One of my favorite Christmas carol videos -
And from A Festival of Lessons and Carols, from Cambridge, England …
For Christmas 2011
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Category Archives: Local
A Bleg and a Business Proposal
I’ve long been kicking around the notion of a German translation of my books, especially the Adelsverein Trilogy – since that story has to do with German immigrants to the Texas frontier, and the Wild, Wild West as a concept is madly popular in Germany, and has been so for decades, if not centuries. Yeah, I know – weird concept, but it is true. I’ve fielded the occasional email from readers asking if there were such, as they have friends who don’t speak English but would just love-love-love to read the Trilogy in German. Early on, I had kind of hoped that I would get some interest from a German publishing house wanting to clean up from all those Karl May fans, but that hasn’t happened, not so far.
So, being advised by another newly-indy author, and a couple of friends, and my daughter (who had a great many caveats, seeing that she is not only my assistant but heir to the whole ongoing literary concern) I have decided to give up on any offers from German-language publishing concerns, and take command of the situation in a time- honored indy-author/free blogger way. Feh – like I had all that many offers for mainstream American publishers anyway …
Amazon has the ability to distribute their wares in Europe, and I am the junior partner in a boutique publishing firm with an LSI (Lightning Source International) with the ability to publish in any language that we specify – so publishing a German-language edition of my books would be a fairly simple matter: a separate ISBN, and another set of relatively small fees to upload.
That’s the easy part – the hard part is getting a German translator. I can’t afford to hire one directly. My checks for sales of my books, while adequate, are not yet into four figures. But sales for my books are a good and steady solid stream. I am mildly renowned locally and I do have a solid core of local fans, plus generally good reviews for my books. I figure that I am at the start of an arc of success, and that I can do on turning out another ripping good yarn every two years or so. Every book that I go on writing will bring in more fans; every reader who discovers a book of mine and instantly adores it will go to my back-list and buy all the rest. Such is my strategy, confirmed by the experience of a good few other indy authors … who have a nice augmentation to their regular day-job paycheck. Not enough that many of them can afford to quit their day jobs or start shopping for castles in the neighborhood of R.J. Rowling’s … but in this current economy, a regular income stream is a regular income stream, and to be valued accordingly. Given the focus of the Trilogy, the existing fan-base in Germany for Wild West adventures, I figure this venture would be a pretty solid … for anyone who wants to take a chance.
I am proposing to offer a significant percentage of ongoing sales of a German-language edition of the Adelsverein Trilogy to any qualified linguist prepared to take it on spec. Yeah, to do a lot of work in expectation of eventual royalties, which would sound a bit problematical – except that it’s what I have been doing with my books all this time since I published my first book, just like about every other author does, indy or mainstream pubbed. I gambled that my work on it would pay off eventually and over time. That gamble looks like it is beginning to pay off, so I am in a position to offer this to anyone with mad translating English-to-German skills.
I do have access through friends to means of judging abilities – and of setting up the legal matters … so, anyone out there who can translate from English to German, who wants to take a gamble on a steady income, and is prepared to do the same work I have done and take a long view … let me know.
(Cross-posted at Chicago Boyz)
Gone with the Wurst!
We went to Wurstfest in New Braunfels this last weekend, to celebrate all things Germanic. I posted the pics in a Facebook album here – enjoy!
And no, I don’t have a recipe for the German Taco … I would guess, since it is fair food, that it is basically a grilled country sausage, with jalapeno cheese and maybe some salsa, wrapped in a flour tortilla.
Evening With the Authors in Lockhart
Yea these many months ago, I was invited by the organizers to be one of those authors in a fund-raising event to benefit the Clark Library. This is the oldest functioning public library existing in Texas; and since Texas was not generally conducive to the contemplative life and public institutions such as libraries until after the Civil War, generally – this means it is a mere infant of a library in comparison to institutions in other places. But I was thrilled to be invited, and to find out that Stephen Harrigan is one of the other authors. There were two elements in his book, Gates of the Alamo which I enjoyed terrifically when I finally read it. (Well after finishing the Trilogy, since I didn’t want to be unduly influenced in writing about an event by another fiction-writers’ take on it.) First, he took great care in setting up the scene – putting the whole revolt of the Texians in the context of Mexican politics; the soil out of which rebellion sprouted, as it were. (And he also touched on the matter of the Goliad as well.) Secondly, he had a main character who experienced the Texian rebellion against Mexico as a teenaged boy and who then lived into the 20th century. I liked the way that it was made clear that this all happened not that long ago, that it was possible for someone to have been a soldier in Sam Houston’s army, and live to see electrical street lighting, motorcars, and moving pictures.
