All Hat and no Cattle

Two Stepping in the Lone Star State

Hello Curious Subscribers. My apologies, there’s been nada from me over these last few weeks. Life has been lifey with some unplanned medical happenings that are resolved but… wow, that was a distraction.

Stay healthy!

I’ve just returned from Ft Worth, Texas. Not my first trip there, but in a way my first trip there.

Rhinestone Cowboy Hat Sundance Square Ft. Worth

Oh, The Places You Write in Fiction

One of the first decisions you need to make when you write a story is where does the story happen, your story world. This is the setting. I’ve written about setting before. Setting is foundational for me. The story anchor.

Stories can have multiple settings such as a kitchen table, a hospital, or a bus. Picking a location helps tell your story and provides specific objects and obstacles for your characters to navigate.

I’m currently working on a story in a zoo. I suspect the moment you read that, a mental image popped up for zoo. Your image is different from mine. My job is to write my zoo in a way that builds on your memories.

Additionally, your zoo is based on your emotions about going to the zoo or your feelings about zoos. Place and emotion are linked. And that’s what I want to talk about.

That Place was Awful

Do you remember your first trip to Cancun when you had that bad ceviche and spent the entire week in your hot hotel room? It was the worst vacation of your life. Mexico sucks!

Ok, I just made that up. I’ve been to Cancun and the food and the people are great. You can replace Cancun with any vacation or event of your choice and the strong memories will um…vomit out of you.

And because you have strong memories and associations to a place, you avoid that place. You don’t want to visit again. You tell others to stay away. You even avoid movies, tv shows, or books that feature that location. You may hold strong opinions about the people who live there, how they drive, the way they dress, and walk their dogs. That place is dead to you.

Then There’s Texas

I sort of felt/feel that way about Texas. How sad I’ve written off an entire state. Or at least have decided not to write about it in any of my stories.

Sign from a visit to Lady Bird Johnson Botanical Gardens outside of Austin, TX

When I started writing The Pelican Tide, I needed a location for the oil spill. Texas was one of the states hit by the oil. I immediately said, I’m not writing about Texas.

Flashback

I first went to Ft. Worth in the 90’s for my then future father-in-law’s 3rd wedding. I hadn’t met him yet and meeting him, his new wife, and seeing Texas was exciting.

Texas Two-Stepping Source JK dance Studio Midland

I remember amazing Mexican food and BBQ. Going to a local bar where we had a short lesson on the Texas two-step. I then watched from a bar stool as an enormous crowd of hat and boot wearing men and women with fringe swinging stomped in rhythmic unison across the dance floor.

Texas is a state and a state of mind.

You must own a car and wear lipstick before you leave the house (if you’re a woman). The highways are massive, concrete spaghetti junctions, and the sky is truly big and expansive. I also experienced a bit of “what did you say?” when my Boston accent met the Lone Star twang. All in good fun.

Texas was the first place in the United States where I felt a new American culture. I bought boots that never looked right when I wasn’t there. I enjoyed our visits and my in-laws Southwestern decorated home. Think pottery and tin stars and a giant smoker on the patio with squat cacti growing wild in the back yard and long-horn cattle across the road.

We’d visit relatives deeper in the state towards Oklahoma and I stared wide-eyed at the horse head-pumping oil derricks. My grandmother in-law had these enormous pecan trees on her property. She would hand us bags of fresh shelled nuts - after she overfed us chicken fried steak with enough side dishes for a proper church picnic.

I wrote a short story that took place in Texas. The place was fresh and vivid in my mind. I was experiencing it with all my senses. This is what you want to do with a story.

It was all good until it wasn’t

Slowly my affection for Texas changed. I was always sideways on the politics and surprised by the guns. I don’t have a photo, but a diner we used to go to had a sign on the door that read:

We love guns too, but please leave yours outside.

I could eat my omelet knowing the person next to me wasn’t packing over their pancakes.

And then the 3rd wife left my father-in-law. Other relatives in the state died uneasy deaths. Yes, that’s life being lifey as I said at the start. But Texas for all its big sky became stifling as we navigated healthcare and in-home services. The best tacos in the world couldn’t make-up for the worst people.

Bam! the epiphany. It’s the people in your life who matter. The characters for better or for worse make your story work. The plucky secondary figure who grounds your protagonist when they can’t get out of their own way.

Fast Forward

Plot twist. Wife number 4 showed up. It was bad, very bad. Texas-sized bad. And then the expected. My father-in-law died an awful death.

Here’s a health tip kids. You only get one liver.

I didn’t go to the funeral. I was never going to Texas again. Texas was my fictional Cancun. That place sucks!

Then…a Wedding Invitation Arrived

About a year later, a wedding invitation arrived for freaking Ft. Worth! We were never supposed to go back. But we wouldn’t miss this wedding. The event was beautiful, meaningful, the people warm and welcoming. A true celebration. In between the events, there was Ft. Worth. We walked the compact downtown taking in the 19th century buildings and reading all the historic plaques.

Ft. Worth has the motto: Where the West Begins.

“Isn’t that Denver?” This was followed by a weekend long discussion about “The West.” But regardless, Ft. Worth takes the slogan from a beautiful poem, “Out Where the West Begins” written in 1917 by Arthur Chapman.

Then we walked to Sundance Square and saw the enormous rhinestone cowboy hat. Had I never been to this place before? This was followed by trying to remember the expression all hat and no cattle and other ranch-themed metaphors.

Later came Magnolia Street for enchiladas, craft coffee, and margs. Panther BBQ and a stroll through the Ft. Worth Water Gardens. Yes, there is a water garden, a large public 3rd space designed with various water features.

My kids playing in the enormous waterfall structure

Downtown Ft. Worth isn’t large, but somehow over two decades I had managed to see what amounted to one rhinestone on that huge Stetson. The residents still wear boots and hats reminding me of a cowboy cosplay convention. Except it’s real. The twang is still fun to hear. The sky is still large. And you do need a ride.

Will I return? Not without a reason. Yet now I have new people to populate to my personal story and this setting. I’m grateful that my freshest memory of Texas is one of the happiest memories I will carry for the rest of my life. I may even write about it.

Do you have a “Texas” in your life?

Book News and Where to See Me

May 28 Join me at Adventures by the Book for a summer reading escape book bingo

June 20th book signing at Barnes and Noble in Springfield, Virginia

July 18, book signing Daydrift books in Arlington, Virginia

Looking for a great book club read! Invite me to your book club!

Thank you for posting your reviews of The Pelican Tide. I’m hoping to hit 1,000 reviews on Amazon.

Until next time — Bye Y’all!