{"id":412,"date":"2010-06-11T10:57:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T10:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/cowboy-for-a-rainy-afternoon-book-giveaway.html"},"modified":"2010-06-11T10:57:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T10:57:00","slug":"cowboy-for-rainy-afternoon-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/cowboy-for-rainy-afternoon-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon – Book Giveaway"},"content":{"rendered":"

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THIS GIVEAWAY IS OVER – NO NEED TO LEAVE A COMMENT! THE WINNER WAS POSTED HERE<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n


If you want to enter the drawing, you must read Stephen Bly’s article and leave a comment about something you read in the article along with your email address! I’ll need your email address so that I can contact you to let you know if you’ve won! If you don’t refer to something in the article, then you won’t be entered into the drawing!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m pleased to host multi-published author Stephen Bly on my blog again! I found his article about research extremely interesting, especially the part about Research Through Memories! Stephen speaks about memories from the fifties. I fondly recall a lot of historic things that younger people don’t recall, mainly things in the seventies. Stephen has many memories for the fifties. Myself? I have many memories from the seventies. The seventies were fond times for me, filled with memories that I’d love to place into a book! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Read this very interesting article that Stephen Bly wrote, Fiction As Research<\/u>:
Do They Sweat In Duke City?\/Fiction As Research
By Stephen Bly
Copyright\u00a92010<\/p>\n

New Mexico heat blanketed Albuquerque that July like too many
covers in a stuffy cabin. . .the kind of day that you sweat from the
inside out and feel sticky dirt in places that you don\u2019t ponder much
except in the shower.
From Cowboy For a Rainy Afternoon
Released: June 2010<\/p>\n

Every novel\u2019s got a place and time. That often means plenty of research. My next release, Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon, is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1954. So, I needed to know some things about a specific city, a state, and what the world was like that year.<\/p>\n

Research Thru Travel<\/u>
It\u2019s tough, dirty work. . .but I love any time I can go to New Mexico. The only other site I\u2019ve been that boasts similar layers of culture stacked one upon another: Rome. Yet, New Mexico\u2019s still a cowboy state. From the Pecos River in the east to the Plains of San Agustin in the west, from the Sangre de Christo range in the north, to the \u201cbootheel\u201d in the south, it\u2019s full of great ranching country. A perfect setting for a cowboy story.
My wife, Janet, and I drove up and down Historic Route 66 that runs through Albuquerque. It was known as the \u201cMain Street of America\u201d or the \u201cMother Road.\u201d It was the primary route for those leaving the dust bowl of Oklahoma and moving to California during the Great Depression. Albuquerque was selected as a stop on the first transcontinental air route in the 1920s and Route 66 brought the first transcontinental motorists through the city.<\/p>\n

Research Thru Study<\/u>
Duke City is a nickname for Albuquerque, because it was named after Viceroy Francisco Fernandez de la Cueva, the Duke of Alburquerque. Later the spelling was changed because some influential person couldn\u2019t pronounce the \u201cR\u201d in Alburquerque.
The cowboys in my story retire in Albuquerque, not Santa Fe, because even in 1954 the latter was becoming the artsy, celebrity spot it is today. These guys needed a cheap hotel and city amenities. So, Albuquerque suited them fine. Before there were retirement communities and senior citizen housing, some elderly lived in old downtown hotels. Well past their prime in attracting overnight guests, they catered to senior citizens who scraped by on something fairly new in the fifties: Social Security.
One of my favorite governors hails from New Mexico. Governor Lew Wallace authored the novel Ben-Hur (a movie made in 1959, starring Charleton Heston) and he also tried to negotiate with the notorious Billy the Kid. What an eclectic group of folks tramped the Old West.
A piece of historical tidbit. . .a hard thing for some readers to realize: in 1954 no one considered cigars or cigarettes or their second-hand smoke in any way harmful. That\u2019s why you see so many actors and actresses lighting up in the movies of that period. Cowboys often carried peppermints, which were tasty, portable, and covered up the smell of such vices, at least so they thought.<\/p>\n

