Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher
4.9.2017 karla k. morton’s passion for poetry
This interview will not do full justice to Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate — although Lone Star Lit will try. To get the true sense of her verve, her passion, and her evangelism for poetry and words, you owe it to yourself to go to YouTube.com and see one of her readings or interviews. The Fort Worth poet spent years submitting poems to journals; overcame cancer; and was selected the first female Texas poet laureate in seventeen years. Via email from El Paso—where there was a huge literary gathering held ths week in conjunction with the Texas Institute of Letters induction—Morton was interviewed about her life, path to poetry, and, yes, her middle initial.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Karla, you were born in Fort Worth, but spent many of your formative years in Rendon, Texas. Tell us about your Rendon raising. What was it like?
KARLA K. MORTON: Rendon is the perfect Texas town! It is small enough to know and love your neighbors, yet you can access a larger city like Fort Worth in twenty minutes.
My neighbors who owned the empty lot next door had horses, and encouraged me to love on them as often as possible — which I did! My grandparents lived just down the road in Alvarado. They had twenty acres and raised catfish. My grandpa would give us guns to keep the water moccasins away — and let me tell you, twenty free-to-roam acres and real guns made for a wonderful childhood! >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 4.9.2017
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
News Briefs 4.9.17
El Paso: TIL’s Moment in the Sun
by Chrisine Granados
Watch for a roundup of this important event in this week’s Midweek Update! >>READ MORE
Texas Mountain Trail Writers to hold 25th annual retreat, Sat., April 29, at historic Indian Lodge
The Texas Mountain Trail Writers group invites both beginning to advanced authors to join them for a one-day retreat at the Indian Lodge in the historicDavis Mountain State Park in scenic Big Bend area, Sat., April 29, 2017. It will mark the group’s twenty-fifth year of hosting the retreat.
Presenters of this year’s retreat are Barbara Brannon and Kay Ellington of Lubbock, Texas, editors of Lone Star Literary Life and coauthors of the Paragraph Ranch series of novels. The novels have been praised by readers for realistic characters, authentic West Texas settings, and interesting plots. >>READ MORE
Krishnan and Rebecca Lucash, editors)
Cheryl Etchison graduated from the University of Oklahoma’s School of Journalism and began her career as an oil and gas reporter. From there she moved on to public relations and now fiction; she lives in Austin. >>READ MORE
TOP BOOKISH DESTINATIONS 2017
From the spur of Texas’s boot-heel to the tip of the toe, we’ve traveled the state in search of some delectable destinations for book lovers. Check out all ten on the map as you plan your literary travels! >>READ MORE
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COMING UP ON TOUR: FICTION
Evidence of Things Not Seen by Lindsey Lane Visit with Lindsey April 12–21, 2017
4/12 Video Guest Post Forgotten Winds
4/13 Playlist Texas Book Lover
4/14 Review Reading By Moonlight
4/15 Excerpt Take Me Away
4/16 Author Interview Missus Gonzo
4/17 Review It’s a Jenn World
4/18 Scrapbook Books in the Garden
4/19 Review CGB Blog Tours
4/20 Guest Post StoreyBook Reviews
4/21 Review The Page Unbound
COMING UP ON TOUR: FICTION
The Grace Tender by Eliza Maxwell Visit with Eliza April 10–24, 2017
4/10 Promo Margie’s Must Reads
4/11 Review Hall Ways Blog
4/12 Excerpt Missus Gonzo
4/13 Review Books in the Garden
4/14 Book Trailer CGB Blog Tours
4/15 Review Momma On The Rocks
4/16 Promo Books and Broomsticks
4/17 Author Interview StoreyBook Reviews
4/18 Review My Book Fix Blog
4/19 Deleted Scene Texas Book Lover
4/20 Scrapbook Reading By Moonlight
4/21 Review Forgotten Winds
4/22 Playlist Blogging for the Love of Authors and Their Books
4/23 Promo A Novel Reality
4/24 Review The Page Unbound
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Sandpiper Cove by Irene Hannon Visit with Irene April 4–13, 2017
4/9 Author Interview 1 Books and Broomsticks
4/10 Review Missus Gonzo
4/11 Guest Post StoreyBook Reviews
4/12 Review The Page Unbound
4/13 Author Interview 2 Chapter Break Book Blog
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FOR CHILDREN
ALMOST A MINYAN by Lori S. Kline Visit with Lori through April 7, 2017
4/2 Author Interview 2 Margie’s Must Reads
4/5 Illustration Preview 3 Chapter Break Book Blog
4/6 Review Byers Editing Reviews & Blog
4/7 Author Interview 3 StoreyBook Reviews
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
A Stolen Heart by Amanda Cabot
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Lone Star Listens compilation available Aug. 1, 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 1 and will ship around Aug. 1.
