Introducing Deep Ellum Duet

By Jan S. Gephardt

I’ve spent the last several days preparing a new book for its presale launch. Deep Ellum Duet is the answer to a lot of requests we’ve had since we published my sister G. S. Norwood’s first novelette in 2019. People want to buy them from a variety of booksellers, and many would prefer to buy a paperback. But until now, Deep Ellum Pawn and Deep Ellum Blues were only available individually on Kindle.

There were several reasons for this. They made sense at the time we first published Deep Ellum Pawn. We at Weird Sisters Publishing were newer to the publishing game then (it was only our second title). And one novelette alone was not big enough to be practical in a print edition unless we wanted to make a slender booklet that wouldn’t be cost-effective.

We also were under the illusion that Kindle Unlimited would make a piece of short fiction easily available and that there was a tremendous demand. As it turned out, KU has no “magic formula,” especially since the novelette had a profit margin too small to justify paid advertising.

Cover art ©2019 by Chaz Kemp.

 

G.’s Writing Career

I’m excited to produce Deep Ellum Duet because it’s a new milestone for G: her first fiction publication in literal print. You see, one of my greater pleasures in recent years was bringing my sister’s first independently-written fiction, Deep Ellum Pawn, into publication. An odd combination of obstacles held up her fiction writing career for a long, frustrating time.

It’s certainly not because she can’t write! She’s earned her livelihood through one writing job after the next, from broadcast writing to several forms of journalism and newsletter or ad copy writing, through highly effective grant writing. No, G. always had the writing chops. Indeed, I’ve always thought she’s a better writer than I am.

But officially-acknowledged fiction publication has maddeningly eluded her until now. She co-wrote the Time Police #1 novel and collaborated with her late husband Warren C. Norwood on the outline for a 6-book series after Warren became seriously ill. Mel Odom wrote books 2-5 based on that outline (then the publisher went bankrupt and the series was never finished). But for contractual reasons, she wasn’t credited.

Covers courtesy of Goodreads.

 

G.’s Body of Fictional Work

During the 1990s, both she and Warren tried to break into the romance genre. She attracted a lot of editorial interest but never found a publisher. Her books made it into editorial meetings more than once. She almost sold one – but then the publisher decided to discontinue the line. Another got a lot of interest, but . . . no. It’s the story of many writers’ lives when they try to mesh their vision with that of a traditional publishing house.

Here at Weird Sisters, we’re determined that it’s only a matter of time before several of those “failed romances,” too, will become available. Because they’re wonderful. Especially if you read them as women’s fiction, rather than romance novels (see more below).

But Deep Ellum Pawn at last put G. in the “published fiction” column. It came after an adult lifetime of hanging out with top published writers, honing her skills, and writing book after book. While still holding down her day job as Director of Concert Operations for The Dallas Winds, she polished off a second novelette set in the series, which came out in 2020 as Deep Ellum Blues.

Artwork ©2020-2021 by Chaz Kemp.

 

The Deep Ellum Stories

A third short “Deep Ellum” work may be shaping into a novella but it’s not finished yet. This one is titled Death in Deep Ellum. It has been in the works since right after we published Deep Ellum Blues but unfortunately a range of issues beyond G.’s control have delayed it.

Meanwhile, we’ve collected several pages of rave reviews for the two already-published novelettes. These opinions come from both from “known” writers and discerning fans. If you follow Weird Sisters Publishing on Facebook, you know that even now, in recent months, Deep Ellum Pawn consistently pulls in Top 1K rankings on Amazon in the Occult Suspense category (and some others, too).

The Deep Ellum stories also were added by readers to the Goodreads Listopia’s “”Most Interesting World” List.

But we want to bring these stories to a much broader audience, in more formats. We have pulled out of Kindle Unlimited, although both novelettes are still available as standalone titles on Amazon (See our book pages for more details).

Montage designs from the last 2 months by Jan S. Gephardt. Cover art ©2019 by Chaz Kemp.

 

Where does Deep Ellum Duet Come in?

One novelette might be too short to make a bound, printed book. But two – especially including the extra “Set List” feature at the end of Deep Ellum Blues – definitely make a good small trade paperback. It’ll be about the size of my book The Other Side of Fear. This will be a new first for G: her first original fiction published in a print edition.

