Checking In

Thanks for worrying about me when I become a bit scarce around the blogosphere. Just for the record, I did have a wee little medical procedure followed by a quick fishing expedition to central Texas. Pictures to come later. (Of the fishing trip that is not the medical procedure - that would just be gross)

And in a few hours I am headed top a Texas musical festival and Cook-off that will be the subject of my My Town Monday post this week. The Shiner bock is on ice and the sun screen is packed, and Charlie Robison is headlining. Should be a great time

I'll do my best to get back on track and make the rounds to all of your blogs this week.

Forgotten book Friday

Patti Abbott launched the idea for forgotten book Friday a few weeks back. I participated the first week and have not done so again until now. In that first post I did tag three people to name a recommendation of their own. I'm proud to say all three accepted their assignment.

Katrina Kimble's can be found here.

Shauna Sturge's is here.

And Jennifer Archer ran with the assignment and did one here and here.

But guess what. Jennifer is a very talented author in her own right. I'm not sure of the exact number but she has had somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen books published.

Of those, the Me I used to be is my favorite.

That Was Then

Me, Allyson Cole. Age sixteen. Living in the world of endless summers, of going wherever you wanted. And yes, my parents may have worried that I was riding into trouble — but I was young and in love, and growing up was something I had to do….

And This Is Now

Me, again. Allyson Cole. This time, age fifty-one. I have everything I always wanted — almost. I don't have him…and I don't have me. Now's the time to find what I lost. To do that, I have to hit the road, and find the father of my child. And start a journey I never could have anticipated….

The story is chocked full of great characters and I guarantee you'll feel like you are on that journey with Allyson.

Jennifer also has a new story out the collection More than Words Volumn 4 which can be bought here. She is also one of the nicest ladies you can meet and her perpetual smile is enough to brighten any room. so check out either of these titles or any of her others when you get the chance.

Two-sday

Two Lines I have written this week.

From my novel in progress, Plundered Booty ...

She singed Frank with constant, torching remarks about his massive girth and thick, Oklahoma accent. When she branded him with the nickname, Bub-A-Lard, even Junior adopted the term.

Two Lines I've read.

From fellow blogger, and frequent commenter here at One Word, Carleen Brice's fabulous (I'm nearly finished but not quite) debut novel, Orange Mint and Honey ...

She wanted the big scene. She had been poking and prodding me since I arrived, trying to make me split open so she could put me back together.

Keeping with the Tuesday theme of two, let me apologize to the English duo of Debbie Lou and Lyzzydee for not getting their My Town Monday links posted until this morning. I urge all of ya'll to check out yesterdays post and to visit the England contingent of MTM as well as any of the other links you might have missed yesterday.

Now for two quick stories involving the youngest of my two boys. Z is five.

Yesterday, while eating a hamburger he looks up with sudden enthusiasm and says. "Hey why don't we save some of these sesame seeds and plant them so we can grow our own hamburger tree."


Ahhh ... only it a perfect world would beef grow on trees.


And further proof that the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.

This weekend while watching me play a hunting video game that ends the game if you accidentally shoot a female deer or elk Z asks, "Dad, how come you can't shoot the girl ones?" Busy trying to play I simply said, "You're just not supposed to." And his reply?

"But don't they have meat inside them too?"

Be sure and visit the Two Sentence Tuesday inventors over at Women Of Mystery.

The Bone Pickers - A My Town Monday Book Review

First off, Happy Mother's Day to all.

A month or so back, fellow blogger, Josephine Damian emailed me with a great idea. To do a special My Town Monday week of book reviews where everyone who wanted to participate would post about a book set in their town. I instantly knew which book I would choose ... The Bone Pickers by Al Dewlen.

I'll warn you upfront. This post is going to be a long one, because first I'm going to tell you about the novel and then I'm going to tell you about the history behind the novel which is every bit as interesting as the actual book, a tall order given the the fact that The Bone Pickers was chosen as one of the 50 Best Books about Texas.