That just appealed to me, for as another author friend pointed out – we are only a few lifetimes ago from the memories of great events. For instance – my mother, who is now in her eighties; suppose that when she was a child of eight or ten, she talked to the oldest person she knew. Suppose that in 1938, that oldest person was ninety, possibly even a hundred. That oldest person that my mother knew would have been born around 1830 to the late 1840s; such a person would clearly remember the Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, possibly even the California Gold Rush and the emigrant trail, the wars with the Plains Indians. Now, suppose that the oldest person that my mother knew and talked to as a child and supposing that person as a child of eight or ten had then talked to the oldest person they knew – also of the age of eighty to ninety in the 1840s . . . that oldest person would have been born in 1750-1760. That oldest person, if born on these shores would remember the Revolution, the British Army occupying the colonies, Lexington and Concord, General Washington crossing the Delaware. All of that history, all of those memories, in just three lifetimes – three easy jumps back into time! Nothing worked better to establish how close we are to events.
Anyway, I am looking forward to this – and since my daughter and I will drive up to Lockhart around midday Saturday, and the event doesn’t even get started until early evening, we are planning to go to the Kreuz Market and prove to ourselves that it really is one of the five best BBQ places in Texas. And she wants to check out any thrift stores and estate sales going on.
(Reposted to allow comments – that old punctuation in the post title bites again)
A Book the Size of a Brick
Oh, lord, I thought on Monday afternoon, when I ripped opened the industrially-strong sticky tape that held the cardboard mailer closed around a hardbound book the weight and dimension of two bricks – did I really write all that? The UPS guy had just brought it, and left it on the porch after ringing the doorbell, and departing as swift as the wind . . . or as swift as one can be, working a delivery job at the height of the summer inSouth Texas. I wouldn’t want to linger on a doorstep either, when it’s over 100 degrees in the shade and towards the end of a working day.
But the “OMG – did I write all that?” moment – It’s the same thing I thought, when I opened up my writer’s copy of Book Three of the Trilogy: all five hundred pages. Well, the story did kinda carry me away: the saga of the Germans in the Texas Hill Country. The research and writing of it I had nailed down within the space of two years, but I measured out the resulting books into three separate stories, all published through Booklocker, three years ago. Let’s just say that it has sold very well, as these things go when one’s nom du plume is not Philippa Gregory, Dan Brown or Larry McMurtry. The Trilogy continues to sell, in paperback and e-book categories . . . but one of my biggest fans and I decided to bring out a hard-bound with dust-jacket version of all three books in one. As I said, it is the size and weight of a couple of bricks, a solid 1040 pages (including historical notes) . . . and although a bit pricy, the retail price will be much less than the cost of all three volumes in paperback, and will probably last a titch longer, under the weight of constant re-reading. And did you see the dust-jacket cover? My little brother, the graphic artist, did that – and from a picture I took on the grounds of old Fort Martin Scott, just outside ofFredericksburg . . . where a lot of the action and drama took place.
Alas, have to tweak a couple of pages of content; namely the family trees. My own late dear Dad asked me to include family tree/trees, so that he could keep all of the main characters and their children straight. I did this with a mind fairly split: yes, it would be good to keep casual readers appraised of who was related to whom, especially as the story began to focus on the second and third generation, but I hated, hated, hated to give away plot developments: Readers could go to the family tree and plainly see who was going to marry whom, and who was going to eventually drop off their perch in the branches, and when, and given significant dates and events, probably from what cause . . . ugh. I hated to telegraph future developments, especially after taking such care in setting up plot and characters, and making people care and invest their interest in them, and all, and then hitting them with the surprise twist. It’s like – oh, she’s/he’s toast in Chapter Umpteen-whatever, don’t emotionally invest her/him at all. Or; he and she are going to marry anyway, so why bother with building up any suspense and wonderment about it all. So, I compromised and put the family tree in the last volume. One more thing to tweak . . . and anyway, here it is. The hardbound all-in-one publication of the Trilogy will be available on or about the first of September, through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the usual on-line and big box store outlets. Enjoy . . . just as I have finished this one last tweak.
