Download or read book written by James Hold and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2004-09-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The clock was nearing midnight when John Parradine heard the knock at the door. "Now who could that be on such a stormy night?" he mused, and summoning the maid, said, "Bela Lou, go see." --excerpt from "Brainstorming," one of ten adventures in "Out of Texas," in which a cat-turned-human explores the world of men for reasons all his own. If you're a fan of old dark houses, lost civilizations, and pretty princesses in peril... If you like crazed villains with their fiendish plans to conquer the world... If you've ever wondered what would happen in a fight between a robot and a cabbage... Or what to do when feminist basketballs attack... If you want the real truth behind the extraterrestrial origins of Texas... Or if you just don't like Dallas, Then "Out of Texas" is for you. "Out of Texas"--it's about God, Texas, professional wrestling, and rock'n'roll--and a lot of other things as well. "Hold's stuff belongs right up there between Ernest Hemmingway and Robert E Howard--on an alphabetical bookshelf." --Basil Sage, "The Rosemary Times"

Download or read book Percolations written by Marilyn J. Agee and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many a famous tale began with Once upon a Time. While yet others led off with It was a dark and dreary night. Each author, using these openings, was attempting to set the tone for his or her story and poem that followed. None of the stories or poetry that follow in this book set their tone with such epic or historic and yes sometimes hackneyed openings. Instead they all begin with what the individual author considered a fresh perspective on a subject of either his or her choosing or one chosen for him/her. In order to better understand this last statement, an explanation of how these authors came together to write such stories is required. In 2005, Milli Thornton, the author of the book Fear of Writing, for writers & closet writers, established a writing group in a back room of Chickis Coffee Shop in the small Texas Hill Country community of Bulverde. Each Tuesday morning this eclectic group of would-be authors gathered, and over coffee and a variety of pastries would write for two hours. The two retired school teachers, a nurse and federal agent along with, an Irish lass, and an interior designer/artist would write their stories and poems from prompts offered by Thornton in her book or from other sources such as Texas Public Radio or WritersDigest.com. Making liberal use of their literary licenses, these writers crafted their pieces from these prompts by either embodying the entire prompt or selecting key words and or phrases from these prompts. On a number of occasions the single word the was chosen from the prompt and woven into a tale. Or the writers would choose a subject that was of importance to them at that moment. A tale from ones past; a rail against some minor injustice or poking fun at one of lifes inane situation became fodder for these authors. Just as important as the prompt or fertile material as Thornton refers to them as, was the understanding that the stories and poems, when read at the conclusion of each weekly meeting, would not be negatively critiqued unless requested by the author. Instead, each participant would receive positive feed-back and encouragement on his or her works in hopes that it would inspire him/her to continue writing. The theory behind this kind of writing support can best be articulated in the words of Thornton when she discussed unleashing your imagination. She advised, The more you flex it the more limber it becomes. Positive reinforcement was intended to aid in the limbering effort, to encouraging them to continue to write and therefore become better writers. That the theory proffered by Thorntons was effective one merely has to look at the limited success of several of the authors who have contributed to this book. Two authors submitted and had their short stories selected to be read on Texas Public Radio. One author received honorable mention in another short story competition. Another of this group of authors finished and published a novel and has completed another book that is being readied for publication. These accomplishments might have not been achieved had it not been for this writing group. Moreover, this book would have not been written had it not been for the desire and dedication of these authors who week in and week out continued to pour out their souls in their short stories. Over the succeeding years, numerous writers passed through this group. Some moved on as their life situations changed; others needed something other than what was offered by the group. And still others, decided for personal reasons that the group did not satisfy their writing needs. What remained, was a constant core of writers who continued to meet and toil each Tuesday or whenever possible. The stories and poems contained in this book are the works of that core of writers. This group of writers hope that you, the reader, get as much joy from reading this collection of short stories as their authors did in creating them. The book has been divided

Download or read book Living in the Woods in a Tree written by Sybil Rosen and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a glimpse into the turbulent life of Texas music legend Blaze Foley (1949-1989). This book is suitable for Blaze Foley and Texas music fans, as well as romantics of different ages.

Download or read book Sing Me Back Home written by Bill C. Malone and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over fifty years, Bill C. Malone has researched and written about the history of country music. Today he is celebrated as the foremost authority on this distinctly American genre. This new collection brings together his significant article-length work from a variety of sources, including essays, book chapters, and record liner notes. Sing Me Back Home distills a lifetime of thinking about country and southern roots music. Malone offers the heartfelt story of his own working-class upbringing in rural East Texas, recounting how in 1939 his family’s first radio, a battery-powered Philco, introduced him to hillbilly music and how, years later, he went on to become a scholar in the field before the field formally existed. Drawing on a hundred years of southern roots music history, Malone assesses the contributions of artists such as William S. Hays, Albert Brumley, Joe Thompson, Jimmie Rodgers, Johnny Gimble, and Elvis Presley. He also explores the intricate relationships between black and white music styles, gospel and secular traditions, and pop, folk, and country music. Author of many books, Malone is best known for his pioneering volume County Music, U.S.A., published in 1968. It ranks as the first comprehensive history of American country music and remains a standard reference. This compilation of Malone’s shorter—and more personal—essays is the perfect complement to his earlier writing and a compelling introduction to the life’s work of America’s most respected country music historian.

