Surprise! A new book

When my neighbor, Prudence, emailed that she’d gotten my new book, The Second Battle of the Alamo, from Amazon, it came as a total surprise to me. I thought and have been telling people the publication date was March 7, at which time I’ll be in San Antonio for the annual meeting of the Alamo Society at the historic Menger Hotel. So I looked on Amazon, still thinking there must have been a flub, and it’s only available for pre-order. Not so! It released January 10.

So, woohoo! I have a new book out.

This is a book with an unusual back story. Several years ago, Texas author Susan Albert Wittig invited me to join the Work-in-Progress group of the Story Circle Network, an international network of women telling their own stories. So I became part of a small—probably ten or twelve active women—close-knit group. Debra Winegarten of Austin was one of the members. I didn’t know her but had, of course, heard of her mother, Ruthe, an author, activist and historian known primarily for her involvement with Texas and Jewish history. Debra proved in many ways to be her mother’s daughter—unabashedly Texan and Jewish.

Deb was a woman of incredible energy, an author with several projects both published and ongoing, a part-time faculty member at UT, an much-in-demand public speaker who never turned down an opportunity, and a tireless promoter who specialized in Outrageous Requests and taught the rest of us how to use them. She and I shared interests in Texas history and Jewish food, among other things. Deb was under contract to write a book about the second battle of the Alamo, but she kept getting distracted by other projects. She also kept resolving to focus, and I encouraged her because the topic really interested me.

In the winter of 2018 Debra developed some health problems—a persistent hoarseness, a chronically sore hip. She limped along, keeping her busy schedule, but in late spring x-rays revealed overwhelming malignancy throughout her body. She was immediately hospitalized.

One day in June she called me and, in her whispery voice, asked if I would write her book for her. She made one of her outrageous requests to Erin Turner, editor at Two Dot Books (Rowman and Littlefield), and Erin agreed. A new contract was issued, and Deb’s wife, Cindy, sent me a two boxes of research material and a box of books. Debra died in September, and I got her research material shortly after. The manuscript was due in May. I immersed myself in Alamo material and loved every minute of it. It was my kind of subject.

After I turned in the manuscript in March, I submitted a new proposal to Erin, and she issued a contract—more about that another time. I have ongoing sadness that Deb’s life was cut off when she was on such a roll and guilt that I profited from her death. My good friend Carol finally put it in perspective for me when I said, for the umpteenth time, that Deb had opened a door for me. “No,” she said, “she cracked the door. You opened it by doing a good job with what was given you.”

The Second Battle of the Alamo is dedicated to Deb, and the title page reads, “By Judy Alter, based on the research of Debra Winegarten.” And now you know why I’m not writing mysteries right now—I’m deep in Texas history.

The Second Battle of the Alamo is available in bookstores and at https://tinyurl.com/w7n4pe5 

Two kids from Chicago

For almost ten years, I turned from writing about the American West to writing mysteries, albeit all set in contemporary Texas. But life brings you funny opportunities, and a sad death opened a door for me—it’s a long story, but when my friend Debra Winegarten knew she was dying, she asked me to write the Alamo book for which she’d done so much research. I had encouraged her work on this project, urged her to set other things aside and focus on it, because it was a book I would have loved to write and I thought it offered her a great opportunity to enlarge what was already a burgeoning career. You’d have had to know Deb to understand that, but she was the Energizer Bunny with boundless enthusiasm and incredible chutzpah (good Jewish girl that she was, she’d have loved that description). Her most outstanding trait: she made outrageous requests of publishers and others and usually got what she was after—a lesson for all of us to put timidity aside. With some sadness, I took over project. The Second Battle of the Alamo will debut next March, probably on the 7^th and probably at the annual meeting of the Alamo Society at the historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio. I hope Debra will be there in spirit and is looking down on me as I write tonight, on the first anniversary of her death.