We’ve come to believe that restricting these novelettes to a single distributor (Amazon) and only one format (ebook) was holding them back. Enter Deep Ellum Duet. It’s a double-story edition that contains both of the Deep Ellum stories she’s finished so far. This title will officially go into wide release in ebook and trade paperback formats on March 14, 2023.

Today we’re proud to announce the start of pre-orders for the ebook version (unfortunately, Amazon is our only current outlet that enables pre-orders, and those only for ebooks). As soon as we can manage e-commerce from the Weird Sisters website, we’ll take pre-orders for the trade paperback version, fulfilled to addresses in the USA, UK, Canada, and Mexico.

Cover art ©2022 by Chaz Kemp.

 

What’s ahead?

Keep checking the links on the Weird Sisters Deep Ellum Duet page. We’ll update them as soon as more outlets open up. And The book will be available as close to worldwide as we can manage by March 14. You can also bet it’ll be prominently displayed on our dealers tables at conventions we attend throughout this year!

G.’s not done, however. She’s contemplating retirement in 2023, although it’ll be hard to part with her beloved Dallas Winds. But she’s got Death in Deep Ellum to finish! Not only that, but we’re in final edits for the first of her women’s fiction titles, Wrong Way Riley. It features plenty of good Texas music, as well as an engaging young woman who struggles to define herself as a person and an artist.

G. also has a wonderful mystery novel in progress, titled Ray and Sunshine. It stars a widowed, retired Texas police chief, a precocious little girl, and a delightful dog in the dynamite opener for a promising mystery series.

Yup, my awesome sister is just getting warmed up! Stay tuned.

IMAGE CREDITS

Many thanks to Chaz Kemp for the wonderful “Deep Ellum” covers – he’s the artist behind all three. The cover paintings are © 2019-2023 by Chaz Kemp. We also gratefully acknowledge Goodreads for the three “Time Police” covers. All montages and “Shout-Out” designs are Jan S. Gephardt’s fault. 

Packing up for Archon

 By Jan S. Gephardt

This week I’m packing up for Archon 45. I’m set to depart on Thursday, and I have a very full weekend planned. If this blog post is a little shorter than some, it’s because this week, of all weeks, time is of the essence. In addition to all of the “necessary maintenance” stuff there is to do on any given week, packing up for Archon tops the priorities!

It’s a broad-spectrum effort. If you’ve followed this blog for the last several months you’ve been a secondary witness to a recent change in my approach to conventions. In May, for ConQuesT 53, I decided to Try Something New. I dipped my toe into the idea of spending part of my time at a dealers table, and it worked out better than I expected.

We weren’t far from the Art Show – you can see it behind Karin R. Gastreich (L). At another time, M. C. Chambers and I posed for a photo. (See credits below).

 

Testing My Hypothesis

When it came time for the next convention, SoonerCon (#30 this year, in Oklahoma City, OK), I decided to test that hypothesis some more. Had my initial experience been a fluke? I had A Very Busy SoonerCon, and discovered that, no – it wasn’t just a one-off. That was a good experience, too. Nothing of that sort worked out for me with Chicon 8, the Worldcon in Chicago. Indeed, I actually ended up not going (“too expensive” headed a list of reasons), more focused more on Using My Time Well in other pursuits. Thus, I couldn’t test it further.

Until now.

I am packing up for Archon with some new equipment: A custom-made table cover (its design is based on a nebula image I licensed from Chaz Kemp, and I think it looks wonderful) and a 71-inch-tall banner to back up my end of yet another dealers table. This time we’re calling it Hollingsworth & Weird – once again, I’m depending on a trusted partner (who’s also a “morning person”) to make sure the table is staffed as much of the time as possible.

As I’m packing up for Archon 45, I have lots of plans for this convention! (See credits below).

 

Introducing the Hollingsworth Part of Hollingsworth & Weird

In this case my intrepid partner is a Kansas City-area science fantasy writer, Aaron Hollingsworth. He’s worked with me before, and I know him as a trustworthy go-getter with a strong work ethic. He normally stakes out a place in the dealers room at the conventions he attends. He tells me he prefers to interact with readers individually, face-to-face, rather than participate in panels.

You might enjoy his literarily-witty novels and novellas, such as The Broken Bards of Paris, The Broken Brides of Europe, and The Apothecary of Mantua. He’s also the author of numerous role-playing game supplements for D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, most under the series names Shattered Skies and Porphyria.

