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Day 8 of the Aransas Morning Book Blog Tour provides a scrapbook of photos from Port Aransas:

Aransas Morning Scrapbook

These photos are just a few from a large group I took during a visit in January 2013. I kept them in front of me during much of the writing of Aransas Morning to help set the mood and keep me focused. While the story is set in a real town and some of the locations are real, others are not.

Sam’s trailer park is based on the very real On The Beach RV Park located on Access Road 1A near the beach about two miles south of the town center. Dave’s hotel is on the same road at Highway 361 and is where I stayed when I first met the man who became Sam. (See Chapter Break Blog for the inside story on that,) And the ferry to the island is absolutely real; it’s the only way to get to Port Aransas unless you circle around to Corpus Christi.

Other locations such as Shelly’s Dream Bean Coffee Shop and Allie’s bungalow are fictional but placed in approximate locations on a real map.

Of course, much has changed in Port Aransas since August 26 when Hurricane Harvey made a direct hit with wind speeds of 130 miles per hour. The storm is not covered in Aransas Morning but it will be a key factor in the sequel, Aransas Evening, to be published later this year.

Meanwhile, the people of Port Aransas and the surrounding area are working hard to recover, and we’re trying to help a little by donating proceeds from book sales to those efforts. Learn more about that — and how and where to buy a book — at Aransas Morning.

 

 

For Wilshire Baptist Church

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.

For an hour on Friday I carried planks of beech flooring from the back of my SUV into the garage and up the tall attic stairs. I added the planks to the stack of flooring already there. We don’t need it now, and we may never need it, but we have it if we ever do. Continue reading “Treasures”

Day 7 of the Aransas Morning Book Blog Tour brings a review from a man who calls himself The Clueless Gent, and I really like this one. But not for the reason you may think.

I won’t label a review as a “favorite” because I believe that taints the process. A book review is an independent opinion by a person who took the time to read a book and share that opinion. Good or bad, that opinion is a gift because it adds to the public knowledge about a book and that helps potential readers make a decision. And reviews, like the daily news, should be gathered from various sources. Some of the world’s most-loved books received tepid or even bad reviews. And some of the best-reviewed books have left readers saying, “Huh?” Same goes for movies and records.

But I like the review by  “The Clueless Gent” because I like his method: general thoughts about Aransas Morning followed by discussions of setting, character and technical aspects. That’s the sign of someone who takes rewiewing seriously. I can tell he read and didn’t skim. And on top of that, he’s a darn good writer himself with well-crafted sentences and entertaining turns of phrases. I’m looking forward to reading his reviews of other books.

So, does he like Aransas Morning – and might you like it too? Read him and find out:  The Clueless Gent