Life gets in the way

My youngest grandson, Kegan David Alter, when he opened

the package of Star Wars figures I sent for his birthday. That is life at its best.

I did not work on the great American novel at all today--or yesterday. My excuse is that life gets in the way. Too many things to do. Today it was errands, menu planning for a friend's b'day dinner this weekend (a challenge since she and her husband are gluten- and dairy-free) and for Easter, when I think there will be nine of us. Menu planning is one of the joys of my life--it's like cooking in anticipation, and I relish it. I won't detail here but will report if some of my experimental recipes turn out well--liked naked (no tortilla) chicken tacos with tomatillo sauce, or vinegar-based coleslaw. I went by the office, then to CVS to buy plastic eggs and jelly beans (and ended up spending $45--how does one do that for plastic eggs and jelly beans?). Then off to buy a pair of canvas shoes to wear around the house--threw the old ones away with great ceremony. They were down to their last threads, the soles worn through in places, and they smelled bad. Also bought myself a pair of Easy Spirit walking shoes.
Tonight Easter has claimed my attention--spent a good while filling 36 large plastic eggs with jelly beans to drop off at the church for Saturday's egg hunt. Christian and I will be taking Jacob, along with a picnic lunch. Then I got small--really small--Easter packages ready for the out-of-town grandchildren, a b'day present for Lisa, and cards for various other people. I think that all was the $45 but I now have a lifetime supply of unwrinkled tissue paper. I don't know about you, but I save it and when I pull it out of the bag to use in a gift, it's so wrinkled I'm embarrassed. Got lovely pastel shades today.
Last night's program on Elmer Kelton for the Burleson Mayor's Club was a success but with a glitch. I reviewed Elmer's life and accomplishments for the audience of about 50, stressing the way being the son and grandson of working cowboys and then an agricultural journalist had shaped his approach to the people of West Texas and the land. Jim Lee took over to lead a discussion of The Time It Never Rained--only nobody discussed and the poor man worked really hard for 30 minutes. I maintain it was because the facility--the Burleson campus of Hill and Texas Wesleyan colleges--is in a former church building, and the lecture hall was the sanctuary. There we were with soaring beamed ceilings, beautiful stained glass, church pews--who discusses in church?
I'm hoping for a better outcome tomorrow when I talk to three junior high groups at a Burleson school about my novel, Sam Houston is My Hero. But I know from my oldest granddaughter, kids her age aren't into history--they're reading The Hunger Games and Stephanie Meyer (two of the books most often challenged on censoring lists). As Maddie's mom once told me, if I could make Texas history into a vampire story with paranormal elements and love gone awry, she'd be all over it. I keep telling myself I'll pretend I'm talking to Maddie. I emailed her for advice--shoot, I even need wardrobe advice so they won't think I'm an old lady (which I am)--but she hasn't come up with anything. Tomorrow will be a long day but, I hope, a pleasant one.
And then maybe I'll get back to writing--but wait, there's the Easter egg hunt Saturday and Saturday night's dinner to cook . . . .

Elmer Kelton

Raise  your hand if you've read a book by Elmer Kelton. Raise both hands if you've read The Time It Never Rained. That novel was the choice this year for the Mayor's Book Club in Burleson, a city adjoining Fort Worth, and Jim Lee and I presented a program tonight. Elmer, who died in 2009, was a Texas treasure, a man who wrote novels about the American West that weren't westerns. And The Time It Never Rained has been called one of the dozen or so best novels written by an American in the twentieth century.
Elmer was ranch born and raised but he was a bookish child with poor eyesight, and he never made a hand. HIs younger brothers could rope much better. His idea of watching the herd was to keep one eye on the cattle and the other on the book he'd propped up in his saddle. As he neared high school graduation, he told his father he wanted to study journalism, and in his words his father gave him a look "that could have killed Johnson grass" and said, "That's the trouble with you kids. You don't want to work for a living." Elmer studied at UT, his education interrupted by WWII, from which he brought home an Austrian bride and her son. He began publishing in Ranch Romances, a popular magazine, and then writing pulp, formulaic novels for Ballentine Books. In the 1970s he broke out of the stereotype with The Day the Cowboys Quit, a novel about the cowboy strike at Tascosa in the 1880s. As in all of Elmer's books, the research behind the story was thorough and impeccable. Other major novels during the 1970s included Stand Proud, The Man Who Rode Midnight, The Wolf and the Buffalo, The Good Old Boys, and, of course, The Time It Never Rained, all published by Doubleday.
For forty years, while writing novels, Elmer worked as an agricultural journalist, most of those years as editor of Livestock Weekly, the weekly bible for West Texas ranchers. He traveled to auctions and sat in coffee shops and absorbed the people and the land. It was his country, and he spoke their language. He said once he wrote Time because it became harder and harder to write a story about the drought. There were only so many ways he could say, "It isn't raining." He wrote the novel but New York publishers rejected as a quiet agrarian novel; in the early 1970s, he rewrote it completely and it was published.
Elmer liked to put characters in a time of change and see how they react. In Time, Charlie Flagg, a rancher getting on in years, sees change all around him. The seven-year-drought of the 1950s causes him to sell his cattle and raise sheep; then sell his sheep and raise goats. He loses his leased land and has to take a mortgage on what he owned free and clear. Others are taking government aid, but Charlie refuses. He had always been the patron, but relationships between Anglos and Mexicans are changing. His son leaves the ranch for the rodeo circuit, marries a floozy from Dallas. The fire has gone out of Charlie's own marriage. And yet he clings to what he knows is right; he plods ahead day by dogged day. This is a story of West Texas and the kind of people who survived in that dry, unforgiving, and unpredictable land, the land that Elmer knew so well. No spoilers here except to say that Elmer didn't believe in tying things up in neat little packages. That's not, he explained to me once, how life happens.
If you haven't read Time, maybe you saw the Tommy Lee Jones movie of The Good Old Boys. That book too is a good place to start dipping into Elmer's sixty-plus novels. TCU Press has reprint editions of many of the major ones (1.800.826.8911 or http://www.prs.tcu.edu/).
Elmer Kelton died in August 2009. I miss him still. There's not a book festival, historical meeting, or literary gathering where I don't still expect to see him. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around a world without Elmer. In tribute to that feeling, Jim Lee and I edited Elmer Kelton: Essays and Memories, now available from TCU Press. Elmer was one fine writer and one great and humble man.