Aaron Hollingsworth and some of the books he has written. (See credits below).

 

Let us not Forget the Weird Part

I’ll be there to represent Weird Sisters Publishing. We’re in the process of preparing my late brother-in-law Warren C. Norwood’s  vintage series, The Windhover Tetralogy for re-issue in new e- and paperback editions. But they won’t be ready till this winter. My sister G. S. Norwood has a couple of wonderful novelettes available as the Deep Ellum Stories – but they’re short works currently in e-editions only.

Thus, when I’m packing up for Archon this year, the only physical books I’ll have available to sell are still my three XK9 stories: the prequel novella The Other Side of Fear and XK9 “Bones” Trilogy Books One and Two, What’s Bred in the Bone and A Bone to Pick. This is the same lineup I’ve successfully taken to the other conventions this season.

Unfortunately, it’s a fairly small pile of books. In my opinion, it’s still too small to justify taking up a whole table, plus covering the membership and time of a dedicated “morning person” to run it. I’m eager to fill out the Trilogy next year with Bone of Contention, and to start offering Warren’s books. But I’m also very pleased that in the meantime I could find a tablemate who’s as reliable and proactive as Aaron!

We have a growing list of tales to tell . . . but not all are in print yet! (The Other Side of Fear cover is © 2020 by Lucy A. Synk. The other two XK9 covers are ©2019 and 2020 by Jody A. Lee. The background nebula (also used for the dealers table cover) and all the rest of the covers are ©2019-2021 by Chaz Kemp).

 

And Speaking of Bone of Contention . . . My Reading!

I normally request to have my reading scheduled later in the day on Saturday, or even on Sunday of the convention. That gives me a good part of the weekend to promote it. But that doesn’t always happen. At Archon 45 it’s scheduled at 7 p.m. on Friday night. That makes it my first scheduled Programming item. No chances to promote it on panels before that! So I’ll have to rely on social media to alert people to it, and hope enough notice it to bring some listeners in!

Depending on who shows up and what they prefer, I have a number of options. There are a couple of scenes from Bone of Contention that I could share (I read an early version of Chapter One last time). I also have fun scenes from a couple of short stories I wrote as exclusives for my Newsletter subscribers (each month I offer them a free downloadable story or XK9-related project).

Which Shall I Choose?

Which story would you choose, if you attended my reading? Use the Comments section of this post if you’d like to weigh in with opinions. Can’t attend the reading, but you’re interested in one or more of these? Subscribe to my Newsletter!

Design and e-book text © 2021-22 Jan S. Gephardt (with help from 123rf and BookBrush). Shady portrait ©2020 by Lucy A. Synk.

 

Jan created this banner with a little help from her friends at BookBrush and 123rf. Story © 2021 by Jan S. Gephardt.

 

Anywhere but Sixth Level Artwork ©2022 by Chaz Kemp. Story is ©2022 by Jan S. Gephardt.

Packing up for Archon, I Added Another Idea to Test: QR Codes!

As partial compensation for fact that the early reading has truncated some of my publicity efforts, I’m also trying a different “test project.” We’ll see if it turns out to be a good idea or not. You may have noticed that QR codes, those funny-looking splotchy square or circular patches, have started turning up in more and more locations. Some people find them irritating or inscrutable, but more and more of us have started using our smartphones to scan them for a fast link to a web page or other online material.

Earlier this year, Weird Sisters Publishing created downloadable versions of Chapter One for each of my XK9 “Bones” Trilogy novels that’s available so far. But it only just recently dawned on me as I started packing up for Archon that I could create QR codes to take people to those “free samples” even more quickly and easily (I know: Well, duh! Right??). So I generated a QR code for the downloadable first chapter of What’s Bred in the Bone and added it to the label on my postcards that I give out at the convention.

The cover art for What’s Bred in the Bone and A Bone to Pick is ©2019-2020 by Jody A. Lee. Scan the QR codes to go to the sample chapters, or click on the links in the titles. QR codes were generated via QR Code Generator.

 

But Wait! There’s Also Art!

Yes, I’m also bringing my paper sculpture to Archon 45. Lucy A. Synk will be there too, with most of her “Welcome to Rana Station” display from Worldcon (other than the artwork she sold there). You’ll probably see lots more about the Archon 45 Art Show in one or more future posts on this blog.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to see highlights from past Archon Art Shows, you might enjoy my blog posts Artwork at Archon 43 and Artists at Archon 44.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish packing for Archon 45!

