Sarah Black's Blog: Book Report - Posts Tagged "the-legend-of-the-apache-kid"
Meet Johnny Bravo
I’ve been in love with this kid, Johnny Bravo, since he rustled some goats and sold them for cabrito across the border in Mexico in my book Lawless. Lawless is one of two stories I wrote about Colton and Diego, hard-headed and difficult men who were always screwing and screwing up. Johnny Bravo was something else again, and he’s been sitting in the back of my mind, patiently waiting his turn. When I wrote his story, The Legend of the Apache Kid, he surprised me for being smarter than I remembered when I first met him at age 16. The scene below is from Lawless, when Johnny first makes his appearance.
Late afternoon in Arizona, and the light turned the landscape a strange, brilliant gold, making the tumbled sandstone and scrubby brush beautiful just for a moment. Colton was feeling the light warm his face, happy to be in this peaceful valley with Diego, who was finally in a good mood. He’d taken all the tags off Samuel’s new clothes, folded them and put them in the trailer, drank a beer and made burger patties, studied the goat in the pen and sat on the porch steps, watching Colton wrestle with the barbeque pit.
Colton nearly singed his eyebrows off with an excess of lighter fluid when he lit the charcoal, but then he sat down next to Diego on the steps, felt his warm thigh snug against his. Diego handed him a beer and they sat together in the golden afternoon light. This was good. They were okay.
“You’re the one gets happy when you go shopping, not me. You’ve been happy since you bought that monster barbeque pit.”
‘Well, we’ll see the proof in the burgers, if the pit is as good as the old man’s barbeque pits. I’ll tell you what I think. I think you bought enough new clothes for two boys. You just guessing they’re the same size?” Diego nodded, and Colton reached for his thigh, ran his hand up and down, let it rest on his knee. “Some days I wish we could just stay out here. This seems a peaceful life, but ranching is hard. A hard life. At least it was for my granddad. Seemed like things were always on the edge of disaster.”
“That’s the truth of it.” Old man Weaver was behind them on his sofa. “One bad storm, one bad infection in the herd, and your taxes for that year are gone. Long as I’ve been working this land, I never really got ahead. I think the best I can say is I wrestled it to a draw. That’s not bad, for a lifetime’s work.”
“No, it’s not.” Diego was quiet, his face thoughtful. Colton knew he had plans for his life that included doing more than wrestling his world to a draw. But what control did they really have? Maybe not as much as they thought they did, when they were young as Samuel.
“It’s worth the hard work,” Samuel said. “See how beautiful this land is, Colton?” Samuel gestured toward the mountains, where the little valley opened up. “I just want to get to know land like this. To learn it in all the seasons. To find a way to take care of it, and let it take care of me. That’s the best life, I think.”
Colton turned around and looked at Joshua, who was leaned back on his sofa, rocking a little. Joshua nodded his head. Colton could see it in his face. This boy, Samuel, he was a man like them, a man with a passion for the land.
Diego stood up, went to the barbeque pit and stared down. “How can you tell if the coals are ready?”
Colton stood up and studied the coals. “They’re ready when somebody wants to put their beer down and throw the burgers on, Big D. I would say right about now.”
Diego put the burgers on the grill, stood over them with a spatula while the smell of cooking beef spread out across the valley. Colton looked around. “Now, Samuel, this is a fine idea, but don’t get discouraged if he don’t come in tonight. We can always go look in the mine in the morning.”
Samuel shook his head. “He’s not in the mine. He’s with his horse, and he wouldn’t put the horse down there.”
“Colton.” Diego gestured with his chin. The boy was walking in from the east, leading his horse, the setting sun full on his face. He looked like something out of an old western movie, dusty jeans, long, black hair spilling over his shoulder, leading a beautiful horse the color of caramel, with a soft ivory mane.
“Joshua, this your boy?”
Joshua struggled up from the sofa, looked hard across the pasture to where the boy was walking in. “Yeah, that’s him. Where the hell’s he been?”