Download or read book Raincrow written by Joe Watson and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raincrow is set over 9 decades, spanning past present and the future. It is a roller coaster ride, rich with characters, full of humor, and the highs and lows of everyday life. The story takes us from an orphanage in Firestone, Illinois, to the river town of Flatwater, Nebraska, telling the story of Thomas Raincrow, along with Harley, Eve, Angeline and Big Hat.

Download or read book Pink Is For Blobfish written by Jess Keating and published by Dragonfly Books. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's Pinkalicious meets Fear Factor in this nonfiction picture book introducing the weirdest, wildest, pinkest critters in the animal kingdom! Some people think pink is a pretty color. A fluffy, sparkly, princess-y color. But it's so much more. Sure, pink is the color of princesses and bubblegum, but it's also the color of monster slugs and poisonous insects. Not to mention ultra-intelligent dolphins, naked mole rats and bizarre, bloated blobfish. Isn't it about time to rethink pink? Slip on your rose-colored glasses and take a walk on the wild side with zoologist Jess Keating, whose other books in the World of Weird Animals series include What Makes a Monster? and Cute as an Axolotl. A New York Public Library Best Book for Kids, 2016 "The 2016 Ambassador to Young People’s Science and Nature books is unquestionably the blobfish." —Shelftalker "Readers will never look at pink the same way." —Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Stoney Armadillo written by Annie Wampler and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2006 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heaven Bound shares letters from Donnie Foster on Texas Death Row to Annie Wampler. Reading these letters, one can witness how God took the heart of stone belonging to a man known as Stoney Armadillo and turned it into a heart of flesh. The book also gives a personal glimpse inside the walls of Death Row and into the heart of a man who eventually is executed--a changed man.

Download or read book Pickers and Poets written by Craig E. Clifford and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many books and essays have addressed the broad sweep of Texas music—its multicultural aspects, its wide array and blending of musical genres, its historical transformations, and its love/hate relationship with Nashville and other established music business centers. This book, however, focuses on an essential thread in this tapestry: the Texas singer-songwriters to whom the contributors refer as “ruthlessly poetic.” All songs require good lyrics, but for these songwriters, the poetic quality and substance of the lyrics are front and center. Obvious candidates for this category would include Townes Van Zandt, Michael Martin Murphey, Guy Clark, Steve Fromholz, Terry Allen, Kris Kristofferson, Vince Bell, and David Rodriguez. In a sense, what these songwriters were doing in small, intimate live-music venues like the Jester Lounge in Houston, the Chequered Flag in Austin, and the Rubaiyat in Dallas was similar to what Bob Dylan was doing in Greenwich Village. In the language of the times, these were “folksingers.” Unlike Dylan, however, these were folksingers writing songs about their own people and their own origins and singing in their own vernacular. This music, like most great poetry, is profoundly rooted. That rootedness, in fact, is reflected in the book’s emphasis on place and the powerful ways it shaped and continues to shape the poetry and music of Texas singer-songwriters. From the coffeehouses and folk clubs where many of the “founders” got their start to the Texas-flavored festivals and concerts that nurtured both their fame and the rise of a new generation, the indelible stamp of origins is inseparable from the work of these troubadour-poets. Please see the listing for the print edition to view the table of contents for this title.

Download or read book American Wildlife in Symbol and Story written by Angus K. Gillespie and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2003-03 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Life Is Funny written by Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant and published by Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant. This book was released on 2007-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Texas Literary Outlaws written by Steven L. Davis and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the sixties, a group of Texas writers stood apart from Texas’ conservative establishment. Calling themselves the Mad Dogs, these six writers—Bud Shrake, Larry L. King, Billy Lee Brammer, Gary Cartwright, Dan Jenkins, and Peter Gent—closely observed the effects of the Vietnam War; the Kennedy assassination; the rapid population shift from rural to urban environments; Lyndon Johnson’s rise to national prominence; the Civil Rights Movement; Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys; Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, the new Outlaw music scene; the birth of a Texas film industry; Texas Monthly magazine; the flowering of “Texas Chic”; and Ann Richards’ election as governor. In Texas Literary Outlaws, Steven L. Davis makes extensive use of untapped literary archives to weave a fascinating portrait of writers who came of age during a period of rapid social change. With Davis’s eye for vibrant detail and a broad historical perspective, Texas Literary Outlaws moves easily between H. L. Hunt’s Dallas mansion and the West Texas oil patch, from the New York literary salon of Elaine’s to the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, from Dennis Hopper on a film set in Mexico to Jerry Jeff Walker crashing a party at Princeton University. The Mad Dogs were less interested in Texas’ mythic past than in the world they knew firsthand—a place of fast-growing cities and hard-edged political battles. The Mad Dogs crashed headfirst into the sixties, and their legendary excesses have often overshadowed their literary production. Davis never shies away from criticism in this no-holds-barred account, yet he also shows how the Mad Dogs’ rambunctious personae have deflected a true understanding of their deeper aims. Despite their popular image, the Mad Dogs were deadly serious as they turned their gaze on their home state, and they chronicled Texas culture with daring, wit, and sophistication.