IMAGE CREDITS

Unless otherwise stated, all of the photography and graphic design in this blog post was created by Jan S. Gephardt. In the first picture, Deb Branson, my intrepid proofreader, took the photo of M. C. Chambers and Jan at their ConQuesT 53 table.

In the second picture, that’s Aaron Hollingsworth at a book-signing. It was held at Readers World in Sedalia, MO on August 13, 2022. Jan accessed it via Aaron's public Facebook page. The photo of Jan with Weird Sisters books at Archon 44 by Tyrell E. Gephardt.

In the third montage, Jan got Aaron’s Author photo from his website, and acquired his book covers for The Apothecary of Mantua and The Broken Brides of Europe from Amazon. She represented his RPG titles with a screen-capture of four listings on that page of his website.

The fourth montage is lifted from the Weird Sisters website. It features the work of Lucy A. Synk, Jody A. Lee, and Chaz Kemp. The rest are graphics originally designed for Jan’s Newsletter (Sign up for it here!). See the credits in their cutlines with copyright notices and links to the sources’ websites.

Preparing for DemiCon

 By Jan S. Gephardt

This week I’m preparing for DemiCon 33, to be held in Des Moines, IA May 6-8, 2022. There is a lot to do. Would you like a glimpse of my process?

My son Tyrell and I had been in the habit of attending 6-8 science fiction conventions per year before the Pandemic locked everything down. In our attempts to evade the roller-coaster of Covid dips and peaks, we dared to attend Archon 44 in person last October. But the Omicron surge (and an extremely untimely snowstorm) shoved us back into attending Capricon 42 virtually, last February.

Preparing for a virtual convention differs dramatically from preparing to go in person. There are logistics involved with both, but it takes far greater organization and effort to attend an SF convention in person. Either way, we have to iron out membership details, but an in-person appearance means making hotel reservations and lots more planning ahead. Not to mention hauling all our stuff several hundred miles to go encamp somewhere for several days.

Jan and Ty are preparing for DemiCon 33 (header courtesy of DemiCon 33).

 

To Attend or Go Virtual, That is the (First) Question

Even as we’re preparing for DemiCon, we’re keeping a wary eye on the recent rise in Omicron BA.2 cases. I’m double-vaxxed and double-boosted (Ty’s too young and healthy to need the second booster). Both my Beloved and I are in a higher risk category because of our age. And my family also cares for my frail, 97-year-old father, whom we’d like to keep alive and well.

I know a lot of the country is young, healthy, and really, thoroughly beyond tired of being careful. For well or ill, however, my family still can’t afford to take undue risks with Covid. So it was with considerable caution that we decided to give DemiCon an in-person try. They’re following local health guidelines at the con, but we’ll definitely bring our hand sanitizer and masks!

This is kind of how a lot of people visualize the Covid “roller coaster.” (See credits below).

 

When I go to a convention, I no longer go just as myself, but also a representative of Weird Sisters Publishing. That somewhat alters the advance publicity planning. For one thing, I decided this year to try advertising in conventions’ program books. This might raise awareness of our little company, and it also might help financially-distressed cons – which means most of them, these days.

Preparing for DemiCon Way Beforehand

Advertising means I must design an ad. Ad deadlines usually come a month or more before the convention. But it’s a way to represent, when we’re still too small to support a dealers’ table. We don’t have many titles in print yet (also, the hours I’d have to keep, to run a dealer’s table, might seriously end this confirmed old night owl).

But, few or many, preparing for DemiCon means I had to have some books. In stock. At the con.I have more on order, and I’m lucky to have what I hope are enough for DemiCon already in hand. We currently have print editions of my three XK9 books. That’s it for now, but not for long.

My sister’s Deep Ellum Stories are too short for individual print copies bigger than maybe a booklet. Those might be more expensive to print than I could ask people to pay. We’re holding out for an omnibus edition before we print it, once she’s finished the other two stories she’s planning. Starting this fall, once my late brother-in-law’s Windhover Tetralogy is back in print, I may have to make a different calculation about that dealer’s table.

Here’s Jan, masked for Covid protection at Archon 44, October 2021 (photo by Tyrell E. Gephardt).

 

Long Live S.W.A.G.!