“The hot springs are up that way.” Samuel blushed when Colton turned and studied his face. “I just thought... that might be where I would camp out, if I had to camp somewhere on the ranch. And I did see some tracks up there. I left him a note, you know, just in case, telling him we were having burgers if he wanted to join us.”
Diego was grinning. “You did good, Samuel. Well, Mr. Weaver, he looks just like you described him.”
Johnny Bravo gave them all a nod and bypassed the group without a word, leading his horse back to the stable. Samuel walked back and joined him. Colton studied his retreating back, then turned to look at Diego. “Why do I get the feeling Samuel...”
Diego shook his head, flipped the burgers. “Leave it, Colton. Let him settle a bit first.”
“He looks Apache. You think a face like that belongs on one of those old timey photographs, those sepia-colored pictures from 1870, buckskins and Navajo saddle blankets on the horses and a boy with that proud face.”
“He’s too proud,” Joshua said. “That kind of pride just leads to trouble.”
“He’s just sixteen. He needs some work to do, settle him a bit. You think he’s a ranchman, like you?”
The old man shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t recall I ever met a dreamer knew how to do a lick of real work.”
Johnny and Samuel came back from the stables, and Johnny climbed the steps up to the porch and stood in front of Joshua, his arms crossed over his chest and his chin nearly pointing at the sky. They stared at each other for a long moment, and Colton was reminded that Joshua had known this boy since he was born.
“Go throw your stuff in the house if you want.”
“Samuel said there’s another bunk in the horse trailer. I’ll stay out there.”
“Fine. Do whatever you want.” Joshua reached for the bottle next to his foot, just came up with tropical fruit juice. “Goddamnit! Where’s my whiskey?”
Johnny turned and marched back down the porch steps. He held out his hand to Colton. “I’m Johnny Bravo. I heard you were looking for me.”
Colton shook his hand. “I’m the law, if that’s what you mean. And I was investigating a crime and your name came up.”
Johnny looked surprised at his tough voice. He looked over at Samuel, then straightened his back and faced Colton again.
Colton nodded down at him. “In the old westerns, we used to call it cattle rustling, like it was something romantic. Nowadays we call it grand theft. And if you do it again I am going to throw your sorry ass in jail. I don’t care your reason for doing it. Do you understand me, Johnny?”
“Yes.” He was speaking through clenched teeth. Colton looked over at Diego. Oh, very proud.
Johnny was holding his hand out to Diego now, obviously hoping for a warmer welcome. “I’m Diego Del Rio. I hope you’re hungry, Johnny. I put three burgers on the grill for you.”
Johnny looked over the food. “I could eat three burgers.”
Colton felt a bit irritated that he had been so worried about this kid, and he came strolling in with his horse, ready for supper. No blood, no wounds, he didn’t look tired or miserable or in any way needing to be rescued. He wasn’t even very dirty. Samuel must have been right, and Johnny was camping at the hot springs. Weaver seemed to share Colton’s feelings of irritation, and Johnny, with perfect teenage intuition, stayed very far away from them both, tucked up safely between Diego and Samuel.
Colton listened in while Diego got Johnny talking. “A film maker? That’s interesting, Johnny. What kind of films?”
“Westerns. I want to make films that tell the truth about how things are in the West. How things really are for Natives, and for Mexicans. And for the people who live on the land, like him.” He gestured toward Joshua on the porch. “It’s deadly out here, but people don’t see. And it’s been exploited so much, the minerals, the uranium. I think it’ll take a Native filmmaker to tell the truth about this place. You want to see some film?”
“I sure would.”
Diego was being so nurturing and kind, Colton made a gagging gesture, a finger down his throat. Diego ignored him. Johnny climbed up the porch steps and stopped in front of Joshua again. “Can I borrow the TV? I can hook a cable up from my video camera and show you some of the footage I’ve been shooting.”
Joshua waved a hand. “Sure, boy. You go on ahead.”
Johnny ran out to the horse trailer, got his video camera from the backpack he’d tossed in there earlier. He went up the steps and into the house, and a minute later he was back out on the porch, standing in front of Joshua. “You don’t have a TV.”