And I’ve been asked about pre-release orders: I’ve set up a page at my website to take pre-orders of the hardbound Complete Adelsverein Trilogy – to be autographed and mailed on 1 September, 2011 at a price slightly reduced from the official selling price (which Amazon will probably discount slightly anyway) but your copy will be autographed – personal message and all that. And I am extending the drawing for the Adelsverein tee-shirt to 1 September. Anyone ordering a copy of the Complete Adelsverein will have their name put into a drawing for one of two very nice customized tee shirts from ooshirts.com.
The hardbound version has all three volumes of the Trilogy, and the historic notes – and although it makes a … er … rather hefty volume (suitable for having a small child sit upon, at the Thanksgiving supper table in lieu of a telephone book) the retail price of it is about 2/3rds of what it would be to get all three separate volumes in paperback. And with luck, it will hold up to being read and re-read a little better than the paperback versions will. And you will be able to work on your hand and forearm strength in holding it up to read for hours at a time! Such a deal!
The Writer’s Life Waltz:A Short Rest Between
Right, then – I was dragged away temporarily from the computer and the mad gallop of the writer’s life waltz by my daughter . . . because it was Mothers’ Day. No, not for a brunch or something on Sunday; our Mothers’ Day was actually in support of Mothers’ Day, or specifically, the company that my daughter works on occasion for as a delivery driver. It’s called Edible Arrangements; they make cunningly contrived and rather high-end arrangements of cut fruit, made to look like flower arrangements. On certain high-demand holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Mothers’ Day, and the Christmas/New Years holidays, the local outlet in San Antonio is absolutely swamped with orders, more than their regular delivery driver can cope with. One of our friends has part-timed like this for years and she referred Blondie; being reliable and efficient, with a good bump of location (or a reliable GPS unit), and owning a vehicle with functional air-conditioning and capable of transporting at least six or eight arrangements are qualities highly valued by the business owner.
Anyway, Blondie inveigled upon me to part-time also. Originally, I think the plan was for me to work as a sort of driver wrangler – but as it turned out, for three days she was driving the shop’s refrigerated delivery van and I was driving the Montero. Look, bills to pay and all that. Only two hundred living producers of popular fiction in America today make a living entirely off their royalties. I am not one of them. Everyone else has a day job, or a patchwork collection of income streams and delivering fruit-bouquet arrangements has now been added to my own personal collection. As for Blondie, she delivered for six days, and can now afford the new front tires for the Montero. The economy in other places may be flat-lining, but when it comes to exotic arrangements of fruit, San Antonio is doing OK. Doing deliveries – it’s not brain surgery, but it helps a bit to know the local area, and to be able to read a map – and a day of it is pretty exhausting. We were falling into bed, and fast asleep every evening almost before it was entirely dark outside.
Some of my deliveries were widely-spaced, and since I knew the areas involved, I could think about things – to do with books, mostly, especially the one under construction. I always thought I did some of my best thinking during a commute. Walking the dog or jogging is pretty good think-time, too – but nothing beats a long drive. I mentally worked out a couple of key scenes, and jotted down the notes for them during the short intervals between sleep and delivering. That was how I spent my weekend – you?
*later – comments frelled, due to hyphen in title. WordPress does not like odd punctuation in titles
Return to the Writer’s Life Waltz
I know, I know – posting here from me has been a bit pro forma over the last couple of weeks. There are so many things that have happened, in several different arenas that I could have written about, but either just didn’t feel enough interest/passion/irritation about them, or have been swamped in launching the latest book. Yes, Daughter of Texas is being published by the Tiny Publishing Bidness in which I am now a partner, as part of our venture into POD. Just this last week, DoT was added to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, to be available as of April. (To coincide with the 175th anniversary of the war for Texas independence from Mexico. Yeah, I chose that deliberately, as a release date). Alice has always worked before with a number of different litho printers and binders, but increasingly over the last couple of years I am convinced that we have lost potential customers who really, really only wanted a small initial print run, or access to mainstream distribution and to get their book on Amazon. So, I convinced her to let me set up an account with Lightning Source – which I did – and Daughter of Texas is our test run. We’ll offer the POD option – to include a very strict edit of the manuscript, as well as professional standard cover design and formatting. I know, I know – the Tiny Publishing Bidness is late to the game with all this, but she has established a nice little niche market and gotten all kinds of local referrals which have afforded her a regular income over the years that she is in business. San Antonio is a small town, cunningly disguised as a large city. She is a very good editor – I joke that she has been married three times; twice to mere mortal men and once to the Chicago Manual of Style.
