With a book deadline looming and getting ready to leave for Bouchercon, I haven’t spent much time thinking about the subject of today’s blog, but it came about at a book signing. Tuesday, August 20, was the release of my second Tucker Snow novel, The Broken Truth.

We had a packed house at the Paris Texas Public Library, and I did my usual talk about the subject matter, the characters, and writing in general. Without a set speech, I discuss whatever comes to mind, and and I drifted off into a promo for Comancheria, the first book in my new western horror series (2025).

And here we burrow into a rabbit hole and all its branches.

I mentioned the entire novel came from a dream, and in fact, I dreamed another one a week or so ago. Coming awake at two in the morning with the entire plot in mind, I crept out of bed and into my office where I wrote for three hours, just to prime the pump and I wouldn’t forget.

A hand went up at the back of the room at the signing, and may I say, it was a packed house. “I loved your second book, Burrows. It was one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read, and I was an undercover narcotics officer. I know creepy.”

Humbled, I toed the carpet.

“So where does your creep come from?”

“Everywhere.” I looked around the room, noting folks were hanging on every word. That’s a weirdness (creepy feeling for some) for writers, because folks are there to hear you, and buy your book. You have to be entertaining on several different levels.

I once went to a book signing where the author spoke so softly the forum’s director came up with a new microphone, thinking the first one was defective. The lady changed mikes, and her voice was still barely a whisper. Then she read about a hundred pages of her book, at a level that had people fiddling with hearing aids turning them up, or changing batteries there on the spot.

NOTE: Be Loud. Be Proud. Be Entertaining!

Anyway, my creep comes from inside this empty head of mine. I confess, and won’t go into a lot of details here because I’m running up against a departure time, but we had a real live ghost (get it?) in our previous house. John Gilstrap can vouch for the fact that our family believed it, because the first time he stayed with us I had to warn him about…Casper.

I know. How original.

Casper played jokes on us, changing the TV channel, talking in familiar voices on the other side of the door, ringing bells (we don’t have any in the house), cutting through rooms at the edge of our vision, or making shadows under doors when no one was there (that’ll poise a finger over 911 on your phone). We felt he was a lot of fun, once we got used to his antics, but I’d neglected to tell my little brother about him.

He stayed with us for a few days, and one afternoon he called me at work, breathless, and on the sheer edge of a full blown panic. “What have you not told me about this house???”

“Uh, what did you see?”

“I saw a little boy in the hall, and when I asked him why he was in the house, he ran into Chelsea’s bedroom. I went in right after him and looked.” His voice lowered. “No one is in there, and all the outside doors are locked. What the hell!!!???”

“That was Casper, and don’t worry. He just likes to have fun.”

I explained the presence in further, and he never stayed with us in that house again.

I’m always casting around for something different to add when I’m writing. I continued my answer with the gentleman at the back of the room when he asked more about Creep Factor.

“There are a lot of other things I want to write about, but haven’t found the right place. For example, how many of y’all have The College Dream? You know, the one in which you can’t find you classroom because you haven’t been there all season, and it’s time to take the final. Or you come to class without pants, and have to take the final. Or you’re wandering in a building on the last day of school, and know you’ve blown the whole semester because you forgot about that class?”

Hands went up all around the room. So is that creepy? Is it something to raise the hair on a reader’s neck if properly presented?

I also want to write about the Mandela Effect. That’s the one where we’re convinced scientists have torn a hole in the fabric between universes and the world has changed, only slightly, and our memories argue with reality. “The term was coined in 2009 by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome after she and others realized they had false memories. Broome became convinced that Nelson Mandela, then the president of South Africa, had died in prison in the 1980s, but he actually served a 27-year sentence and was released in 1990.”

Do you remember how Mr. Monopoly wore a monocle? I say he did, but today’s reality says otherwise. Or is it the Berenstain, or Berenstein Bears. My auto correct insists it’s Berenstain. Did Mickey Mouse wear suspenders? Did Curious George have a tail? (My good friend’s son has a Curious George tattoo he got over thirty years ago. I’ll have to take a peek…ooohhh, story idea! His tattoo does have a tail, but today’s reality says he doesn’t).

And my own personal recollection is O’Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor because I went there many times when it was in business in the Dallas area, but wait, if you look it up, it’s just Farrells. And now the spelling is different: Parlour vs. Parlor.

There’s a world of ideas out there, and many full of Creep. I’m afraid I don’t have the time to explore everything, and to write about all that interests me, but I’m sure gonna give it a try as long as these fingers stay limber enough to type, and as my old grandmother would say, “I’ll get it done, the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Here’s a fun link to the Mandela Effect. If you want to know about the ghost we had, and all of his antics, look me up at Bouchercon in Nashville, where Gilstrap can vouch for me. We’re both here all day today, August 31.

https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/mandela-effect/#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20most%20famous,Mickey%20Mouse%20as%20wearing%20suspenders.

As I type this, two ginormous generators on an equal number of gooseneck trailers across the street roar so loud I’m forced to wear the ear protection usually reserved for shooting large firearms. On the backs of those same trailers are four five-hundred-gallon tanks full of water and some foamy solution designed to remove paint from brick.

The house across the street is the target of my ire, along with the steady hiss of pressurized water spewing from the ends of two power washing wands wielded by a pair of very wet workers. It’s part of an ongoing saga of renovations over there, and as John Gilstrap can attest from the last time he visited over a year ago, the residence in question looks like someone with no sense style had been watching wayyyy too much HGTV.

I think the house was a front for nefarious businesses. Honestly, I believe they were cooking meth over there. Strange things went on behind those closed doors after we moved here five years ago. I seldom saw the same people more than a couple of times in the four years after we bought this house. Strangers came and went. The blinds were always closed, and it usually looked as if no one lived there.

