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,)

Looking to the Season

06. September 2016 · Comments Off on Looking to the Season · Categories: Book Event, Random Book and Media Musings

Here it comes, rolling around again – this season salted with the bitter seasonings of a particularly contentious electoral season and all that this year has brought to us. Seriously, at this moment, I would rather not think about that campaign, and the international situation. I’d rather just put my head down and power through the book and craft events that come our way, and provide us a certain visibility in the local book and origami jewelry direct market in the lead-up to Christmas. And even some sales and visibility, for there is always a follow-on effect.

Because the last quarter of the year is traditionally the best for retail sales; when the Daughter Unit and I go all-out. Towards the end of it, we have an event every Saturday, or every Saturday-Sunday. The most brutally taxing are the ones where we haul out the pavilion, the folding tables and all the racks, chairs, and all the display stuff. This fills up the backs of the Daughter Unit’s Montero and takes both of us to set up and arrange. The least demanding events involve just the merchandise and maybe both tables. Still, it means that both of us will be tied to the venue of the day for at least six hours, which is exhausting in it’s own way – especially if a long drive is also involved.

So – what is coming up this holiday season? I will have two books to launch; the third Luna City Chronicle, of course – and the long-awaited picaresque Gold Rush adventure, The Golden Road, which I have had on my to-do writing list for … umm, the last three years? I just kept getting sidelined … read – distracted with bright shiny stuff, and completion of that book just kept getting rolled back. Lone Star Sons, the two previous Luna City books, Sunset and Steel Rails. This is the adventures of Fredi Steinmetz in California, which were referred to in the Trilogy – and in more depth in Sunset and Steel Rails, where he is an older man who has knocked around the old West for quite a bit. The Golden Road is … well, it’s about his time and adventures in California during the late 1850s, which never came up much because in the Trilogy he was a minor character, and in Sunset, he was decades beyond the impulsive, adventurous teenager he is in The Golden Road.

We’re loading on a full schedule, beginning with the Giddings Word Wrangler event this week. This was not such a big-selling event for us last year, but it was a blast to participate in because it was so strongly backed by the community. There was a banquet on Thursday evening with all the local important people there, as well as other authors, then an all-day event at the Library-Community Center on Friday, where the kids from local schools were bussed in to do the rounds of the author tables, a luncheon sponsored by city employees at mid-day … and it was all the most splendid fun. Yes, it does mean an overnight stay, with a two-hour drive on either end of it, but honestly, for Texas, a two-hour drive is reasonably close – and no, this will not include a large part of it being stuck in traffic.

Right after Giddings, we have to turn around and head up to San Marcos for a day – this is not for books, but for my daughter’s origami jewelry and beadwork. Art Squared is having a special art market to kick off Mermaid Week – on Courthouse Square in San Marcos.

And that’s just the start of our confirmed fall events, for both my books and her stuff. I’ll have a place at the Boerne Book Fair, on the grounds of the spanking brand-new Patrick Heath Library in Boerne on October 1st, and we’ll share a place at the Bulverde-Spring Branch Fall Craft Fair, which is in the Senior Activity Center on Cougar Bend Road, on November 12. Other events and markets will be filled in as they begin taking applications.

Oh, Happy Squirl!

27. July 2016 · Comments Off on Oh, Happy Squirl! · Categories: Random Book and Media Musings

Hurrah! I have just now finished adding the locations to Adelsverein: The Gathering, Daughter of Texas, Deep in the Heart, and The Quivera Trail to the Squirl website, so that anyone who has that app on their cellphone can “look around” and find locations written about in books… or conversely, look up a book and find the locations in it.

This has taken a bit longer than I thought, especially for Quivera Trail … because the characters traveled a LOT! I have to call up a map, match the location in the book to a location on the Squirl map, and add a bit of commentary and an excerpt from the book to that. Still to come – Adelsverein: The Sowing and The Harvesting, Sunset and Steel Rails and finally — To Truckee’s Trail, which will be … fun, because that book was ALL journey.

« Older articles
Newer articles »