Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
FICTION
Robert J. DeLuca
The Pact with the Devil
Archway Publishing
978-1-4808-2529-1 (paperback) 352 pages, $21.99 (also available in hardcover and as ebook; 2016
Robert J. DeLuca’s novel, The Pact with the Devil, offers an intriguing variation on a classic story.
This time, two men who are essentially devils—a crooked Texas real estate developer and a major Mexican drug lord—strike a Faustian bargain to help each other survive major cash flow problems within their individual empires.
The Texan, Travis Nelson, has developed many realty projects, including numerous homes near the Texas-Mexico border. And outwardly, at least, he is viewed by others as highly successful—a solid citizen and family man. However, he has now overextended his investments and missed loan payments. Banks and other lenders are closing in on him. And life within his storied family is much less perfect than his admirers know. >>READ MORE
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Author Jeff Guinn pens another western
The third novel in Fort Worth author Jeff Guinn’s award-winning western trilogy is Silver City (Putnam, $27 hardcover), and it’s another thriller that will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens to main character Cash McLendon.
For two years McLendon has been hoping to win back the lover he unceremoniously jilted in St. Louis and make a new life together in California. After their breakup, Gabrielle Tirrito moved to Arizona Territory with her aging father. McLendon pursued them to the town of Glorious but had to make a hasty exit when the man known as Killer Boots hunted him down.
McLendon’s problem is that he married his wealthy boss’s crazy daughter in St. Louis, choosing money over love. When she committed suicide, McLendon headed west. His ex-boss blamed her death on McLendon and sent Killer Boots to bring him back for a private and brutal execution.
After McLendon escaped from Glorious, he ended up in Kansas with a band of buffalo hunters and eventually found himself fighting for his life in the middle of a fierce Indian attack at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, in the Texas Panhandle. Surviving that, and receiving an encouraging letter from Gabrielle, McLendon again heads to Arizona, this time to the prosperous mining town of Mountain View, where Gabrielle and her father are living.
But the vengeful ex-boss learns of McLendon’s new location and once again sends Killer Boots, or Patrick Bautigan, to capture McLendon and bring him back so the boss can get the satisfaction of personally watching him die a painful death. Meanwhile, Cash is trying his best to convince Gabrielle that he is a changed man and that his love for her is genuine. Just as it looks like they might be able to put the past behind them and move forward, Killer Boots shows up.
And then the leisurely pace of the story turns into a hair-raising life-and-death thriller.
Readers new to the series need not have read the first two books in the trilogy — Glorious and Buffalo Trail—to pick up the story in as it unfolds in this third volume. The author briefly recaps the events in McLendon’s life that have led him to Mountain View.
But the first two books are now available in paperback, so if you’re interested in reading the entire trilogy (which I highly recommend), you should start with Glorious, then read Buffalo Trail, then Silver City—or wait for it to come out in paperback, probably in about a year.
Again, though, it’s not mandatory to have read the first two tales to pick up on the action in this new hardback. So feel free to plunge in. You will be in for a treat. Guinn, the former book editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the author of about twenty books, really knows how to keep a reader zoned in.
Guinn writes fiction and nonfiction on widely diverse topics ranging from Santa Claus to Bonnie and Clyde to Charles Manson. His next book, due out in April, delves into the tragic story of preacher Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre.
Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
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LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive
Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher
1.29.2017 Author and agent Jim Donovan talks Texas books—from both sides of the publishing world
Jim Donovan knows books. A well-regarded author and historian, he’s a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and president and the owner of Jim Donovan Literary. He’s been an agent for more than two decades, during which time he’s sold hundreds of books to major publishers and other good houses. Some of these have been New York Times bestsellers; many have been optioned for film. Donovan has worked on the other side of the transaction as well: he’s served as editor, buyer for a bookstore chain, and bookstore staffer. He offers his insights, via email, into the world of writing and publishing, as well as into his own best-selling books.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: You’ve been a literary agent, author, book buyer, bookseller. But how did you get into the world of books? Where did you grow up, and how did your raising influence your life choices?
JIM DONOVAN: I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and my mother used to read to us four kids every night from her three-ring binder of favorite poems she had copied out by hand while growing up in New Hampshire in the ’30s and ’40s. That and other children’s books—most memorably, Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses—whetted my taste for the written word. >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 1.29.2017
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
SAN ANTONIO Wed., Feb. 1 The Twig Book Shop, Jeff Guinn reads and signs Silver City, 6PMCORPUS CHRISTI Thurs., Feb. 2, Texas A&M, University Authors Day featuring former Oklahoma Poet Laureate Nathan Brown and Corpus Christi Poet Laureate Alan Berecka, 7PMDALLAS Thurs., Feb. 2 South Dallas Cultural Center, “African Diaspora: New Dialogues” series with Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of the award-winning novel Here Comes the Sun, hosted by Sanderia Faye, author of the award-winning novel The Mourner’s Bench, 7:30PMSAN MARCOS Thurs., Feb. 2, TSU – Alkek Library, The Wittliff presents a poetry reading and book signing with Ada Limon, 3:30PMALSO SIGNING in KYLE Fri., Feb. 3, Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center, 7:30PMTYLER Sat., Feb. 4 Cowan Center, An evening with comedian Jay Leno, author of Behind the Curtain: An Insider’s View of Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, 8PM
News Briefs 1.29.17
Bookstores and more in the Panhandle and Plains
Lone Star Literary Life’s Bookish Tour of Texas, January 27–28, 2017
The last weekend in January brought the Lone Star Lit team back to our roots in West Texas. On Saturday, Jan. 27, Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon had the pleasure of lunch with Canyon author Donald Mace Williams (author of the forthcoming Wolfe and Other Poems) before venturing next door to visit Dallas Bell of the brand-spaking-new Burrowing Owl Books.