That book led to another contract with the same publisher—Globe Pequot—and the same editor—Erin Turner, who I like a lot and feel fortunate to work with again. So now I’ve been researching the Waggoner Ranch in North Texas, still to this day the largest ranch in Texas under one fence. It’s a fascinating story that ultimately boils down to a conflict between heritage and wealth. With a history of the grit and determination that built the ranch, the last heirs sold the land in 2017. Wealth—or greed to be blunt—won out, and in a sad break with history, no Waggoner descendant lives on or owns any of the 197,000-square mile ranch. Other family-owned Texas ranches—the King, the Pitchfork, the Burnett Ranches, Lambshead—remain in the hands of descendants of the founders. But not the Waggoner. It makes me sad.

But it also brings me to what I meant to write about tonight. The listing of this massive ranch for sale in 2015 prompted several YouTube videos—I suppose as marketing tools. But they are impressive—the cinematography excellent, the landscapes sweeping and magnificent, the scope of the ranch—oil, cattle, and horses—well covered. I have watched several times, enthralled each time.

So I called my brother, who runs a few cattle down by Tolar, some forty-five miles southwest of Fort Worth. I called him because I thought he, a retired physician who has always loved the ranching life—dare I say this? since our uncle’s horse, pulling a wagon with John and Uncle Floyd in it, ran away when he was a tiny kid and all he could think was he wished he was home in his bed. Today of course, he has a more seasoned approach to ranching, but he loves the land and the cattle. I thought he would enjoy the video—and he well may when he figures out how to find it on the internet. (Clue: do a search for “YouTube sale Waggoner Ranch” and go for the six-minute video.)

But even as I called him, I had this funny thought about the strange tricks that life plays on us. Here we are, two kids from the South Side of Chicago, now in our “golden” years, and one of us raises cattle and the other revels in Texas history. I’m sure our parents would be surprised, and I am pretty surprised myself.

Maybe another day, unless you’re bored, I’ll trace the roots of my interest in Texas history. Most of my career has been spent writing about Texas and the American West, and particularly about the women. It’s where I belong, but it’s a far cry from Chicago’s South Side.

So here’s to Debra, may she rest in peace and smile upon us as we carry on her work, and here’s to John, a Chicago kid turned rancher. Pretty amazing.

My good news

Sunday night seems a good time to share good news. This past week I signed contracts with Globe Pequot Publishers for a new book—and five reprints. The new book is a study of one mega-ranching family in North Texas and Fort Worth, with a feminist approach to the subject, looking at the role of the women in the family. It’s interesting stuff, and I’ve been working on it for some time. Slow going but satisfying.

In addition, Globe Pequot will reprint five of my historical novels in 2021 and 2022. I had known for a couple of weeks that they would do four—Jessie, Libbie, Cherokee Rose, and Sundance, Butch and Me. But the surprise was the addition of Mattie to the list. Mattie was my first adult novel—I had written three novels which were marketed to young-adult readers, though I did not sit down and consciously think that I was writing a young-adult story.

With Mattie, I told the story from the viewpoint of an elderly woman looking back on her life. It’s a trope I’ve since used in novels and short stories, a way of telling someone’s story that makes me comfortable. I settle into the character and live her life with her. Mattie is based on the life of Dr. Georgia Arbuckle Fix who was a pioneer physician on the empty plains of western Nebraska in the late nineteenth century. This novel won a Spur Award as the Best Western Novel in 1988 from Western Writers of America.

That Mattie won the award in 1988 shows you that I’ve been writing a long time. But now, with these new contracts, I feel that my career is taking off—at the age of eighty. Certain bit of irony there. I can’t really complain about my career. I’ve written a lot of books and gotten some nice awards for some of them. It’s just that it’s all been sort of hardscrabble, and now, to have all this happen at once, is a bit overwhelming. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the late Debra Winegarten, who asked me to finish her Alamo book when she became ill. That work introduced me to Globe Pequot. I said something to a fellow author about feeling uncomfortable about riding on Debra’s coattails, but she put it nicely: Debra cracked the door for me, but I opened it when I turned in a strong Alamo manuscript. I hope Deb is smiling down at me. She was always one to boost other writers.

