More Magic

09. October 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Old West, Uncategorized · Tags:

The creation of characters is one of those miracle things. That happens in a couple of different ways. The ones who are historical characters are easiest of course; people like Sam Houston, or Jack Hayes, or John O. Meusebach, all of whom make appearances in the various volumes of the Adelsverein Trilogy, and in Daughter of Texas/Deep in the Heart. There are biographies, and historical accounts of these characters, so it is simplicity itself for me to get an idea of what they were about, how they looked and spoke and what background they came from. This does have its distractions; I was waylaid for a whole week reading biographies and letters of Sam Houston, just to write his brief appearance in The Sowing, on the eve of the Civil War.

Then there are the ones which I made up: I start with a requirement for a character, a sort of mental casting call for a certain sort of person, usually to do something. It can be, to continue the movie imagery, anything between a starring role, down to just a short walk-on, bearing a message or providing some kind of service to the plot. I usually don’t get caught up in describing everything about them – which is a tiresome tendency I will leave to romance writers and authors who have fallen in love with their own characters. Just basic age, general coloring, tall or short; a quick sketch rather than a full-length oil painting. I also don’t bother with describing in great detail what they are wearing – that’s another waste of time. Just the basics, please: work clothes, or dirty, or ragged, or in the latest fashion, whatever is relevant. And it’s really more artistic to have other characters describe them, or mention key information in casual conversation. That way allows readers to pull up their own visualizations of the characters, which seems to work pretty well and keeps the story moving briskly along.

On certain occasions, that character has instantly popped up in my imagination, fully formed. One moment, I have only a vague sort of notion, and the next second, there they are, appearing out of nowhere, fully fleshed, named and every characteristic vivid and … well, real. Vati, the patriarch of the Steinmetz-Richter clan appeared like that: I knew instantly that he would be absentminded, clever, loving books and his family, a short little man who looked like a kobold. His family would in turn, return that affection and on occasion be exasperated by him – but he would be the glue that held his family together. Another middle-aged male character also appeared out of nowhere, Daddy Hurst – technically a slave in pre-Civil War Texas, but working as a coachman for another family.

His character emerged from the situation of slavery as practiced in Texas, where there were comparatively fewer slaves than there were in other Confederate states. Many of those so held worked for hire at various skilled trades, and also seem to have been allowed considerable latitude, especially if they were working as freight-haulers, ranch hands and skilled craftsmen. Daddy Hurst is one of them; I like to think he adds a little nuance to the ‘peculiar institution’. The only trouble with that kind of character is that if they are supposed to me a minor one – they have a way of taking over, as I am tempted to write too much about them. This was becoming a bit of a challenge with the final part of the trilogy, The Harvesting.  If I had explored all the various characters and the dramatic scenes they wanted – in fact, all but begged for – it would have easily been twice the 500 pages that it eventually turned out to be. In the name of all the trees that might have been logged to print it – I had to say No, not now. But I did take note; many of those characters, with their back-stories appeared in Daughter of Texas and Deep in the Heart – the Menchaca brothers, for instance, or will appear in the continuing chapter of the Becker and Vining clans, in The Quivera Trail.

Where was I? Oh, characters, the third sort, evolution of – got it. That’s the other sort of character – the ones that I have started out with a certain idea of them, winging it a bit as I sketch out a scene for a chapter. Right there, they evolve, in defiance of my proposed plans for them. In my original visualization of their characters, as the romantic couple in the first book of Adelsverein, Magda Vogel Steinmetz and Carl Becker were supposed to be one of those sparkling and amusing Beatrice and Benedict couples, striking romantic and witty sparks off each other in every encounter, like one of those 1930’s romances of equals. Didn’t work out that way – he turned out to be very reserved, and she to be almost completely humorless. Beatrice and Benedict was so not happening! Within a couple of chapters of having them ‘meet cute’ when he rescues her niece from almost drowning – I tossed that concept entirely. I did recycle it for the romantic of Peter Vining and Anna Richter. He was a Civil War veteran, an amputee and covering up his apprehensions and self-doubts with a show of desperate humor. She was the clever woman who saw though all those defenses, calmly sized him up as the man she thought she could live with and come to love – and asked him to marry her, never mind the exact particulars. It makes amusing reading, just as I had planned.

The pivotal character of Hansi Richter is the most notable of those evolving characters. He started off as a stock character, the dull and conventional brother-in-law, a sort of foil to the hero. A rejected suitor, but who had married the heroine’s sister as a sort of second-best. That was another one of those initial plans that didn’t quite turn out as originally projected. A supporting character in the first two books, in The Harvesting,  he moved front and center; had developed into a stubborn, ambitious and capable person, quite likeable in his own right – and carrying a good deal of the story forward as he becomes a cattle baron, in the years following the Civil War.