Then it sold, and the new owners brought in 30-yard dumpsters, and stripped the interior down to the studs. Ignoring the architectural styles of the neighborhood, they remodeled everything into some ghastly ultra-modern Scandinavian design with a wide glass front door the size you’d find at one end of a car dealership’s showroom.

Without approval from the HOA, they sprayed the exterior bright white, making it the only painted residence in our neighborhood of naturally colored brick. It stood out like a sore thumb, required Ray Bans to look at it in the bright summer stun, and still hasn’t sold eighteen months later, because the HOA (and this is the only time I will give them props) put a lean on the house until certain conditions were met. Namely, strip off all that garish paint.

That’s what they’re doing right now. Power-washing the paint off a 5,000′ two-story house brick by brick.

The noise and aggravation is one more thing to endure this month, and this leads us to the root of today’s rant and recommendation.

Through this summer, I hammered out the first 40,000 words on my latest western horror novel, Buck’s Lament, and on a creative roll, retreated to the Cabin for a week by myself to gain another fifteen. Coming home, I went to town on the downhill side of the manuscript (Texan lingo meaning to do something in a detailed and enthusiastic way).

On Monday, words flowed into the laptop from my fingertips. The story moved forward with startling twists as the plot continued to develop on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. During those four days, all those subconscious connections James Scott Bell was talking about a few days ago here on Killzone found themselves and i wrote with feverish glee at how well it read.

Those who know me can tell you that I don’t outline, so it was all stream of consciousness, and it worked!

Then I stuck on some bit of western history, and went to the Google for the information. Typing key words into the search engine, I found a safe link I’d used before and hit Enter.

A dozen screens popped up, one over the other so fast I couldn’t read them, before it froze up and refused to respond. On top of that, a warning came up that I didn’t quite understand. Trying not to panic, I dialed up the makers of my laptop. For the next hour, we discussed my dilemma and technical support finally suggested that I should shut everything down and reboot this infernal machine.

It worked, and all came back…except for what I’d written the last four days. Seven. Thousand. Words. They were just gone.

But that can’t happen! My iDrive automatically backs up to the Cloud. It should all be there.

Sick at my stomach, I again reached out to tech support and the helpful expert figuratively shrugged. “I can’t tell you what happened.”

I called a friend who lives on computers. He came over and three hours later, delivered the bad news. “For some reason, you were disconnected from the Cloud. Nothing has backed up since Sunday.”

With a sick feeling in my stomach, I swallowed down a wave of despair. “So it really is all gone.”

“I’m afraid so.” He went to work, beating back all the electronic gremlins he could find and got me going again, but for days afterward I couldn’t make myself type a word. All those descriptions, the twists, and especially the Pulitzer prize-winning dialog, was gone.

Following those twenty-year-old footsteps in my own imaginary ashes when an electronic hiccup took my entire first novel, I spent the next week re-writing those seven thousand words from memory. I’m sure I missed many details, but the scenes were still fresh in my mind. Maybe these new pages look like the ones floating around somewhere in an electronic heaven, but I’ll never know.

I wish I could tie my troubles in a gunny sack and throw them over the edge, but that’s just the line from a Guy Clark song.

So, the purpose of this discussion is to urge you all not to rely on just one backup method, no matter how good they say it is. I won’t go into the myriad methods to save your work, because I can’t tell you what’s best.

An exterior hard drive?

Had one. It failed.

Download to a thumb drive.

Check. Did that, but it also failed and when I bought this machine, they said the Cloud would never let me down. I know it wasn’t the electronic netherworld, it was a strange disconnect between this infernal machine and that little storm cloud icon at the top of this screen that I never would have imagined.

One of the support techs I spoke to on the phone said to use Time Machine. “You’ll never lose your work again.”

Probably should, but I don’t have the time or inclination to learn more technology. Then again, that’s what they said about the connection between this device and the Cloud.

My grown daughters insist I should use Google Docs. They say it will never fail. I’ll give that a look once I’m finished with this manuscript, but not right now.

I save as I go again, even though it’s supposed to do that for me, and at the end of the day I send the entire manuscript to myself through email. That one has never failed me.

I hope this never happens to any one of you, and I also mean the generators that I’m beginning to think will be outside my office window until the end of September.

—

May I offer a suggestion to writers who are struggling with a manuscript?

I’ve talked with a number of folks who tell me they’ve been massaging a book idea for months, if not years.

“I’ve been working on this manuscript for five years and have about twenty thousand words. It feels like I’m going slow, because I keep going back to improve a paragraph here, or rewriting these sentences after I finished Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. And then I read James Lee Burke’s newest novel, and his descriptions are beautiful, so I went back…”

As one who says there are no rules in writing, I wait for Budding Author to finish.

“And because I have to write between taking the kids to school, my job, picking the kids up and hauling them to practice, I kind of get lost where I am and go back and read what I’ve written. That’s so depressing, because everything I have on paper needs work, so I go back and tweak it again –––.”

“Can I interrupt?” I grab Budding Author’s shirt for a good, old-fashioned shake, slap, and backslap.

“Please.”

“I assume you know the absolute basics of building a house.” We’re nose to nose as I continue. “You’ve seen them going up, right?”

“Of course.”

“So what do they first?”

“Draw up blueprints?”

“Good enough. They have an idea of how they want the floorplan to flow.”

“I suppose.”

“Bear with me here…” Slap, slap, slap. “The floorplan comes first, along with mental images of what a builder wants. From there the architect draws the foundation plan, then plumbing, electrical, elevations, everything necessary for construction. The foundation is the first step on site.