I am also looking at the option of having the Trilogy and To Truckee’s Trail in a second edition through The Tiny Publishing Bidness as well. I have a good relationship with the current publishers . . . but the individual per-copy cost is increasingly unbearable to me and to customers actual and potential. Since I am now the slightly-less-than-half partner in an existing publishing company, and have my dear little brother the professional graphics designer doing book-covers . . . well, it’s only logical. I am only held back by the hassle, and additional chore of paying the various fees. On the upside – fixing the various typo issues – priceless! Truckee was thick with them and very obvious to me now that I have had the experience of working with Alice on various editing projects. (To those readers who have noticed them – mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. To those who have not – bless you; these are not the typographical errors you seek. There are no typographical errors. You may go on your way.)
This last weekend was the 175th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo – Blondie and I went to some of the reenactor events in Alamo Plaza. Gee, first time in two years that we haven’t been there for a Tea Party protest! Anyway, lots of fun and I got some good pictures. On my list of things to fix – why I can’t do pictures on this blog, but I put the best of the best on my Open Salon blog. Link here, as soon as OS gets their a** in gear.
I may even be scoring a bit of local media interest, through having chosen to release Daughter of Texas to coincide with Fiesta San Antonio, the commemoration of the San Jacinto victory, and an excuse for a two-week long city-wide bash-slash-block party. Next Saturday, I am off to New Braunfels, to speak at a fundraising brunch for the local DRT chapter – which is really kind of a lift for me, as last year’s famous local scribbler-slash-guest speaker was Stephen Harrigan, of Gates of the Alamo fame. The Daughters – Lindheimer Chapter – have bought a boatload of copies of the Trilogy, to be on sale after the talk and personally autographed. (Note: it’s a kick to autograph my books for someone, but now I have awful nightmares about botching the message and signature. In that case, do I owe them another copy? Did Margaret Mitchell have this nightmare?)
Finally – I haven’t written much about Mom and Dad, since returning from California, for a reason. Mom asked me not to blog about this – too personal. She’s OK, being basically one of these flinty and resilient pioneer types. Besides my brothers and sister, and bro-in-law, she and Dad had lots of friends; we’re looking out for her. Wish I could have talked her into getting the internet, but no luck with that.
Oh, and one final thing – anyone who wants to be on the email list for my monthly author newsletter? Send me a private message, and the email addy you would like it to be sent to. I promise – I will only send it out once a month.
Stupid Spam Blog Comments – Another collection
These were collected at random over the last couple of months; I selected the more resoundingly scrambled for your amusement and delectation, just as is, punctuation just as is, spelling just as it is in nature.
Who the heck generates this stuff? Not only is their first language not English, I am pretty sure it isn’t even language…
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(These next three attached to a Christmas carol video)
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A Vintage Joke
… from Dad – about the little bird called the Key-bird. And why was it called the Key-bird?
Because, as it went hopping and shivvering from branch to branch, it’s constant lamenting call was –(wait for it)–
“K-k-k-k-ke-Rist! It’s cold!”
Which it is. It snowed here in San Antonio last night. It was an accumulation of less than an inch or so, but it was cold enough that it stuck, and the remains will doubtless freeze again tonight … and no, I am not planning to go anywhere at all. Why do you ask? – I’ve seen these people drive when it’s wet outside. Yeah, fer sure – all they need is ice-puddles at all the normally soggy intersections.
Page Hayden – 1930-2010
For Dad – The local semi-large newspaper guestimates a charge of $500 to run this in a print edition. Dad would be seriously pissed at that. So herewith… with some redactions
Page Hayden, long-time resident of Valley Center, died at Scripps Green Hospital after a brief illness, on December 26, 2010.
Mr. Hayden was born in Glendale, California, on January 3rd, 1930, the only son of Dorothy Simpson Hayden and Thomas Alfred Page Hayden, both of whom were immigrants from Great Britain in the early years of the 20th century. He graduated from Alhambra High School in 1948, and attended John Muir Junior College in Pasadena, before attending Occidental College, and pledging SAE fraternity. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology in 1952, and later earned a Masters in Zoology from UCLA. Upon graduation from Occidental, he served in the US Army, including a tour of duty in Korea at the end of the Korean War, rising to the rank of sergeant. (E-4). In 1953, he married fellow Occidental classmate, Kathryn Anne Menaul. He worked for UCLA’s Environmental Radiation Laboratory as a field biologist/ecologist specializing in desert mammals, participating in various projects for the DOD, NASA, BLM and the DOE. His last project was a life study of the California desert tortoise, for the BLM. He also completed required studies for a doctoral degree in Zoology at USC, but never obtained a PhD. Upon retirement in 1986, the Haydens retired to their property in Valley Center. There they commenced building a house, with a small orchard and xerioscaped grounds, doing the larger part of the work themselves. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary there in 2003, shortly before that house burned in the catastrophic Paradise Mountain fire. Undeterred, they rebuilt.