Research Thru Learning the Language<\/u>
The main challenge of fiction: the rhythm of the dialogue. I had to sit very still and listen to each character speak in order to get the timing right, along with the vocabulary.
Every era boasts its own unique language. Every region develops a dialect. For the writer, both can be learned through research and careful study. But tone, timing, and cadence can\u2019t easily be taught. It\u2019s better to be in your bones. A writer\u2019s challenge is to develop instinct for tune as well as lyrics of speech. There has to be a natural flow.
To know the right lingo steps up a novel\u2019s authenticity. In Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon I got to use a lot of the classic cowboy terms that got lost over the years. I tried to stick an interior explanation to explain a few that might confuse.
For instance, a McGee is cowboy slang for a 4-strand rope made of a maguey (century) plant.
A phrase often used on a cattle drive or roundup was \u201cman at the pot.\u201d That meant someone was at the coffee pot for a refill and that shout-out indicated the guy was to fill everyone\u2019s cup.
To old cowboys, \u2018nobby\u2019 signified fine, expensive boots.
Pop\/Grandpa would \u201cdo to ride the river with.\u201d That\u2019s the ultimate compliment for a cowboy. Crossing wild rivers with great herds of cattle exposed dangers for man and beast. Not a time to trust your safety to some rookie just learning the ropes.
\u201cYou never know the luck of a lousy calf\u201d. . . one of my favorite cowboy sayings. Big, healthy, sturdy calves seem to fall of cliffs or get attacked by wolves. It\u2019s the scrawny, worthless ones that live forever.
I\u2019ve often wondered why we stopped using colorful words like \u2018footpad.\u2019 So called because of guys who pulled off their boots and snuck around in stocking feet, so no one would hear them.<\/p>\n

Research Thru Memories<\/u>
In 1954 an old man\u2019s vision of feminine loveliness would be Bow, Grable, Monroe or Kelly. Grace Kelly in High Noon stole my own ten-year-old heart. However, I figured she wasn\u2019t too smart because she couldn\u2019t understand why Will Cane had to turn back. But I did. Shoot, that\u2019s in a cowboy\u2019s bones. But, my oh my, she surely was purdy.
My bedroom was stacked with White Owl cigar boxes, my granddad\u2019s favorite cigar. He didn\u2019t smoke them much; mainly he chewed them. And because I lived across the road from him, I got many of his boxes. Lots of childhood treasures can be stored in a cigar box.
I listened to Sergeant Preston on the radio. What memories. How I wanted to be a mountie and own a dog like King.
TV was a brand new technology in 1954. We hadn\u2019t learned to sit comatose in front of one. . .yet.
One of the advantages of modern autos. . .they run so smooth there\u2019s seldom a backfire. But those random air-shattering blasts from the old rigs added adventure to an otherwise ordinary, routine day. Me and my young pals surmised the sound as a gun blast from a bank robber making his get-away, even though my hometown had no bank. That fact didn\u2019t darken my vivid 10-year-old imagination.
The summer of 1954, in Albuquerque, a 10-year-old boy becomes A Cowboy For a Rainy Afternoon.
Maybe I wasn\u2019t born 100 years too late.<\/p>\n

Stephen Bly
http:\/\/www.BlyBooks.com
http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/BlyBooks.com<\/p>\n

Available Now: Creede of Old Montana (hardback, Center Point)
Coming June 2010: Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon (hardback, Center Point)
Find these books at www.Amazon.com or www.BlyBooks.com<\/p>\n

~Cecelia Dowdy~<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS GIVEAWAY IS OVER – NO NEED TO LEAVE A COMMENT! THE WINNER WAS POSTED HERE. If you want to enter the drawing, you must read Stephen Bly’s article and leave a comment about something you read in the article along with your email address! I’ll need your email address so that I can contact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-giveaways"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paovYP-6E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ceceliadowdy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}