Back Pages and Sample Chapters

05. October 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Old West, Uncategorized

Because a Facebook friend asked me to send links to various sample chapters of my books that I have posted – of course, this is six years and nearly as many books, so there are (blush) a lot of them, and scattered over two different websites. In order of publication, and by the book, here they are:

To Truckee’s Trail
Chapter 1 – Preparations and Partings
Chapter 2- The Jumping-Off Place
Chapter 12 – The Very Roof of the Mountains

Adelsverein – The Gathering
Prelude and Chapter 1
Chapter 8 – The Home Place

Adelsverein – The Sowing
I did not post any sample chapters from this book – can’t think why not.

Adelsverein – The Harvesting
Chapter 1 – The Death of Dreams
Chapter 10 – Day of Reckoning

Daughter of Texas
Prelude and Chapter 1 – Across the River
Chapter 4 – Gonzales
Chapter 8 – One Little Cannon
Chapter 11 – A Message from Bexar
Chapter 13 – Following the Army

Deep in the Heart
Chapter 4 – The Ranger from Bexar
Chapter 9 – Forted Up
Chapter 12 – Returns
Chapter 12 – The Last of the Lone Star

The Quivera Trail (A work in progress, est. release November 2013)
Chapter 7 – The Voyage
Chapter 9 – A Sky Full of Stars
Chapter 12 – The Home Place

Note that this may not be all – there may be other sample chapters buried in the blog archive that I could not readily locate. And books changed titles, chapters were reassigned or re-written entirely – so what was posted originally may not conform to the eventual printed version.

Oranges and Honey

30. September 2012 · Comments Off on Oranges and Honey · Categories: Domestic, Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,

I have a shoebox full of vintage postcards, collected in the Thirties by the invalid young son of Grandpa Jim’s employer. Among my favorite cards are those of places I knew, like the Devil’s Gate Dam, on the nebulous border between La Crescenta and Pasadena, with a Model-A Ford on the roadway atop the dam, and Mt. Wilson topped with snow in the background, and a view of the Arroyo Vista hotel, still a landmark in the days when Mom was driving us to Pasadena to visit the grandparents, but half a century past its Roaring Twenties prime.

My very favorite is a view again of Mt. Wilson and the San Bernardino range, edged with snow against a turquoise blue sky, and acres of orange groves covering the entire plain below, even up to the foothills. From the mountain peaks and ridges, an expert could deduce where that particular vista had been taken down for 3-penny posterity. The citrus groves were long gone from Pasadena when I was a child, nibbled away by suburbia, but pockets of hold-outs still held sway in back yards; Grannie Jessie and Uncle Jim had an enormous lemon tree in their front yard, and a smaller orange tree along the driveway, shading the only place where JP and I were allowed to dig, and make mud pies amid the sweet scent of orange blossoms and the still-sweet moldy smell of the windfalls.

When Grandpa Al and Grannie Dodie first moved out to Camarillo in the early 1960ies, and Mom and Dad would drive up on Saturday afternoons for dinner, the way there from the Valley that was not rolling hills covered in tawny dry grass and dark green live-oaks, was still taken up with citrus groves. The orchards were like vast, roofless rooms, walled with the windbreak trees, and floored in neat rows of orange, lemon and grapefruit trees, guarded by tall towers with slow-moving vanes intended to move the air when it came too close to freezing.

Gradually, creeping fingers of suburbia reached into the groves along the highway, just as they had before in Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley. Between one Saturday dinner and the next, the grove was bulldozed and by the next year, there would be a tract of houses, and the windbreak around the grove would be ragged, no longer a tall, sheltering wall against the wind. No doubt a few survivor trees lingered in back yards, or maybe were planted by the builders. Redwood House was built on hills which had once been olive groves, and the surviving trees still aligned in rows, along the roads or from yard to yard, but someone had planted orange and lemon trees there, and around Hilltop House. After we moved in, Dad averred that he had favored buying it because he had a wish to have fresh-made lemonade from fresh-picked lemons from his own tree on the Fourth of July.

Oranges and lemons were so ubiquitous, so much a part of the public and private landscape that it came as a shock to realize there were people elsewhere who had to go to the store and actually buy them… and they were an exotic and foreign delicacy at that. Our neighbors at Hilltop House brought over their visiting English cousins, so their children and their little cousins could swim in the pool— three little boys who looked like various incarnations of the juvenile Roddy McDowell. The youngest happened to notice the orange tree, growing in the hillside by the steps to the pool.
“What is that, miss? A peach tree?”
“No, it’s an orange tree, “ I said, and his eyes widened.
“May I have one, miss?” he asked, tremulously, “To eat?”
“You can pick many as you like,” I said, and damned if he didn’t sit down and eat four of them.

