If It's Good Enough for Cher, Michael Jordan, and Garth ...

... it's good enough for me.

Don't call it a comeback
I've been here for years

Me and LL are cool, so I'm sure the esteemed Mr. J won't mind me borrowing a couple of lines from his lyrics. What I am trying to say here people is that I am once again going to be using this space to speak, share, rant, and ramble.

I tried to use a blog on my dedicated webpage, but the format was cumbersome to post at and even worse for folks wishing to comment or take part in the conversation.

So much has transpired since I last post here, personally and professionally. I will do my best to catch y'all up over time, but we will focus on the latter for now..

I moved out of Texas, and now live in sunny Southern California where I write full-time. Freelance articles of a wide variety, as well as continued work and promotion of my fiction.

I released a new novel WAITING ON THE RIVER which is available in print and ebook and a collaborative collection of shirt stories titled Hemingway that is a companion piece with an album of the same name by musician, Dan Johnson. The stories in that collection expand on the songs while telling a bigger story delving into the humanity of the choices we are all forced to make in life.

I will be back with at least one post a week to catch y'all up and I will also be posting some writing samples that were once published elsewhere but are now unavailable so that potential clients can have a place to read a variety of my work.

Hope to hear from y'all so please take a moment o say hello, ask, a questions, or chime in with a comment.  
 



  

See Ya' There

I am proud of what I did here for over 8 years, but as they say all good things must come to an end.

This blog is now inactive. For new blog posts from me please visit ...

http://www.traviserwin.com/blog 


It is a process but I will be moving the posts that still have relevancy as well as the ones that simply make me smile over to the new site.

Good Beer, Good Music, and Bad Bad Marketing

I'm not going to lie. I am an opinionated person. I'm also pretty outspoken even when my opinion is not all that popular.

I am critical of certain things more than others.

Beer.
Literature.
Music. 
Sports. 
Humanity and basic kindness for others.

In no particular order, these are things I am passionate about. The later at times spills over into politics but don't worry this spot isn't about politics. It is about critics. Like me. Sometimes I think those of us with with staunch opinions are labeled negatively. Sometime we are called snob. Heck, I've even described myself as a beer snob, but I think technically that is the wrong term.

Without consulting Merriam or his friend Webster I will say snobbery strikes me as a bed mate of judgemental and judgemental I am not.

Oh, I hear you skeptics out there. How can an opinionated critic be anything but judgmental?

Easy. Before I pass down my opinion. Before I criticize. I consider one question ... What is the intended audience?

Let's go back to beer. Yeah, I think nearly all the mass produced swill of Bud and Coors and Miller is nothing more than the glorified urine of of their respective CEO. But hey, its obvious there are millions of adoring fans. I mean people have to drink something while they are listening to the corporate manufactured music of people like Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line? One bad but shiny and heavily marketed recipe deserves another just as a finely crafted Russian Imperial Stout goes well with a perfectly grilled medium rare steak while listening to some fine tunes by Jason Isbell.

Or maybe you want something a little less heavy. Go ahead sip a good ol' Shiner Bock while you listen to Dan Johnson and the Salt Cedar Rebels regale the fine state of Texas. This duo pairs nicely with a number one combo from Whataburger, or a plate full of Tacos to gain the full Lone Star experience.

I get ticked when companies and artists try to inflate their intended audience by luring in unsuspecting others. Like 50 Shades. I get it. it sold millions of copies, but that doesn't make it good. More people mock it than praise it and that is because some publishing executive decided that eroticized Twilight fan fiction needed to be be thrust hard and deep against every lonely and horny woman in America who is tied down to a job, family, or household. But one kind of bondage isn't exactly like the other.

Sadly the novel has now tainted the erotica genre by draping the finely crafted books under the same pleather hood. Just as people hear the words country music and think Nashville and the whine of Rascal Flatts or the melodramatic moaning of Tim McGraw. Here in Texas country music means Robert Earl Keen and Willie Nelson. Waylon and William Clark Green. People that put emotion above commotion in both their lyrics and performances.