If your preference for an independent bookstore is a clean, well-lighted (and welcoming) place, you’ll be right at home at Burrowing Owl. Orderly arranged bookshelves (built by Bell’s husband) line each side of the attractive store on Canyon’s courthouse square, and comfy chairs are arranged in several gathering spots for reading and readings.
It’s also worth a mention that two other excellent sources of Texas-related books in Canyon are the on-site gift stores of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum and Palo Duro Canyon State Park.
The following day, back in Lubbock, we had a great time visiting with authors Jodi Thomas (at left, center) and Linda Broday (right) who along with Barnes & Noble customer service rep Terry Handley joined a group of more than a dozen area writers for lunch before their talk and signing at B&N. The authors, both with their newest books, are shown above with book blogger and podcaster KJ (left).
More in San Angelo: Last week we reported on a few bookish destinations we were lucky enough to see during a few free hours in San Angelo. But there’s one important book retailer we didn’t get to visit this time around: The Cactus Book Shop on 6 East Concho, which specializes in fine used books, local authors, and Texana. Felton Cochran, we’ll catch you next time!
Shakespeare festival tradition returns to Odessa, March 3–5, 2017
The Bard is back in West Texas. The Odessa Council for the Arts and Humanities has announced the new Odessa Shakespeare Festival, which will run March 3–5, 2017, appropriately at the Globe Theatre.
This new festival continues in the traditional of the city’s original festival by presenting three Shakespeare related performances for the general public over the three-day period. New this year will be the involvement of the Texas Shakespeare Festival out of Kilgore, an organization that has presented Shakespeare works all over Texas since 1986.
In addition to three full-length plays, two new features will be included at this year’s festival. A Conversation with Christopher Moore, author of Fool, a Shakespeare-based novel, will feature the author discussing his craft and taking questions from the audience. This event, free to the general public, is in conjunction with the Friends of the Ector County Library and One Book Odessa. >>READ MORE
Lone Star Literary Life to celebrate second birthday, Feb. 2, 2017
We launched Lone Star literary Life from the hinterlands of West Texas on Feb 2, 2015. Since then our readers have multiplied faster than the state’s favorite herbivorous burrowing rodent (well, maybe). Watch for special midweek coverage Thursday, Feb. 2 and —with a special announcement of forthcoming literary projects!
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COMING UP ON TOUR: NONFICTION
BULLETINS FROM DALLAS: REPORTING THE JFK ASSASSINATION by Bill Sanderson
Visit with Bill February 21–March 2
2/21 Scrapbook Page StoreyBook Reviews
2/22 Review Hall Ways Blog
2/23 Author Interview Texas Book Lover
2/24 Book Trailer Forgotten Winds
2/25 Review Kara The Redhead
2/26 Video Interview The Page Unbound
2/27 Review Blogging for the Love of Authors and Their Books
2/28 Guest Post Byers Editing Reviews & Blog
3/1 Excerpt Books and Broomsticks
3/2 Review Reading By Moonlight
RECENTLY ON TOUR: NONFICTION
A MOONBOW NIGHT by Laura Frantz
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Private creative writing school for emerging writers to open in Dallas this spring
DALLAS—Now enrolling for its spring 2017 term, Writing Workshops Dallas is an independent writing school for hard-working, talented writers who want to strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication along the way.
Founded by Dallas-based fiction writer and University of Texas at Dallas creative writing faculty member Blake Kimzey, Writing Workshops Dallas offers multi-level writing courses, seminars, and individual consultations to fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and poets in an intimate workshop setting. Classes are inclusive and intentionally small, offered four times a year, beginning in January, March, July, and October. All workshops are held at The Mix in East Dallas.
Kimzey, a graduate of the prestigious MFA program at UC-Irvine and a widely published author, says Writing Workshops Dallas places the highest importance on teaching the craft of writing so that students can produce meaningful and memorable work that has the opportunity to find a readership beyond the workshop.
“Essential to our mission, we want writers to be part of a literary community that goes beyond the workshop table,” said Kimzey. “I created Writing Workshops Dallas on the basis that having a literary community is essential to the career of any creative writer. You can’t do it alone.” >>READ MORE
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