Christmas Gift Idea - A Little Downhome Nostalgia

Have an elderly or sight-impaired relative who could use a little Holiday Cheer? Consider this Large Print book as a gift.

Tales of a Texas Boy - Large Print  makes a really great Christmas present for those who are still spry, yet their danged glasses don't work as well as they should. My mom's like that. With her progressive lenses, the world in general is more or less clear, but the tiny spot left to the reading part of the lens is difficult for her to find.

The 18Pt type is eyesight-impaired friendly. I can even read it without my glasses.

The trim size (dimensions) is an easier-to-hold 9.7 x 7.4 x 0.3 inches with 138 pages. It's eligible for free shipping and handling from Amazon Prime.

The big news for Tales of a Texas Boy is that it's in audio book now. It's discounted to only $1.99 at Audible.com (also through Amazon). And, of course, the ebook is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, and lots of other on-line stores in various ebook formats.

Here's the blurb for the book:

How do you handle a crazy jackass? Eddie knows. If you ask Eddie, he'll tell you pigs can fly and show you where to find real mammoth bones. Take his word for it when he tells you always to bet on the bear. These are things he learned while dreaming of becoming a cowboy in West Texas during the Depression. Through Eddie, the hero of "Tales of a Texas Boy," we find that growing up is less about maturity and more about roping your dreams. Hold on tight. It's a bumpy ride. A wonderful read for anyone who enjoys books like "Little House on the Prairie" or "Tom Sawyer." A great bit of nostalgia for seniors, too.

Here's a brief excerpt to give you an idea of what you might expect to find in "Tales of a Texas Boy." In this story, ten-year-old Eddie is left home with only his sister. Without Ma and Pa around, Eddie usually finds some way to get into mischief. This story is titled, "No Angel."

I noticed a flock of blackbirds lit on Ma's clothesline, so I went in and got the shotgun. I loaded it with smallshot and snuck around the side of the house so's not to scare the birds. I figured I could get the whole flock of birds if I shot straight down the clothesline from one end to the other.

I had to be real quiet, so's I thought I'd sneak up on 'em like I was a Comanche. I got down on my belly and rested the shotgun across my arms. The grass was high enough so I'd not be seen. I dug in my elbows and pulled myself real slow around the corner of the house. When I got to the lilac bush, I got up behind it and checked if the birds had a notion I was there. They just sat on the line and didn't even look my way, so I hunched over and ran lickety-split to the oak tree. From there, I was right at the end of the line and no more'n ten feet away.

I leaned around the tree trunk and eyed the line. Yep, I could see right down it. My hands aren't big enough to span both triggers, so I pulled them one at a time. I figured I'd shoot the first barrel and then real quick-like, fire off the second. That way, I'd get to hit the flock twice.

I eased the shotgun up to my shoulder and pulled back slow on the left-hand trigger. The first shot blasted off and knocked me back a few feet where I landed on my rear end real hard. I still held the shotgun in my hands, but I wasn't in any position to fire off the second barrel. When I sat up and looked to see how many birds I got, I was in for a shock. All that noise and not one feather to show for it. But Ma's clothesline...now that's a different story. The durn thing looked like a dead snake layin' there.

I knew right away Ma would not be pleased with this.

I got myself up and was wonderin' what to do next when I looked up and saw the blackbirds flyin' in a circle like they were waitin' for the clothesline to be put back up for 'em to light on.

Giving Tuesday

I hope people I know don't need a day telling them it's a good day to give. However, people get wrapped up in holiday plans and can think, "I'll be sure to do that soon."

Today's the reminder day: November 28th, 2017 is Giving Tuesday.

Join me and help @EnvDefenseFund raise $250K for climate action, habitat conservation, & more. All #GivingTuesday gifts are being matched $4-for-$1. 

ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND

Happy Sports on TV Day

HAPPY SPORTS ON TV DAY!

Have a great Thanksgiving or a decent Thursday the 23rd if you're not in the US.

Also, Happy Birthday to my mom on her 94th birthday coming up on November 27th. 

Tribute to Turkeys Everywhere

My favorite Thanksgiving Greeting song. Have a nice Thanksgiving day and be kind to turkeys!

#Free Books on Smashwords

All of the following are free because I'm a nice person or I'd just like people to be able to enjoy the books I have published already.