Page Hayden was active in the Valley Center Chuckwagon, in the Promenaders’ square dancing group, and together with his wife — an artist and teacher in stained glass – were members of the Valley Center Art association.
He is survived by his wife, four children, and four grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at 2 PM, Saturday, January 8th at House of Prayer Lutheran Church in Escondido. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Lutheran Social Services and specified for disaster relief efforts in Southern California.
About the Next Book
So, coming down the home stretch on the next book – which had the working title of Gone to Texas, which Blondie didn’t much like because she found a couple of others, fiction and non- with the same title. So, when released, it will be titled Daughter of Texas, subtitled “The prelude to the Adelsverein Trilogy.” My clever and artistic younger brother, Sander, who is a freelance graphic artist, did the cover design for me, and Watercress Press, the tiny publishing bidness in which I am a junior partner will edit and publish . . . and print it as a POD book, since we have set up an account with Lightning Source. We had wanted to do something of the sort along the POD line for our clients, after a couple of decades of taking bids from various traditional litho printers. It’s the same old tradeoff – traditional litho, large quantities at a time = large initial up-front cost, but small price per single copy. POD/Lightning source means small print run = relatively small up-front costs and slightly higher cost per single copy. So, Daughter of Texas will be the test run for Watercress Press.
It’s the prelude to the Trilogy, as it follows the life of Margaret, Carl Becker’s older sister, who married twice, and became an influential political hostess in Republic-era Texas – after experiencing the trials of the Texas war for independence from Mexico, to include the ‘Come and Take it’ fight, the fall-out from the siege of the Alamo, and the terrifying ‘Runaway Scrape’ . . . all that, and she has just gotten up to her first husband. (Also explained why the Becker family got to be dysfunctional in a special way . . . )
Anyway, I was set on finishing it in time for release on the anniversary of San Jacinto Day, April 21 2011, because this spring will mark the 175th anniversary of the Texas War for Independence – which, while loaded down with bags of drama – was over and done in a flash, relatively speaking. (Can you picture a lot of people picking themselves up off the ground in early 1836 and saying ‘Whoa! – What was that which just went by? A war? The hell you say – anyone see who won?)
Small problem – I was just coming up to writing the post-war picking-up-and-moving-on part, and hit a couple of problems: the first being that I had already clocked 300+ pages, and if I wanted to do true justice to the Republic of Texas-era shenanigans,(the Pig War, the Mexican raid on San Antonio which captured the entire district court and every Anglo man in town, the Archives War, etc,) that would mean another couple of hundred pages . . . in the next month. Plus all the necessary research – that being one of my marketing points, that I have researched all this to the nth degree. And I was out of time for all that. Another problem: writing out Margaret’s first husband – who dies of consumption – and her romance, such as it is, with her second husband. I was struck out of the blue by solutions to both those situations, a solution which would let me wrap up the first part of her story very tidily while allowing an interesting plot twist in a book to be worked out at a later date – and to make a second book of Margaret’s life; widowhood in the town that would (intermittently) be the capitol of the Republic of Texas and later the state capitol, participation in or witness to a whole series of gripping and exciting events, plus a new romance with a male character which I would have to flesh out a little more. The second book about Margaret will be called Deep in the Heart . . . to be available by next Christmas, perhaps.
Anyway, I will begin taking orders for Daughter of Texas starting about mid-December, autographed and delivered in mid-April, just before the official release date. Links and pricing will be posted then.
So that’s what has been going on with the book-thingy. Any questions?
Friends and Fans
We were off to Fredericksburg on Monday; Fredericksburg, Texas – a medium-sized town large enough to contain two HEB supermarkets, a Walmart, four RV parks – and two museums, one of which – the National Museum of the Pacific War – draws considerable tourist interest – and a marvelous kitchenware shop which might very well be the best one in the state of Texas. (It certainly makes Williams – Sonoma look pretty feeble in comparison.) The town has begun to develop a little bit of suburban sprawl, but not excessively so. Most of the town is arranged along the original east-west axis of streets laid out by German immigrant surveyors in the mid-1840s, along a rise of land cradled between two creeks which fed into the Pedernales River. In a hundred and sixty years since then, houses and gardens spilled over Baron’s Creek and Town Creek. Log and fachwork houses were soon replaced by tall L-shaped houses of local stone, trimmed with modest amounts of Victorian fretwork lace, or frame and brick bungalows from every decade since. Main Street – which on either side of town turns into US Highway 290 – is still the main thoroughfare. A good few blocks of Main Street are lined with classic 19th century store-front buildings, or new construction built to match, storefronts with porches which overhang the sidewalk, and adorned with tubs of flowers and hanging baskets, with shops and restaurants and wine-tasting rooms catering to a substantial tourist trade. Fredericksburg is a lively place; and I have been visiting there frequently since I came to live in Texas.
