Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
POETRY
Donald Mace WIlliams
Wolfe and Other Poems
Wundor Editions (UK)
Paper with flaps, 64 pgs., 978-0995654129, $15.10 + $3.99 shipping via Blackwell’s UK, or purchase locally at Burrowing Owl Books, Canyon, Texas
May 2017
Reviewed by Barbara Brannon
Seven years ago this week, on a Fourth-of-July camping excursion to Palo Duro Canyon, I wandered into the park store for ice and charcoal and wandered out with a book that set my imagination on fire.
I hadn’t expected to encounter a literary masterpiece there in the trading post, den of Coleman lanterns and toy tomahawks and T-shirts and Deep Woods Off! and “The Best Burger in the World,” but then, I hadn’t looked for Beowulf in the era of Charlie Goodnight, either.
Canyon, Texas, author, poet, and quondam newspaperman Donald Mace Williams had had achieved publication in the estimable Rattle journal the previous year for his homage, in epic verse, to the classic Anglo-Saxon tale. Rattle editor Timothy Green laid out the long poem as a chapbook, and the author — clearly familiar with the canyon’s natural and human history — persuaded the park store to sell copies.>>READ MORE
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
‘Sawbones’ is the first of a three-book western series
Sawbones (Hachette, $14.99 paperback) by Frisco author Melissa Lenhardt is a western thriller and the first in a three-book series that debuted in April. The second, Blood Oath, hit bookshelves in May, and the third, Badlands, came out at the end of June.
When Dr. Catherine Bennett is charged with murder in New York City in 1871, she chooses to flee rather than reveal her alibi, which would ruin her fledgling career as a woman doctor. She decides to head to Texas and from there to Colorado and maybe California and resume her practice as Dr. Laura Elliston. Meanwhile, the murdered man’s family is offering a $500 reward for the capture of Dr. Bennett.
As she travels by covered wagon through the Texas frontier, an Indian attack changes everything, and Dr. Elliston has to come to grips with death, savagery, guilt, rejection, greed, and fear. She also finds friendship, respect, and love at the frontier Fort Richardson, near Jacksboro. However, as word gets out about a female frontier doctor — certainly a rarity in 1871 — Dr. Elliston’s past is in danger of catching up with her.
I zipped through the 405 pages of Sawbones in a couple of days, and it certainly whetted my appetite for novels two and three. The books flow easily from one to the next. Consider the series like reading one 1,200 page epic. Lenhardt also is the author of two murder mysteries featuring small-town police chief Jack McBride — Stillwater and The Fisher King.
Read more on her website, melissalenhardt.com.
Movie in the works: Tom Hanks reportedly will star in a film version of the award-winning western novel News of the World by Texas author Paulette Jiles. The book, a National Book Award finalist, is now available in paperback (HarperCollins, $15.99).
The story, set in 1870, revolves around two major characters — a seventy-one-year-old former soldier and printer who travels around reading “news of the world” from big-city newspapers to information-starved frontier residents, and a ten-year-old orphan who has been freed from her Indian captives. She speaks no English, resents being taken from her Kiowa family and has no memory of her own parents, killed in an Indian raid four years ago.
After a reading in Wichita Falls, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is paid fifty dollars to deliver Johanna to an aunt and uncle near San Antonio, 400 miles away. Along the way, they develop a bond as they confront one adversity after another.
Jiles is the author of another highly-acclaimed Texas frontier novel, The Color of Lightning. Read more on her website, paulettejiles.com.
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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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2017 Kids’ Summer Reading: Check it out!
sponsored by Blue Wilow Bookshop
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
7.2.2017 Lone Star Lit turns the interview tables on books editor — and now book author — Michael Merschel of Dallas
A familiar name is making book news instead of writing it at the Dallas Morning News. Michael Merschel, the newspaper’s books editor, debuted his first novel this spring. Revenge of the Star Survivors depicts middle-grades angst with a gentle wryness for young and older readers alike, and Merschel took time last week to visit with us via email about writing, books, book reviews, and more.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Where were you born, Michael, and where did you grow up?
MICHAEL MERSCHEL: I was born in California but we moved to Colorado when I was in preschool, then Louisiana when I was in first grade, then back to Colorado when I was in seventh grade. All of which might have had something to do with why I wrote a book about being a new kid.
I see that you were one of the editors of the student newspaper at the well-respected William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas in the 1980s. When did you first become attracted to journalism and newspapers?
I did have an unremarkable tenure as editorial editor at the excellent University Daily Kansan (Rock Chalk, Jayhawk).
I fell in love with the idea of being a writer in about fourth grade and fell in love with journalism soon after. I was on my junior high newspaper staff in eighth grade, but because I was the new kid in town, I was stuck with the one job nobody else wanted, which was sports reporter. You can imagine what a great match that was — scrawny new kid covering the world of jocks.