Feeling a little guilty over the fruit that fell from the tree and was wasted, Pippy and I made a concerted effort to keep ahead of production, that summer. We filled three or four shopping bags with ripe oranges, without making an appreciable dent in the bounty. It was more than we and our neighbors could ever eat, so we converted it into juice. Gallon jugs of juice filled the refrigerator— still more than we could drink, and before we could think of what to do with it all, the brush at the end of the hill caught fire, and we would up taking it out to the firemen afterwards. They drank it gratefully every drop, straight from the jugs, fresh-pressed and icy cold on a hot day after a brushfire. So much for trying to keep ahead of the bounty, but we could not count on a fire every day.

We went back to letting the surplus rot on the ground, but at least our bees got the good out of it. Amidst the other pets, strays and lab survivors and Hilltop House, we had taken on a hive of bees. Our pastor’s oldest son had begun working on a Scout Merit Badge in beekeeping, and alas, too late, discovered that he was one of those severely allergic to bee stings. The hive had to go, and go it did, with all the paraphernalia, to the sunny hillside above the vacant lot next door, which was planted in thyme and native chaparral. For two or three years, we had our own honey.
We never did figure out what plants the bees favored, because the honey was like nothing else I have tasted since. It was clear, almost like Karo syrup, with a delicate flavor, not quite citrus, not thyme, distinctive, but unidentifiable, as rare as the oranges were common.

Oranges and honey, tart and sweet, enduring, but ephemeral, a vision of California that still exists in the backyards of suburbia, and on the postcards from another era.

Comfort and More

14. August 2012 · Comments Off on Comfort and More · Categories: Book Event, Old West, Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,


We were in Comfort this last Saturday … no, that doesn’t mean we were comfortable, exactly – just that we were in Comfort, Texas – a nice little town about an hour’s drive north from San Antonio, a lovely little Hill Country town situated where the Guadalupe River is crossed by the IH-10. In the larger world, Comfort is known for being the final burial place of a number of German Unionists, who either died in a vicious fire-fight on the Nueces River in August of 1862 or were murdered shortly afterwards. I was there because … well, this is the community in which a number of my books are set, and the ‘middle’ book of the Trilogy covers this tragic period. So, when another writer and enthusiastic local historian told me at the Meusebach Birthday celebration that I really ought to get in with this one … and we swapped copies of our books … well, I really must do things like this, meet people, talk to fans, and sell some books. It’s not a chore to actually be there and do that, but setting it up is sometimes a bit of a job and full marks to Blondie for taking the bull by the horns.

The plan was that a number of other local authors, some of whom had books about the Germans in the Hill Country, the Civil War in the west, or about the Nueces Fight and the subsequent execution of a number of Hill Country Unionists would have table space to sell their books at a picnic luncheon in the Comfort City park which would follow the commemoration ceremony and wreath-laying at the monument. After the the luncheon, there would be a symposium in the parish hall of the Lutheran Church … and we could set up again to vend books, through the good offices of the Comfort Historical Association … for a simple donation of 20% of total sales to them when all was done for the day. We headed up to Comfort, located the park without much problem, and set up on our portion of table, which was just large enough and under the shade of the park pavilion.

So, I missed most of the commemoration at the monument itself, although I did go up and take some pictures during the ceremony – while William Paul Burrier was explaining on what exactly had happened during the early morning hours of August 10th, 1862 on the bank of the Nueces River. He has explored those events and personalities involved to almost the sub-atomic level. (Alas, I can’t find any links to the book that he has written about it all.) Pictures taken, I spelled my daughter so that she could go and check out an interesting resale shop just across the field from the park … and then the three cannons at the memorial gathering were fired, and everyone came down to the park. There is a small problem at events like this – trying to eat. Just as you’re ready to tuck in to your plate, there are three or four people wanting to talk to you. Our place at the table was next to Carlos Juenke, who is from Fredericksburg, and has read the Trilogy and loved it extravagantly … and so, I hardly got to eat much lunch or look at any of the other writer’s tables. It was a large crowd, and very lively for nearly two hours – and then pack it all up, and drive around the block to the symposium venue … which was a bit more cramped, but indoors in the AC… bliss it is to finally go indoors, on a sultry August afternoon in South Texas.