Lacking a dealer’s table, I am a mobile exhibit. I’ve made signs. I always carry a copy or two of each book. And I like to come loaded with S.W.A.G. for the freebie table or to give away at autograph sessions or my reading.

What is S.W.A.G.? I wrote an entire blog post about it, a while back. The acronym stands for “stuff we all get.” That is, free things handed out at a convention. For Weird Sisters, it consists of bookmarks for each book, a postcard that promotes What’s Bred in the Bone and my reading, and badge ribbons. I do have new bookmarks to hand out since the Pandemic: I had some made for The Other Side of Fear, A Bone to Pick, and my sister’s story Deep Ellum Blues.

Making bookmarks and badge ribbons are two other long-term projects, along with ordering books and making ads. I first have to figure out designs and badge ribbon one-liners. Then I compose and design them, and place my orders so I’ll have them when it’s time to go to more conventions. Preparing for DemiCon, plus preparing to have enough S.W.A.G. for the rest of the summer and fall, took a while.

A lot of work goes into the creation of “freebies” at conventions. (See credits below).

The Art Part

Anyone who’s seen me at a convention knows I nearly always have artwork in the Art Show. I’ve “always” been a visual artist. I was an art major (printmaking and graphic design) for my undergraduate degree (I minored in journalism). During my full-time teaching career, I worked as an art teacher who also taught some publications. But, although I steadily honed my writing craft in the background, in the early years the artwork always came first.

And after 40 years of bringing artwork to science fiction conventions, it just doesn’t feel right if I don’t have an Art Show display! Thus, preparing for DemiCon means gathering enough work for a display, getting registered, and preparing the paperwork needed.

If you’ve followed this blog, you have seen lots of “Here’s my art show panel at X” photos. I’ll probably post one of this year’s DemiCon display, too. Sorry to say, it will be smaller than in past years. Between writing fiction, working on my monthly newsletters, blogging, and working on covers for Warren’s Windhover Tetralogy, I’ve had less time than usual for paper sculpture.

Jan’s art show panel at Archon 43 in October 2019, when she won an award for "Best 3D" (photo by Jan S. Gephardt).

 

Panels, Readings, and Presenting Myself

Conventions, large or small, are entertainment venues that operate on thin profit margins. They often give panelists free memberships, but that’s not just because they love them. It’s because they’re relying on them to help provide a worthwhile experience for con-goers.

I spent too many years as a teacher preparing lesson plans to stomach just walking into a panel “cold,” and “winging it.” To me, that’s grossly unprofessional. But that means I must develop materials for panels ahead of time. My ideal? To go into a panel with enough material (even if I’m not the official moderator) to guide the panel into interesting discussions for the full time we have. If we don’t get to all (or any) of them, that’s okay, as long as the audience enjoyed the panel.

For readings, especially when I share a short time slot during a session with one or more other authors, I plan ahead. Readings are like auditions for my books, so I practice. I time myself to be sure I respect others’ time allotments. And, although it’s always a challenge at this end of the “con season,” coughing fits are not entertaining. I try to get my voice in shape, so I’m able to read all the way through smoothly.

Here’s a walk through the decades that Jan’s been going to sf cons. (See credits and panelist identifications below).

 

Preparing for DemiCon

As you can see, preparing for DemiCon – or any convention – takes a lot of work. I think it’s worth it, because I love science fiction conventions. If you also go to conventions and enjoy the special exhibits and/or panels, now you have a bit more behind-the-scenes understanding of what goes into them. And if you’re a newer creator, getting ready for an early-career foray to a convention, maybe this post has offered some ideas (the teacher in me hopes so).

And thank God the conventions are coming back! Many thanks to all the dedicated convention committees and their financial backers. And here's a hope for the DemiCon committe, my fellow panelists and exhibitors, and all my fellow attendees, that with all of us preparing for DemiCon, it’ll be the best one yet!

IMAGE CREDITS

First of all, many thanks to DemiCon 33! Thanks for inviting me, for providing me with a venue to show and read my work to others, and thanks also for your header graphic at the top of this post!

I assembled the “Covid Roller Coaster” montage with two images: Statista provided the graph of Covid cases in the US from the start of the Pandemic through April 9, 2022. The burning roller coaster photo came from Inspire More’s article full of Covid-related memes (the credit there said only “Instagram”). Tineye Reverse Image search found it on a website I can’t access, back in early September 2014. Other hints in its early record on Tineye indicate a possible location in the Los Angles area, but that’s all I could find in a quick search.