Against the flamboyant background of the “Golden Spread,” the oil-rich
Panhandle of the late 1950s, Al Dewlen has poised a full-scale and truly
original novel of one Texas family—the Mungers of Amarillo.

The six Munger siblings are the heirs of hard-drinking, hardscrabble farmer Cecil Munger, who in one generation brought his family from Dust Bowl poverty to unfathomable wealth. Sitting as directors of the several corporations in which their wealth resides, five of the siblings—Spain, Texas, Laska, China, and Bethel—struggle to balance their past with their present, their place in
society, and their obligations to community, to themselves, and to their damaged and dependent brother June, confined to the old homestead.

The above comes directly from the back jacket. As does this bit of blurb taken from W.U. McCoy's introduction included in the most recent edition of the novel.

"... The ambiance and essence of matters uniquely Texan is a
perverse underscore to gripping themes and raw, rending conflicts."

Perhaps the most surprising things about The Bone Pickers, at least for me, was how contemporary it felt and read despite the fact it was first published fifty years ago in 1958. Outside of an odd reference to some bygone bit of culture it is a tale that could be set in today's world. Though the author did use bits of language that were common used in the fifties that are offensive to decent folks these days. Unfortunately, there are still many indecent peopel in this world so the terms live on and in being true to the characters they had to be included in the telling of this story.

I wasn't alive in the fifties, but Mr. Dewlen did an excellent job of painting Amarillo and the surrounding area at least ass far as how I imagine things to have been in that time era. The streets, places, and even attitudes were accurately described. But then again Mr. Dewlen is from the area and at the time he was a local newspaper reporter so one would expect nothing less.

The theme of the novel is Image, though in describing the work, Dewlen acknowledges that word had not into usage when he penned the novel. A quote from the author.

"It struck me that if borne to extremes, this compelling quest for acceptance in other eyes could critically distort, and perhaps even destroy, a life."

The novel itself is funny at times, ironic at its core, and very revealing of the human psyche. The conflicts are predominantly internal, but masterfully presented. The book could be described as slow-paced, in areas, but a reader with patience will be rewarded as every last detail bears fruit somewhere down the line. To give you a taste of the style I'm going to highlight an example of the actual writing that deals with the city of Amarillo since this post is a part of My Town Mondays.

For the Panhandle, more modernly spoken of as "The Golden Spread," 1956 became the seventh year of drouth. Except for one savage blizzard, it had arrived ash dry, and it continued that way. At the heart of the Spread, Amarillo sat at thirty-six hundred feet high, smoking the inflated cigars of incongruous record-breaking prosperity and boasting how it now had fifty-five known millionaires. Drouth could not touch oil and gas. Only a minority of credit-exhausted sodbusters actually suffered. These watched their fields chap and split as their seed blew away; they took blow torched to yellowing prickly pear, burning off the spears so the stock might survive a bit longer. To them, Amarillo's two-eighty-four-a-barrel boom seemed like sin.



$2.84 a barrel oil might sound like paradise by today's standards but little has changed outside of the math.

And one more sample with a bit of dialogue in it.

"Aw dammit, Snake," Papa said the day Spain had the fight at school," what's it gittin' you settin' so thin-skinned all the time? Where yu' think I'd be I ask you, was I always keeping my feelin's on my sleeve? Look at me back there in'17. Three-quarters German an' a quarter English, at a time like that! What you think people said to me? Did I ever have me a fight? Hell, no! Before they could start on me, I said, 'The Kaiser is a sonofabitch,' and then I'd say, ' Them German kin of mine, they rig up the goddamn wars, an' then my limey cousins, they come along behind scavenging up,' and then I tole them, ' Me, I'm a Panhandle Texan, an' I'm raising the beef to feed our Texas boys who'll whip the hell out of one side or both of 'em, whichever needs it!" After which as Spain recalled, papa got up off the couch and took him to the kitchen, to play poker a little while for the ten days' wages owing because Spain had been grubbing mesquite.

