Hardwired

Writing

My Current Reads

At the suggestion of Scott Slinker (https://twitter.com/scott_slinker) who highly recommended The Trail Drivers of Texas, I immediately purchased the book and read it in three days. In Scott’s own words, “Incredible first-hand accounts of the real west and the hardships and experiences they faced.” I was fascinated to learn about the early cowpunchers and their lives on the range. These were the men who fathered the cattle industry in Texas.

From the cattle drivers who faced danger on the plains, including warring Native American tribes, my curiosity led me to Quanah Parker and the town named after the Comanche chief. Quanah, Texas, is located in Hardeman County and is 8 miles south of the Red River which forms the Oklahoma-Texas state line. During one of his visits to Quanah, Chief Parker bestowed his blessing on the town. 

“May the Great Spirit smile on you little town, may the rain fall in season, and the warmth of the sunshine after the rain, may the earth yield bountifully. May peace and contentment be with your children forever.”

Searching for a more in-depth account of Quanah life, I bought Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne. Other books I’ve read about the Comanche chief have scratched the surface, but Gwynne’s book expounds on two astonishing stories. One traces the rise and fall of the most powerful Indian tribe in American history, and the second, the epic saga of  the most famous Indian captive—a pioneer woman named Cynthia Ann Parker.

Cynthia was born in Illinois in 1827, before the Parker family moved to Texas in 1833 and built Fort Parker east of Waco. In 1836, the fort was attacked by Comanche warriors and young Cynthia was taken captive. She spent twenty-four years with the tribe and during that time married Peta Nocona, a Comanche chief. They had two sons and a daughter. Their eldest son was named Quanah. Cynthia had several opportunities to leave the Comanches but refused. At one point, she was abducted by Texas Rangers and returned to her white family, but was unhappy and struggled to adapt to the white man’s world. A number of times she tried to escape back to her Comanche tribe, but failed. Her story is one of hardship but, like many pioneers of the time, also one of happiness. 

Gwynne’s exhilarating book covers the many wars fought by the Comanches over four decades, encompasses Spanish colonialism, the American Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads: the history that shaped Texas and the United States.

Trail blazers still on my mind, my literary interest circled back to Fort Worth and led to my recent purchase of Lost Fort Worth by Mike Nichols. Mr. Nichols is a fifth-generation Texan who was born near the Fort Worth Stockyards. He worked for the local newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, for twenty-three years. At age 62, he began to chronicle the history of Fort Worth from his seat on a bicycle with his camera slung around his neck. In his own words, “I went to work for the Star-Telegram, traveled all seven continents, and I came back home thinking that Fort Worth is a really interesting place.”

Lost Fort Worth synopsis: “Fort Worth began as a frontier Army camp and grew into a city as cattle drives, railroads, the stockyards and packing plants, oil, and national defense drove its economy. During the tremendous growth, the landscape and cultural imprint of the city changed drastically, and much of Cowtown was lost to history.” 

But in Lost Fort Worth, we can “Join author Mike Nichols on a stroll down Memory Lane from the cattle pens on the North Side to the Battle of Buttermilk Junction on the South Side, from Randol’s mill on the East Side to the Army’s Camp Bowie on the West Side. Witness the birth of Western swing music and the death of a cloud dancer. See mansions of the well-heeled and saloons of the well-armed. Meet Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Clyde Barrow and Rube Burrow, Sisters of Charity and ladies of the evening. Along the way you’ll also pass four trolley parks, three World War I airfields, two gunfighters, one flamboyant preacher, one serial killer, and one very short subway that carries readers back in time to Lost Fort Worth.”

After reading Nichols’s book, I wanted to learn more about the author and Fort Worth’s history, so I logged onto his blog, Hometown by Handlebar: https://hometownbyhandlebar.com/

Sadly, Mike Nichols passed away on March 5, 2023, at the age 74 of complications from cancer.

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Book Reviews

I appreciate all the book reviews I’ve received over the years for my Darcy McClain and Bullet Thriller series. But for a moment, I’d like to concentrate on one in particular that caught me by surprise. 

An acquaintance saw a print ad I had recently run in a local bulletin and was delighted to learn I’m an author. He quickly followed with, “I used to be an avid reader, but since my stroke, my attention span has never been the same. I find it hard to stay focused.” But he assured me he would buy Brainwash and do his best to read the book. 