From the Witches of Galdorheim Series:

BAD SPELLING (Book 1 of the Series)
Katrina’s spells don’t just fizzle; they backfire with spectacular results, oftentimes involving green goo. A failure as a witch, Kat decides to run away and find her dead father’s non-magical family. But before she can, she stumbles onto why her magic is out of whack: a curse from a Siberian shaman.

SPELLSLINGER (Bonus Short Story)
What does a teenage half-warlock, half-vampire do to have fun? Why build an old west town on a glacier in the Arctic. There he can play at being the good guy sheriff up against mean old Black Bart.



Short Stories Series

TALES OF A TEXAS BOY (Illustrated)
How do you handle a crazy jackass? Eddie knows. If you ask Eddie, he'll tell you pigs can fly and show you where to find real mammoth bones. Take his word for it when he tells you always to bet on the bear. These are things he learned while dreaming of becoming a cowboy in West Texas during the Depression. 

MIXED BAG (Previously Published Short Stories)
A little science fiction, a bit of fantasy, plenty of humor, and some really shocking horror. These are tales to suit any mood. 

Review: The Volcanic Rose by Renee Duke

The Volcanic Rose by Renee Duke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The time-traveling saga of the Wolverton family comes to an explosive end in "The Volcanic Rose." I'm not giving any spoilers you can't get off the cover. Yes, Mt. Vesuvius is involved.

One thing about the Wolvertons, there are plenty of them to get involved in fixing the things that go wrong in the past. Featured over the four previous books, we follow the current generation of time travelers, siblings Paige and Dane, and their cousin, Jack. In the third book (Spirit Rose), they meet Skookaweethp, a syilx (First Nations tribe) girl from centuries before, who knows not only they are time travelers, but that another time traveler, the evil Khatcheres, wants to disrupt time to his own advantage.

The Time Rose travelers learn they are tasked by time itself to thwart Khatcheres' plot, but in doing so, their ability to time travel will end.

The cryptic writings of one of their time traveling ancestors, Aurea-Rose, leads them through the steps they must take, which involves returning their Time Rose and other time artifacts to a girl named Varteni who awaits them in 79 AD at Ercolano, known now as Herculaneum. Varteni and the town lie in the direct path of the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius. To be sure, time is more of the essence than usual.

This is a great setup to end the series with both dramatic flair, but also to make sure we readers of the series will (sadly) know this will be the end of the Time Rose tales.

It is best to read the books in order even if the travelers are hopping around in time themselves. Lots of clues are provided throughout the series which make the conclusion logical and inevitable.

My only complaint is the cast of characters within the Wolverton clan alone is numerous. However, five plus generations of the family are represented, so it's not surprising there are tons of aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, grand-parents, great-grand-parents and even a great-great-great-grand-aunt. It's a bit difficult keeping track of who's who. I'd love to see the Family Tree.

It'd be great if the publisher now puts the entire series together as a boxed set. It'd be a wonderful gift for middle-grade kids who like a rousing fantasy tale.

Highly recommended for kids of all ages. I'm giving this five stars to include the entire series. I'm usually stingier with stars.


View all my reviews

Happy Veterans Day

Vets' Day Special  - TALES OF A TEXAS BOY

#FREE Amazon Kindle Ebook - Final Day
#FREE Photo-Illustrated Ebook at Smashwords - All November
Large Print Paperback Book $8.99 at Amazon
Regular Print Paperback Book $6.99 at Amazon

This is the real Texas Boy during WWII. Handsome devil. I can see why my mom accepted his proposal within a month of meeting for a blind date. 

“We saw that big sign there and it said ‘Free College’. I’d never heard of any such thing, so Red and me, we thought maybe we’d try it out. But, we didn’t after all, ‘cause we saw we could pick tomatoes. We went down there and signed up for a while. We went to the World’s Fair, you know, in San Francisco. Later, me and Red enlisted in the army.”

Animated now, my father, who isn’t much of a conversationalist, was telling me about things he did in 1939. He and his buddy, Red, were on a road trip in a new 1940 Ford. They’d just graduated from high school and wanted to examine the world a bit beyond the tiny world of Salem High School. He’d told me plenty of stories and I hurried up and wrote them down. Why hadn’t I started this long ago?