SF Convention Memory Lane

I owe Tyrell E, Gephardt repeated thanks for photos of me at conventions. He took the one of me, masked up behind my current collection of signs, books, and S.W.A.G. at Archon 44 last October (2021). He also took the one of me at Capricon in 2020 with my then-full display of S.W.A.G., at my autograph session. And he gets further credit for the photo of me at Archon 43 in 2019, preparing to do a reading.

I took other photos of our S.W.A.G., as well as the wide photo of my Art Show display at Archon 43 in 2019. Sorry: the one at DemiCon 33 won’t be that big, because I’ve sold a lot of that artwork since then.

I don’t think I was ever sure who took the “historical documents” that show me at ConQuesT in 1985 (ConQuesT 16) and 2012 (ConQuesT 46), but I can identify my fellow panelists. In the 1985 photo they are L-R: Dell Harris, Ken Keller, me, and the late Roland Schmidt, my former co-teacher and a fantasy watercolorist. BTW, that’s my calligraphy on the name cards, back before desktop printing made them easy to print. And in the 2012 photo that’s me on the left. Tracy S. Morris sits in the middle with her book Bride of Tranquility. At the right is fellow Kansas City writer, artist, and longtime sf fan Sherri Dean.

A Bowl of Red

 By G. S. Norwood

We are in the middle of what passes for winter in Texas. Not like the deep freeze we had last winter, thank goodness. A typical Texas winter means we have many days when the temperatures hang in the mid-fifties during the day, sometimes dropping into the twenties overnight. And when temperatures drop in Texas, Texans make chili.

When temperatures drop in Texas, Texans make chili. (See credits below).

 

A Bowl of Red

Chili looms large in Texas mythology. Cue the image of cowboys sitting around the campfire, eating bowls of chili while someone plays a harmonica in the background. Back in 1966, beloved Dallas journalist, restauranteur, and historian, the late Frank X. Tolbert wrote what remains to this day the definitive work on chili. In A Bowl of Red, Tolbert offered up recipes, profiles of chili masters, and lots of tasty historical tidbits, all collected on his way to founding what is now called the Original Terlingua International Championship Chili Cookoff, held every November in Terlingua, Texas.

For more than 50 years now, folks have been flocking to Terlingua, or simply starting their own chili cookoff competitions, in pursuit of the best, the ultimate, the absolutely perfect bowl of red. Along the way, the Terlingua competition has spawned many legends and inspired at least one classic outlaw country recording—Jerry Jeff Walker’s ¡Viva Terlingua!—all of which have only added to chili’s mythic stature.

Please note that ¡Viva Terlingua! has nothing to do with chili and was actually recorded in Luckenbach, Texas. But the wide-open craziness of the Terlingua Chili Cookoff has resonance in Texas, and somebody must have figured the name would sell a lot of records. Which it did. (Luckenbach is a whole ‘nother story.)

Photos from the 2021 Original Terlingua International Championship Chili Cookoff. (See credits below).

Beans? No Beans?

Chili con carne is a basic of Tex-Mex cooking, but modern Texas chili has evolved far beyond a simple sauce of chili peppers and meat. Traditional Tex-Mex cooks treat chili con carne (chili pepper sauce with meat) more like gravy than a hearty stew than can make a meal all by itself. Chili con carne, like chili con queso (chili pepper sauce with cheese) is ladled over enchiladas and added to huevos rancheros. You can slit open an individual size bag of Fritos corn chips, drizzle a little chili over them, and add a whole pile of shredded cheese for Frito Pie. Uses like these give rise to the scornful snort you’ll often hear from chili purists: There are no beans in chili.

But c’mon. Let’s flash back to those cowboys, gathered around the campfire, out on the rolling plains. If you’re the camp cook and you have to provide a hearty meal for some hungry ranch hands, what are you going to do to make that chili pepper sauce with meat stretch? Add more expensive meat? Or throw in a bunch of beans?

That’s right. You go for the beans. Beans are cheap. When dried, they’re easy to transport from Beaumont to the trailhead in Abilene or Fort Worth without going bad. Your cowboys, whether Anglo, Black, or Hispanic, all grew up eating beans. It beggars the imagination that pintos, red kidneys, or navy beans never found their way into a pot of chili until folks from up north or back east started messing around in the chili pot.