A week later we bumped into each other again. He appeared excited to see me and I wondered why. Sure, we know one another, but he certainly had something on his mind and was eager to share it. With a broad smile on his face, almost bordering on a smug grin, he said, “This is a great book, and I’m back to reading like before my stroke. I couldn’t put the book down.” He was halfway through Brainwash and had purchased Gadgets so as not to break his momentum. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Not about the book sales, but that the series had helped someone in a most unexpected way. 

Three weeks passed and I hadn’t seen him. I grew a bit concerned and asked about him from mutual friends. He was on vacation visiting family in his hometown in North Dakota. When we met up again, he had read Genocide and was almost done reading CLON-X. That impressed me, but what touched me the most? He had a thank-you gift for me. And what better than a book from a local author in his home state – Lori L. Orser’s Spooky Creepy North Dakota. What a fitting title right in time for Halloween! 

I read it in two days. I loved the haunted stories, but, as I’ve never visited either of the Dakotas, I also found the historical facts about locations and people informative. I had both states on my bucket list and all reservations made for visits. Then Covid hit, derailing those vacation plans. Both states are now back on the list. 

A parting comment. In Lori’s book she states: “Like most places, North Dakota has plenty of what would be called urban legends in a more populated state. Here, we call them rural legends. These are stories with only one source, and no one to confirm or disprove them, but whose authenticity as history can only be considered as dubious!”

Her statement regarding authenticity as history certainly hit home, harkening back to my blog post titled “Fact, Fiction, or Contradiction?”

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Blue Angel

So far, every novel in the Darcy McClain and Bullet Thriller Series has come to life in pretty much the same way. I start with a spark of an idea. Often, these sparks come years in advance of the actual novel. When they do, I stow them away for future use. For example, chapter one of book four flared to life in 2003 during a walk with my first giant schnauzer, Shotz. She found a trash bag in a creek in Keller, Texas. The spark for CLON-X.

In many cases, an ending soon follows. While the last chapter may change – and usually for the better by the time the plot unfolds – not once has the concept for the opening chapters been altered in any major way. Each one has set the tone for the plot to unfold. 

The mind of a writer is an interesting phenomenon. Who troops through an arroyo in Taos, New Mexico, picking up trash left behind by those who disrespect the land, and ends up collecting, among other things, a filthy floppy disk? It isn’t just a disk, but the impetus for an entire book, Brainwash. 

Or why can’t the author simply attend a fun event like the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Festival without conjuring up an explosion, blowing a hot air balloon out of the sky with a laser no less? Gadgets is born. 

While on vacation in San Francisco and snapping photos of the Palace of Fine Arts, the author envisions this as the ideal place for a murder, Genocide.

A weekend getaway to an upscale hotel in Dallas to celebrate an anniversary becomes the perfect location to stage a massive fire to cover the true reason for the blaze. And there’s the spark for book five, Blue Angel.

Synopsis for Blue Angel

Darcy’s best friend, Samantha Logan, is lured out of retirement by the CIA for a Special Op. When Sam doesn’t show up in Dallas as planned, Darcy senses that Sam is in trouble and begins to track her whereabouts. Her desperate hunt leads Darcy on a footrace across Europe, always trailing steps behind, until she resorts to help from her canine partner, Bullet.

To complicate matters, the CIA is concerned that Darcy and Bullet will blow Sam’s cover and expose the secret operation, so the Agency deploys field agents to stalk them. As if that weren’t enough, Darcy’s former FBI partner, Dan, is worried that both women might be in grave danger, so he’s shadowing them as well.

Thrown back into the environment in which she was raised, Darcy learns the shocking truth about her childhood. These startling revelations shake her adult world, and will change her life forever.

My Favorite Question

The one I’m hearing a lot lately. When is Blue Angel coming out? I actually love the question because it means you’re eager to know more about what Darcy and Bullet are getting up to. So now you have your first hint. Want to track the progress of getting their latest adventure into your hands? That’s all going to be in my monthly newsletter, which will also feature new blog posts. To subscribe, go to patkrapf.com. I promise not to spam your inbox. You’ll only hear from me monthly. And you can opt out at any time. But, of course, I hope you’ll stay. 

 

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