Texas novelist Bob Flynn, a good friend of mine, says that if someone asks you which is the favorite of your books, it's like asking you which is your favorite child (that's a big bone of contention among my children since they all claim to be the favorite and of course they are!). Which of mine (books, not children)? Various books for various reasons. After Pa Was Shot because I suddenly learned I can write fiction; Luke and the Van Zandt County War because I think it's the best y-a novel I ever wrote; probably Libbie because it was the most complicated story I tried to tell in adult fiction and it broke me into a new field of writing.
But two books have a special place in my heart. One is Sue Ellen Learns to Dance, my collection of short stories. It's special because it's darn hard these days to get anyone to publish short stories, and yet I really like those stories (okay, egotistcal, but I do!). They're stories of women in the American West, both of the past and a few contemporary. They're women who love and lose, women on the frontier, women during the Depression, women being women no matter the circumstances. I sent the collecition to two university presses. The reader at the first press said they should all be novels. Wrong! They are what they are--stories with one twist and, according to Poet's theory, suitable for reading at one sitting. The second press was very enthusiastic about them but then after a year or so decided they could no longer afford to publish short stores. I understand that. We don't publish them at TCU because they don't sell enough to justify the cost of publication.
But I wasn't ready to give up. An agent once told me never to publish a short story collection unless with a university press, because the next time a book of mine was presented to a New York publisher, they'd check sales numbers and shake their heads. But I'm past courting a New York publisher or two, so I sent it to a tiny tiny press in the Houston area--and they liked it. I will always be grateful to Guida Jackson and her Spring Creek Publishing for putting my stories into print--and using the cover art I wanted, a Dorothea Lange photo taken in 1936 of what appears to be a sharecropper's wife standing by an old Ford truck inside which her children sit. They are all worn down--by poverty, by dust, by despair. To me, she is Sue Ellen and she needs to learn to dance. "Sue Ellean Learns to Dance" is the story of mine that has been the most anthologized, even on audio tape.
The other book? It's not published yet, but it's the cookbook I've referred to from time to time in this column. (See how subtle I was in leading up to this?) It now has a title--Cooking My Way through Life: Kids and Books in the Kitchen--and it has a cover. (I hope tomorrow, at the office, I can insert the cover here--another learning lesson!) I sent the publisher all kinds of adorable pictures of my kids and pictures of family birthday parties, etc., because I thought they showed what a good time we had. None of them worked for her, and she came up with this burned mitt, which led each of my children to ask, "Is it yours?" and one to say, "We have some of those at our house." I love it.
Speaking of cooking, which I often do, I cooked a rib-eye tonight for Christian and Jordan--mostly for Christian because he loves his steak and he's so busy these days I rarely get to see
him. It was a pound and a half, a good-sized steak to feed the three of us. I put the iron skillet in a 500-degree oven and got it really hot. Then, carefully, I took it from oven to stovetop, where the electric burner was set on high (how I long for a gas stove!). I had rubbed the steak with vegetable oil (maybe I should have used olive oil?) and sprinkled it with Kosher salt and pepper. I plopped that steak into a dry, sizzling hot pan and cooked it for 30 seconds (I made Christian time it), turned it with tongs (not a fork which breaks the skin and releases juices) and cooked it for another 30 seconds. Then the whole thing went back into that hot oven for 3 minutes on each side. The result was a wonderful medium rare steak. When I did it on the stovetop it turned gray, not brown, and I despaired, but in the oven it got a nice brown crust.
I love my iron skillet. Let me count the ways that I can cook with it . . . .
But two books have a special place in my heart. One is Sue Ellen Learns to Dance, my collection of short stories. It's special because it's darn hard these days to get anyone to publish short stories, and yet I really like those stories (okay, egotistcal, but I do!). They're stories of women in the American West, both of the past and a few contemporary. They're women who love and lose, women on the frontier, women during the Depression, women being women no matter the circumstances. I sent the collecition to two university presses. The reader at the first press said they should all be novels. Wrong! They are what they are--stories with one twist and, according to Poet's theory, suitable for reading at one sitting. The second press was very enthusiastic about them but then after a year or so decided they could no longer afford to publish short stores. I understand that. We don't publish them at TCU because they don't sell enough to justify the cost of publication.
But I wasn't ready to give up. An agent once told me never to publish a short story collection unless with a university press, because the next time a book of mine was presented to a New York publisher, they'd check sales numbers and shake their heads. But I'm past courting a New York publisher or two, so I sent it to a tiny tiny press in the Houston area--and they liked it. I will always be grateful to Guida Jackson and her Spring Creek Publishing for putting my stories into print--and using the cover art I wanted, a Dorothea Lange photo taken in 1936 of what appears to be a sharecropper's wife standing by an old Ford truck inside which her children sit. They are all worn down--by poverty, by dust, by despair. To me, she is Sue Ellen and she needs to learn to dance. "Sue Ellean Learns to Dance" is the story of mine that has been the most anthologized, even on audio tape.
The other book? It's not published yet, but it's the cookbook I've referred to from time to time in this column. (See how subtle I was in leading up to this?) It now has a title--Cooking My Way through Life: Kids and Books in the Kitchen--and it has a cover. (I hope tomorrow, at the office, I can insert the cover here--another learning lesson!) I sent the publisher all kinds of adorable pictures of my kids and pictures of family birthday parties, etc., because I thought they showed what a good time we had. None of them worked for her, and she came up with this burned mitt, which led each of my children to ask, "Is it yours?" and one to say, "We have some of those at our house." I love it.
Speaking of cooking, which I often do, I cooked a rib-eye tonight for Christian and Jordan--mostly for Christian because he loves his steak and he's so busy these days I rarely get to see
him. It was a pound and a half, a good-sized steak to feed the three of us. I put the iron skillet in a 500-degree oven and got it really hot. Then, carefully, I took it from oven to stovetop, where the electric burner was set on high (how I long for a gas stove!). I had rubbed the steak with vegetable oil (maybe I should have used olive oil?) and sprinkled it with Kosher salt and pepper. I plopped that steak into a dry, sizzling hot pan and cooked it for 30 seconds (I made Christian time it), turned it with tongs (not a fork which breaks the skin and releases juices) and cooked it for another 30 seconds. Then the whole thing went back into that hot oven for 3 minutes on each side. The result was a wonderful medium rare steak. When I did it on the stovetop it turned gray, not brown, and I despaired, but in the oven it got a nice brown crust.I love my iron skillet. Let me count the ways that I can cook with it . . . .
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