I highly recommend the book to anyone who enjoys the inner ticking of humanity. The novel felt so real at times that I almost felt like a peeping-tom peering in at the lives of my neighbors. If I had any neighbors worth upwards of two hundred million that is. But there very well may be a reason why it read so real.

Now, as promised, the story behind the novel.

The Bone Pickers first was released by McGraw-Hill in 1958. That much I can tell you is fact. I have heard two different rumors about what happened next and try as I might I have not substantiated either in my research so I am going to lay both out here. I have hopes that someone who reads this blog and was living during that time can shed some light on the facts.

There is and was a prominent family of Amarillo millionaires who achieved their family fortune from oil after years of struggling to make it as ranchers. So the story goes many of the elements in The Bone Pickers closely mirrored this family's actual history. Everyone I've talked to seems to agree on that. It was how this family reacted to such a close inspection of their past that differs.

Story 1 says the family tracked down and bought nearly every copy of the original novel to stop it from becoming widely read especially in and around the Texas Panhandle. To me there are a lot of holes in this explanation given the things I do know are facts.

Story 2 seems more plausible to me and it is the one I've heard repeated more often. It says that upon The Bone Picker's release the family sued the author and publisher. Demanding certain scenes, dates, and names be changed. Rumor has they reached a settlement that included the promise no more copies would be printed (which might have been when the family bought the remaining copies) and that after a few changes were made the altered book would be released under a new name. A paperback version of a similar story titled The Golden Touch came out in 1959. I tried to find a copy of that book in time to compare but failed.

In 2002 Texas Tech University Press rereleased what is supposedly the original story with the original name, The Bone Pickers. This is the only version I've read, and even it was a bit difficult to procure. I went to Hasting Bookstore where I buy the majority of my reading material. Hastings is a national chain but they are based out of Amarillo. When I asked about order a copy of The Bone Pickers the clerk told me he could but it would have to be shipped directly from the published to my house as it was a title they were not allowed to order for arrival at their store. i've ordered a lot of books from tiny publishers up to the big New York houses and never before have I been told I couldn't pick it up in the store.

The harbinger of political fallout from a novel first published fifty years ago? The pressure of local wealth to take care of one another? Or just a strange coincidence? Who knows, but this is a novel that deserves to be read and I encourage you to do so.

Links to Other My Town Monday Posts

Josephine Damian -- Part 1 of her post about New Rochelle, New York and Ragtime author E.L. Doctorow. *******And part duece.********

The Anti-Wife -- Seattle, Washington

Patti Abbott -- Review of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Euginides a novel set in Detroit, Michigan

Clare2E (Women of Msytery) -- Rye, New York

WordVixen -- Lititz,Pennsylvania

Barrie Summy -- Tells us about Carolyn Wheat, a mystery author from San Diego, California

Linda McLaughlin -- Orange County, California

Clair Dickson -- Livingston county, Michigan

Lyzzydee -- Welwyn Garden City, England

Debbie Lou -- Bishops Stortford, England

Waste Not, Want Not

Everyone has heard the old adage ... One's man trash, is another's treasure, but it wasn't until this morning while doing a bit of slog surfing that I started pondering the depth of that cliched notion.

We all know that scavenger that goes to the city dump and come home with more than he took. Or eagerly grabs that scrap of grisly fat from you dinner plate before you can scrape it off into the trash. He creed is ... "I'd hate to see that go to waste."

But let's move out of the concrete and into the abstract. Is there any difference between rescuing a bright orange, slightly frayed couch from the curb,
and defending a painting that your friend just said was hideous. Or using two cinder blocks and a one-by-ten plank for a bookshelf down in your basement bedroom, all the while answering your dad's screaming to turn off that damn racket with a yell of your own that, "Metallica is sweet music, not racket."

Maybe you think The Simpsons is the funniest show to ever air, but your sister says anybody who watched that vulgar filth is an imbecile. One man's treasure, another's trash.