I actually have a curious relationship with the place, having written a series of three historical novels about how it came to be founded and settled. Thanks to intensive research which involved reading practically every available scrap of nonfiction about the Hill Country and Fredericksburg written by historians and memoirists alike, I am in the curious position of knowing Fredericksburg at least as well as many long-time residents with a bent for local history do, and holding my own in discussions of such minutia as to how many people were killed in cold blood on Main Street. (Two, for those who count such things. It happened during the Civil War.) And for another, of having a mental map of 19th-century Fredericksburg laid over the present-day town, which makes for a slightly schizophrenic experience when I walk around the older parts. Eventually, I may have to do a sort of walking guide to significant locations, since so many readers have asked me exactly where did such-and-such an event take place, or where was Vati’s house on Market Square, and where in the valley of the Upper Guadalupe was the Becker ranch house?
Mike, the husband of one of Monday’s book-club members is a fan of the Trilogy, and although he couldn’t come to the meeting (being at work and all) he still wanted to meet me. He had actually contacted me through Facebook a couple of months ago, for a series of searching questions about where I had gotten some of the street names that I had used in the Trilogy; many of them are not the present-day names, but are what the original surveyors of Fredericksburg had laid out. I deduced that being stubborn and set in their ways, the old German residents would have gone on using those names, rather than the newer ones. After all – when I grew up in LA, there were still old-timers who insisted on referring to MacArthur Park as Westlake Park, even though the name had been changed decades ago. So, the book club organizer gave me Mike’s work number at the Nimitz Foundation (which runs the Museum of the Pacific War) and said we should call and his assistant would get us on the schedule for that afternoon. It was my understanding that this gentleman was a retired general – OK, I thought ‘eh, another general, met ‘em by the bag-full . . . matter of fact, there was a general even carried my B-4 bag, once,’ (long story) but anyway, we had a block of time to meet Mike at his office – and a lovely discussion we were having, too; he was full of questions over how much research I had done, and terribly complimentary on how well woven into the story.
Mike thought ever so highly about how I had made C.H. Nimitz, the grandfather of Admiral Chester Nimitz into such a strong and engaging character – although we had a discussion over how devoted a Confederate that C.H. Nimitz really was – probably not so much a Unionist as I made him seem to be, but I argued that C.H. was probably a lot more loyal to his local friends and community than he was to the Confederacy – so, nice discussion over that. It seems that the Mike was born and grew up in the area. He and his wife (who was German-born) had read the Trilogy, and loved it very much – they were even recommending it to everyone, and giving sets of it as presents. Well, that is way cool – I’m in regular touch with three or four fans doing just that; talking it up to friends, and giving copies as gifts. Local history buffs, or they know the Hill Country very well, they can’t wait to tell their friends about it; as Blondie says, I am building my fan base. So I had a question-packed half hour and a bit; me, answering the questions mostly, and Blondie backing me up. At the end of it as we were leaving, Blondie casually asked about a few relics on the sideboard, under an old photograph of C.H. Nimitz and Chester Nimitz as a very young junior officer; a very battered pair of glasses, and a covered Japanese rice bowl: they came from the tunnels on Iwo Jima. Blondie said ‘oh?’ and raised her eyebrows. Yes, Mike had been allowed into the old Japanese tunnels; Rank hath it’s privileges – and Iwo is a shrine to Marines, after all.
After the book-club meeting – two hours, of talk and questions, and hardly a chance to nibble any of the traditional German finger-foods, an hour-long drive home, which seemed much longer. I fired up the computer and did a google-search, and found out the very coolest part. (Blondie had a suspicion, of course – being a Marine herself.) Mike was not just any general, but a Marine general, and commandant of the Marine Corps. How cool is that? One of my biggest fans is the former commandant of Marines, General Michael Hagee.
I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t know that, going in – I think we both would have been at least a little bit intimidated.