Joshua rubbed his chin. “Well, now, let me think. You know, I meant to buy a TV. I was thinking about selling a calf and buying one down at the Sears and Roebuck. But then something happened. You stole that calf, so I couldn’t sell him.”
They stared at each other for another long moment. Johnny’s cheeks were flushed red, but Colton didn’t know if it was mad or sorry. Joshua looked like he was thinking about breaking into tears, he was hurt so bad. Johnny dropped down to one knee in front of the old man. “I’m sorry I stole your cows and goats.”
“That’s all you had to say, boy. I was just waiting for you to say it like you meant it.”
“I mean it.” Johnny had his face turned a bit away, studying the dusty porch. “I bought the video camera with some of the money, and I bought some food, but I have the rest.”
“You can turn it over, then. We gonna live together, we got to have straight dealing between us, you understand? Otherwise this won’t work.”
“I’m not living with you if you’re gonna drink yourself into a stupor every night.”
“What the hell’s a stupor?” Joshua waved this away. “Never mind. I know what you mean.” He gestured toward Diego with his chin. “My doctor has got me on fruit juice.
Lawless on Kindle http://tinyurl.com/d378ulv
The Legend of the Apache Kid, coming in September from Dreamspinner Press
Late afternoon in Arizona, and the light turned the landscape a strange, brilliant gold, making the tumbled sandstone and scrubby brush beautiful just for a moment. Colton was feeling the light warm his face, happy to be in this peaceful valley with Diego, who was finally in a good mood. He’d taken all the tags off Samuel’s new clothes, folded them and put them in the trailer, drank a beer and made burger patties, studied the goat in the pen and sat on the porch steps, watching Colton wrestle with the barbeque pit.
Colton nearly singed his eyebrows off with an excess of lighter fluid when he lit the charcoal, but then he sat down next to Diego on the steps, felt his warm thigh snug against his. Diego handed him a beer and they sat together in the golden afternoon light. This was good. They were okay.
“You’re the one gets happy when you go shopping, not me. You’ve been happy since you bought that monster barbeque pit.”
‘Well, we’ll see the proof in the burgers, if the pit is as good as the old man’s barbeque pits. I’ll tell you what I think. I think you bought enough new clothes for two boys. You just guessing they’re the same size?” Diego nodded, and Colton reached for his thigh, ran his hand up and down, let it rest on his knee. “Some days I wish we could just stay out here. This seems a peaceful life, but ranching is hard. A hard life. At least it was for my granddad. Seemed like things were always on the edge of disaster.”
“That’s the truth of it.” Old man Weaver was behind them on his sofa. “One bad storm, one bad infection in the herd, and your taxes for that year are gone. Long as I’ve been working this land, I never really got ahead. I think the best I can say is I wrestled it to a draw. That’s not bad, for a lifetime’s work.”
“No, it’s not.” Diego was quiet, his face thoughtful. Colton knew he had plans for his life that included doing more than wrestling his world to a draw. But what control did they really have? Maybe not as much as they thought they did, when they were young as Samuel.
“It’s worth the hard work,” Samuel said. “See how beautiful this land is, Colton?” Samuel gestured toward the mountains, where the little valley opened up. “I just want to get to know land like this. To learn it in all the seasons. To find a way to take care of it, and let it take care of me. That’s the best life, I think.”
Colton turned around and looked at Joshua, who was leaned back on his sofa, rocking a little. Joshua nodded his head. Colton could see it in his face. This boy, Samuel, he was a man like them, a man with a passion for the land.
Diego stood up, went to the barbeque pit and stared down. “How can you tell if the coals are ready?”
Colton stood up and studied the coals. “They’re ready when somebody wants to put their beer down and throw the burgers on, Big D. I would say right about now.”
Diego put the burgers on the grill, stood over them with a spatula while the smell of cooking beef spread out across the valley. Colton looked around. “Now, Samuel, this is a fine idea, but don’t get discouraged if he don’t come in tonight. We can always go look in the mine in the morning.”
