:Like seeing your chldren again

An author/friend once commented that having books out of print was like having children  you can't see. Well, I'm excited to announce that as of today I can see two of my OP "children" again. Libbie and Sundance, Butch and Me are now both available as ebooks. I've mentioned them before but in cases of blatant self promotion, I believe in repetition.
Libbie is the story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer's years with George Armstrong Custer, as I imagine them. Not all the fun and games her journals would suggest. Elmer Kelton wrote, "Libbie is probably the book Mrs. Custer would have written had she not been determined to protect her husband’s name.” a review in Romantic Times said, “A wondrous, intimate story of an unsung heroine of the West," and Affaire de Couer said, “Rings…authentically true….Brilliant and memorable….Kudos to Ms. Alter for a refreshingly unique story.” Here's a brief excerpt:

I knew that history would make a plaything of Autie, and when that happened, all my battles would be lost again. Autie rarely lost a battle—save that last big one—and his fights were always glorious, painted on a broad screen by the clamoring newsmen if not by himself. My battles were small and silent and private, but oh! they were important to me, and I had managed to hold the line. I would not see it all wiped away with the muckraking cry that Autie's overweening ambition had led him to disaster at Little Bighorn. I would make sure that the world saw the George Armstrong Custer I wanted seen. Only this private journal—to be burned upon my death—records my own wars.

Twelve years is not very long in a lifetime, yet it seemed my whole life was lived in those brief years of marriage. I had fought battles of my own, hard battles, to marry Autie, and once married, I thought myself the happiest and luckiest of women—married to the great boy-general, the hero of the Civil War. We would, I knew, grow old together, savoring the best of life, the last for which the first was made, so the poet wrote. I'm not sure when, exactly, that I knew that dream was not to be, that a love as intense as ours could not survive, that two people as willful as we could not be bound so tightly together. And yet, when all was said and done, I would not have traded those twelve years for anything on earth. Were they worth a lifetime? There is no answer, but even to think about it, I must begin earlier, back in Monroe.... I remember yet one snowy night when I was but sixteen years old.

 Libbie is available from Kindle at

http://www.amazon.com/Libbie-Historical-Western-Romance-ebook/dp/B007Q3EJ74/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1333417391&sr=1-3  and from Nook at

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1000340594?ean=2940014178730&itm=1&usri=judy+alter+libbie

I'm proud of these novels and the research that went into them. Hope you enjoy them. Tomorrow, more about Sundance, Butch and Me, the story of Etta Place's years with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang. 

New Life for Old Books

In the early 1990s, I wanted to break my fiction out into a "big" book, rather than the short fiction I'd been doing for Doubleday's western fiction series. I told then-edtor Greg Tobin I wanted to write a fictional biography of Libbie Custer's years with General George Armstrong Custer. After all, theirs was the "Great Romance of the Western Frontier." Greg coughed, hemmed, hawed and said he'd have to see a hundred pages before he offered a contract. Long story short, it was published and did better than any other book I've published. Not the big breakout book, but nice respectable sales. Of course it went out of print, and in those days who knew to save digital files? Even if I had done so they'd be on a diskette and difficult to access today. So I have paid a company to scan all 300+ pages. Just finished proofing the galleys, and it should be available for e-readers soon.
I suspect I'm as proud of this book as any I've done. I wrote it with Libbie's journals spread out before me, and yet I tried to give her a voice that was real to me, not the public voice she assumed in her zeal to make sure Autie went down in history as a hero. Read an except here http://www.judyalter.com/e-books.
In proofing this book, I was surprised at how much of me there is in Libbie and how much of my attitude toward my marriage, then some ten years in the past. And I was also surprised at the change in my writing style. Libbie is not clumsy, don't get me wrong, and when I began to read it, I thought, "Darn, this is better than I thought." But I also noticed some slight changes in style--I've learned not to repeat similar words too close together; I've learned to avoid what I now think is that awkward construction, "It was then that ...." I've learned to omit unnecessary words to a greater extent.
Don't let me discourage you from reading this. I got some nice comments on Facebook about it, and I still think it's the most human approach to what I see as Libbie's dilemma--marriage to Custer was not al happy romps across the prairie, and I tried to capture that realistically. This is BSP--blatant self-promotion: I think you'll like Libbie if you haven't read it before. I'll post on Facebook when it's live and available to order.
Watch next for Sundance, Butch and Me, my take on Etta Place's life with the Hole In The Wall Gang and her romance with The Sundance Kid. It's no accident that in the title, Butch Cassidy comes between Sundance and Etta. Fiction after all can suppose, imagine, and take liberties. Want a preview of my approach? Read the short story, "Reunion," in Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories, available as an e-book for 99 cents. http://www.amazon.com/Ellen-Learns-Dance-Other-Stories/dp/0977179737/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331599197&sr=1-2
Enough bragging, but I'm excited to see these older works available to readers once again. Hmmm, twenty years is older? My, how time flies.