But I ended up having fun with it — and made some friends because of my writing. >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 7.2.2017
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
SAN ANTONIO Wed., July 5 The Twig Book Shop, Joe Priest discusses and signs After Everybody Else Gave Up, 5PMAUSTIN Thurs., July 6 BookPeople, PRICE AINSWORTH speaking & signing A Minor Fall, 7PMAUSTIN Thurs., July 6 The Long Center, An Evening with Neil Gaiman, author of Norse Mythology, 8PMALSO SIGNING IN DALLAS Fri., July 7 Winspear Opera House, 7:30PMALSO SIGNING IN HOUSTON Sat., July 8 Brown Theater-Wortham Center, 8PMSAN ANTONIO Thurs., July 6 Hotel Emma, First Thursday: Catherine Cooke will discuss Juan O’Gorman: A Confluence of Civilizations (hosted by The Twig Book Shop), 6PMHOUSTON Fri., July 7 Inprint House, 42nd Anniversary of The First Friday Reading Series, featuring Craig Butterworth, 8:30PMHOUSTON Sat., July 8 Houston Arboretum & Nature Center, Introduction to Texas Wines with Dr. Russ Kane, author of The Wineslinger Chronicles: Texas on the Vine, 7PMPORT NECHES Sat., July 8 Fleur Fine Books, Meet & Greet and book signing with Andy Davidson, author of In the Valley of the Sun, 3PMRICHARDSON Sat., July 8 Chocolate Angel, Fresh Fiction presents Afternoon Tea with Rachel Caine, author of Stillhouse Lake, 3:30PM
News Briefs 7.2.17
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 Dr. 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
Marfa to host first Poetry Festival Aug. 9–13
The first annual Marfa Poetry Festival—organized by Canarium Books and friends and hosted by Marfa Book Company and Hotel Saint George—will begin the evening of August 9 and end the afternoon of August 13, 2017. There will be readings, a book fair, film screenings, exhibitions, conversations, live music, and more. All events are free and open to the public. >>READ MORE
Cortez, Vanishing Points garner prestigious awards
The National Federation of Press Women recently awarded First Place for Editing to Houston poet Sarah Cortez for Vanishing Points: Poems and Photographs of Texas Roadside Memorials (Texas Review Press, 2016). The annual NFPW National Communications contest encourages and rewards excellence in communication in a wide range of categories, with entries judged by leaders in their fields of expertise. Prior to winning at the national level, Cortez won the Press Women of Texas 2016 Award for Editing, which qualified her for the national contest.
————— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————
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 31 and will ship around Aug. 1.
- Examination and review copies will be available May 31 in watermarked pdf format.
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LONE STAR CLASSIFIED LISTINGS
FEATURED: EDITORIAL SERVICES
6.11.17 AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS as an editor, I know exactly what publishers look for in a book and I help my clients develop their work with this unique perspective in mind. I specialize in: manuscript development, revisions, book proposal writing, and consulting. Find more details at www.nickirichesin.com. Contact: nicki@nickirichesin.com.
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COMING UP ON TOUR: FICTION
A Matter of Trust by Susan May Warren Visit with Susan July 6–15, 2017
7/6 Character Interview 1 Books and Broomsticks
7/7 Excerpt Chapter Break Book Blog
7/8 Review Syd Savvy
7/9 Author Interview Margie’s Must Reads
7/10 Character Interview 2 Forgotten Winds
7/11 Review The Page Unbound
7/12 Playlist Hall Ways Blog
7/13 Review Reading by Moonlight
7/14 Deleted Scene CGB Blog Tours
7/15 Review Missus Gonzo
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Hitchin’ Post by Julie Barker Visit with Julie through July 5, 2017
7/2 Promo Momma on The Rocks
7/3 Review The Page Unbound
7/4 Cover Reveal Forgotten Winds
7/5 Review Books and Broomsticks
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Badlands by Melissa Lenhardt Visit with Melissa through July 2, 2017
7/2 Badlands Excerpt 1 Books in the Garden
7/3 Bonus Review Blogging for the Love of Authors & Their Books
7/4 Bonus Review Hall Ways Blog
7/5 Badlands Excerpt 2 Texas Book Lover
7/6 Badlands Excerpt 3 Missus Gonzo
CONTINUING ON TOUR: FICTION
Heart on the Line by Karen Witemeyer Visit with Karen through July 2, 2017
7/2 Review Forgotten Winds
RECENTLY ON TOUR: YOUNG READERS
The Eldridge Conspiracy: Sir Kaye the Boy Knight, Book 4 by Don M. Winn
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
UNDER A SUMMER SKY by Melody Carlson
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