Samuel shook his head. “He’s not in the mine. He’s with his horse, and he wouldn’t put the horse down there.”
“Colton.” Diego gestured with his chin. The boy was walking in from the east, leading his horse, the setting sun full on his face. He looked like something out of an old western movie, dusty jeans, long, black hair spilling over his shoulder, leading a beautiful horse the color of caramel, with a soft ivory mane.
“Joshua, this your boy?”
Joshua struggled up from the sofa, looked hard across the pasture to where the boy was walking in. “Yeah, that’s him. Where the hell’s he been?”
“The hot springs are up that way.” Samuel blushed when Colton turned and studied his face. “I just thought... that might be where I would camp out, if I had to camp somewhere on the ranch. And I did see some tracks up there. I left him a note, you know, just in case, telling him we were having burgers if he wanted to join us.”
Diego was grinning. “You did good, Samuel. Well, Mr. Weaver, he looks just like you described him.”
Johnny Bravo gave them all a nod and bypassed the group without a word, leading his horse back to the stable. Samuel walked back and joined him. Colton studied his retreating back, then turned to look at Diego. “Why do I get the feeling Samuel...”
Diego shook his head, flipped the burgers. “Leave it, Colton. Let him settle a bit first.”
“He looks Apache. You think a face like that belongs on one of those old timey photographs, those sepia-colored pictures from 1870, buckskins and Navajo saddle blankets on the horses and a boy with that proud face.”
“He’s too proud,” Joshua said. “That kind of pride just leads to trouble.”
“He’s just sixteen. He needs some work to do, settle him a bit. You think he’s a ranchman, like you?”
The old man shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t recall I ever met a dreamer knew how to do a lick of real work.”
Johnny and Samuel came back from the stables, and Johnny climbed the steps up to the porch and stood in front of Joshua, his arms crossed over his chest and his chin nearly pointing at the sky. They stared at each other for a long moment, and Colton was reminded that Joshua had known this boy since he was born.
“Go throw your stuff in the house if you want.”
“Samuel said there’s another bunk in the horse trailer. I’ll stay out there.”
“Fine. Do whatever you want.” Joshua reached for the bottle next to his foot, just came up with tropical fruit juice. “Goddamnit! Where’s my whiskey?”
Johnny turned and marched back down the porch steps. He held out his hand to Colton. “I’m Johnny Bravo. I heard you were looking for me.”
Colton shook his hand. “I’m the law, if that’s what you mean. And I was investigating a crime and your name came up.”
Johnny looked surprised at his tough voice. He looked over at Samuel, then straightened his back and faced Colton again.
Colton nodded down at him. “In the old westerns, we used to call it cattle rustling, like it was something romantic. Nowadays we call it grand theft. And if you do it again I am going to throw your sorry ass in jail. I don’t care your reason for doing it. Do you understand me, Johnny?”
“Yes.” He was speaking through clenched teeth. Colton looked over at Diego. Oh, very proud.
Johnny was holding his hand out to Diego now, obviously hoping for a warmer welcome. “I’m Diego Del Rio. I hope you’re hungry, Johnny. I put three burgers on the grill for you.”
Johnny looked over the food. “I could eat three burgers.”
Colton felt a bit irritated that he had been so worried about this kid, and he came strolling in with his horse, ready for supper. No blood, no wounds, he didn’t look tired or miserable or in any way needing to be rescued. He wasn’t even very dirty. Samuel must have been right, and Johnny was camping at the hot springs. Weaver seemed to share Colton’s feelings of irritation, and Johnny, with perfect teenage intuition, stayed very far away from them both, tucked up safely between Diego and Samuel.
Colton listened in while Diego got Johnny talking. “A film maker? That’s interesting, Johnny. What kind of films?”