The stories flowed, backtracked, started up again somewhere else. Sometimes, he was back in high school on the football team, sometimes in grade school, then forward again, bouncing wherever his eighty-four year old mind led him. His high school yearbook showed his picture with the words ‘Ed the Cad’. Quite a heartbreaker back then, he was. The cool dude, sports jock, class president, too. Who was this guy?

As a kid growing up in West Texas, he’d gone on a cattle drive, collected bones to sell, encountered skunks in cornfields, went fishing with special Arkansas cedar floats. Good stories. Real life stories.

TALES OF A TEXAS BOY holds these stories forever. I hope you might enjoy them.

Saluting My Own Vet

I'd be remiss if I didn't include a mention of my very own veteran, Jack. He served in the Philippines before Vietnam became "official."

He was in Intelligence, which meant he spent his time listening to communications between Viet Cong who were already fighting with South Vietnam for the unification of the country into a single Vietnam under the Communist party. Heaven forbid the US would allow people to choose their own system of government.

Anyway, the US was listening in while only a few "advisers" were on the ground in South Vietnam busily trying to prop up the puppet government.

The result: Millions of Vietnamese dead--soldiers, fathers, mothers, sons, brothers, sisters. More than 58,000 American dead. And none of the killing did anything useful at all.

Nevertheless, whether the fighting and deaths were senseless or not, US military put their lives on the line and many died. That's why we salute Veterans. They did all that was asked of them and did it well, but the war was never going to change Vietnam unification. Vets are not saluted for winning, but for giving their all for their countries. This they did with honor.

In honor of all vets from all wars, I hope you'll accept the gift of Tales of a Texas Boy from either Amazon (through the 11th) or from Smashwords (through the end of the month).

Amazon Kindle Ebook Free Through November 11th 
Smashwords - FREE to the end of November

Large Print Paperback $8.99 at Amazon
Regular Print Paperback $6.99 at Amazon
Audio Book only $1.99

Little Eddie tells some almost true Tall Tales set in West Texas of the 1930s. Guess what's true and what Eddie fudged on. Was it about the bear? Cage McNatt's prize sow? The skunk in the cornpatch? Guaranteed for a chuckle and maybe a tear here and there.

Veterans Day Specials

Vets' Day Special (all of November)

#FREE Amazon Kindle Ebook - November 7th-11th 
#FREE Photo-Illustrated Ebook at Smashwords - November 1st-30th
Large Print Paperback Book $8.99 at Amazon
Regular Print Paperback Book $6.99 at Amazon

IF YOU'RE A VET OR KNOW ONE YOU WANT TO GIFT WITH A FREE EBOOK or AUDIO BOOK, CONTACT ME AT MY EMAIL ADDRESS (mgdasef@gmail.com)

TALES OF A TEXAS BOY
How do you handle a crazy jackass? Eddie knows. If you ask Eddie, he'll tell you pigs can fly and show you where to find real mammoth bones. Take his word for it when he tells you always to bet on the bear. Twenty-one nostalgic stories based on the real life Eddie's adventures growing up in West Texas during the Great Depression. But the stories are not depressing at all! If you like animals and stories of farm and ranch life, this is a perfect book for you.

Watch the Book Trailer on YouTube.

Listen to the excerpt at SoundCloud.

A Salute to Veterans

Tales of a Texas Boy are stories my father told me about his life in West Texas as a child. When WWII started, my father signed up, of course. His father (my grandpa) served in the military as a veternarian. This is his story.

Excerpt - Pa's Story

World War I took many young men away from their homes and sent them off to foreign shores. Eddie's Pa was one of those young men. He has his own tale to tell.

In 1916, I was still a young buck and not yet married, so I signed up with Black Jack Pershing to go after Pancho Villa. Ol' Pancho and his banditos came into US territory and killed a bunch of folks in Columbus, New Mexico.

I was real good with horses, so soon I was the veterinarian. This was just as well, as I didn't take well to using a gun. I'd never studied vetting in school, but I'd grown up on a farm in Nebraska and knew just about all there was to know about horses and mules. We chased Pancho and his gang just about all over Mexico, but never did catch up with him. A couple years later, I was still in the service, so I ended up goin' to France with Black Jack when he got to be a General. I could have decided not to go as I'd done my time, but I knew Black Jack could put me to good use.