Feeling better with lots to do

One of our authors--or one I hope will turn out to be one of ours--wrote me a few days again saying she'd like to do a health memoir and chronicle her battle against Parkinson's. I replied that I'd have to think about it--I have seen friends write not very successful health memoirs--heart transplant, prostatic cancer, etc. and I suspect none of us much want to read about poor health. It's as though if we don't read about it, it won't happen to us. 'Nough said. Suffice it to say, I'm through writing--and thinking--about being sick.

Except for one thing--and that's food (I can always write about food!). You know you should eat to keep your strength up but nothing sounds good. Marcia from El Paso commented on my blog today saying her grandmother used to do a couple of eggs over-easy and than mix bread pieces into them. I got to thinking about my mom's "sick foods"--milk toast was a standby, but she also used to crumble saltines in a bowl, add pepper and butter, and pour hot milk over them. So that was my lunch. Not bad--the pepper is essential--but I don't think I'll be eating it again soon. This afternoon I got up from a nap ravenously hungry and ate one of those small cans of apricot halves, and tonight I roasted cubed sweet potato and new potatoes. It was okay but not as good as the night Kristine fixed it in Austin. It got me to thinking, though, about what people's moms fixed to make the feel better, and I'd love some suggestions. Maybe there's even a column there, but then, as I said, who wants to read about being sick. Oh, do I ever remember being sent to bad with a bottle of ginger ale when I was sick!


While I was falling asleep last night I dreamt the darndest historical novel--about Libbie Custer and her lifelong effort to make a hero out of her Autie (actually that novel has lingered in the back of my mind for sometime and I have no idea why it came alive last night). Now I don't know if she solved all the mysteries on her plate in one book or if it was a series. Some of you may remember that I wrote a fictional biography of Libbie back in the early '90s and so know--or used to know--quite a bit about her. Her long years of widowhood have always fascinated me, and there were some strange things she could be investigating, beyond of course Marcus Reno, though she certainly fought against Reno's effort to avoid blame for deserting General Custer at the battlefield. That tangled web has been studied and studied but what about Custer as a womanizer? Libbie would want to fight rumors about the New York society matron in whose salon her husband spent too much time or even the American Indian woman with the blue-eyed, red-haired baby that she'd once seen at a reservation? And of course Libbie could put herself in serious danger along the way. Have I just given away the plot of the novel? It would take lots of serious research but I might just do that someday.
Meantime I'm reading Lorna Barrett's "Murder is Binding" and may take a whack at that scene from No Neighborhood for Old Women that has settled itself into my brain. And today I've spent tackling the stack of cooking magazines on my desk. I read a new one, mark a few recipes, and then put it in the stack. Eventually I go back and go through more carefully, being heartless about clipping every recipe I might want and discarding the others. So it's not been an unproductive day.
Interesting (at least to me) is that I've used this time to try to fight my [strong] tendency toward obsession, telling myself TCU Press won't collapse if I don't go there for almost two weeks, the dog, the cat and I won't starve if I don't do a big grocery shopping. This last is hardest--I have to convince myself that the neighbors won't begin to point at my house if I don't get fresh porch plants. But a trip to the nursery is on my list for tomorrow morning It was 81 today, sunny and gorgeous--a perfect top-down day! And I missed it. Maybe that's why my mind is on bright, blooming flowers.