Elmer Kelton, writing deadlines, and hot weather

Today I went to a meeting at TCU Press about the Elmer Kelton titles we reprint and those we are about to sign a renewal of rights for. Elmer, for those who don't know, was a beloved novelist who wrote Texas history, from before the Alamo to the present, in a way no one else could, with a true Texas voice that no one could ever imitate. Born in the sand hills of Crane County, he grew up on stories of cowboys (his father was a ranch foreman), and he wove these into his books, along with a rich and well-researched knowledge of history. Probably his classic is The Time It Never Rained, a novel about the seven-year drought of the 1950s. One critic called it "one of the dozen or so best novels written by an American in the 20th Century." Elmer died last August, and we wondered, suspected, hoped there would be a bump of interest in his work. Sales prove that to be true. And today a friend sent me a link to Amazon.com that shows that a new copy of the small literary biography of Elmer I did in the 1990s may now be had for $263. Wow! Elmer, a perfect gentleman, always expressed his profound appreciation to TCU Press for keeping his works in print, and I wanted to shout at him that his books had kept TCU Press alive. He wrote, if I'm correct, about 60 books. A true marvel. If  you haven't read him, make it a point to do so. And as a person, we all miss him mightily. Gentle, kind, soft spoken, self-demurring with that politeness of a cowboy that always seemed a little more uncomfortable around women. But not his Austrian-born wife of many years, whom he adored. Watch for a festschrift, a small book honoring him, from TCU Press in the spring: Elmer Kelton: Memories and Essays.
Jungle Red Writers, a blog written by several members of Sisters in Crime, has a challenge out to members and authors to write one page a day before turning on the internet. It's not quite something I can follow--I go for the internet first thing in the morning--but it has inspired me this week to write a thousand words a day on my current novel. In fact, I think today I wrote about 1500. And I'm following that old advice--just keep writing. Worry about what sense it makes when you go back through for the first edit.
The 100+ temperatures continue in Texas--hot, muggy, and fairly discouraging. My basil is shriveled no matter how much I water it. But relief is finally on the way--who would believe that predicted highs in the mid-90s sound wonderful. But they do. By Sunday night or Monday. Meantime I have a spoiled dog because he spends all his time indoors. So do I as much as possible.

Sushi and friends

Had dinner with good friends Elizabeth (Beth to the rest of the world but it's a long story) and Weldon at the Tokyo Cafe tonight. It's always too long between our visits. Elizabeth was a work-study student in my office some fifteen years ago, and we have remained friends ever since. When she began dating Weldon, I admitted him cautiously but a now as fond of him as of her, and they make each othe very happy. Elizabeth has developed a great careeer in specialized publishing (for accountants) and is now teaching yoga, including to me.We had a great visit, and I thank them for yet another after-the-fact birthday dinner. I tried to post the sushi on Weight Watchers and of couse the kind I had--Seattle Sunrise, with cucumber, cream cheese and smoked salmon in a soy wrap--wasn't listed. So I fudged.

Today was a top-down day--haircut, grocery, dinner--I put the top down on all my small trips, delighted that it now seems to work fine. (Please keep your fingers crossed.) I hate to leave it with the top down when it malfunctions because I'm afraid someone will steal my handicapped tag. Tonight when I got in the car, the temperature thing read 101--now I know that wasn't true! By the time I got home it was 89. A few minutes ago I started hearing a strange noise--looked out the window and it's raining, fairly hard. No thunder, no lightning, just plain steady rain. We have been blessed with first light rains early in the week and then an apparently violent storm that I slept through a couple of nights ago, complete with a tornado warning. We need it and welcome it, but Central Texas needs it worse. They're comparing this to the 1950s drought which prompted Elmer Kelton's award-winning novel, The Time It Never Rained.

Haven't down much constructive today, so I'm going to finish the cookbook chapter I stopped in the middle of.