Budding Author raises both hands to glory. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

The next shake is for emphasis. “Visualize this. The floorplan is your idea of a story.”

“I can see the whole thing like a movie in my head, I just need to write it down.”

“Well, you see bits and pieces that flow, and that’s just fine, but all that visualization comes together on top of the foundation. Slab or pier and beam, it doesn’t matter, but it must be solid and square.”

“I’m getting the idea!” Budding Author’s eyes brighten even more.

I refust to turn loose of this person’s shirt, lest they quit concentrating. “Next comes the framing. All those wall have to go up to support the roof which is the first step to completion. The roof protects everything under construction below.”

“I thought we were talking about manuscirpts.”

“We are! But here’s what builders don’t do. They don’t finish the living room before moving on. There’s no electrical, plumbing, or sheetrock before the rest of the house. There are no windows when the rest of the house is still nothing more than sticks. No trim, fixtures, or paint. No carpet or flooring while they’re still framing the bedrooms. No furniture, drapes, pictures on the walls, or the installation of that sixty-inch television. Are you getting this?”

“Kinda. So what do the builders do, then?”

“They press on with the whole project as a whole, working forward to completion, and then they add all those final touches.”

“I get it! You’re saying write the damn book to the end and don’t get caught in that whirlpool of going back over and over to make the pages perfect before moving on to the next!” The light bulb goes on over Budding Author’s head and that excited individual dances with glee, tearing away from my grip.

“You’re right. Plow forward until you reach the end and then go back to edit, and edit, which is all the finish work in that house we were talking about.”

Budding Author rushes away to work and I smile in satisfaction, because it took me a good long while to learn how to get the first draft done by pushing forward to follow the story while it’s still fresh in your mind and evolving.

Follow the story. Write the book, then get out the paint and polish.

So, Hopeful Author, you came up with a great plot and over the course of several months, or years, you’ve hammer out 30,000 words in fine order. With the first act written, polished over and over, and massaged into a form you can live with, the next phase begins.

It’s the pesky second act that gives me headaches, and not because it’s hard to write, but because the whole world seems to slow down, and the words come slow. You might have experienced it also, when the universe conspires to keep you from writing, and all those carefully crafted characters develop minds of their own and refuse to move, lounging around, drinking coffee and puffing cigarettes.

“I can’t think of anything to write when I get to that point!”

This was a comment I heard the last time I talked with a group of writers. The young woman’s voice was full of tension, and frustration.

“I have a suggestion.”

The assemblage waited, pens poised…and in one instance, a woman held her fingers over the home keys on her laptop’s keyboard.

“Start a new chapter and throw a couple of your characters together. Start a conversation, or give them a nudge, and see what happens.”

Raised hands.

“That’s all?”

A voice came from the back. “What if it doesn’t go anywhere? I will have wasted those hours.”

“If nothing else, you’ve finished an exercise in creative writing. Delete those sentences, or pages, and give it another shot.”

Frowns. Eyebrows came together in dark lines over hooded eyes.

“Does that work?”

“It does for me, and remember, there’s nothing concrete about creative writing.” I quoted Miss Adams, my high school English teacher who still whispers advice in my ear on occasion. “Put words on paper, and those words will lead to others.”

Another question from under a raised hand sent us off into a new direction. “I keep working on this scene, but it won’t develop.”

“Maybe you’re trying to make your characters do something that’s not necessary at that time. It could be you’re wanting them to go against their fictional codes. Listen to your subconscious. Stop trying to make them do what you want, and approach it from another direction.”

“I didn’t know there would be so many complications.”

“None of us did when we started out.”

I experienced a similar lag this week. I finished the first act of a novel contracted with a new publisher, satisfied with the plot and excited about where the story was going. Then it happened. Act II refused to move.

I went back and read those pages and realized I hadn’t utilized a character to her full extent. It was time for her to walk on stage. We needed to hear her story. Putting her into an uncomfortable situation with little support from anyone she knew, I watched Victoria’s back stiffen with resolve and she moved the story forward in a direction I hadn’t anticipated.

The story is rolling along today, and the tension is rising as fast as this summer’s temperature. Don’t let that second act slow you down. Once you’re through to the other side at around 60,000 words, it’ll be a downhill race to the conclusion.

Write away!

The full-blood, six-foot-six Cherokee speaker held up a bound document two or three hundred pages deep. “This is the Dawes Roll and it’s gold for anyone looking for their Oklahoma ancestors, or who have questions. I had a lot, and still do, but now all the old people are gone and I can’t ask them. This helped me find a few I didn’t know about.”

I perked up at the session, though I’d been listening carefully to his discussion of the Trail of Tears and his grandmother who loved to tell stories.

“Please feel free to come look at this when I’m finished.” Now in his late seventies, John Grits continued to tell the story of his people and family to the attendees at the Western Writers of America conference, and my mind went back to so many things I wish I’d asked my old people.

They weren’t much storytellers, but I learned to sit quiet in a living room, on the front porch, out in the yard, or at the stores in Chicota, Texas, and listen as the adults talked. From the old men there, who Miss Esther called the Spit and Whittle Club, I learned about farming, the weather, cattle, stock prices (which didn’t register much at the time), hunting, fishing, and “adult” issues which were vastly more interesting.

The family get-togethers I mentioned provided some information, including the story about an old man who stayed with my grandparents when Mama was little. He’d been captured by Indians (they never said what tribe) and somehow escaped one night. Tiring, he crawled into a hollow log. Laying there in the darkness and holding his breath, he counted the steps of each pursuer who placed a foot on the downed tree as they raced after him. I recall it was over twenty.