So yeah, while I am of the opinion that the corporate record company music is crap, that beer sold by companies that market their fancy bottle and cans harder than they do the product inside is nothing more than pablum for the masses, that most of the stuff we are TOLD to like and buy is a scam I recognize there is an audience who don't want to learn, explore, try new things. This is corporate America's intended audience. 

And I'm not among them.          
  

Dust Bowling with Vick Schoen

Today I am sharing my blog with Vick Schoen. Vicki and I were critique partners for many years. Through several different groups the two of us wrote on. She has been essential in me becoming who I am as a writer. She has a new novel set in the dust bowl era here in the Texas Panhandle.  

Historical Fiction As It Was Really Lived

In the Texas Panhandle during the 1930s, the hard, cracked earth seemed to turn on the men and women who had nurtured it all their lives. The decade-long drought had rendered the fields barren, susceptible to the constant wind tearing away the topsoil. A tough place to eke out a living. Some folks left. Some died. Some lost their nerve and their hope. But the strongest survived and became the backbone of the area. These are the folks who personified the enduring values of the American West. These are the heroes of Inherit the Texas Earth.

These are the people who joined the Last Man’s Club promising to remain in the area and support each other through the hard times. These are the people who found time to play and laugh and love during one of the most trying eras in American history.

Writing about them was a challenge. I wanted to make my fictional characters strong enough and vulnerable enough to pay just homage to the real players in the drama. And I wanted to acknowledge the land on which they built their futures.

Meet some of the main characters.

Willy Gil Kellogg talking to Gramps as the old man is dying ... 

Gramps lay on his side facing the open windows. An evening breeze was making an unsuccessful effort to clear out the odor of medicinal alcohol and vomit. The western sky glowed with oranges and pinks—the day’s last attempt to keep the night at bay.

“Will, come ‘round over here.” Gramps’s voice sounded small and empty, not the commanding, full resonance Willy Gil had heard his whole life. “Pull that chair up. I got something to say to you.”

“Yes, sir.

“You comfortable, Gramps?”

“Oh, sure.” The old man sucked in a shallow breath of air. “’about as comfortable as a snake in mud.”

Willy tried not to grin—but did anyway. “Grandma says eat some soup.”

“Well tell her I ate it. Make her happy. But toss it out the window. I’d just throw it up.”

Rosemary Fielding on her first morning in Texas ...

Rosemary looked at the wheat ready to harvest, the shack needing repair that would be their home, this plot of land Pa had signed a lease on yesterday claiming, “The good Lord’s wantin’ us to be Texans.” Sharecroppers. That’s what they’d become.

Pa had tried cotton farming and failed. Then he’d worked at the sawmill in Augusta and failed at that too. Now was his opportunity to fail at wheat farming. About the only thing he hadn’t failed at was getting Ma pregnant.

Quan Blackhorse on returning to his family’s abandoned home in the Texas Panhandle ...

Quan sat cross-legged on the floor picturing what had been before the accident. His mom baking bread, his dad coming through the door dirty, tired, and proud. He strained, trying to make his memory retrieve the sounds of the Comanche his father spoke only to him, but it had been eight years. He shook his head. Then he rose and spoke to the air. “I am back, Father. I cannot assuage my guilt, but I will redeem your name. The burden of injustice is now mine.”

The Land

Willy Gil walked the hard, sore ground that was his farm, mourning. Mourning for events that couldn’t be changed and now needed to be put to rest. Mourning for the child and mourning for the family member who killed her. And now the killer appeared terminal.

You can read chapter one of Inherit the Texas Earth at vickischoen.com

Taking Flight with the Thieving Birds

So I had this gig writing for a music magazine. It was fun while it lasted, but we mutually parted ways after having a deep philosophical divide about the musical influence of the late great Waylon Jennings, compared to the bro country babble of one Luke Bryan. I was hired as the Indie music contrarian and they want to now go more mainstream which is certainly their prerogative, but my musical tastes are not in line with that vision and faking articles I am passionate about, is not why I write.

I am proud of some of the stuff I wrote including a few articles that were rejected as too far off the mainstream path. Today I am sharing one such article about a band called the Thieving Birds.


