14. November 2013 · Comments Off on Renewing the Well · Categories: Random Book and Media Musings

Travels of Jaimie McPheetersIt was said to me so long ago that I really can’t remember who or when they said it – that being a writer is like drawing words from a cistern; you have to keep replenishing the store in the cistern by reading – and reading even more than you write. Was it Mr. Terranova, the whirlwind 6th grade teacher, or maybe the elderly gentleman who came to speak to a school assembly at Vineland Elementary when I was in about the 2nd or 3rd grade? He was blind, with a seeing-eye dog named Rosie whom he let off duty long enough for her to run down the center aisle in the auditorium for a good petting. Our teachers told us that he was an Enormously Famous Published Author – for some reason I thought for years that he was William Prescott, the author of The Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru, never mind that William Prescott would have been dead for a little over a hundred years by then. Yes – Mr. Terranova had us read excerpts of The Conquest of Mexico and Peru, which should give an idea of how eccentric and bloody brilliant he was as a teacher. The Enormously Famous Published Author with the seeing-eye dog named Rosie did give us one bit of authorly good advice, using ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’ as his example; telling us to show them going up the hill, describe the hill, and why Jack and Jill did so, and what they saw and felt. Show, not tell, in other words. But enough of my early influences in writing, such as they were.

I have to limit myself when working on a book project; nothing by other fiction-scribblers working in the same area or time-period. This is because there is a danger for me of inadvertently taking an idea for a character, or an incident or accident of plot from someone else’s visualization, so at this time, all fictional accounts of Gold Rush-era California or the various trails and journeys towards the Ophir of the far west are strictly off the table. I have this totally bird-witted habit of seizing on certain things as I read about them, as if they were bright and shiny objects, and thinking, “Ah-ha! This has to be in The Book!” Other things just grab at me, and I come back to them again and again. In Adelsverein – to give just two small examples – it was the concept of the children, taken by Comanche Indians, who were returned, but never returned in spirit, and the massacre of the Texians at Goliad.

So, now I am faced with doing the episodic and picaresque Gold Rush adventure that I have always wanted to write – tentatively entitled The Golden Road. I grew up with this, because it was the event that I think made California what it was, for better or worse – and in the brief blink of an eye, as far as time goes. It was a sleepy agrarian backwater with a wonderful climate and spectacular scenery, a paradise to those who lived there at that time, a lost Eden to which they looked back on later with considerable nostalgia. And in the space of two or three years – the whole world piled in. The sleepy port of Yerba Buena became the muddy, lawless, brawling town of San Francisco, from hundreds of residents to thousands in mere months. The empty bay was suddenly forested with the masts of hundreds of abandoned ships. The properties of entrepreneur John Sutter were swamped with squatters, rogues and gold-seekers, the pristine rivers and streams in the foothills all alive with more men, looking for gold. Gold from the mines of California – and from just over the border in Nevada – kept the Union from going under entirely, so say some … and I have always wanted to write about it.

The next book, (after the bagatelle of Jim Reade and Toby Shaw, in the days of the Republic of Texas) will follow the adventures of Fredi Steinmetz, the younger brother of Magda Steinmetz-Becker, from the Trilogy. I’ve noted in other books that he went out to California as a cattle drover in the 1850s … and he returned, thinking not very much of the place, for a variety of reasons.

So, that’s why I am reading, and not writing and posting quite so much. I know the main character, one or two of the secondaries, and the rest will suggest themselves in time. The overall and relatively episodic plot will come out of what I am reading now; Maryat’s Mountains and Molehills, Dame Shirley Clappe’s Letters, Captain Gunnison’s history of the Mormons in Salt Lake City, Randolph Marcy’s 1859 advice to transcontinental travelers, William Manly’s account of his journey through Death Valley … and at least a score or more of others as they take my butterfly interest. Some of them are on my own bookshelves, some as eBooks or PDFs stashed away in my computer file … but shusssh … I am reading now.

Did you know that William Tecumseh Sherman and Edwin Booth were in California at the very time of the window for Fredi Steinmetz’ adventures there?
(And the book cover is that of my very favorite Gold Rush tale adventure ever … which I will not read again until I am completely done with The Golden Road.)

20. October 2013 · Comments Off on Back In The Bookworks Again · Categories: Old West, Random Book and Media Musings, Uncategorized

A good few years ago – so, OK, it was 1997 – another  writer sent me this musical parody, to be sung to the tune of “Back in the Saddle, Again.” It was composed especially for me, as he was inspired upon actually recieving a copy of “To Truckee’s Trail.”

“BACK IN THE BOOKWORKS A’GIN”

Well, she’s back in the bookworks a’gin.