I know nothing else about the incident she related, and have often wondered about the rest of her tale.

Miss Esther told me her mother burned to death in front of her while making soap when my grandmother was little, I know nothing else other than she’s buried in a cemetery in Grant, OK, (which Miss Esther often said), but I never asked her exactly where or drove her up there to point out the plot.

I do have a fading photo of her and her siblings along with my great-grandfather on the porch after the funeral. It was 1913 and kids are barefoot, though their clothes look somewhat fresh, and the looks on their faces are blank from that great tragedy. I want to know more now, but the opportunity is long gone.

That leads us to the next regret. Family lore says we have some Choctaw blood, but there’s no marriage license between great-grandma Minne and Miss Esther’s daddy, Ed Gentry. With that missing piece of the puzzle, we’re stymied, which leads us back to the beginning of this discussion.

After John Grits finished his presentation, I borrowed his Dawes Roll and looked up Minnie Roberson. A four-year-old was listed, and two lines underneath was my grandmother’s first name, but it was Esther Roberson (maybe someone she’s named after?), but the dates didn’t seem to add up, and those folks were from northeast Oklahoma.

The National Archives explains “The Dawes Rolls, also known as the “Final Rolls,” are the lists of individuals who were accepted as eligible for tribal membership in the “Five Civilized Tribes:” Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminoles. Those found eligible for the Final Rolls were entitled to an allotment of land, usually a homestead. The Rolls contain more than 101,000 names from 1898-1914 (primarily from 1899-1906).”

So…we might be Cherokee, or Choctaw (a tiny, tiny percentage), or not. The names I found might not even be them, but that’s not the point here, either. This discussion isn’t primarily about the rolls, or ancestry, but is a way for me to urge y’all to talk to those who are still around and record their lives, and your family stories.

With today’s technology, it’s as easy as pushing a button on your phone and leading them to tell what the remember. I know, we had tape recorders back in the day and I didn’t use them because the tapes and pushing all those buttons was intrusive. People looked at those devices like I’d put a live snake on the table.

But a deft push on a cell phone screen is so common no one will notice, and if they do, quickly forgotten, and you might be able to hear stories that wouldn’t come out any other way. Be careful, though. My own grandmother didn’t want to talk about some of those old times because, “We all have skeletons in our closets and should leave the doors closed.”

Like so many people through generations back, it never occurred to me that I should have been looking to find out more about those who’re already gone. I also want to know the stories they told, what they lived through, and what they knew about their own grandparents, relatives, and beyond.

Before people started writing these things down, information was passed down in the form of tales and recollections around the campfire, and in front of the fireplace and stoves. They also spun them under the stars, and I got some of that in the evenings beneath the dripping mimosa tree, or the sweet-smelling sycamores while lightning bugs flashed around us.

Now we have air conditioning, cell phones, and computers, and don’t go visiting like they did. People are more interested in television programs, movies, inaccurately titled Reality TV, or those damned devices in our hands.

It became easier to watch television and no talk, and soon there was no need to entertain each other with recall about what happened when my ancestors crossed the red River from Oklahoma and Arkansas, or on Dad’s side, through the southern states and up from Houston to Lamar County.

Folks, it’s a crying shame that most kids know a quarter of their family history that should have been passed down through the years, mine included. My grandparents all married right after the turn of the twentieth century, survived scratch farms, this country’s involvement in WWI, the Great Depression (which made them who they were), WWII, and even Korea, before I came along, but I don’t know enough about what they went through, what they liked and disliked, or what they knew of the Armstrong/Wortham/Vanderberg/Gentry stories.

John Grits admitted he only knows a small piece of what his own family experienced in those horrible times for his people, and laughed when he said his grandmother always knew there was a foot trail on their Missouri property, but not the story behind it.

Only a few years ago this man who’s closing in on 80 found out that trail down behind the house where he was born and delivered by his own grandmother was the Trail of Tears his people survived. His great-grandmother had walked that trail herself, but apparently assumed her daughter and family knew.

The stories that are getting away from us will be lost forever unless you, and I, record them in some way. Gather those stories and cherish them, and for your writers, it’s a fountain of ideas for future works.

I spoke at a book club event this past week and a nice lady who organized the meeting at a local public library took me to task on not releasing a new book in the Red River Series in the last year or two. She caught me the moment I walked into the building.

“I’m tired of waiting.”

The event began at two o’clock, and I walked in ten minutes early. She sounded like my late father-in-law who insisted being at least thirty minutes early to everything.

I squinted at her, trying to see if there was some family relationship. “I would have been here earlier if you’d asked.”

“That’s not what I meant. I want another Red River book. I like those the best, then your other series, even though one of them was about Tom Bell in the 1930s. You need to hurry up and bring everyone back in the next one. I want my adopted family.”

“Ah.” I turned the tables on her. “So what do you like best about that series?”

Her face brightened. “They take me back to when I was a kid.”

“These books are a time machine, then.”

“I suppose.” She led me into the meeting room. “The way you write is so…familiar. I feel comfortable with all of your characters and the music in there is what I listened to back you’re your history is accurate, and I love everything about those books, except that you kill animals in almost every one of them.”

That second zinger caught me by surprise. “Well, you realize no animals are harmed in these novels. They’re fiction. I made them all up.”

“But I love dogs, and now that you mention it, you killed a cat in one of those Sonny Hawke novels.”

I couldn’t let that go. “Again, we’re talking fiction here.”

“But I don’t like to read about animals being hurt or injured.”

I neglected to bring up the subject that some of my most heart-wrenching newspaper columns involved the loss of dogs, and I always hear from readers who say I touched something deep inside them, and thanked me for it.