TAKING FLIGHT
by Travis Erwin

From small towns to big cities, they are all the same …

A scratched, dented bar. Stools to perch on. Not too comfortable, but sturdy and more than adequate to take a load off. Off in the corner, the golf video game replays glory shots of games past. Beside it, a man is taking shots, not of liquor, but at pixelated deer with an orange plastic gun …

… the neighborhood bar.

Under the soft glow of neon two men play pool. The clacking of balls a natural accompaniment to the clink of beer bottles. The flotsam and jetsam of conversation rises and falls to just trump the volume of the music. There, in the space between songs you catch a shiny bit of confession not hushed in time.

It is early still. The back corner where the small stage sits, if you can call a few raised planks of plywood a stage, is dark. Waiting.

Most of the crowd came to drink. They'd be just as happy if the band didn't play. Talking over the jukebox is one thing, but they’ll have to shout once the band kicks off.

There are a few of us who came for the music.

But not the rowdy happy hour holdover holding court at the bar. His suit jacket tossed to the side as forgotten as the crappy work day that drove him to stop in for a beer or ten before heading on home. He'll call in sick tomorrow, not really remembering what went down, but neither will he regret the night. Except maybe for the dry cleaning bill to remove the smell of cigarette smoke from his suit jacket. But even that is okay, because hey, he nearly talked that waitress, the one with two inches of tanned flesh showing beneath her Senor Frogs tank top, into going home with him …

… the neighborhood bar.

The band arrives. Checks in at the bar. Everybody but the base player orders a beer, because the bar provides domestic bottles or drafts free of charge to the talent. The bassists doesn't care. He pays for a Jack and Coke because he likes that whiskey burn. Because he needs that moody edge.

The band takes the stage to tinker with their equipment. There are no roadies here. These guys are their own roadies. For that same reason the t-shirt and CD table stand empty until after their set.

This same scene is played out night after night. Could be any bar. Could be any town. Could be any band.

But on this night there is magic in the air.

The Thieving Birds are playing more than three hundred miles from their home in Fort Worth, Texas. They are playing for less than fifty people in a nondescript bar. In a nondescript town. Lead singer and guitarists Ace Crayton looks like Val Kilmer, circa Doc Holiday in Tombstone, but like the band's genre, Crayton's voice is harder to pin down. Smooth entering the notes, but rawer on the exit. Every word packed with emotion. Are the country? Are they rock? In the end it doesn’t matter, because they are just that damn good.

The band has undergone a few changes. Kenny Hollingsworth has taken over at guitar joining Crayton, bassists Rody Molder, and drummer Beau Brauer, but their music is raw, emotional, thoughtful and rebellious somehow. Listening to them is liberating in the way adulthood seldom is. Like a stolen smoke in the junior high bathroom, or that rush of adrenaline the first time you talked your girlfriend into sneaking out the window after midnight. Live and on stage they interact with their audience and are playful between songs. Readily accepting shots from their handful of admiring fans, the band didn’t seem to care how many were in attendance just so long as those in the room enjoyed the show.

And enjoy it they did. In the middle of the set I looked around. The pool balls sat idle, the orange plastic gun dangled from its tether. The happy hour business man took a break from his pursuit of Miss Senor Frog and settled happily onto a not-too-comfortable stool, whiskey in hand. The Thieving Birds had captured the room, taking flight with energy, magic, and talent.

These birds are no doubt headed for greatness and my thoughts after listening to both of their albums (Gold Coast and Thieving Birds) only reinforced that I was lucky to catch them in such intimate terms down …

… at the neighborhood bar. 

   

P is for Plodding

These days I seem have more to say than I do time to say it. Or in this case write it.

It's been a busy hectic summer and fall, but I think the one normal facet of life these days is that none of us have enough hours in the day.

Writing has been going well, despite no obvious evidence to the outside world. I am closing in on finally finishing a novel that I first started some ten years ago. At the time I was a bit intimated by he complexities of the story and its characters but as my skills have grown over the years so has my desire to finish. I have also started another story, this one with series potential that I am really excited about.

Meanwhile I've been doing a fair amount of freelance work for everything from a music magazine, to to football articles, and the exciting world of Femco oil pan drain plugs. A great novel

A few weeks back I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Women's Fiction Writer's Association first ever retreat. The event was perhaps the best writer's gathering I've ever been to. Met a lot of great and talented authors and I just finished reading The Perfect Son by Barbara Claypole White . I loved the novel. Deep complex characters that surprised and enlightned from start to finish.  And that ending ... WOW!