“Westerns. I want to make films that tell the truth about how things are in the West. How things really are for Natives, and for Mexicans. And for the people who live on the land, like him.” He gestured toward Joshua on the porch. “It’s deadly out here, but people don’t see. And it’s been exploited so much, the minerals, the uranium. I think it’ll take a Native filmmaker to tell the truth about this place. You want to see some film?”
“I sure would.”
Diego was being so nurturing and kind, Colton made a gagging gesture, a finger down his throat. Diego ignored him. Johnny climbed up the porch steps and stopped in front of Joshua again. “Can I borrow the TV? I can hook a cable up from my video camera and show you some of the footage I’ve been shooting.”
Joshua waved a hand. “Sure, boy. You go on ahead.”
Johnny ran out to the horse trailer, got his video camera from the backpack he’d tossed in there earlier. He went up the steps and into the house, and a minute later he was back out on the porch, standing in front of Joshua. “You don’t have a TV.”
Joshua rubbed his chin. “Well, now, let me think. You know, I meant to buy a TV. I was thinking about selling a calf and buying one down at the Sears and Roebuck. But then something happened. You stole that calf, so I couldn’t sell him.”
They stared at each other for another long moment. Johnny’s cheeks were flushed red, but Colton didn’t know if it was mad or sorry. Joshua looked like he was thinking about breaking into tears, he was hurt so bad. Johnny dropped down to one knee in front of the old man. “I’m sorry I stole your cows and goats.”
“That’s all you had to say, boy. I was just waiting for you to say it like you meant it.”
“I mean it.” Johnny had his face turned a bit away, studying the dusty porch. “I bought the video camera with some of the money, and I bought some food, but I have the rest.”
“You can turn it over, then. We gonna live together, we got to have straight dealing between us, you understand? Otherwise this won’t work.”
“I’m not living with you if you’re gonna drink yourself into a stupor every night.”
“What the hell’s a stupor?” Joshua waved this away. “Never mind. I know what you mean.” He gestured toward Diego with his chin. “My doctor has got me on fruit juice.
Lawless on Kindle http://tinyurl.com/d378ulv
The Legend of the Apache Kid, coming in September from Dreamspinner Press
The Legend of the Apache Kid out Sept 5
The Legend of the Apache Kid by Sarah Black, out from Dreamspinner Sept 5
Check out this beautiful cover by Paul Richmond!
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/stor...
I think this is one of the most deeply romantic stories I’ve ever written- here is a little bit of Raine and Johnny:
Johnny was drowsy against my shoulder. He slid one hand down the length of my chest and settled his palm over my belly. “When I first saw you without your shirt, sitting in that hot tub, I thought, man, look at that! I bet he works out. Then I saw the callus on the palm of your hand and said, no, he doesn’t work out. He just works. Gave me a thrill to think of those callused hands moving across my skin. When I was home, taking care of my old man before he died, I would take a few minutes to myself, go for a walk, and dream about the way your hands would feel.” He turned his head until his mouth found my skin. “It’s been better than I imagined. I wasn’t expecting you to be gentle. You’re reading me, the way a cowboy reads the clouds on the horizon. Like it’s important to you to get it right.”
Check out this beautiful cover by Paul Richmond!
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/stor...
I think this is one of the most deeply romantic stories I’ve ever written- here is a little bit of Raine and Johnny:
Johnny was drowsy against my shoulder. He slid one hand down the length of my chest and settled his palm over my belly. “When I first saw you without your shirt, sitting in that hot tub, I thought, man, look at that! I bet he works out. Then I saw the callus on the palm of your hand and said, no, he doesn’t work out. He just works. Gave me a thrill to think of those callused hands moving across my skin. When I was home, taking care of my old man before he died, I would take a few minutes to myself, go for a walk, and dream about the way your hands would feel.” He turned his head until his mouth found my skin. “It’s been better than I imagined. I wasn’t expecting you to be gentle. You’re reading me, the way a cowboy reads the clouds on the horizon. Like it’s important to you to get it right.”