In fact, just this past weekend I helped my little brother bury one of his dogs, because he was
both physically and mentally unable to do it by himself. You see, he lives out in the country and rural life is hard on animals.

The dog he cared for wasn’t his. Rocky (and that’s his given name) granted an elderly man’s dying wish that he look after Tig after Charlie passed. The old dog insisted on staying at the empty house down the road, because that was his home and he refused to move in with Rocky who fed and watered him for three years.

When a car sped by this past weekend, going way too fast on an asphalt county road, Tig hadn’t completely crossed the road. His back was broken, and the poor dog was so mangled that Rocky had to do what country folk have done all their lives to end suffering.

So we buried Tig, another in a long line of faithful companions I’ve had to lower into the ground.

As he and I were finishing up, I thought back about that book club lady and pondered a strange thought. Thrillers and mysteries are filled with murder and mayhem. I can kill a hundred people in one of my books (all made up, of course), and readers seldom say anything about the body count.

But if an animal dies, folks gather up torches and pitchforks to chant in front of my house, hoping to toast some marshmallows as my computer goes up in flames. Even the spouse of one of my oldest friends refuses to read any of my books, because she’s afraid I’ll waylay her with a deceased animal.

When fictitious animals “die” in my novels, it’s to advance the plot, or to allow the reader, in the case of my aforementioned Texas Ranger to show this character was under a great deal of stress and dealt with running over a feral cat that darted out in front of his truck with tears and a near emotional breakdown.

But at the same time, the Book Club lady loves to think about those days when she grew up in the country. But doesn’t want to dwell on the reality of life itself.

In my view, animal deaths are not off limits as long as they aren’t gory and serve the story.

Come on, Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows wouldn’t be classics without these events.

So authors, have you killed off an animal in one of your novels?

And readers, what are your thoughts on this very real part of life in a fictionalized world?

Back in my larval stages, which occurred in the mid-1960s, my buddy Gary Selby and I were partners in a field day event called the Three-Legged Race. Field Day was how they ended the school year back then, and the late May air was perfumed with fresh-mown grass, gardenias from some lady’s yard across the street, and dill pickles.

Beneath the scraggly elm trees outside our old school, the teachers sold those delicious green mouth puckers as a fund raiser for the next year. After I was grown and became a middle school teacher, I figured out they used the money for a much-needed end-of-the-year happy hour. They also sold cheap homemade Cokes and Dr Peppers (syrup from clear gallon jugs hand-mixed with tap water), weakly flavored snow cones, and popcorn that didn’t sell the year before.

There were other drinks of course. Water in a five-gallon metal water cooler they filled from the hose, and if an elementary student was brave, a Suicide (Coke, Dr Pepper and pickle juice).

All for a dime each. Even the hose water, because it had ice in it.

At the starting line that warm sunny day, Coach tied my right leg to Gary’s left, and we waited for the starting pistol with our arms over the others’ shoulders. At the crack, we were off in fine rhythm, and had a great lead by the time we were five yards from the finish line. That’s when the knot came untied. We crossed as victors, but were disqualified by a sour old math teacher, and I lost the only opportunity to win a ribbon or trophy in my entire twelve years of public school.

I didn’t win a darn thing for the next fifteen years until I took a college course in photography to supplement my assignment as a middle school photo teacher and placed first in the Silhouette category. I had that trophy in my office until it disappeared in a move several years ago.

All this leads back to one day in the 6^th grade when I came across a Newberry Medal winning book in the school library titled, Across Five Aprils. I picked up that little novel because of the gold emblem on the cover and absorbed it in one sitting, sparking a lifelong interest in the War of Northern Aggression.

Finishing that, I looked for other books Newberry winners such as Island of the Blue Dolphins. Those titles took me to Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and ultimately, and this is a weird connection, The Old Man and the Sea and my introduction to Hemingway, which intersected with Steinbeck and eventually Robert Ruark, the writing mentor I never met.

Newberry made me aware of Caldecott Awards, and when I got older, Spur Awards on westerns caught my attention. Hugos, Edgars, the ITW, and Pulitzers to name only a few told me these authors, and ultimately their works, were worth reading.

Awards and the resulting recognition are important personal achievements that can stimulate a flagging author. Writer awards are also a great way to fast track a literary career. They provide professional recognition among your peers, and in my case, are a significant source of personal satisfaction.

Awards are endorsements of your book, and therefore, showcase your talent. They tell the world that the novel you bled for is worthy of the price and can be an incentive for online shoppers to add more titles to their list, or cart. They boost self-confidence and self-esteem, and impress the heck out of potential agents and publishers.

Most of those awards I’m familiar with don’t bring in much in the way of instant cash, and I’m not talking about grant awards which is an entirely different discussion, but recognition among literary peers serves as a springboard to help authors rise above the relative obscurity of thousands of books published each year.

My first novel, The Rock Hole, won the Benjamin Franklin Award, and at the time I had no idea what it meant to a budding career. The folks at Poisoned Pen Press had to explain that one to me (as well as the importance of Starred Reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and a host of others). I had my sights set on others, too. They served as personal goals and milestones, that kept me plugging along.

At one point confidence sagged, and I seriously wondered what I was doing at the keyboard, but a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America came my way, and then another, along with Will Rogers Medallions, and I was back on the mental track to keep plugging along. Because of renewed enthusiasm, I kept at it and that led to several honors and accolades now hang on the walls of my office. When I have any doubts about my work, and all authors do at some point, I only have to look up and am once again energized.

The addition to mentioning awards on your website, Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform that showcases your work, this recognition can lead to an increase in sales. When marketing, they lift your brand, and help others celebrate your success in this race to be recognized as professional authors.