As a writer I tend to use certain words more than others. They are in my treasure trove so to speak. The more common of these I have to be careful not to overuse so that they become echos. There are other words I tend to avoid. I could list them here but then I wouldn't be avoiding them would I. Actually i don't make a concerted effort not to use any particular word. I am always looking for the best possible word to make my meaning clear. Even if that word might offend. Which leads me to today's story.

Once Upon A Time, in a land not so far away I was in a critique group. There were six talented writers in the group. I was the lone male and the youngest by a good many years. A number of these fair maidens took offense one weak at the language I used in telling a scene involving a drunk and drug-addled man's attempt to beat and rape his ex-wife. They said female readers would cringe at the words I used. I explained that I wasn't shooting for good time and joy in that particular scene. I wanted to reader to feel the sting, the anger the resentment. To me the antagonist slapping an innocent women while saying "Golly darn. you make me mad." simply didn't ring true. Soon the discussion manifested around the F word. Fuck for those who like things spelled out. Sure it is a crass vulgar word, but if you are writing a crass vulgar character it is only natural they would utter it a few times in the book. But I didn't press. I listened while they told me to take it out so I wouldn't offend readers, agents, or editors.

But the very next week a new fair maiden visited out group on a trial basis. She whipped out a six page short story and commenced to reading. If I remember right the first F-bomb landed in the second or third sentence. Soon the sky was filled with with more dirty bombs than a hidden bunker in South Korea. With each one I bit my lip a bit harder to keep from laughing out loud. I looked to my easily offended crit partners and could see their jaws tighten. I literally had tears spilling out of my eyes before the story was finished. I felt bad thinking our visitor would assume I was laughing at her or her writing when i was not. the story was actually quite good and since it was written entirely from a brazen teenage girl who went to great length to shock those around her and to be the focus of every one's attention the language seemed appropriate to me.

The rest of the group didn't see it that way. And for whatever reason i found it easier to argue on behalf of this other writer's work who at that point I didn't know than I had my own work the week before. I'm not proud of the fact but for the next forty-minutes I argued with two senior citizens about the word Fuck.

I'm not saying that particular word is something to treasure. They were right in saying it was overused, but the meat of their argument centered around that including that type of language would kill any chance of getting published. That assertion was an is absurd, unless you are writing for an audience that like those ladies is easily offended by such vocabulary. Christian, Children's, Historical romance. For those genres the inclusion of that kind of language would land you in the trash heap, but write an action story with marines fighting for their life in Afghanistan, or novel about the culture of street racers, or a modern day pirate tale about sleazy car dealers in Oklahoma and one man's dream to visit the Caribbean and a bit of seedy lingo is bound to creep in. Especially, if that story is called Plundered Booty. I can only hope someone will think it's a treasure.


All of the above came to me after reading today's post by Debbie Elliott-Upton who blogs every Thursday over at Criminal Brief. Another commenter used the words stimulus package in his reply. Now this is a term that has been thrown around a lot lately in the media and never before had it struck me so, but today it seemed vulgar in a, "Hey baby, I got your stimulus package right here!" kind of way. That got me to wondering if anyone else has ever snickered when Bill O'Reilly or Katie Couric says, "President Bush's new stimulus package is slated to be deposited starting this Friday."

Zippity Do Dah

Last night, I showed up bare-handed for my regular Monday critique group. It is rare that I do not show up with a stack of pages to read, so I think my fellow writers were all a bit surprised. One of them (hello Lisa) even chided me a bit about spending too much time on this blog and that's why I didn't have another chapter to read.

The truth is the blog tends to mirror my fiction. I have been in a rut, not really stuck as I know exactly what I want to happen in Plundered Booty (the title of my novel in progress for any newcomers) but I've had trouble transitioning from one scene to the next. I am trying to bridge over a two month period where some pertinent info takes place, but not enough to build an entire chapter out of. Today the answer that has eluded me is as clear as bottle of Captain Morgan's sweet coconut rum.