The reprints will get new covers (which they need) and will, I think, be hardback. And there’s more: in 1986, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram commissioned me to write a novel about Texas to be serialized in the newspaper in recognition of the Texas Sesquicentennial (Texans will remember how hard it was to learn to pronounce that!). I wrote a novel titled So Far from Paradise, loosely based on the founding of one ranch. Much of my current research retraces material I explored back then. The newspaper has given me permission to reprint the novel in ebook form. It is with an editor now, and an artist is working on a cover. It will come out sometime this fall—wonderful thing about being your own publisher is that the only deadlines are those you set yourself.

Of course, I’ll shout it from the rooftops when So Far from Paradise is available, as well as the other books, but I’m delighted to share my good news with you now. Not sure my feet have touched the ground in several days.

A nice break

With Jamie and Eden

Fun day today. My son Jamie and granddaughter Eden—a relatively new driver—came from Frisco for the day—well, Jamie’s definition of the day, because they didn’t get here until three in the afternoon. Jordan and Christian were busy elsewhere, so Jamie took Eden and Jacob to Top Golf—imagine that! I turned down an invitation to accompany them in favor of taking a nap. They went from golf to go-karts, a first for Jacob who complained he got a defective kart that had no speed. His uncle and cousin lapped him twice.

We went to Chadra for supper. My first ride in Eden’s car—a Mini Cooper. She’s a good

driver, confident, but careful, and she came close to mastering backing out of our driveway—a test that several adults I know failed and refuse to try again. At dinner Jamie proceeded to give Jacob a lesson in extracting meat from crab legs—our picky eater loves shellfish. Crab was on the buffet, and I’m afraid my boys really got their money’s worth out of that buffet tonight. Eden, who’s vegetarian, had the penne with vodka, and I had an eggplant and ground sirloin dish that was delicious. Eden and I both came home with leftovers, so I will have a good lunch tomorrow.

Jamie brought his dog, Kosmo. I’m still getting used to Kosmo, because for years Jamie had a wonderful big chocolate lab named Mosby. When they lost Mosby to age, he got a Pomeranian—and I was astounded, because I thought Jamie was a big dog person. He, who had cats all his growing up years, explained that the Pom was as close as he could get to a cat. The last couple of cats he had frustrated him because their bathroom manners weren’t perfect, and Jamie got tired of litter boxes. So Kosmo is his compromise. It amuses me, because a lot of people are either dog people (me, for sure)

or cat people—Jamie is trying to land somewhere in the middle.

Kosmo, who is just over a year old, was nervous in new surroundings, but he gradually adjusted to Sophie—enough that he ate some of her food, and she, a good hostess, let him. Jamie has a soft-sided carrier, probably meant to be a cat carrier, that he uses to take Kosmo most places he goes. We could have taken Kosmo tonight to dinner if we were willing to sit on the not air-conditioned porch. We weren’t, so Kosmo stayed behind in his carrier, safely shut in my bedroom so Sophie couldn’t mess with him.

Now, it’s late, and I’m sleepy, but it sure was nice to have a break in routine. And I even got some work done today—finished the page proofs for the Alamo book, though I will give them one more run-through. And I also finished sorting, as best I could, the voluminous research material I inherited for that project. I will return it to Debra Winegarten’s partner—Debra was the author/friend who willed the project to me when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Someday all those papers and books will be in the Debra Winegarten archive in the Woman’s Collection at Texas Woman’s University. Somehow that gives me a nice sense of being part of history. I hope Debra was reading proof over my shoulder and smiling. The Second Battle of the Alamo was her project, and I am honored to have finished it for her.

Jacob and the reluctant go-kart