Mentioning that you’re a finalist on social media can put you on a stage in which others share your anticipation and excitement, maintaining interest and conversation for months at a time as everyone waits for that announcement. Those who might know only your name can be prompted to look up your backlist and elevate sales.

Don’t hesitate to enter these contests, even though winning might a longshot in your own mind. Sure you might lose, but you’ve already taken a whale of a step by getting that novel published, so don’t let self-doubt dissuade you. Some of these have entry fees, so research those you’re interested in. Don’t hesitate to reach out to other established writers to make sure they’re legit. There are a lot of scams out there. Other competitions are financed by grants or outside entities, and only require copies for submission and no fees.

Writing contests are also a source of great satisfaction when you place. Some of you might have heard of the late Pat McManus, the legendary and hysterically funny columnist for Outdoor Life and Field and Stream. He and I became friends decades ago, and he urged me to enter a Humor Category in a contest sponsored by the Outdoor Writers of America. I did, and my column came in first with Pat taking second. He called to congratulate me, and the excitement in his voice was worth as much as the paper certificate I framed.

The honor of winning that contest sparked me to work harder on a writing career.

Even seasoned writers are excited to hear their latest novel has been honored with such recognition. I was humbled to stand in front of a banquet hall full of writers I’d read for years and accept my first Spur. It was a goal and dream come true.

But don’t be disappointed if you don’t make the cut right off the bat, or even after several attempts until you finally succeed. Participation ribbons aren’t part of this business, so just square your shoulders, congratulate those who won, and keep trying.

As I always say in all things. Never give up.

One complaint I often hear about plots is that coincidences come too frequently, or they’re unbelievable. Coincidences in fiction makes readers mad, even though they might have actually happened.

My example: Way back in 1982, my former wife and I were dining with another couple at The Shed, a steakhouse in Dallas. It was the new In eatery that everyone had to experience. Of course since it was new, the place was packed that particular night and we had to wait nearly an hour to be seated in one of the smaller dining areas off the main room. It didn’t matter, I liked the smaller area that wasn’t as noisy.

Even though my friend was a cop, I was sitting with my back against the wall with a view of the door and a dozen tables. A foursome composed of two distinct generations came in, an older couple and a pair of young folks who looked to be around eighteen or nineteen.

The young lady in a cream-colored sweater and her escort sat facing us, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the dark-haired woman. It became so awkward on my part, that I had to purposefully engage those around me so I wouldn’t stare, something that had never happened to me before.

Halfway through the meal, the young woman and her beau had a disagreement that caught my attention. The older man with them patted the air to quiet the young couple down, and the girl rose and walked out. She returned a few minutes later and all was well. The foursome finished the meal in quiet conversation.

I confess, I kept sneaking glances at the dark-eyed young lady until we paid out and left. As we walked by their table, I took one last glance at her when she smiled at the older couple, and we were gone.

Thirty years later, the Bride and I were sitting by the pool one late evening, drinking wine and talking about our past before we met. Since she grew up in a small town about forty miles from where I did in Old East Dallas, the conversation drifted to the Dallas clubs that used to line Greenville Avenue, a hotspot for the Baby Boomers such as us. In fact, I was born on this date way back in 1954, one of the earlier Boomers, and she came long ten years later almost to the day, as the last of our generation, and will celebrate her birthday on the 29th.

WIth this almost exact ten-year difference in our ages, (and by the way, our 26th anniversary is on her birthday, only three days from now) but we’ve found we share similar memories of that time in the ‘80s before we met.

The music playing through our outside speakers helped recall those days and one song reminded me of a place I enjoyed. “Hey, do you remember Spaghetti Warehouse out on I-35?”

Her white teeth flashed in the fading light. “My high school boyfriend took me there before we went dancing at Bell Star.”

“You had to be twenty-one to get into Bell Star.”

She gave me a look over the top of her glass. “I’ve heard.”

“Man, there were some great clubs and restaurants down there back then. The Longhorn Ballroom, Whiskey River, The Western Place. I loved The Old San Fransciso Streakhouse –––.”

“With the girl on the swing over the bar!” Her eyes lit up at the recollection.

“Yep, but my favorite was Baby Doe’s Matchless Mine.” The Dallas restaurant on the only hill in Dallas (and that’s a stretch to say) had a great view of the Trinity River down below, and about a million cars stuck in traffic jams off of I-35.

“I liked it, too. Especially the cheese soup.”

“That reminds me, did you ever eat at The Shed? It was a steak house in North Dallas.”

“I loved that place. My parents used to take me there–––.”

My head spun and my breath caught. I was back in That Place, staring across the restaurant at my future wife. “You were there with them and someone else once. You were wearing a cream sailor’s sweater.”

Her expression was one of shock. “I did wear that sweater when they took me and my boyfriend out to eat one time. We broke up a year later, but how did you know? ”She tilted her head and took another sip. “I’ve never told you that story.”

“Didn’t have to.” I described the scene as she nodded and listened with a frown across her forehead. “I was there and couldn’t take my eyes off of you from across the room. Y’all had a disagreement and you got up and left.”

“We sure did. He was back from college and I’d just graduated. It was the beginning of the end for us.”

For the next hour we talked about that night, how I was taken with her almost to the point of embarrassment, though I have to admit, she hadn’t noticed me at all. We talked of our lives with other people for the next eight years until a mutual friend introduced us in Austin and we married another eight years later.

It was an unbelievable coincidence, and when I used it in a manuscript, my agent urged me to take it out. “I love the story It’s too unbelievable in a book.”

“But it really happened.”

“You readers won’t like it, or believe it’s possible.”

