January Member News

Andrea Downing, Dances of the Heart, Successful, workaholic author Carrie Bennett lives through her writing, but can’t succeed at writing a man into her life. Furthermore, her equally successful but cynical daughter, Paige, proves inconsolable after the death of her fiancé. Hard-drinking rancher Ray Ryder can find humor in just about anything—except the loss of his oldest son. His younger son, Jake, recently returned from Iraq, now keeps a secret that could shatter his deceased brother’s good name. On one sultry night in Texas, relationships blossom when the four meet, starting a series of events that move from the dancehalls of Hill Country to the beach parties of East Hampton, and from the penthouses of New York to the backstreets of a Mexican border town. But the hurts of the past are hard to leave behind, especially when old adversaries threaten the fragile ties that bind family to family…and lover to lover. Also available on Amazon.

Gail Jenner A western love short story, “Valentine Angel” will be included in the upcoming anthology, Cowboy Kisses,( Prairie Rose Publishing” targeted for Valentine's Day. Available on amazon.com - Kindle/paperback.

Gail has been interviewed for and will be appearing this spring in an episode of “MysteriesFrom the Museum”, on the State of Jefferson movement in Northern CA/Southern OR in 1941,  and also appeared in a PBS episode of “Oregon Experience”, on the State of Jefferson movement (Nov. 2014).

Gail also writes three historical essays a month for PBS/Jefferson Public Radio, which is heard all over Southern Oregon and Northern California. Link: http://ijpr.org/programs/it-was and an historical profile/article for the regional monthly publication, Jefferson Backroads.

C.M. Mayo, Marfa Mondays Podcasting Project: Exploring Marfa, Texas & the Greater Big Bend Region of Far West Texas in 24 Podcasts, including "Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands" and  "Tremendous Forms: Paul V. Chaplo on FindingComposition in the Landscape".

Awards

Cynthia Leal Massey Death of a Texas Ranger, A True Story of Murder & Vengeance on the Texas Frontier,  is a 2015 Winner of the San Antonio Conservation Society Publication Awards. The award will be presented in March.

This is the story of the murder of Texas Ranger John Green by Cesario Menchaca, one of three Rangers of Mexican descent under Green’s command. Immediately word spread that the killing may have been the botched outcome of a contract taken out on Menchaca’s life by the notorious Gabriel Marnoch, a local naturalist who had run up against the law himself. But was it?