Posted by Paula Boyd
Hello all!
Here are a couple of photos from the signing event for The University of Texas Press release Lone Star Sleuths: An Anthology of Texas Crime Fiction.
I had a wonderful time and met so many great people. Wish you could all have been there!
I will write more soon.
Wishing you laughter!
Paula
Turkey Ranch Road Rage
Posted by Paula Boyd
As my gift to all of you have hung in there with me for sooooo long, Turkey Ranch Road Rage is online now and readable for free. The version may be a bit rough around the edges as it is still going through the editing process, but you can read it now and catch up with Jolene and Lucille.
Here’s a glimpse at what’s going on THIS time!
No matter how hard she tries to escape her Texas roots, and her mother, Jolene Jackson finds herself dragged back to Kickapoo to deal with both.
This time, there’s an RV Park going in behind her mother’s house and they want her property too. Lucille’s not selling and she’s on a mission to stop the whole thing, even if it means joining up with a dubious group that just rolled into town to save lizards.
Lucille’s assault on the radiator of a road maintenance truck gets her hauled in to the county jail just in time for the horny toad rally. Picket signs, a camper painted with slogans and a naked lizard girl in a cage on the courthouse lawn are bad enough, but when things start exploding, Sheriff Jerry Don Parker demands that Jolene get down there and put a stop to her mother’s felonious behavior.
It doesn’t take long for Jolene to realize that something way bigger than an RV Park is at stake. Drill rigs and earthmovers are at work in the mesquites and they aren’t making camper pads. The owner of the would-be-park land turns up missing, the leader of the lizard group turns up dead and horse chow is raining down on Main Street.
Before it’s all said and done, Jolene has to face kidnappers, snipers and some serious skeletons in the family closet before she figures out who has a really bad case of Turkey Ranch Road Rage.
If you’d like to read the whole book, go to the Books page and download the pdf.
I hopeyou enjoy it!
Paula
Note New Categories
Posted by Paula Boyd
Hi, friends,
I have added a few more categories in the top bar with new information. The entire site is being reworked and I am trying to learn how to use this blog efficiently. I’m getting there!
I look forward to hearing from you!
Paula
What’s New!
Posted by Paula Boyd
After a long detour on the fast track of life, Paula is back and more outrageous than ever!
The latest news is that Paula’s first book, Hot Enough to Kill, is featured in The University of Texas Press recent release, Lone Star Sleuths: An Anthology of Texas Crime Fiction.
Early reviews for the book are fantastic, including an exciting review by The Dallas Morning News, which mentions Paula and her humor. (We’ve all known she was “funny” for a long time…)
Paula, along with at least 13 other authors, will be signing copies of the book at the University of Texas campus in San Marcos from 2 – 5 p.m. February 23, 2008. If you’re in the area, please stop by!
Publishing rights for Turkey Ranch Road Rage are still being negotiated. However, for a limited time, you can download an unedited version and catch up with Jolene and Lucille. To find out what’s going on this time check out the link under the TR3 heading.
Questions
Posted by Paula Boyd
Here are a few links that may be of interest to you. I attended the 2007 Arkansas Writer’s Conference in Little Rock in June and enjoyed it very much. Contact information is below. I have no personal experience with any of the others, but they are located in Arkansas.
I do have quite a bit of conference experience in other areas around the country, however, depending on what kind of conference you are looking for. Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (www.rmfw.org) and Pikes Peak Writers Conference ( http://www.ppwc.net) are both really good events. Both also have contests for unpublished authors where final judging is done by editors and agents. If you find any others or do attend one of these, please let me know how it goes!
- http://www.geocities.com/penwomen/
- http://www.ozarkcreativewriters.org/
- http://www.arkansasliteraryfestival.org
- http://www.whitecountycreativewriters.org/id53.html
Arkansas Writers Conference
Posted by Paula Boyd
Hi, all! I enjoyed being back in the conference world June 1 and 2 in Little Rock. I met some really nice people and the presentations were good too. It had been a while–okay, yes, years–since I’d been to a conference and it was good to dip my toes back in those waters.
Dusty Richards- the winner of TWO Spur Awards this year–was there and I liked his presentation style. I also had the opportunity to visit with Laura Parker Castoro, who writes women’s fiction. Her latest–#36–is Icing on the Cake. Besides being an incredibly successful author, she’s a really nice person.
As for me personally, well, I’m making progress. Yes, really!
Paula
More Australia Photos
Posted by Paula Boyd
Hello from Down Under!
Posted by Paula Boyd
Oz is most incredible and I am having the time of my life!
My son has married an Australia girl and I made it to the wedding. And since I was in the area, I decided to make an adventure of it.
I have been to Fraser Island, the world’s largest sand island, where I traveled through Rain Forests and desert and drove along the highway at water’s edge. Had to pull over from time to time so the planes could land there as well. Yes, on the sand at the surf line. That’s the “road”!!! Saw a shipwreck from 70 years ago and swam in the low ph freshwater lake that made my skin feel so smooth. The sand there is rounded and good for polishing things, so I polished me! No soil at all on the island, only sand. There are colored cliffsbut they are made of sand and mineral deposits. No rock at all. Amazing place. Did NOT swim in the ocean there as a man on the beach was catching sharks.
