Dac Crossley's Western Blog

Talking with Velda

Velda Brotherton is an award-winning novelist and columnist, with roots in the west. It's a pleasure to have her visit my blog.

Velda – You’re an accomplished writer in several genres, with some serious awards to your credit. Am I right – you have a love for westerns, western history and romances?

I love westerns and western history. As for romances, that was more a way to get published than anything else. It goes back to the first time I actually met a real New York editor at Western Writers of America Conference. He liked my idea for a book, but after reading it later he wrote and suggested that since my protagonist was a woman, it should be a romance. What to do? I had never even read a romance. Something I probably shouldn't admit. I wanted to keep his attention, so I asked a good friend and fellow writer who was already published in western romances to help me turn this book into a romance. To make a long story short, my love for western history has enabled me to write and have published seven western historical romances.

How has growing up in Arkansas influenced your choice of genre?

Actually, I was born and started school in Arkansas, but I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. A great town with a western history that fascinated me even back then. Add to that a Dad who was born in Texas and who has Cherokee blood flowing through his veins, and I became fascinated with how people dealt with cross-cultures back in the early days. You'll find this theme in several of my books.

How did you decide to become a writer?

I don't know if how is as important as why. Deciding to be a writer, I think is done for us. Gowing up I thought something was wrong with me. I could spend hours alone making up stories in my head, and I'd be so engrossed in those stories it was as if I had lived them. It wasn't until many years later when I became acquainted with other writers that I learned that almost all of them had experienced the same thing.

I began to do some writing as a young mother, but found that with a full time job and raising two children, it might be best if I concentrated on that and left the writing for later. I would write most of the night, then found I couldn't function properly with my job or my children. So I packed it up until the day came when I looked up and found the time. We had moved back to Arkansas, I didn't go to work outside the home, what with gardening, raising lots of animals, canning all summer, it was best I remain on the homestead. My children were grown and busy working on their own lives. The voices returned full blown one rainy Sunday nearly 30 years ago, and I've been writing steadily ever since.
 
“Velda” is an unusual name. Is it an old family name?

No, my mother swears she found it in a baby name book. My middle name is Elizabeth, and it is a family name. Mother's best friend had a baby at the same time as she did, so being young and silly, they named us Velda and Nelda. We live about 15 miles apart now and still laugh at our mother's for doing that. At least there aren't very many with my name.
 
They tell me that women buy most of the books sold today. Should we be writing fiction designed with women in mind?

Probably. Look at all the best selling writers who write about female protagonists. James Patterson, David Morrell and I'm sure there are more if my brain would dredge them up.
 

Well, Dac, I've written on and on answering your marvelous questions, but we talked about me writing how I was able to begin publishing my western historical romances after the debacle in New York. When the western romance line closed at Penguin I dabbled around and had a couple more published with another house, but wasn't happy, so I decided to do some regional historical books. For years I'd written a historical column for a few newspapers in the area and had a lot of good interviews. So I attended the Women Writing the West Conference where a new publisher was looking for that type of work, and as he'd been in the audience when I accepted my award for Fly With the Mourning Dove, I didn't have much trouble selling my idea to him. The Boston Mountains, Lost in the Ozarks came out a couple of years ago from Old American Publishing. It is still available there.

The secret, I think, is to continue to write the books of your heart and go to conferences where you can meet the people who might want to publish them. I'm not a fan of writing query letters and waiting three to six months to hear something. Nor do I want an agent---I've had three---who has twenty or thirty other clients and might submit my book once or twice in a year.

I like direct publishing to Kindle for my back list of books, but prefer to find publishers for new books. However, if I absolutely can't sell one, I would consider direct publishing at Kindle. The money is good if you promote a lot, which is something you have to do with any publisher today, anyway.

There's not enough time for all the things I'd like to get done, and that's just the way I like it. Thanks for having me, Dac. It was fun.

(Check out Velda's website at www.veldabrotherton.com.)

Will the Desert Bloom?

I’m guessing that the desert will bloom nicely this spring, if indeed it hasn’t already begun. All those grass fires in Texas last summer might do it. Burning off the grass grass releases those colorful little annuals. Many of them are legumes, with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots. As the grass grows it will benefit from the nitrate supplied by those wildflowers.

If the desert gets a little rain…

Historically, grass fires impeded the growth of woody plants. Periodic fires kept the grasslands alive. Fire suppression is one of the factors that has allowed mesquite to become established in former grassland areas. When you do get a fire, it’s a big one. Like we had in 2010.

Rainfall tapers off as you proceed west in Texas. The 100th Meridian (about the edge of the caprock) marks a line usually recognized as the edge of the 20 inches of annual rainfall. Beyond that, farming is impossible without irrigation. But given an inch or so of spring rain, the desert annuals burst forth.

Is it blooming this year? Wish I was there to see…

Dac Crossley
March 21, 2012 (welcome to Spring)

“Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with will make you lose your way.” – Francis Bacon.

Return of the Lone Ranger

Somebody sent me a publicity picture from an upcoming Lone Ranger movie – with Johnny Depp playing Tonto. I read that the movie is slated for release in 2013. Johnny Depp?

When I was a tad the Lone Ranger was all the fad, as Fess Parker’s Davy Crockett became later. Some of us will remember Saturday afternoon at the Rialto theater, a 15-episode Lone Ranger serial. “Hi-Yo Silver!”

