Fool Girl

My short story, “Fool Girl,” is now available for Kindle readers. But there’s a backstory to this. I’m taking an online epublishing course, and our assignment for the second lesson was to post a short story to Kindle (pity the poor author who has no short stories—I don’t have that many, but what I have are collected in Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories). I read the instructions, read them again, and decided I could never master all that.

Then I made myself work with two files open—the instructions and the file I wanted to post. Step by step, I followed the instructions. Sometimes I went backward; sometimes I decided it was impossible. But finally I had the story posted. You can find it at http://www.amazon.com/Fool-Girl-Judy-Alter-ebook/dp/B013YXZL3U/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439751429&sr=1-4&keywords=Fool+Girl  Maybe by the time this posts the new cover will also be up—I just did that, and am actually feeling pretty proud of myself. I figured if I got it up as a lesson, I might as well put a low price on it and offer it for sale.

“Fool Girl” is based on a story I read in H. H. Halsell’s Cowboys and Cattleland. In truth, a young boy was at the center of the story but with my penchant for writing about girls and women of the West, I changed the protagonist and sent a lone girl out on the Texas prairie, with its danger of Comanches, to look for two lost work horses.  The story won a Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. I was almost as proud then as I am now of having posted it.

My goal, is to be able to post my next novel, Murder at Peacock Mansion, myself. We’ll see. Meantime, if you want a quick read, download “Fool Girl.” And if you find mistakes, let me know. I already know two places where my corrections simply didn’t post—there is a word “t” where it should be “at” and in about the author one paragraph is the wrong font and size. But I tried.