Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 76

"Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie

I read this once before, as a teen -- it's probably the first Agatha Christie mystery I encountered.  I'm not a huge fan of hers, but this particular story charms me for some reason.  I really enjoyed the 2017 movie version (review here), but it'd been probably twenty years since I last read this and I couldn't remember enough of it to tell just how much the movie changed.  I did remember the solution to the case, though.  

The story, just in case you're somehow unawar...

"Guns of the Timberlands" by Louis L'Amour

Man, oh man, is this a well-crafted story.  I am in awe.  This book is almost depressingly good.

I say that because I'm working on revisions of my latest western, Dancing and Doughnuts, and I'm feeling very critical about my own storytelling efforts right now.  And when I read something so tautly plotted, with superb characterizations and action scenes I can never dream of matching... I sometimes get depressed.  Not always.  Sometimes, I get inspired.  And, actual...

"Anne of Green Gables, My Daughter, and Me" by Lorilee Craker

I got this book from my mom for my birthday a couple months ago.  My mom and I sort of discovered the Anne books together when I was like six or seven years old.  Maybe eight.  Anyway, a friend of hers told he we would love them, and that friend was right.  Mom read the books aloud to us, we watched the Sullivan movies over and over and over, and they generally informed my childhood about as much as the Laura Ingalls Wilder books did.  Anne Shirley and Laura Ingalls w...

Revealing the "Dancing and Doughnuts" Cover

Without further ado, here it is!!!!!


Do you love it?  I love it.  It's from the same artist who did the cover for Cloaked and my short story "No Match for a Good Story" and I think it continues the look of my series so perfectly.

What's this book about?  Well, someone's been spiking the apple cider at a Kansas dance hall owned by a family with twelve daughters.  No one in the small town has been able to find the culprit.  A hungry Civil War veteran d...

My Kids' Take on the Greatest Showman Book Tag

My three kids, Sam (10), Jellybean (8), and Mad Dog (6), also love The Greatest Showman.  And they love books.  When they saw my tag post, they decided they wanted to fill it out too!  So here are their answers to the prompts :-)  (My husband Cowboy got in on the fun once in a while too.)


(They helped me choose all these gifs too.)


~’The Greatest Show’: Name a book that’s as entertaining as a circus

(Sam) The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
(Jellybean)  The Ghast...

"The Greatest Showman" Book Tag

Eva over at Coffee, Classics, and Craziness tagged me with this tag that I believe she also created!  She knows how much I love The Greatest Showman (2017), so she knew I'd love doing this tag :-)  Thanks, Eva!

Rules are:
answer the questionstag whoever you want using her graphic is optional, but recommended


~’The Greatest Show’: Name a book that’s as entertaining as a circus

Dragons at Crumbling Castle and Other Stories  by Terry Pratchett is EXTREMELY fun.  There's a won...

Want to be in on the Cover Reveal for My New Book?

The cover for my next book, Dancing and Doughnuts, is allllllllmost ready for the big reveal.  Like I did for Cloaked, I want to have some of you help me share it with the world by doing a cover reveal on Tuesday, May 29. 

In case you haven't heard me talking about this book already, Dancing and Doughnuts is my next Once Upon a Western story.  It's a retelling of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" set in post-Civil War Kansas, and I'll be sharing more about it d...

"The Broken Gun" by Louis L'Amour

Friends are awesome.  Eva S. from Coffee, Classics, and Craziness has a brother who loves Louis L'Amour books.  He knows, from her, that I'm a fan of Alan Ladd (if you understand "fan" to mean "fanatic"), so he told Eva to tell me about this book.  Because L'Amour dedicated it to Alan Ladd and Ladd's best friend William Bendix.  It was published a couple years after they both died, and I really felt while reading that I could see and hear Alan Ladd as the main charact...

"The Blue Castle" by L. M. Montgomery (again)

While working on the revisions for Dancing and Doughnuts, my creative well ran dry over the weekend.  Happens from time to time, when I'm using more creative juices than I'm taking in.  Usually it's a gradual slow-down, but sometimes I just stutter to a stop, like this weekend.  So on Monday, I thought, "I've been wanting to re-read The Blue Castle for a while.  I'll just start it today and then I can savor it over the course of the week while I'm visiting my parents....

"A Pioneer Woman's Memoir: Based on the Journal of Arabella Clemens Fulton" edited by Judith E. Greenberg and Helen Carey McKeever

Do you ever get the urge to sell your house and pack your most useful things into a covered wagon and head for the western horizon in search of a new and better life?

I don't exactly get that urge, but sometimes I get this yearning for it.  Like, I wish that I wished I was a pioneer, or something?  Because wow, they were astonishingly brave and intrepid and hardy.  Maybe this is why I'm fascinated with astronauts too.  I wish I knew if I was that brave and intrepid and hard...