This last weekend we were up in Boerne, where they were celebrating an all-American fabric art form – the patchwork quilt and all it’s variations. They actually had quilts hung up on the fronts of stores, in the store windows and from lines string around the edge of Town Plaza.
Enjoy. It’s controversial, apparently, that Sting took to singing 400+ year old pop music … but to each their own.
When the house that my parents had built for their retirement retreat burned in a catastrophic brushfire in 2003, they had only about half-an-hour warning, and so there were a good many things they simply did not have time to pack into the car, or even to remember certain items that would have been easy… More »
Pretty well, actually – I finished a chapter Saturday afternoon, and tallied up what I have so far; a little over 300 pages, but only about another three plot twists and set-piece scenes to go. I’ll do my best to bring it at or around 400 pages. A severe re-read and edit will probably shave… More »
This affray did not happen in Texas, but in New Mexico in 1884. It did have all the classic Western elements; rowdy cowboys, a small town fed to the back teeth with their destructive and abusive antics, and a single local lawman determined to up hold the rule of law and order. Here, however, ends… More »
Scott Cooley, who lived for revenge on those who had a part in the murder of his foster-father, Tim Williamson, made a kind of headquarters with his violent and disreputable friends in Loyal Valley. George Gladden had a place there – he, like many other participants in the feud – was a small rancher with… More »
The Hoo-Doo war eventually became so bitter and vicious that all sides involved in it splintered into factions – even the company of Texas Rangers eventually dispatched to quell the range war split over it. The one survivor of the Baccus lynching still in custody, one Tom Turley, was returned to jail when he recovered,… More »
The so-called Mason County Hoo-Doo War was one of those particularly impenetrable frontier feuds which mixed up all the classic western feud elements into one bloody and protracted mess; legal possession of land provided one element, there was also a clash between cattle ranchers with local farmers and townsmen, wrangling over the ownership of cattle… More »
(I knew this poem from an anthology collection that I had as a kid – it was called The Magic Circle – and I suppose my sister wound up with it, although most of our childhood books wound up in my possession, as I was the first of the four of us to produce offspring.… More »
So not being really a romance writer, and having pretty much washed out of the lists of matrimony personally, I still have managed to write about romance … mostly by pulling in a little bit of inspiration from here and there from real-life couples. For instance, the main romantic couple in my first book, Dr.… More »
Connor, the middle-aged Malti-poo is at the veterinarians office today, to sort out why he has been throwing up for the last day and a half, has no appetite and is terribly lethargic. The bill for his treatment will be an unexpected expense for me … so anyone going to my book blog and purchasing… More »
This brought on by a series of color pictures of women working in factories in WWII. (Through Chicagoboyz.net, who also found the link to the Carbon Leaf song.)
In the year of the Centennial of the United States, the last of the West left relatively unscathed by the forces of law and order was that part of present-day Oklahoma set aside as homeland for the native Indian tribes. This was a 70,000 square mile territory in which anything went … and usually did.… More »
Oddly enough – guns were not a terribly real presence in the household – or even the neighborhood where I grew up. Dad, and our near friends and neighbors didn’t hunt, and as near as I can recall, none of them were obsessed collectors. I never even saw a firearm, in use on on display… More »
Blondie and I hit Sam’s club this afternoon for some holiday oddities and endities, and as we were heading out to the parking lot, Blondie remarked that everyone seemed rather … subdued. I couldn’t really see that the other customers were any more depressed than usual, wheeling around great trollies piled full of case-lots and… More »
It was a gradual process … the place grows on you, even back before it became clear that it was one of the states – out of these occasionally United States – which has a good chance of emerging comparatively unscathed from impending economic disaster. I don’t know why Texas should be so fortunate among… More »
Seriously, I hope they have better luck than the last time American TV producers tried to riff off the success of the original Upstairs, Downstairs – it was called Beacon Hill, as I recall and a routine googlectomy confirms. It started with great fanfare and interest, and promptly fizzled out, probably confirming expectations that American… More »
It was said of Texas that it was a splendid place for men and dogs, but hell for women and horses. Every now and again though, there were women who embraced the adventure with the same verve and energy that their menfolk did; and one of them was a rancher, freight-boss and horse trader in… More »
All the other authors and publishers whom I talked to over the three days of the Christmas Market agreed – as an author, and none of us being of the NY Times best-seller class – it is profitable and much less dispiriting to do an event like a Christmas craft fair in company with a… More »
Alas and alack, I haven’t paid attention to this blog since Friday – all my attention and care was given over to getting the various bits and elements for the German-language version of Adelsverein-The Gathering all worked out. Including having my little brother the graphic artist having to re-do the cover, since the German translation… More »
I wouldn’t have remembered that this week marks another WWII battle anniversary – that of El Alamein which ran for nearly two weeks in October and November 1942 – but for seeing a story or two in the Daily Mail about it. (A reflection upon the death spiral of the mainstream news is that I… More »
My family was, for various reasons, devoted to the first Upstairs, Downstairs series, back in the day. Mom loved the whole dichotomy of the ‘family’ upstairs, and the servants, working away behind the scenes and below stairs – very likely because her father, my Grandpa Jim was engaged in practically life-long service to a wealthy… More »
Having reason to head up to Fredericksburg last Saturday, we decided to explore doing it by the back roads; honestly, I would rather – unless in a tearing hurry – travel across Texas by the secondary roads. (Unless it is in the dark, or in the rain, and when the deer are especially depressed and… More »
(This months’ installment of the current work in progress: Isobel and her maid, Jane, have arrived at the Becker ranch, near Comfort, in the Hill Country of Texas. But Jane fell ill with malaria, and could not go with Isobel and Dolph to establish a new RB ranch in the Panhandle region, which with the… More »
So, with a little more than six weeks to go to Election Day, this particular video is getting play, and no little amount of critical commentary, which does not actually surprise me in the least. What would surprise me would be to find out that the speaker in question actually is privately embarrassed, humiliated, and… More »
The anniversary of 9/11 crept up on little cat-feet this year. Not to say that I have forgotten about it entirely – but it is receding into the past, faster and faster. It is taking it’s place in history with other tumultuous and tragic events. So many anniversaries – of the start of WWII, and… More »
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… More »