The radio version ran for about ten years or so, and certainly helped to popularize the Texas Rangers throughout the US. The Lone Ranger embodied all that was good about the West and the Rangers. Although his motto clearly wasn’t “Shoot first and ask questions later.”

The Lone Ranger program didn’t hurt in Texas, either, with Ma Ferguson in the governor’s chair. Ma fired all the old Rangers and then replaced them with her own choices (see Mike Cox, Time of the Rangers. Volume II. 2009. Forge). A sad episode. The widespread popularity of the radio program did a lot for the image of the Texas Rangers.

On radio, the part of the Lone Ranger was portrayed by a series of deep-voiced actors. I particularly remember Brace Beemer playing that part. I had an entomology professor at Kansas, Ray Beamer, who was a big fan. The radio program came on at five. Ray’s wife Lucy would pick him up on campus with the car radio turned on. She’d drive home and go inside and get the Lone Ranger on the kitchen radio. Then, Ray would dash inside during a commercial. Ray didn’t miss a thing.

Jay Silverheels was the Tonto we all remember from the TV series. He was a Canadian Mohawk and skilled at Lacrosse (which gave him the name “Silverheels). A stunt man and later an actor, Silverheels played bit parts in a range of western movies such as True Grit and The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. With Clayton Moore playing the part of the Lone Ranger, they graced many a TV set in the 1950s. A deep friendship developed between the two.

Thanks, Bob G., for resurrecting a happy childhood memory. The Lone Ranger rides again!

Who was that masked man?

Dac Crossley
March 13, 2012

“Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.” – William Faulkner.

Setting the Clock Ahead

February 1942, and our country was at war. Americans were asked to set their clocks ahead one hour – for War Time.
We documented the event with the family Kodak. Dad set the hands forward. We went to bed early.

We of a certain age can remember the uncertainty of the winter of 1942 – our armed forces undermanned and under-armed. Friends and neighbors going away to fight in the Pacific. Little actions that we could take – War Stamps for a quarter dollar, paper drives, scrap metal drives, even setting ahead the clock – gave us the sense of doing something, however small, for the war effort.

War Time was intended to allow us more daylight hours after work, so that we could plant Victory Gardens. We faced food shortages, what with so many sway at war. I wonder, now, did Victory Gardens help? Or were they another small way to participate in World War II?

War Time is still with us as Daylight Savings Time, and it’s due to arrive this week. Seems to me that DST is the norm now – we have it eight months of the year.

Dac Crossley
March 8, 2012

“A simple measure of a country is to look at how many want in…and how many want out.” – Tony Blair

March 6 --Remember the Alamo

Early Sunday morning, March 6, 1836, at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas. A warm night after last week’s freezing temperatures. A full moon cast a feeble glow through cloudy skies. Colonel Travis went to bed late, unaware that the assault was already under way.

Five a.m. and bugler Gonzales of the Zapadores blew the charge. “Adelante!” It was all over by 7:00. The slaughter handed us the slogan that rings until this day.

Suppose it had been different. Suppose one of those Tennessee long-rifle mountaineers had managed to kill Santa Anna from a distance. Would the entire Mexican effort collapse? Santa Anna was the kingpin, as Sam Houston proved at San Jacinto.

Or suppose Santa Anna had listened to his officers and refrained his bugler from sounding the “Deguello.” No mercy. If he’d accepted the Texan’s surrender, and sent them back to the States – would the Texas revolution have withered on the vine?

Suppose the Alamo had simply been bypassed. Leaving a small force to keep the Texans pinned up, Santa Anna might have raced ahead and captured the infant government of Texas. That would have ended it all. Andrew Jackson might hope for better, but he would not bring the US into the battle.

It often happens – the fate of men and nations hangs on the whims of one egomaniac.

Dac Crossley
March 6, 2012. 176 years later.
(And happy birthday to Paige C. and Kevin L.)

“Ambition is a dream with a V-8 engine.” – Elvis Presley

The Case for the Museum

“You’ve started writing popular fiction. Why don’t you write some articles about the importance of natural history museums? Why it’s important to know the names of living organisms?”

I was having lunch with Alan C., a most distinguished ecologist and a good friend. He set before me a difficult task – explain to laymen why we do what we do. I don’t think I’m up to it.

I’m curator of mites and ticks in the Georgia Museum of Natural History, a prominent one in the southeastern US with more than 5 million items in its collections. I oversee mites on slides and in preservatives. Each specimen has its own critical information with it – where it came from, when, who found it – the data that give it value. I try to make sure that the mite specimens are properly stored and cataloged.

Museums such as ours exist to preserve the natural and cultural heritage of Georgia – plants and animals, fossils, anthropologic items. Of course, the museum is a teaching resource for our schools and colleges. Teachers may check out special boxes of plants and animals for classroom use. Museum exhibits help to educate, and they promote environmental stewardship.

Still, the museum’s real value lies beyond its exhibits and lectures. It is the scientific collections themselves that are important. They are irreplaceable. I wish I could put a dollar figure on their value. I cannot. In fact, when I send slides of mites by US mail I declare “Scientific Specimen. No Commercial Value.” Doesn’t sound good, does it? Yet, time and again, museum collections have yielded the answers to vexing biological problems.

Scientific collections, housed in museums, a resource beyond monetary value – does that make sense to you? Is their worth only to be expressed in dollars? What do you think?

Dac Crossley
March 1, 2012

“In a thousand years, archaeologists will dig up tanning beds and think we fried people as punishment.” – Olivia Wilde.