But last week, while I struggled with moving my novel forward in an entertaining way, I also struggled to pen anything worthwhile to the blog. I was in a surly mood. Today, bluebirds are singing on my shoulder and the world seems to be spinning the right direction again. Matter of fact I am having to rein myself in so that I do not rush the words as I rapidly approach the two most satisfying words I know ... THE END.

Here's a question to my fellow writers. Does your writing mood spill over into other areas of your life? Have you ever been frustrated at your inability to string words together, only to then snap at your spouse for not picking up their shoes? Have you ever called into work sick because of a sudden viral-like burst of inspiration and you can't stop vomiting paragraph after paragraph?

*******************************

Now for Two Line Tuesday a blog feature from the brilliant minds of those fabulous females over at Women Of Mystery.

From The Bone Pickers by Al Dewlen

Under this regulated allowable, arrived at through the system of advanced purchaser nominations and in light of such known factors as pipeline, transport, storage, and refinery capacities, the oil market has become constant. price is whatever the industry wished it to be.

That comes from the novel I plan to due an entire post on for next weeks My Town Monday book review of a novel set in Amarillo. By the way it was written in 1958 and set in'56, but I think that passage is still applicable in today's market.

And from Plundered Booty ...

Yep, I ransomed away my Caribbean dreams for sex. I'm not proud of that fact, and I could claim I was just putting them off for a bit, but the fact is, I'd been delaying them all my life.

Panhandling, But Without The Cardboard Sign -- My Town Monday

This weeks My Town Monday post will not be as detailed or I fear as interesting as past editions, but do to a busy schedule and time restraints. And remember, next week is the book review edition of My Town Monday in which several of us are going to discuss books set in or nearby our hometowns.

Today I'm widening the scope of My Town Monday and going to tell you a bit about the entire Texas Panhandle. The Texas Panhandle is comprised of the 26 northern most counties of Texas.

Amarillo sits just about smack dab in the middle of that red area, and it is by far the largest city in the area. In many ways the Panhandle is the stepchild of Texas. According to numbers from the 200 census the population of the area was 405,862 residents, a mere 1.9% of the Texas population. And these numbers are spread out over nearly 26,ooo square miles, and while that is only 10% of the the land in Texas, The Panhandle is larger in size than ten entire states. (Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland, and West Virginia)

Actually, because of wording in the treaty between the Republic of Texas and the United States, Texas could divide itself into as many as four states, one of which would be the Texas Panhandle. And in 1915 a bill was introduced into the Texas legislature to have the Panhandle become it's own state. The proposed name was Jefferson, but the bill never came to fruition.

Here is another odd fact that I doubt many other places can claim. Amarillo is closer to five other state's capitals, than it is it's own in Austin. Also it is a shorter drive for me to visit cities such as, Salt Lake City, Utah, Des Moines, Iowa, Natchez, Mississippi, and St Louis Missouri, that it is to visit Brownsville, Texas.

Agriculture, especially ranching and Oil and Natural Gas proved the economic base. The area is prone to high winds year round and with only 21 inches of rain on average is considered semi-arid. We usually get at least a few snowstorms each winter and occasionally we get dumped on by several feet. But don't worry we still get hot in the summer. A few years back every day but one in August broke the 100 degree Fahrenheit mark.

So I plan to give a bit of history beyond Amarillo so I thought maybe it would be a good idea to highlight the region I plan to discuss.

Links to My Fellow My Town Monday Marauders

Josephine Damian -- Tarrytown, New York

Debra -- Village of Peninsula, Ohio

Lyzzydee -- Panshanger Airfield, England

Linda Mclaughlin -- Orange County, California

Patti Abbott -- Bath, Michigan

WordVixen -- Lititz, Pennsylvania

Barrie Summy -- San Diego, California

Clair Dickson -- Livingston County, Michigan

Nan Higginson (Women Of Mystery) -- Colorado Springs, Colorado

DebbieLou -- Bishop Stortford, England