The symposium was interesting – always interesting to see working historians going at it, although it was sidelined for some time when Mr. Burrier began talking about his current project – debunking many of the current conceptions held about the Adelsverein generally. He was of the opinion that Prince Solms and his confreres seriously intended to establish a working German colony in Texas – that their ambitions were on the colonial-imperialist side rather than more economic and charitable. This caused an intake of breath through-out the room, and Mr. Kearney got up to contest that – and being pretty well versed in the contents of the official Mainzer Adelsverein, he could quote chapter and verse. For a few moments, I thought we might have another civil war on our hands, right then and there. However, as a relatively phidless (PhD-deprived) scribbler of historical fiction, I was beneath the notice of the professional historians – in fact, one of the academic gentlemen barely concealed a sneer as he departed at speed from in front of my table once I explained that they were all novels. Well, given the usual sort of historical fiction and historical romance, one can hardly blame him, but it is altogether likely that more casual readers have learned local history from reading my books than ever did from reading his.

Ah well – a nice day, in a nice place, with nice people. And we bought a whole smoked chicken from the Riverside Market in Boerne for dinner on the way home. What could be better than that?

Laying By

17. July 2012 · Comments Off on Laying By · Categories: Domestic, Uncategorized


A neighbor of ours has a fig tree – an insanely prolific fig tree, to which we have been going regularly and with permission – to harvest the bounty. And a bounty there is; so much that we came and took about six or seven pounds yesterday morning and today when we went past their house with the dogs on morning walkies, the senior lady of the house called out to us, and said that we should come by and pick some figs. There is a point in fruit-tree production, when energetic picking of the ripe barely makes a dent. I learned this early on, when we had an orange tree at Hilltop House, an orange tree which produced and produced and produced so much that the ground underneath it was redolent with the smell of rotting oranges. One very hot and dry summer, my sister and I quixotically decided that we ought not to let all of this go to waste, so we went up one morning, picked several large brown paper shopping bags of those that were ripe (and that was barely a fraction of the fruit on the darned thing!) and worked until nearly midday, halving and squeezing the oranges … which gave us too many gallons of orange juice to fit into the freezer.

The brush at the top of the hill caught fire that day, and after it was extinguished, we took the many jugs of freshly-pressed local orange juice up to the firemen, who appreciated it greatly. But after that point we kind of decided that … we’d just use what we needed. So it was when I lived in a tiny house in South Ogden, which had a hedge of apricot trees. The ground underneath them was paved with rotten apricots and mined with the hard pits, and never mind that I did with them what I could, brought bags of them into work to swap with co-workers who also lived in owned or rented properties which also had bearing fruit trees planted in their yards, dried them, made preserves out of them … so I can understand that the people living in the house with the fig tree in the front yard are now probably sick to death of the sight and smell of them. But still – free fruit is not to be scorned, especially in this economy… and so I’ve been drying them, and making jam and preserves, and even fermenting a couple of gallons of fresh fig wine out of the bounty of figs. (I really wish that the various developers and owners of houses in Texas had done more often what was routine in Utah – and that was to plant at least one bearing fruit tree per housing unit.)

Some of this out-put of the canning kettle will be used for Christmas presents, but the rest of it – pickles and relishes, mostly – will be used for home consumption. The okra and mixed vegetable pickles are divine, by the way. And cheaper than purchased, even figuring in the cost of making them … which is one of my reasons for going all D-I-Y in the first place. The other reason is that maybe I am being affected by the current atmosphere, or the whispers of my grandmothers, who routinely stockpiled supplies of preserved foods against winter (Granny Jessie, who grew up on a farm) or Granny Dodie, (who lived through the Depression and whose garage held about two years worth of canned foods.) There’s something reassuring about knowing you can get along for a couple of weeks or moths on the stocks of food on your own shelves. And right now, this is one thing that I can do.

This is one of the best old fashioned and simple recipes for preserved figs, by the way – from The Gift of Southern Cooking: sprinkle two pounds of fresh figs (anything other than the black Black Mission variety) with two or three tablespoons of baking soda, and soak for five minutes in boiling water. (This toughens the skins of the figs so that they stay whole.) Drain the figs and rinse them in fresh water, then put them into a non-reactive pot (that is, enamel or glass) and sprinkle two cups of sugar over them. Steep the figs in sugar for at least twelve hours, until the juice from the figs has begun to liquefy the sugar. Simmer for ten minutes, cover and set aside and let steep overnight. Simmer ten minutes, set aside to steep. Repeat once more, and at the end of the third simmer, remove the figs with a slotted spoon and pack into sterilized pint canning jars. Strain the syrup, and simmer until it reaches °220 degrees, pour over the figs, and process in boiling water for fifteen minutes. The canned figs are thus to be aged a month before being eaten.

(cross-posted at Chicagoboyz)

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