures of a very young Fredi Steinmetz in the gold mines of 1850s California will also be available in mid-November. By then, I will be offering a special Christmas book-bundle gift package; details to be posted later, as soon as I have the cover for The Golden Road sorted. (Not to give away any plot points at all, but Fredi encounters a whole raft of semi-famous Western characters at the peak of their fame, or more often, even before they were famous: Sally Skull, Roy Bean, Lotta Crabtree, Jack Hays, Charlie Goodnight, and Mary Ellen Pleasant, and many others.)

So – there is the schedule, posted on my Amazon Author Page – look for the pink pavilion with the black and white tiger-striped top. Don’t know where we will be exactly in the various markets, as these things are variable, and in some cases the event is an indoor venue where the pink pavilion will not play a part. In that case – I’ll be in period garb with a totally flamboyant hat.

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 …

Miniseries – 2016

29. September 2016 · 5 comments · Categories: Random Book and Media Musings

So, I had this marvelous inspiration for an epic miniseries last night, which I am sure has probably occurred to other people – would that at least one of them might be in a position to act on this inspiration. We were watching Father Ted, and on the way to watching it, skimmed through some of the other offerings available through Amazon, Netflix, and Acorn … and I was thinking, since there are so many period series available, which offer all sorts of alternate or even just slightly-skewed versions of history, especially the versions which offer the actors the opportunity to get all vamped up in corsets and  coats trimmed up in gold braid and whatever … what would be a good and popular historical novel series to make a TV miniseries out of … something with a swaggering, handsome and sexually-adventurous-hero, who romped all through the known world of the 19th century, brushing elbows with all kinds of interesting men of note and bedding women likewise, hip-deep in scandals, scoundrels and skullduggery, oh my.

Can you picture for a shining moment – what a thumping good miniseries the Flashman books would make? Yes, George McDonald Fraser’s Flashman series of books, wherein the dashing rakehell of the outwardly heroic, inwardly lily-livered Harry Flashman goes from the First Afghan War, scampering down the corridors of power all over the globe, looking over his shoulder and putting on a desperate burst of speed. Think of all the famous historical personages portrayed over five or six episodes by well-known actors doing a guest turn, consider all the supporting and reoccurring characters, whose listing on imdb would feature this role at the top of their CV. Consider all the exotic, exciting locations for Harry Flashman’s adventures … well, OK, likely Afghanistan is off the list as a real-life shooting location since history is still repeating itself there: You got England and Scotland, Germany, the Crimea, Russia, India, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, Mexico, all through the US and better than half a century of significant events, wars, campaigns and punitive expeditions across four continents. You got Abraham Lincoln, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Empress of China, pirates in the South China Sea, mutineers in India, and Apache on the warpath.

It would be splendid. And with even more book materiel than George R. R. Martin, too. Enough to do at least ten seasons if they did all twelve books, although likely to fill in the American Civil War segment, they might have to figure out exactly how Harry Flashman managed to fight for both the Union and the Confederacy. GMF never wanted to do it up in a book; Flashman being an Englishman, the American Civil War was just one of those minor foreign scuffles to him.

And the best part – would be that nervous-nelly, eternally politically correct social justice warriors would absolutely melt down into puddles of anguished tears at it all.

A Fine Finish

28. September 2016 · Comments Off on A Fine Finish · Categories: Book Event, Old West, Random Book and Media Musings

Well, hallelujah and hurrah, I finally finished out the final draft of The Golden Road which was conceptualized something like five years ago when I mentally mapped out another trilogy-companion set to the Adelsverein Trilogy. Yes, there would be a book about Margaret Becker Vining Williamson, which would slot into the sequence as a prelude to the trilogy – and that took two books to bring to completion. (She was a fascinating character, who saw a lot of Texas history either happen right before her eyes, or just around the corner and out of sight.) There would be a book following on to the Trilogy – the Quivera Trail, which would pick up with Dolph Becker’s English wife and her travails in a new and alien country. And – in between the first and second Adelsverein volumes, there would be the Gold Rush adventures of Magda Vogel Becker’s young step-brother, Fredi Steinmetz. Fredi appeared as a minor character with some brief dramatic turns in the plot. He had gone to California following the rush for gold … but was never forthcoming about what he had done and seen there, between the settling of Gillespie County and the start of the Civil War. I always wanted to write a Gold Rush adventure somewhat like The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, or so I told myself … but it kept being put on the back burner, metaphorically-speaking. I bashed out the two books about Margaret, and then Quivera Trail … for a good bit, I was actually writing them simultaneously. When I got bored or stuck, I’d work on the other. Which is a good method, as long as one is equally motivated. And then I wandered off-track.