I was fortunate enough to get to hang out with Barbara and listen to hear cute cheerful British accent.

She and my wife haggled with the jewelry makers in Old Town while I strolled along and soaked up the cool vibes. I met many other longtime online friends as well as acquired new ones. The talent level was amazing.

Bet you can't pick me out.

I encourage anyone who writes Women's Fiction to check out he group and join. You won't find a more supportive organization.  https://womensfictionwriters.org/

So that's what I've been up to. What about you?

Shine On

This piece first appeared in the 2015 Edition of Top O' Texas Football Magazine.

Shine On

By Travis Erwin

They stand tall, stoic. Day after day they absorb the unrelenting punishment bestowed upon them. Sun beats down on their skin. The wind pushes at them, at least in this part of the world. Rain, sleet, hail, ice-storms and blowing grit attack, but still they stand upright and tall in every Texas town. I am of course, talking about the famed Friday Night Lights that give this state a huge part of its identity.

They are inanimate objects forgotten for most of the year. Yet, they loom large in communities from Texline, down to Terlingua, and on over Tyler way. Whether they tower above small aluminum bleachers, or huge stadiums built and carved into the landscape, they shine down upon our pride, our joy, or hope and our fear. No one wants to lose to their cross-town town rival or that neighboring town.

Friday Night Lights. We flock to them. We feel the power and allure of them. If you’re holding this thick magazine in your hands you can bet they mean something to you. But how many of us ever pause to think what it takes to turn those lights on?

No, I’m not talking about the dude that literally throws the switch prior to game time. I am talking about what gives these lights the magic that draws crowds, inspires books, and creates movies. True magic, not the slight of hand smoke and mirrors of a stage act, but genuine wonder and awe. The stuff of dreams.

It begins on the couch. Father and son watching a Cowboys game. Or on those family trips to Lubbock and College Station for one of those crisp, fall days. Maybe it is a game of catch in the backyard with a brother, a cousin, or that kid down the street. The where is as varied as the colors and mascots of the many teams that line up to play each Friday night, but there is one common thread … it begins with a love of the game. The sound of a crowd, the feel of the leather, the rush of competition. But that is not enough to turn on the lights.

It is hours of overtime, or the sacrifice of one less meal out on the town as young families and single parents scrimp and save so they can sign their boys up for youth football. Maybe the kid themselves sells candy bars to family, friends, and neighbors. Or maybe it is not youth football, but soccer, or baseball, or wrestling, or track, which first captures a young boy’s heart and feeds the flame. No matter what conjures those competitive juices, and builds coordination, eventually a kid must decide they want to shine on the brightest stage out there. They must say to themselves … I want to stand beneath those Friday Night Lights.

But still it is not enough to turn on those lights. The sacrifices of parents and caregivers from money, to time volunteering as coaches, to shuttling their offspring to and from practice. The hard work of the kids themselves. That is all part of the magic, but it is not the whole story.

It takes communities and taxpayers of hardworking men and women to fund the school. It takes the drive and passion of the teachers that will take these young men and push and shape and mold them into football players worthy of stepping beneath those lights. It takes car washes, and camaraderie and booster clubs and cheerleaders both before and during the game to rouse spirit in fans and towns. It takes the love of family, and friends and the pride of towns and alumni. It takes refs driving two maybe three hours to do a thankless job. It takes coaches, both the head man and his assistants, missing valuable time with their own families to best prepare their adopted sons for Friday night. It takes parents making long drives across the sparse Texas landscape. Drives that begin in the years before the bright lights come on. Drives when they are 7^th, 8^th graders. Freshman and JV.

Yes, it takes a long time before the lights shine bright.

It takes sweat, tears, money, and motivation. It takes love and pride and hope to turn those lights on.

So this fall when you look up and you see those swirling moths and flying insects do not think of them as bugs flocking to a light -- think of them as God's smallest creatures gathering in the glow of a true spectacle that only those who have fought so hard and so long to illuminate.

Think of how special those Friday Night Lights truly are.