I must admit that I have been looking for a shortcut to writing this blog lately. I usually would have already written another post by now, but the last days and weeks have been busy and tiring. I have several writing projects going on right now and am in the midst of checking edits for … Continue reading A Long Journey Ends with a Special Memory
The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life. Zadie Smith I have just completed the Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference in Colorado Springs. No, it was not atop the famous mountain. I am high-altitude and deep drop-offs averse, though admiring the snow-crested Pike’s Peak with my feet firmly … Continue reading Why We Write
Robert E. Howard, another rural, small-town Texan born around the turn of the twentieth century, made a lasting mark on the fiction world. He was, though, quite different from both the high church architect of literary fiction Katherine Anne Porter and the son-of-the-Texas-soil Fred Gipson despite this fact of time and space, a space that … Continue reading Literary Texas: Robert E. Howard
Fred Gipson (1908-1973) published his most famous work Old Yeller in 1956. A prolific author of short stories, fiction and non-fiction books, articles, and movie scripts, he was born in the ruggedly beautiful Texas Hill Country. It was a place he loved and could never leave for long. When, after its publication in 1956, Walt … Continue reading Literary Texas: Fred Gipson, Part 2
Chiseled on a plain, pale gray tombstone in a country graveyard in Texas are the words “IN MY END IS MY BEGINNING.” The phrase lies below the outline of a simple cross, the name KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, and the dates May 15, 1890, and September 1980. This granite marker stands beside a darker but smaller … Continue reading Literary Texas: Katherine Anne Porter, Part 2
Many of us of a certain age become nostalgic this time of year. For me, “the most wonderful time of year” is not a cliché we easily attach to the month of December. It is truth. Yes, sometimes memories swirling around in the chill winds at Christmastime can be as difficult as they are sweet, … Continue reading The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
My lovely and loving grandniece has asked me to review her latest Christian novel titled A Love So Sweet. I am honored. Hannah Wright. A Love So Sweet. United States of America. c2022 by Hannah Wright ISBN: 9798848244656 Autumn McKay is living the dream, or, at least, she appears to be. At twenty-five, she owns … Continue reading A Love So Sweet
This morning it is "threatening" rain as we like to say around here. It is a threat we often pray for and have been praying for almost constantly over this last year. When the sky darkens and thunder bumps about ricocheting from cloud to cloud, I most often grab a cup of coffee and head … Continue reading Poetry and Rainy Days
Story Mill Ranch 