We were on the troop ship for weeks. Everybody was seasick for the first few days. The horses seemed to fare fine in that regard, but I was worried we couldn't exercise them enough. We brought them up from the hold, a few at a time, and let them stretch their legs. We'd lead them in a quick walk around the deck. With the metal decks, we didn't want them to move very fast for fear they'd slip and fall.

I'd hate to have to put down a horse with a broken leg, so we took it real easy. As a result, the horses were not in good fightin' shape by the time we landed in France.

It took some time, but me and Joe, who got assigned to be my assistant, got them in shape again. Mostly the horses were used to pack gear, but a few officers still rode them. Black Jack Pershing liked to ride on occasion, as did Captain Patton. I thought we should only have mules, since they make better pack animals than horses, but there were never enough mules to go around.

We weren't in too many battles directly as we were the supply line for the army, but in 1918 it turned pretty bad when we went into the Argonne Forest. They called this an 'offensive.' I can see why as it offended me a lot. The fighting went on for nearly two months and only ended in November when the big guys signed the Treaty at Versailles.

In that short two months, it was hell on earth. Thousands of men died. One whole division, the 77th, was cut off for near a week and held out surrounded by the German forces. It was some battle, I can tell you. Almost all day long, I could hear the shells bursting and the sharp reports of rifle fire. And I heard the screams of dying men and horses.

The worst part for me was the horses being swept up in the middle of the battle. It broke my heart to go out on the fields after the fighting passed by and after the dead and wounded men were collected. Sometimes the ground was so soaked with blood that my boots were covered before I got back. A horse with an artery torn open bleeds gallons of blood; men only a few pints. It angered me when I thought how much the horses gave. They didn't even have a say in goin' to war. Men, at least, had a choice.

I carried a sidearm and had to shoot more horses than I can count. Those we could save, we'd bring back to the line and see if we could treat their wounds. It was a second heartbreak when they wouldn't heal proper and we'd take them out behind the tents to put them down. We dug a deep trench to bury them for health reasons and we kept digging every day to hold them all.

While we treated the horses, close by we could see the wounded men being brought back from the battlefield. Legs and arms were already gone or had to be cut off by the doctors right there in the field. From the history I'd read about the Civil War, this was just about as bad. If the choice was amputate or die, then they had to do what was necessary. We dug another trench to hold the arms and legs the doctors cut off; the dead soldiers we wrapped in oilcloth to be sent back behind the lines, where we hoped to send their bodies back home to their families.

All told I spent twenty months in France. It was the worst part of my life and I hoped and prayed we'd never see another war like this again.

* * *

Pa's story made me sad in a way, though I was proud of him for what he did in the war. It seemed to me people should learn to get along. I never was sure why Pa had to go to France. Later in my own life, I'd learn what it was to go to war. I was lucky to not go overseas, but somethin' in me wished I had.

* * *

Amazon Kindle Ebook Free Through November 11th 
Smashwords - FREE to the end of November

Large Print Paperback $8.99 at Amazon
Regular Print Paperback $6.99 at Amazon
Audio Book only $1.99

Little Eddie tells some almost true Tall Tales set in West Texas of the 1930s. Guess what's true and what Eddie fudged on. Was it about the bear? Cage McNatt's prize sow? The skunk in the cornpatch? Guaranteed for a chuckle and maybe a tear here and there.

Happy Trails for Vets Day

NOVEMBER IS FOR VETS
Great Book for Dad or Grandpa - Surprise them with a Veterans' Day Gift of Old-Time Humor

Amazon Kindle Ebook - Regular $2.99 - FREE NOVEMBER 7TH-11TH
Photo Illustrated Ebook in Multiple Formats - Free at Smashwords
Large Print Paperback $8.99 at Amazon
Regular Print Paperback $6.99 at Amazon
Audio Book only $1.99

Little Eddie tells some almost true Tall Tales set in West Texas of the 1930s. Guess what's true and what Eddie fudged on. Was it about the bear? Cage McNatt's prize sow? The skunk in the cornpatch? Guaranteed for a chuckle and maybe a tear here and there.

Book Trailer #1 = Tales of a Texas Boy