Download or read book Hill Country Chronicles written by Clay Coppedge and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texas Hill Country is a rugged and hilly area of central Texas known for its food, architecture and unique melting pot of Spanish and European settlers. The area's rich history is filled with quirky and fascinating tales about this landscape and the animals and people who have called it home. Clay Coppedge has been gathering Texas stories for over thirty years. This collection of his favorite columns includes his best Texas-sized stories on Hill Country history. From the legend of Llano's Enchanted Rock and the true story of Jim Bowie's famous knife to one rancher's attempt at bringing reindeer to the hottest area of the country and an oilman's search for Bigfoot, Hill Country Chronicles has them all and more.

Download or read book Me and Sister Bobbie written by Willie Nelson and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Abandoned by their parents as toddlers, Willie and Bobbie Nelson found their love of music almost immediately through their grandparents, who raised them in a dusty small town in east Texas. Their close relationship ... is the longest-lasting bond in either of their lives. In alternating chapters, this ... dual memoir weaves together their lives as they experienced them both side-by-side and apart with powerful, emotional stories from growing up, playing music in public for the first time, and the trials they each faced in adulthood as Willie pursued a songwriting career and Bobbie faced a series of challenging relationships and a musical career that only took off when attitudes about women began to change in Texas"--

Download or read book Barama River Carib Narratives written by and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ramble Texas written by Eric Peterson and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-01-19 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Texan has a personal vision of the true Texas. The problem is every Texan has a different personal vision of the true Texas. An outsider is free to see the many sides of the Lone Star State, and seasoned travel writer Eric Peterson bellies up to do just that.Combining classic guidebook fare with lesser-known destinations, Ramble Texas creates a unique approach to travel. From eating mesquite-smoked BBQ on the border, tracking the Texas Chupacabra (a vampiric legend known for sucking goats dry), and sipping a Shiner under a two-headed calf at the Buckhorn Saloon to visiting the Cockroach Hall of Fame and Museum, Ramble Texas provides plenty of ideas for how to spend your time. In between the state's regional chapters, Peterson's travelogues recount adventures and encounters, such as ''Oil, Power, and Money''in Houston; ''Border Run''along the Rio Grande; and ''lone Rockstar Tour,''a musical road trip from the Panhandle to the heart of Austin.

Download or read book ArMaDillo Packin written by Richards Charlie (author) and published by eXtasy Books. This book was released on 1901 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ronald Oleander, Ronnie to his friends, has been looking forward to this road trip for months, ever since he’d aced the test for his motorcycle license. With the wind on his face, he follows Noah and Adam—his older brother and his brother’s mate—through winding back roads. Their destination is a small town in Wisconsin where they’re meeting up with Adam’s old biker gang. Ronnie has been warned the place is homophobic and never to go anywhere alone. Except, when he arrives, the first thing he notices is an enticing smell. Ronnie wanders around the back of the diner to investigate and finds a pair of humans pounding on a smaller guy. Breaking up the fight, he sends the jerks packing. When he focuses on the beaten man, he discovers he’s the source of the smell—and is also not only a shifter, but his mate—Hector Ramirez, an armadillo shifter. At barely twenty-one, Ronnie didn’t expect to find the other half of his soul so soon, and he doesn’t feel ready. Still, he can’t deny his instincts. For better or worse, can Ronnie accept not only a mate but figure out a way to stop the people after him?

Download or read book My Guitar Is a Camera written by Watt M. Casey and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evening of May 10, 1970, found a young Watt M. Casey Jr. standing awestruck, only a few feet from Jimi Hendrix as the legendary guitarist tore into his unique arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the stage of San Antonio’s Hemisphere Arena during the Texas leg of his Cry of Love Tour. Bemoaning the fact that he had no camera to document the amazing experience or the visionary musicians creating it, Watt promised himself that he would make up for his oversight in the weeks and years to come. Little did he realize at the time that Hendrix had less than five months to live. Casey made good on his resolution, and My Guitar Is a Camera provides the evidence. With a foreword by Steve Miller, this rich visual history of the vibrant live music scene in Austin and beyond during the 1970s and early 1980s allows Casey’s lens to reveal both the stage, awash in spotlights and crowd noise, and the more intimate backstage moments, where entertainers hold forth to interviewers and friends. As Outlaw Country’s cosmic cowboys mixed with East Coast rockers, Chicago bluesmen, and West Coast hippies, Watt Casey roamed at will, capturing the people, places, and happenings that blended to foster Austin’s emerging reputation as “Live Music Capital of the World.”