Good Bye to the Beautiful Southwest
Good Bye to the Beautiful Southwest
By the time a person is a mother and a responsible adult, the opportunities for running away from home to become a cowboy are fairly limited. Not that I’ve let that stop me. It was ten years ago when I sold the house, put all our possessions in storage, bought a pickup and a camper, and headed out to the beautiful Southwest. If I remember correctly, we had a CD of the Dixie Chicks singing Wide Open Spaces when we pulled out of Orlando with a bead on…out there. Way out there. Indian Country. Cowboy Country. I think my son had some idea that out west, the other kids wouldn’t drag you into the bathroom at school and kick you in the stomach. I had the idea that, in the big empty west, you could at least see the bad guys coming for you.
Which proved true. Navajo boys live by a code, and that includes telling the truth. When my son was punched in the face by a school mate in seventh grade, they both showed up at my clinic to confess- my son to confess it was his fault, and the other kid to confess he did it.
When we left Florida, I was feeling slightly desperate and wondering if I was going insane- a fairly typical response for a single mother when told her beloved son has autism. I didn’t believe then, and still don’t, that I was running away- I needed those wide open spaces. I wanted some room to see the bad guys coming for me. In the last ten years, since we’ve come out here, we’ve lived on the Navajo Nation, in Alaska for 6 months at an Athabascan Village, in Boise, and for the last year, we’ve been travelling around New Mexico for work. There are bad guys out here, I’m sure, but I haven’t run into very many of them. My experience has been open doors and open arms, people who live by a code, hard work and hard lives. Cowboys, in other words. And, as any fool knows, the best cowboys have always been Indians. It has been my great pleasure to take care of them.
But the urge to roam is still strong and I’m getting ready to go again. Still West. We’re going to Fiji, and the story about to come out from Dreamspinner, The Legend of the Apache Kid, is my last beautiful story set in this land I love. I hope the next adventure is as rich and full of colorful people as this one has been. If not, well, it’s a big world. I still haven’t seen Petra, or Hong Kong, or Iceland. I’m not much on vacations; I have to go live there. I’m not just having a psychotic break, as certain members of my family believe—I’m looking for a place for my son and me. I know if we keep looking, we’ll find a place where he can be at home, where people will like and accept him. I think the warm and happy people of Fiji will welcome us, and we can make a home with them. If not, I suspect I’ll get a few stories out of it before we move on!
The new story is coming out on Sept 5, and we’re leaving on Sept 6—I think that’s a good sign. I hope this new story will give you a little taste of Taos, and The Greater World, and a bit of the beautiful Carson National Forest. I drove through the Carson, and went camping and hiking in April and May—with a tiny bit of snow still on the north side of the mountains, and the wildflowers blooming and the bears snuffling around in the underbrush. So good bye to the beautiful Southwest. Thanks for all the memories. I’ll check in from Fiji.
By the time a person is a mother and a responsible adult, the opportunities for running away from home to become a cowboy are fairly limited. Not that I’ve let that stop me. It was ten years ago when I sold the house, put all our possessions in storage, bought a pickup and a camper, and headed out to the beautiful Southwest. If I remember correctly, we had a CD of the Dixie Chicks singing Wide Open Spaces when we pulled out of Orlando with a bead on…out there. Way out there. Indian Country. Cowboy Country. I think my son had some idea that out west, the other kids wouldn’t drag you into the bathroom at school and kick you in the stomach. I had the idea that, in the big empty west, you could at least see the bad guys coming for you.
Which proved true. Navajo boys live by a code, and that includes telling the truth. When my son was punched in the face by a school mate in seventh grade, they both showed up at my clinic to confess- my son to confess it was his fault, and the other kid to confess he did it.
When we left Florida, I was feeling slightly desperate and wondering if I was going insane- a fairly typical response for a single mother when told her beloved son has autism. I didn’t believe then, and still don’t, that I was running away- I needed those wide open spaces. I wanted some room to see the bad guys coming for me. In the last ten years, since we’ve come out here, we’ve lived on the Navajo Nation, in Alaska for 6 months at an Athabascan Village, in Boise, and for the last year, we’ve been travelling around New Mexico for work. There are bad guys out here, I’m sure, but I haven’t run into very many of them. My experience has been open doors and open arms, people who live by a code, hard work and hard lives. Cowboys, in other words. And, as any fool knows, the best cowboys have always been Indians. It has been my great pleasure to take care of them.