I found out she was right once again as I went down a rabbit hole of research concerning reality and fiction. In real life, coincides are seriously cool, but in the worlds we create, the same rules simply don’t apply. Constant or poor coincidences are startling to readers, and their ability to suspend disbelief (though we always do that in fiction) can draw them out of the plot and drive ’em to complain in two-star reviews. Readers hate sudden, lazy coincides.

However, on the flip side, that interesting confluence of people and events works at the beginning of a novel because technically, all stories start with a coincidence as….

…two men just happen to be fishing under a bridge one night when the body of a woman drops into the water and the story takes off.  (John D. MacDonald in Darker Than Amber). It worked so well that particular Travis McGee novel eventually wound up on the big screen, and I know, because I saw some of it at a drive-in theater one night in 1970…never mind.

But if such a thing happens at the end of your novel, when the antagonist is about to shoot the protagonist under that same bridge and another body falls on his gun hand and saving our hero’s life, then you’ll hear about it. I guarantee.

These Rules That Aren’t tend to apply more to thrillers and mysteries. If you’re writing fantasy, horror, or romance, then you can get away with it, because it seems that readers of these genres are more open to fate and such similar interactions.

Come to think of it, maybe I can go back and dust off that old manuscript and dabble in romance for a while. Anyway, careful what you create in the way of falling bodies or chance meetings, and let reality and past memories rest for quiet discussion some night over wine.

After struggling for years, maybe decades, you The Writer gets published. Celebrations! Parties! Champagne! Now you can legitimately call yourself an author. The book is a modest success and if you’re lucky, there’s a two or three book contract and eventually a world of your own making grows in print.

Like most of us have experienced, it probably won’t be that hoped-for blockbuster, because as I read last weekend, there are a million traditionally printed books released each year, and if we add in self-publishing, it jumps to four million titles clamoring for attention. That equates to about eleven thousand books hitting the figurative shelves each day. To put it simply, all this makes it hard to get noticed.

But you’re published and the fruits of your imagination are out there for everyone to read and enjoy. If you produce two novels in the same genre, you’ve most likely established a “brand.” You now write thrillers, mysteries, cozies, science fiction, fantasy, and any number of other genres.

Let’s say you write thrillers. The cover bears your name, and you’ve figured out how all this works. Unlike that first one that you toiled and sweated over, the second manuscript comes a little easier, mostly because you have a contract specifying a delivery time and by golly you’re gonna make it.

The next book comes out, and a year later, another. Though you still haven’t made the bestseller list, the checks keep coming in and the reviews are great. You’re on a roll.

The phone rings. “Uh, Author? We’re negotiating the contract for a new book.”

“While you do that, I’m going to write something different. I have an idea for a romantic thriller.”

“That isn’t what you write.”

There. You’re pigeonholed to only do what you’ve done in the past, but is that a bad thing? Most authors have stories that swirl like the little birds around a cartoon character’s head. You’ve been reading thrillers and after finishing the last one you told yourself, “I can do better.”

You’ve always wanted to be published, and so should you just settle in and stay in that lane?

My answer is no, if you want to experiment with ideas outside of what you’re doing. After writing mysteries for several years, you want to do something different and that’s perfectly understandable. You and your readers love those characters and the fictional world you created, but if you read everything from thrillers, to westerns, to nonfiction, you might feel a calling to trying something different.

Is it a career killer to switch genres?

Ask A.A. Milne. He wrote murder mysteries, after he tried his hand in writing humor and plays before Winnie the Pooh was born.

Cormac McCarthy wrote literary fiction for years before releasing his outstanding western titled, Blood Meridian. He also penned a number of contemporary westerns and eventually moved on to the apocalyptic novel, The Road before writing historical fiction.

With more than 225 romance novels in her backlist, Nora Roberts decided she wanted to write futuristic police procedurals. You might know her as J.D. Robb.

And did you know that fun movie that came out in the 1968 with Dick Van Dyke as the lead character was written by the creator of James Bond? Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1962.

Dean Koontz began his writing career by producing lean mystery novels, many under pen names early in his career such as Brian Coffey (Blood Risk in 1973), before moving to horror, (Intensity), and now a flood of suspense thrillers. But within these current pages, he also adds elements of horror, fantasy and science fiction. He’s blending genres.

Larry McMurtry wrote western novels such as the nontraditional western Horseman, Pass By (1961), to Moving On (still another contemporary western about marriage and adult relationships), and literary fiction utilizing dark comedy and romance (The Evening Star). He concentrated on these genres for years before writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning western novel, Lonesome Dove. In his later years, McMurtry switched from one genre to another, even producing nonfiction books on the old west.

You roll your eyes at these examples. “Yeah, but these folks are famous!”

They are now, but they all started out with that first novel, then the second, until they gained enough experience and confidence to branch out, despite possible warnings from friends, publishers, and agents.

In my opinion, and with the examples above as evidence, you don’t have to “stick with what brung you,” to borrow and old southern saying.

It’s your work, your brand, and your name, and you should follow your instincts. For some authors, producing only one novel a year is almost overwhelming but satisfying and that’s enough. For others who like to play with their imaginary friends, two, and maybe three books a year is a real possibility, and that gives you the opportunity to experiment and branch out.

No matter how you do it, under your own name, or with a pseudonym, do your own thing.

I seldom turn down the opportunity to speak, and more than once there’s a monetary loss for gas and even a hotel room to make those events. Civic organizations, book clubs, and groups such as retired teachers or other professional organizations all have me on their annual speakers lists, and at first I thought that was a problem, because prepared speeches aren’t my thing. I didn’t want to bore them with the same talk time after time.

