Sgt. Mom

Air Force veteran, historical novelist, and cat-person

Where the 19th Century Died

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It’s always been said that the 19th century died on the Western Front; the writer Gene Smith said so, in his brief and lyrical account of a winding south-to-north trip, fifty years later. “…Verdun, … the disappearance forever of all represented by France’s glorious uniform of red pantaloons, and Germany’s wonderfully martial spiked helmets. Madelon and Germania flocked to the stations to kiss the warriors— “À Berlin!” “Nach Paris!” — and in the end the trains stopped at Verdun. After terrible Verdun, after the mules drowning in this shell hole here, after the disemboweled boys screaming in this fallen-in dug-out, the nineteenth century was over and history was back on the track for what the twentieth was meant to be.”

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Another Long Saturday Drive

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The fabled Swedish meatballs of Ikea

This one not as long as the trip to Brownsville on Monday/Tuesday, which was more in the interests of Watercress business rather than a book event but anyway, it was long enough; to the main library in Harker Heights, which seems to be a bedroom slipper to Killeen. We zipped up there in the wee hours of Saturday morning, with a tub of books and some freshly-printed postcards, on the promise of about eighteen other authors, and a very popular local event a book sale to benefit friends of the library. Alas for us the event was one of those which ask $1 for hardback books, .50 for paperback, and no one staggering away from the main event with a bulging bag of books and change from a $20 bill seemed inclined to pay full price for any of ours. But I handed out a lot of postcards about my books, and talked to other authors, and on the way back … we decided that we would stop in Round Rock and enjoy the Ikea experience.

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Annals of the Tiny Bidness

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So how to begin the story of how I became a business owner? I suppose that the very beginning came about when I realized that I was sick to death of working for other people, answering to sometimes erratic bosses, metaphorically (and sometimes in reality) punching a time-clock or logging my hours as an admin/office-manager/executive secretary or whatever the temp agency sent me to perform. I had also realized that I was good at writing, wanted to write professionally, and was on the cusp of transforming the amateur word-smithing into a paying job. I was encouraged in this ambition by a number of early blog commenters on the old Sgt. Stryker site who basically said I was very good at the writing and story-telling thing and they wanted more mostly in the form of a printed book while some other bloggers with slightly more extensive and professional writing credentials also said I was very, very good and ought to consider going pro myself… and then there was one commenter who didn’t have internet at home, and wanted to read my posts about my admittedly eccentric family so he inquired after my mailing address, and sent me a box of CD media, so that I could put an extensive selection of early posts about my oddball family on it one for him, the note said, and the rest for any other readers of the Sgt. Stryker site who wanted a such a collation. I swear unto all, this was about the first time that it ever occurred to me that yes, I had an audience, and one willing to pay money, or at least, for a box of CD media.

Eventually, I did produce a book a memoir cobbled together from various posts about my family, and growing up and there it all rested, until another blog-post sparked my second book and first novel. Again, a blog-fan encouraged me to write it, and one thing led to another, resulting in To Truckee’s Trail. About two and a half chapters into the first draft I was let go from a corporate job a full-time job with which I had become increasingly dissatisfied. On many an afternoon, walking through the duties expected of me, I kept thinking of how I would rather be and home and writing. It was a small shock being fired, actually but I kept thinking Whoo-hoo! I can go home and work on the third chapter!   I was oddly cheerful throughout the actual firing process, totally weirding out the HR staffer in charge of processing my dis-engagement from the company involved.

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Another Interesting Austin Scene…

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Spotted yesterday, when we were taking our book stuff back to the public parking structure down the street from the Capitol Building … A 2nd Amendment Dog Walk. They had their dogs and their weapons, and flags, and seemed to be a very jolly and cheerful crew, seeing that that they were in the epicenter of liberal-slanting Austin; that little patch of blue in a sea of red. They were there to support a 2nd Amendment-backing candidate for office.

 

And yes, the t-shirt that the young man at the right does say f*ck ISIS in letters supposed to look like Arabic script, which is very clever of someone.