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From read-to-me books to early readers, chapter books to middle readers to YA, you’ll find these terrific new titles at your neighborhood bookshop or online. >>READ MORE

LONE STAR LISTENS interviews   >> archive

Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher

7.16.2017  Mystery novelist Bill Crider: More than a hundred books later, still writing every day (and that includes holidays)

For more than four decades Bill Crider has had a following of Texas readers—and for more than twenty novels Crider’s Sheriff Dan Rhodes has been holding his own with the likes of such sleuths as Stephanie Plum and Kinsey Milhone. The Alvin, Texas, “retiree” whose most recent novel came out in August talked with us via email about writing, Sheriff Dan, and what’s next, in this week’s Lone Star Listens.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Bill, you’ve been a successful author for four decades. Your life began in Mexia in 1941, the year of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. What was it like growing up in a small Texas town in the forties and fifties, and how did it inform your writing?

BILL CRIDER: There’s no question that there’s a lot of Mexia and my upbringing in my books. Mexia was the kind of town where you began first grade with sixty or so other kids and when you walked across the stage to get your diploma twelve years later, most of those same kids walked with you. It was the kind of town where kids were free to roam all over, on foot or on bicycles, and where they played outside from daylight until dark in the summertime unless their mothers (like mine) demanded that you stay inside during “the heat of the day.”

I listened to a lot of baseball games in the heat of the day. Movies were cheap, and we had two theaters. Everybody went to the Saturday matinee at the Palace, where there was always a double feature, usually a couple of B-westerns, along with a serial, a cartoon, a newsreel, and some previews of coming attractions. The audience was often rowdy, but nobody seemed to mind much. Later on a new, air-condtioned theater was built, and the rowdy days were over. If you want to know what high school was like, watch American Graffiti.  >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events

Bookish Texas event highlights  7.16.2017
>> GO this week   Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

News Briefs 7.16.17

Johnston named director of Michener Center

AUSTIN—Author Bret Anthony Johnston assumes the directorship of the Michener Center for Writers, in Austin, in July 2017.  He succeeds longtime director James Magnuson, who is retiring. Johnston has directed the creative writing program at Harvard University for the past twelve years.  >>READ MORE

West Texas Book Festival scheduled for Sept. 21–23 in Abilene

17th year for event, presented by Friends of the Library

ABILENE—The 17th annual West Texas Book Festival, presented by Friends of the Abilene Public Library, will celebrate reading and writing with three full days of activities, Sept. 21–23, 2017.  Fourteen authors will be featured in presentations, panels, and workshops free to the public on Friday and Saturday.  >>READ MORE

Archer City Story Center to offer workshop

ARCHER CITY — The Archer City Story Center is offering the workshop “Literary Nonfiction Workshop” Sun., July 23 through Sun., July 30.

The Archer City Story Center is a program of the Royal Theater, a non-profit theater group operating in Archer City since 1993 with its first production, Tumbleweeds. The Royal Theater, a small-town silver screen, was the inspiration for Larry McMurtry’s 1966 novel The Last Picture Show, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning 1971 film starring Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges. A fire gutted the theater in 1965 and the building stood in ruins for decades before being rebuilt by the Archer Community Foundation in 2000. The new theater sits adjacent to the original space, which now houses outdoor amphitheater programs.  >>READ MORE

Texas authors, performers featured at Texas Plains Trail Region Roundup, July 19–21, in Plainview

PLAINVIEW—The 9th annual Tourism & Preservation Roundup, a heritage tourism conference presented by the Texas Plains Trail Region, will feature authors Joe W. Specht on West Texas music history and Ryann Ford, creator and photographer of The Last Stop, during its three days of programming, July 19–21, 2017, in Plainview.

Destination marketers, museum workers, parks personnel, elected officials, and followers of Texas history are all welcome. Registration for the full conference, which includes:

• Wednesday afternoon tour of the Jimmy Dean Museum and other museums on the Wayland Baptist University campus, 400–5:30 pm;

• Wednesday evening reception (cash bar) and barbecue banquet at the Plainview Country Club, with a talk on West Texas music heritage by historian Joe W. Specht, author of The Roots of Texas Music and The Women There Don’t Treat You Mean: Abilene in Song, preceded by Texas piano stylings of Lucy Dean Record and cowboy poetry performances by students of Boys Ranch, beginning at 5:30 pm;

• Thursday morning and afternoon sessions on museums, historic highways, trails, and more, including a presentation by Ryann Ford on The Last Stop: Vanishing Rest Stops of the American Roadside;

• Thursday lunch with a program on the new Texas Music Trail;

• Thursday evening performance at the Fair Theatre, with actress Zoe Kirkpatrick of Post as Cynthia Ann Parker in the late Marybeth Little Weston’s one-woman show “The Comanche with Blue Eyes”, 7:00 pm;

• Friday hands-on session on publicizing your community’s music heritage, 9:00–11:00 am.

• Vicki Hamblen, author of the revised edition of E. Hamblen’s The Rim to Rim Road: Will Hamblen and the Crossing of Texas’ Palo Duro Canyon, will also be on hand to sign copies of her book, publishedin 2014 by Texas Plains Trail Books.

The all-inclusive registration fee (dinner and lunch included) is only $99.00. Tickets to “The Comanche with Blue Eyes” are only $10 ($15 at the door). Special hotel rates are available at the Comfort Suites for overnight guests.

A full schedule of all presentations, sessions, and activities is at /www.TexasPlainsTrail/Roundup, along with online reservation and ticket reservations.  >>READ MORE

 ——­——— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————

Lone Star Listens compilation available Aug. 15, for readers, fans, and writers everywhere

The present generation of Texas authors is the most diverse ever in gender, age, and ethnicity, and in subject matter as well.

Week in, week out, Lone Star Literary has interviewed a range of Texas-related authors with a cross-section of genre and geography. To capture this era in Texas letters, we’re pleased to bring you

Lone Star Listens:

Texas Authors on Writing and Publishing

edited by Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon; introduction by

Clay Reynolds

Available in trade paper, library hardcover, and ebook Fall 2017

360 pages, with b/w illustrations and index

Featuring novelists, poets, memoirists, editors, and publishers, including:

Rachel  Caine • Chris  Cander • Katherine  Center • Chad S. Conine • Sarah  Cortez • Elizabeth  Crook • Nan  Cuba • Carol  Dawson • Patrick  Dearen • Jim Donovan • Mac Engel • Sanderia  Faye • Carlos Nicolás Flores • Ben Fountain • Jeff  Guinn • Stephen  Harrigan • Cliff  Hudder • Stephen Graham Jones • Kathleen Kent • Joe R. Lansdale • Melissa Lenhardt • Attica Locke • Nikki  Loftin • Thomas  McNeely • Leila  Meacham • John  Pipkin • Joyce Gibson Roach • Antonio  Ruiz-Camacho • Lisa  Sandlin • Donna  Snyder • Mary Helen Specht • Jodi  Thomas • Amanda Eyre Ward • Ann  Weisgarber • Donald Mace Williams

As a collection of insights into the writing and publishing life, the book will be useful in creative writing classes (not just in Texas alone) and other teaching settings, as well as for solo reading and study—and a great Texas reference volume.

• Lone Star Listens will be available for preorder May 31 and will ship around Aug. 1.
• Examination and review copies will be available May 31 in watermarked pdf format.