- Examination and review copies will be available May 1 in watermarked pdf format.
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Dead Man’s Boot sprang from nonfiction research
Midland author Patrick Dearen writes authoritatively about the Pecos River region of West Texas, whether it’s nonfiction or fiction. A couple of years ago he won a Spur Award for his novel The Big Drift. In his thirteenth novel, Dead Man’s Boot (Five Star, $25.95 hardcover), Dearen sets the story in 1869.
Determined to avenge his sister’s gory death, Clay Andrews heads into Pecos River country chasing the man he believes is responsible. Clay finds a map in a dead man’s boot, reportedly leading to gold in the Guadalupe Mountains. After saving 20-year-old Lil Casner from an Indian attack and an abusive marriage, Clay joins a cattle outfit. But when Lil goes missing, Clay risks everything to try to find her.
And that map might just point the way.
Author Patrick Dearen said the novel grew out of his research for a nonfiction book. “I came across an 1870s account of a horseman who found a boot sticking out of the ground along the Pecos. When he pulled it up, a detached foot came up with it.”
Dearen got to thinking: What if something of value, like a treasure map, had been in the boot?
“Some 76,000 words later,” he said, “I completed Dead Man’s Boot.”
Sugar-free cookbook: Brittany Suell of Abilene describes herself as a “health and fitness coach offering women meal planning services, simple yet effective workout plans, and guidance on creating a sustainable sugar free life.” She created a twenty-one-day online Sugar Free Academy. And she has produced Simply Sugar Free: A Cookbook ($27.99 paperback).
Suell, mother of two, tells her story of deciding to go sugar-free for a year, beginning in January 2015, and blog about it. She said her intent was to create a healthier lifestyle for her family of four. The approach in her cookbook is also practical, with plenty of “yummy pastries, chocolates, and even a recipe for pecan pie.”
She suggests some healthy “kitchen swaps,” like substituting sweet potatoes for potatoes, almond butter for peanut butter and almond or coconut milk for cow’s milk. The recipes, accompanied by color photos, are grouped by breakfast, dinner and snacks and desserts, the largest section. Most of the recipes are also gluten-free. A few tasty, and perhaps surprising, examples: blueberry muffins, cinnamon donuts, bacon-wrapped pesto chicken (using sugar free bacon), strawberry-banana “nice” cream, popsicles, cheesecake and margaritas.
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
2017 Dallas Book Festival set for April 29
Partnership with Festival of Ideas to create unprecedented community event
Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
Thomas & Mercer
Paperback, 978-1-5039-4190-8, (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible), 304 pgs., $15.95
April 11, 2017
The late writer John Gardner once said there are only two kinds of stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. In Harry Hunsicker’s new novel, The Devil’s Country, a stranger comes to a strange town. The fictional Piedra Springs is the Twin Peaks of West Texas.
Former Texas Ranger Arlo Baines steps off a Greyhound bus in the tiny, remote (“badlands between Odessa and Sonora”) Piedra Springs. Baines is an admitted “sucker for lost causes, stray pets, and people who couldn’t quite fit into the groove of life.” Sure enough, outside a bar during a thunderstorm Baines stumbles across Molly (who “looked like something from Little House on the Prairie”) and her two children. She tells Baines she and her children have escaped and if he doesn’t help them, they’ll be killed. >>READ MORE
University of New Mexico Press
Paperback, 978-0-8263-5792-2, (also available as an e-book), 192 pgs., $19.95
March 1, 2017
“Normal? ¿Normal? ¿Que es normal?”
Fight Like a Man and Other Stories We Tell Our Children is reporter Christine Granados’s first collection of short fiction, comprising seven stories and the eponymous novella. Many of these stories were previously published in such literary journals as Huizache Magazine and Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. This is a strong collection, mostly set in El Paso, Texas, featuring working-class characters, both Anglo and Latin@, chafing against the frequently uncomfortable ties that bind.
The novella Fight Like a Man is a standout. Moníca is middle-aged, married with two teenagers, when she discovers herself pregnant by her younger lover. As she debates her options, Moníca and her half-sister must decide what to do with the ashes of their father, long-deceased, who had two families—one in Juárez and another in El Paso. Moníca is more like her father than she’d like to admit, and so is her lover. It’s complicated. >>READ MORE
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