First it was Lone Star Sons, then I got taken up with Sunset and Steel Rails – in which Fredi appeared as an older man, a hard-bitten, yet courtly romantic interest for a heroine who chose (through a series of dramatic circumstances) to be a Harvey Girl – and then by the ongoing Luna City Chronicles. Really, I wonder just how much I did want to write a Gold Rush adventure after all, since it kept getting back-burnered so frequently. I posted the first chapter in January, 2014 – but two years in the writing is about par for me, in a historical. So – actually not all that bad in the actual writing and research. So – finally roughed out, start to finish, send to the beta readers, and now to buckle down again with the various contemporary accounts collected. Lot of blanks to fill in – where, for example, was Mary Ellen Pleasant’s boarding house/restaurant in 1856-57? What were the names of express companies in operation in the northern diggings in that same year? How far degraded had the riverbank of the middle fork of the Yuba River become by that same period? Had that vicinity pretty well been overtaken by hydraulic mining – in which whole hillsides were washed away by huge gets of water. And how – exactly were daily newspapers distributed in San Francisco. I am certain that subscribers must have had theirs delivered, and equally certain that they were also sold on the streets … anyway, back to work.

The fall book event schedule carries on this Saturday with the Boerne Book Festival in Boerne, at the Patrick Heath Library, a little off Main Street at Johns Road, just past Main Plaza Park. I’ll be set up in the park and amphitheater by the side of the library – hope to see you there! When the market schedule lets up, after Christmas, I will turn to working on two more book projects – another Lone Star Sons adventure, and the 4th Luna City Chronicle for release in late 2017.

San Marcos on a Saturday

18. September 2016 · Comments Off on San Marcos on a Saturday · Categories: Book Event, Random Book and Media Musings

So – we spent all yesterday in the lovely little town of San Marcos, Texas – a day for us that went, as the saying used to be, “from can’t see to can’t see.” This means that it was dark before dawn when we left home and dark after sunset when we got home. The event was the Mermaid Festival – a celebration of all things mermaid, water-based and local. There is a particularly lovely stretch of spring-fed river which threads through San Marcos, and in times of yore, when Acquarena Springs was a local draw there were girls dressed as mermaids who showed off their abilities to swim and stunt in the clear water while wearing mermaid tails, and all kinds of appropriate accessories. So the last couple of weeks have been a charming and locally-based community celebration, which somehow got my daughter involved because of her Tiny Craft Bidness, making origami paper earrings. They were recruiting crafters for the event last week, and making it absolutely clear that they wanted only crafters who made the stuff they were selling, and yes, they wanted to take a look at pictures of it all – none of this re-selling imported junk from wherever. So, the Daughter Unit was pretty chuffed at being selected – and last week we hauled the pink pavilion to the courthouse square in San Marcos for about six hours – but yesterday, we were supposed to start setting up at 8 AM, and keep going until 8 PM.

As it turned out, we were there early enough to avoid any crowds and to snag a relatively good place – back against a row of trees and strip of lawn – but there weren’t any customers until the parade ended … and oh, my lord – the rush started then, and didn’t let up until nearly 7. The Daughter Unit sold her earrings hand over fist. Many customers bought several pairs, as they couldn’t make up their minds over which pair they liked best – and she had priced them sensibly, so that this was not a painful process. We were very, very pleased and gratified with this market. The vendor next to us was a couple about my own age, originally from Austin – and the wife remarked that San Marcos was how she remembered Austin, back when. Eccentric, smallish-town but with a university, and community-oriented. There were heaps of people of all ages, dressed in mermaid and mermen outfits, even a couple of Poseidons with tridents. The live music acts performed through the day, there was a nice selection of local artists and venders, a heaping helping of support from local businesses – including a catering concern who provided boxed dinners and cold drinks for the artists.

I walked down to the river before it all began, and through the relatively deserted park taking pictures. A couple of them – like the old Fisheries Office will be transformed into the next Luna City book.
And speaking of Luna City – Book 3, or Luna City 3.1 is available this very moment for Kindle on Amazon, and through D2D for Nook and for other formats. The print version will be available in a couple of weeks – I may have a stock in time for the Boerne Library Festival on October 1st, and definitely in time for the various other holiday markets later in October, November and December. (And the Golden Road, as well … still a little bit of wrapping up to do on that,)

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