9.13.15   Someone’s getting married at the ranch, but who?

Lubbock authors Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon have written the second book in their Paragraph Ranch series, A Wedding at the Paragraph Ranch (Booktrope, $16.95 paperback).

In the first novel, Dee Bennett leaves her position as a college professor to return home to West Texas and care for her mother. Resentful at first, she comes to realize that her hometown of Claxton is really where she belongs, with her farm home (nicknamed the Paragraph Ranch) becoming a gathering place for aspiring writers.

Now Bennett must figure out a way to earn a living in Claxton while maintaining and improving the family farm and continuing to work with the writers’ group. She lands two part-time jobs, as a newspaper political reporter and as a library assistant, and finds herself caught up in political intrigue, high school football, goat-raising, xeriscaping, wind energy, and a budding romance (or maybe two).

Of course, there must be a wedding somewhere in the future, but whose? The authors keep you guessing until the very end.

Ellington and Brannon, who also produce the Lone Star Literary Life online newsletter (lonestarliterary.com), will talk about A Wedding at the Paragraph Ranch at the West Texas Book Festival at 9:50 a.m. Sept. 26 at the Abilene Civic Center. For a complete festival schedule, go to abilenetx.com/apl.

The authors have at least two more Paragraph Ranch novels in the works — A Home at the Paragraph Ranch is scheduled for August 2016, and Christmas at the Paragraph Ranch is planned for October 2016. Read more at paragraphranch.com.

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MASCOT SERIES: Sherri Graves Smith has produced a series of children’s books that use collegiate mascots to teach manners and sportsmanship on and off the football field. At last count, Smith had published more than forty books in the series, including five that feature mascots from Texas universities.

They are: Raider Red’s Game Day Rules (Texas Tech), Reveille’s Game Day Rules (Texas A&M), Hook ’Em’s Game Day Rules (University of Texas), Bruiser’s Game Day Rules (Baylor), and SuperFrog’s Game Day Rules (TCU). The books are $14.95 hardcover (Mascot Books).

The words and pictures are essentially the same in each book, except the first and last paragraphs of each book are school-specific and the art work is changed to reflect each school’s colors and name.

The stories, in rhyme, encourage children to share, be polite, offer a helping hand, be patient, and treat opponents with respect. At the end of the book, Smith asks children to sign a “Sportsmanship Pledge.”

Smith, who lives in Georgia, started writing children’s books after being diagnosed with cancer several years ago. Taking cancer treatments nearly every day, she could no longer work as a lawyer or volunteer as a reading tutor, so she took up writing. Read more at her web site, sherrigravessmith.com.

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Glenn Dromgoole is co-author of 101 Essential Texas Books.Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.