Spent another day at Lady Elliott, a tiny island that is part of the Great Barrier Reef. Snorkelled the reef, oh, yes, I did! And it was the most glorious thing. The formations and fish and colors and drop offs and arches and all kinds of aquatic life. Three squid took a fancy to me and followed me around for quite some time. Lots of parrot fish, pink and green and blue and yellow fish, and long nosed ones, big ones, little ones… Swam in a school of small blue fish–they surrounded me. A big brown and orange fish was kind of curious as well. It was just amazing. The aerial view is flying in to the island. You can see the landing strip in the middle. Takes maybe 45 minutes to walk around the whole island. Absolutely wonderful!
Spent another day in Hervey Bay at the beach and just relaxing. Had a lovely apartment on the beach and found lots of shells to bring home.
Have been to the lighthouse at Byron Bay–the most easterly point in Australia.
Am off to hang glide tomorrow! Then to my daughter-in-law’s family beach house for a few days then to Sydney!
The big tree that I am standing in is a Morton Bay Fig Tree. They are huge. It is near where I am staying here near Ballina. Beautiful country. The house is the main house of a macadamia nut farm. The veranda overlooks the pool and a lake behind that. Palm trees, gum trees and all kinds of tropicals and flowering trees and bushes surround the place. It is so beautiful and amazing!
That’s it for now. Hope you have enjoyed the first part of Turkey Ranch that is posted on the site. More is coming soon!
G’Day Mates!
Paula is back!
Posted by Paula Boyd
Where has she been, you ask?
Take this quiz to test your own guessing skills!
Paula was:
Abducted by aliens
Only recently released to outpatient status, having lost her mind and her sense of humor
Busy writing another book
Dealing with drama and trauma involving death, divorce, moves across three states and a great deal of introspection
All of the above
The author takes her own quiz:
Okay, clearly option “c” is ludicrous because it does not take six years to write this stuff. It ain’t Lonesome Dove, for godsakes. Therefore, “e” is invalid as well. Answer “a” is un-provable but possibly true, although I could have just had a psychotic break with reality, in which case “b” would be the option of choice. However, the answer is indeed “d,” although there is some grain of truth in all of them—except maybe the alien abduction thing, although I did toy with using it as a reason for my insanity. People steer real clear when you tell them you’ve just never been right since they brought you back. And no, I am not on medication although many have suggested it.
The truth is that “d” gives the short version. The longer version is that when Hot Enough to Kill came out in November of 1999, my father-in-law became gravely ill and died the following month. During this same period, my sister-in-law also became ill and died in July of 2000. My mother, who was much of my inspiration for Lucille, also became ill and died in October, which was the month Dead Man Falls was released. She never saw it, which is probably just as well since she didn’t speak to me for three months after HOT came out.
Now, there are several interesting points with all this, not the least of which is that three people in my immediate family died of cancer within ten months. They all lived within a few miles of each other in Texas. Yes, I have theories. Rather than go into those however, let’s just say that I learned a lot about a lot of things and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was living in Colorado, and besides several plane trips to the Lone Star state during that time, I also racked up over 37,000 miles on my Suburban. Forget weeks away from work, try months. It was a pretty traumatic time for the whole family, and, well, things just fell apart across the board. You do the best you can at the time, and then you adapt—whatever that means for each of us.
As it turns out, I had started a third book in the series, Turkey Ranch Road Rage (TR3), a while back in response to the Colorado State Parks Department great new plan to funnel over 200, 000 cars and RVs about thirty feet from my front door. I was not a happy camper, to use an unfortunate phrase. So, as with most of my writing, I decided someone needed to die, and I set about to do just that. Well, things changed and my murderous thoughts waned as the parks people made me an offer I couldn’t refuse at the absolutely perfect time, i.e., divorce in progress. Although I loved Colorado, I needed to leave for a lot of reasons. So, I took the kids and went to Missouri where my aunt, who’d been a second mother to me, lived. She was very ill—yes, you only get one guess—and had little time left. It was a good year there for me in so many ways.
Now, I am in Arkansas, which is too darned close to where I grew up in Texas both geographically and philosophically, although I must say Bony Butt would have some stiff competition here. Frankly, Ethel’s dogma seems pretty open minded compared to some of the things I’ve heard come out of real-life mouths here. So, just for fun, I sometimes try to explain that if we just honored each other’s spiritual choices as equally valid as our own rather than my way is the only way, then we wouldn’t need those pesky holy wars. Once that rock has been thrown at the hornet’s nest, I simply whip out my pen and paper and take notes. You don’t think I make this stuff up, do you?
You know, I was told by my website designer that I needed to write a few paragraphs for this opening page. Well, if you’ve read my books or heard me speak, you know how I am. Once you get me started….
Anyway, I am very glad to be back and that TR3 is almost ready. It has been a long while in coming and things have changed in it from when I started it. A lot of things. I don’t have a publisher for it at this point, and may put it online in a downloadable pdf form for a nominal fee until I decide if I want to do something different. All I really want to do is share my insights into the human condition—or, as a fan put it, make you “spit crackers laughing.” Same thing.
If, after reading this rambling discourse on my life, you fear that somehow I’ve been “cured” and Jolene is no longer neurotic, click on over and have a look-see at TR3. The first few chapters of all the books are readable online now. I think you’ll find that, if anything, my friends, she is worse than before.
I wish you much laughter!
Paula