But the urge to roam is still strong and I’m getting ready to go again. Still West. We’re going to Fiji, and the story about to come out from Dreamspinner, The Legend of the Apache Kid, is my last beautiful story set in this land I love. I hope the next adventure is as rich and full of colorful people as this one has been. If not, well, it’s a big world. I still haven’t seen Petra, or Hong Kong, or Iceland. I’m not much on vacations; I have to go live there. I’m not just having a psychotic break, as certain members of my family believe—I’m looking for a place for my son and me. I know if we keep looking, we’ll find a place where he can be at home, where people will like and accept him. I think the warm and happy people of Fiji will welcome us, and we can make a home with them. If not, I suspect I’ll get a few stories out of it before we move on!
The new story is coming out on Sept 5, and we’re leaving on Sept 6—I think that’s a good sign. I hope this new story will give you a little taste of Taos, and The Greater World, and a bit of the beautiful Carson National Forest. I drove through the Carson, and went camping and hiking in April and May—with a tiny bit of snow still on the north side of the mountains, and the wildflowers blooming and the bears snuffling around in the underbrush. So good bye to the beautiful Southwest. Thanks for all the memories. I’ll check in from Fiji.
Music and Memories
One of the ways I get ready for a new story is to feel my way into the tone, hear the sounds, see the colors, feel the mood. I collect songs and pictures and quotes and sort of saturate myself in music and memories before I start writing.
I even, I’m sorry to say, tend to eat the same food as my characters, so my house smells like their house. My son is not too happy with these cowboy stories when I pull that old iron skillet out and start frying eggs in bacon grease! I think he’s hoping for a story set in a pizza joint.
But this new story, The Legend of the Apache Kid, is set up in Taos, and smells like homemade corn tamales and pinon pines with their sap running and red dirt stirred up by horse’s hooves.
I’ve been feeling my way into father-son relationships with some of my books, exploring how fathers and sons find each other. I’ve also been thinking about obsession, how it develops and how a sane person reacts when they find themselves becoming obsessed. Thinking about these two ideas, I collected the ephemera for the new story-
Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle--Rumi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aur5KE... The Maker, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, from Teatro
True love stories never have endings- Richard Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJA4TG... Desperados Waiting for a Train, The Highwaymen
What was silent in the father speaks in the son--Nietzsche
http://tinyurl.com/9gk5jwk image of the Carson National Forest
On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me
Edmund Blunden
The Legend of the Apache Kid out Sept 5 from Dreamspinner
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/stor...
I even, I’m sorry to say, tend to eat the same food as my characters, so my house smells like their house. My son is not too happy with these cowboy stories when I pull that old iron skillet out and start frying eggs in bacon grease! I think he’s hoping for a story set in a pizza joint.
But this new story, The Legend of the Apache Kid, is set up in Taos, and smells like homemade corn tamales and pinon pines with their sap running and red dirt stirred up by horse’s hooves.
I’ve been feeling my way into father-son relationships with some of my books, exploring how fathers and sons find each other. I’ve also been thinking about obsession, how it develops and how a sane person reacts when they find themselves becoming obsessed. Thinking about these two ideas, I collected the ephemera for the new story-
Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle--Rumi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aur5KE... The Maker, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, from Teatro
True love stories never have endings- Richard Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJA4TG... Desperados Waiting for a Train, The Highwaymen
What was silent in the father speaks in the son--Nietzsche
http://tinyurl.com/9gk5jwk image of the Carson National Forest
On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me
Edmund Blunden
The Legend of the Apache Kid out Sept 5 from Dreamspinner
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/stor...
Book Report
In my goodreads blog, I'll talk about what I'm reading, and also mention my new releases
...more
- Sarah Black's profile
- 244 followers
Sarah Black isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