Writin’ away when she kin’. ‘magination’s never dry,

When there’s his’try there to ply,

‘Cause she’s back in the bookworks a’gin.

Writin’ ’bout his’try once more,

Poundin’ her ol’ com-pu-tor

She’s describin” Truckee’s Trail, Starvin’ and tra-vail

Back in the bookworks a’gin

Chorus: Whoopi-ty-aye-Oh

Writin’ to and fro

Back in the bookworks again

Whoopi-ty-aye-Yay She goes her own durn way

‘N’ she’s back in the bookworks agin.

Now, the first book’s the worst

You think the whole durn thing’s cursed

But you stick right to the trail

And you know, you’ll never fail!

You’ll be back in the bookworks a’gin.

I’ll send her a cowboy’s farewell

Pop off a round, bang the bell

She’ll be back someday, I know

An’ a-writin’ she will go

Back to the bookworks a’gin.

Chorus: Whoopi-ty-aye-Oh

Writin’ to and fro

Back in the bookworks again

Whoopi-ty-aye-Yay

She goes her own durn way

‘N’ she’s back in the bookworks agin!

16. September 2013 · Comments Off on Young Adult Book Blog-Hop · Categories: Book Event, Random Book and Media Musings · Tags: ,

Meira Penterman asked me about participating in this weekly blog-hop focusing on young adult or children’s books, even though the book of mine which most nearly meets that description was not intended as a young adult book. Still, To Truckee’s Trail does have a teenager and a small boy – Moses Schallenberger and Eddie Patterson — as secondary characters in a wagon train heading west to California. The book is totally G-rated, in the movie sense, and I have been told that some home-schooling families use it as part of their history curriculum as I was very thorough in writing about the emigrant wagon-train experience.

Part of the blog-hop involves answers to four questions, and posting links to three other writers who have or are working on books for children, teenagers or young adults. Follow and enjoy!

What are you working on right now?  I’ve just started on my next book, which will be a YA western adventure. I haven’t worked out a title for it yet, but I was struck a month or so ago with an idea for revamping the Lone Ranger by making it a straight historical; a young Ranger sole survivor and his buddy the Indian scout in pre-Civil War Texas. Lose the mask and the silver bullets (and other identifying details) but keep the sense of honor, the quest for justice, and the friendship, and use real characters and historical events.

How does To Truckee’s Trail differ from other works in its genre? As historical novels go, it’s more of a recreation of events and an explanation of how a group of people very similar to the Donner party in background and equipment, in the same situation and at the very same place still have such a radically different outcome. .

Why do you write what you do? I started writing historical fiction with an eye towards teaching people history by making it into a ripping good read. Most of the notions which people have about history are gleaned from pop-culture, from books and movies and television shows, so why not enlarge that body of knowledge? Write about fascinating people and interesting events that no one but history wonks have ever heard of? Or explain and make human events that people may have heard about, but perhaps not the whole picture. The motto of the Armed Forces
Radio and Television Service was “Inform and Entertain” – and that is mine, in writing historicals.

How does your writing process work? I’m pretty focused as a writer. I usually have the general plot mapped out in my head, and sometimes characters as well, so it’s just a matter of sitting down and filling in the descriptions and the conversation. But every once in a while, usually when the story is about three-fourths completed, I have a scathingly brilliant inspiration which means I have to go back and rewrite ….

Now look for these authors next week, as they continue the blog tour and answer the same questions. Enjoy!

Pam Uphoff

Cedar Sanderson

Henry Vogel

16. August 2013 · Comments Off on Another Blog Appearance. · Categories: Book Event, Random Book and Media Musings

Just a brief note – I am one of the historical fiction writers mentioned in this post, at the Christian Fiction Historical Society! The local historian whom I owe so much to for the background of Daughter of Texas is Victoria Eberle Frenzel, and her book is Gonzales: Hope, Heartbreak, Heroes.

03. July 2013 · Comments Off on Gettysburg · Categories: Random Book and Media Musings · Tags: , , , ,

The pivotal battle of the Civil War was fought 150 years ago this week, in the hilly countryside around the little Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. Vicksburg fell to the Union also on July4th, but the eyes of everyone focused on the titanic struggle at Gettysburg. This is a link to an interactive map of the three days’ battle, showing how it developed, and concluded with Pickett’s charge against the Union position – a charge which broke Lee’s Army, and decimated the Texans of Hood’s Brigade – to include my fictional Vining family. Of Margaret Vining Williamson’s four sons, only the youngest, Peter, would survive.
After Gettysburg, Lee’s Army would fight on – but never on the offensive again, always in defense.