Watching someone stand in front of a room, reading from a script is mind numbing. Those folks are usually nervous, or unfamiliar with public speaking and it’s obvious in the way they stand and present their talk, barely looking up from their notes or pages.

That kind of thing would be a disaster for me, and like the way I write, when I give a talk I have no idea where I’m going until I get there.

Calls came in right after my first novel released back in 2011 to come talk about The Rock Hole. Having been a classroom teacher for ten years, I knew I could stand in front of a crowd and hold their attention, because if you can keep a class full of middle school students’ interest for fifty minutes, you’re a speaker.

I disremember if that first group was Kiwanis, or Lions, or Rotary, to name a few. It was a luncheon event, though, and I stepped up to the lectern and simply followed one story or idea after the other as I recounted the disastrous road to publication I’d just endured. Folks laughed at the right places, showed concern when I told them of losing my first manuscript, and clapped with enthusiasm when the story came to full circle with a tender surprise.

Oh, wait, but first let’s Let’s start with the basics and clear something up. People often confuse lectern with rostrum, podium, and dais. Personally, I’d prefer not to stand behind any of them, because I tend to move around.

A lectern is the slant-top high desk a speaker uses to read presentation notes. I prefer not to use the term lecture, because I’m a storyteller, but to remember what you’re hiding behind in that sense, think the word “lecture.”

Sometimes large audiences require a podium, which is a raised platform that places you higher than those staring upward at you with blank, expectant faces. Hint, quickly find the friendliest face in the room. He or she might be smiling, or nodding, or changing expressions as your talk proceeds. Use them as a yardstick and an anchor if you feel as if the room is drifting away.

And then there’s the rostrum or dias, which is a larger platform, or maybe a stage, on which a head table is placed during a formal dinner. You’re usually smack in the middle of those dignitaries who invited you, and a trick is to talk to them as well as the audience in order to engage those who are sitting up there with you. Make eye contact, and they’ll appreciate you even more.

As a repeat speaker for annual events, I can’t use the exact same talk each time. Right after I started this journey, I once looked out over an audience that was strangely familiar, and then realized they were a mix of organizations I’d talked to in the past few months. I sure didn’t want to tell them the same stories, so I had to adapt and improvise, to steal from Clint Eastwood’s Sergeant Highway in Heartbreak Ridge.

That was the day I realized that audiences don’t want to be lectured, but prefer to be entertained. As authors, we can stand in front of those people (some of whom are looking at their watches) and talk about outlining, character building, and motivation. But for the most part, the members of these organizations aren’t writers, they’re a captive group who’ve been subjected to countless lectures on everything from recycling to what kind of fertilizer to use on Bermuda grass.

That’s where stories come in and we become entertainers in still another sense. I don’t have any particular ideas written down to use as notes, but I’ll talk about what comes to mind and tie it all together with something to make the audience laugh.

Like the night John Gilstrap and I went out on a Florida beach at midnight after a conference to finish off a bottle of brown water only to find the resort chained and locked that return access at some point and we had to climb over a fence to get in. And for me, that fence somehow undulated like the ocean we’d been watching as I attempted to vault over it like I was a kid. I wound up hanging halfway over it like a deer strapped to the hood of a truck.

Getting John over involved curses, grunts, groans, and threats, all of which came from him.

Or the day at another conference when Lee Child told me a shocking story about a woman who’d been faking his signature on his books until she had the opportunity to get a genuine John Henry that made her so proud she admitted to being a forger. That was a two-part story, but I only hard half because a conference official took his hand and led him away to “bend his ear” for a while and he looked back at me like a dog headed for the pound.

Or back to Gilstrap again when he and I were in a crowd of thriller and mystery writers at eight in the morning when two hookers came through the hotel lobby and asked us for directions to the ladies room. Speechless for once, John pointed, and followed by their pimps, the “ladies of the morning” wove without notice through the oblivious authors who make their living about crimes and criminals. Fascinated, John and I followed them down a hall to watch their fighting men keep a lookout as the ladies eventually emerged in their “work” clothes and the entire assemblage stepped onto an elevator and headed up.

We broke off our surveillance at that time, and went back to being observers of conference life.

Depending on the crowd before me, if they’re not writers I’ll tell stories of my childhood or life as a writer that relates to the work in progress. And it seems they always do. Just recently I talked to a civic organization about my newest contemporary western series beginning with Hard Country, and told them the real story of how we owned a ranch across the gravel road from a meth house, and how those brain-dead individuals were always breaking into the house and that I’d learned they were related to someone in the sheriff’s office who tended to look the other way.

The questions that followed were fun, quick, and interesting for me and the audience.

I included those same stories at a book club event, but talked to them, not at them, about the development of two new series, my traditional western featuring Cap Whitlatch (below), and the upcoming weird westerns that will begin with Comancheria. I was surprised to find they were more interested in the horror aspect of westerns and fielded a lot of questions after that.

I think part of that was because I tend to converse, instead of using a prepared speech or lecture.

It’s all part of being an author, and though I don’t sell a ton of books at these events, they always pay off with name recognition and recommendations to to their friends and family to read my work.

No one told me this was part of the job, but I’m having a helluva time doing it, and if you’re nervous about public speaking, just get in the car and talk to yourself aloud, following a train of thought that leads down unexpected trails. It’ll do you good in the long run.

Now, as a side note, I was discussing my first western with a civic group last week and told them The Journey South is now out, but only as an eBook. That was followed by a firehose of questions concerning electronic vs. physical books, and the publishing industry itself, that led to even more stories and fun rabbit trails that interested the audience.

With that, I’d appreciate it y’all would pass the word that there’s a new western in town, and it ain’t as traditional as you’d think.

Much obliged.