Trust but Verify

  Zip, its Gone August 2021 Okay, I surrender. Where did July go? I love racing, but I only blinked, and July went adios . Parnelli Jones, where are you? For those of us living at Ft. Nichols on the Llano Estacado of Texas, July was a blur. Everything and everybody were on the bright side, but there wasn’t enough time to catch our breath. The third book in the Border War Series, The Russian, went to the press (three cheers, please). With any luck at all, it will arrive in bookstores, the Internet, and book clubs in winter, 2021-22. Continuing on the bright side, “The Third Dawn” was originally published nearly twenty years ago. A biblical novel on the life of Christ, it was allowed to wither on the vine and out of print several years ago. Now, however, there is a resurgence of interest in religious-based themes in the book market. Accordingly, and with my wife Gwen as editor, we have begun an update of the original manuscript. While the storyline remains unchanged, it was past ...

The year 2020 scrambled my brains and my life. I couldn’t tell Monday from Wednesday, up from down, or front to back. Like this collage, it seemed everything was jumbled. How about you/? Did you feel a pandemic onslaught interrupting your tried-and-true lifestyle and challenging your habits? Whichever way you turned, was there another obstacle? Mask or no mask; social distance or not; vaccinate or not; or simply stay home and say, “The heck with it.” For us, there was a bright side or two or three to this otherwise pandemic-scrambling year. Creativity flows in my blood, and that bears fruit in my novels, short stories, and screenplays. And, too, it bore fruit, or should I say meat, in my newfound culinary delight—cooking. While cooking took on a new joyful pastime, I also found creative fun in the presentation of meals. The entire process of dinner took on a whole new meaning—the fireplace dancing its orange and yellow flames, music flowing from the Bose, the chandelier dimmed, the ta...

Up is Down; Crisscross is Backwards; and Bad is Good   We are living in a tumultuous time, maybe more than any of our ancestors ever envisioned in the United States. The textbooks list the eras in the USA as: Early America The Colonial Period Revolutionary America The Young Republic Expansion, Reform, and Turmoil Controversy, War, and Reconstruction Second Industrial Revolution Political Reform II War, Prosperity, and Depression The New Deal Postwar America Vietnam Era End of the Century; and, The New Millennium They were hard times and good times. Suddenly, the new millennium exploded in front of us. Some will say it started with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Others will argue that his death was only the tipping point of something that has been brewing for decades if not centuries. This coming at the same time as the Covid-19 that has swept the world, and you and I find ourselves bombarded with the worst and best of humanity. It will be interesting for those who surv...

The Secret Recipe to Creating a Great Book Cooking and writing have much in common—more than you might think. Take a moment to think back to some special place you went for dinner. Better yet, think of all those meals your mom prepared for your dinner. At some point ahead of time, be it an hour or even days earlier, she had to make a decision on what she would fix, how much, and how many people would be there to eat. Would it be the immediate family, or would there be a friend or two? Or maybe even some relatives from out-of-town. Her decision would first focus on her audience (who she would be feeding), what they would like, the cost of buying the main course and the side dishes to go with it, what her preparation time would be, and did she really want to do it or not? Was she ready to commit? Once her decisions were made, off she would go to the store to make her purchases, get home and schedule what went on the stove or in the oven, prepare her pots and pans, prep...