“Cookie” had to feed a lot of hungry men out of that little wagon. (See credits below).

Man Mysteries

But that protest from the purists is a clue to another aspect of the chili saga. Like barbeque chefs, chili cooks are often men, and they raise the act of making chili to the level of a men-only sacred ritual. No girls allowed.

They do this by turning chili into Man Food, which is generally hotter, more complicated, and more extreme than the kind of food mere females create for mundane purposes like feeding the family. You think jalapeños make your chili hot enough to start brush fires? the chili men ask.  Try adding habaneros or ghost peppers. Wait! How about habaneros AND ghost peppers!

I firmly believe that food should not be painful but then, I’m a girl.

The meat in chili con carne also begs for masculine refinements. Beef is only a starting point. Some chili cooks swear by pork, others by highly spiced sausage. Or, hey! Why not a combination? Beef, and pork, and sausage! Or venison! Yeah! That’s the ticket. There’s probably even a cult following for Varmint Chili, using rabbit, raccoon, opossum, or rattlesnake as sources of meat. I wasn’t able to find a link for it, but you know if I thought of it, the manly chili connoisseurs are way ahead of me.

Frank X. Tolbert put Texas chili on the map with his classic cookbook, A Bowl of Red. (See credits below).

My Personal Chili Odyssey

Do you remember last week’s blog, where I said my mother thought Italian food was too spicy? Well, that went double for chili. It was a forbidden food at our house when I was a child—so much so that it became a bonding opportunity for my father and me. Several times when I stayed home sick from school, Dad took me to the doctor. Mom was a full-time high school teacher, but Dad, a college professor, had a more flexible schedule. It became our little secret that, on the way home from the clinic, we would pick up a can of Hormel and some saltine crackers and have a clandestine lunch of chili.

As an adult, I switched from Hormel to Wolf Brand—the preferred chili of Texas if you have to eat it out of a can. And, while Warren was very much a devotee of the Man Mysteries school of chili cooking, I discovered that he sometimes took a shortcut. He’d buy a Wick Fowler’s Two Alarm Chili kit, which is a prepackaged collection of herbs and spices for your chili-cooking pleasure. Wick Fowler being the legendary chili cook who upheld Texas pride in that very first International Championship Chili Cookoff in Terlingua.

After Warren’s death, when I became the sole chili cook in the household, I fell back on Wick Fowler’s False Alarm Chili, which turns out to be a dead simple recipe for delicious chili that won’t burn the back of my throat away. Did I mention that I don’t think food should be painful? I’m not a chili purist, and I’m definitely a girl, so I feel no shame. Now, when the weather turns cold and I’m hungry for that bowl of red, I pull out the Wick Fowler’s, a can of Ranch Style Beans, and my big red cast iron Dutch oven. Because when the temperatures drop in Texas, even transplanted Missouri girls make chili.

A transplanted Missouri girl makes chili. (G. S. Norwood).

PHOTO CREDITS:

All montages are by Jan S. Gephardt. The frosty Dallas lawn photo is courtesy of LawnStarter, and the meme came from America’s Best Pics & Videos. Many thanks to Ghost Town Texas for the panoramic views of the 2021 Terlingua chili event (it’s worth a look at all the photos on their page – especially if you thought sf convention-goers wore weird costumes!). Thanks also to Google Maps for the satellite view of the area.

We deeply appreciate the archive of historical chuck wagon photos by Erwin E. Smith at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas! Jan used a little “Photoshop magic” to make the details easier to see on The Shoe Bar Outfit in for Dinner (1912) by Erwin E. Smith. That one is definitely from their collection. We found the other photo, Erwin E. Smith stops for a cup of coffee on the LS Ranch (1907) on Pinterest. The Pinterest poster attributed the photo to Erwin E. Smith (he did take several photos of himself) and the Amon Carter Museum – but we couldn’t find this exact photo in the Amon Carter’s online collection of photos, letters, and other materials by Smith.

Thanks very much to Alchetron, for the photo of Frank X. Tolbert. Amazon provided the cover image for A Bowl of Red, and the delicious-looking Texas-style “Bowl of Red” photo came (with a recipe) from Dad Cooks Dinner. Finally, G. S. Norwood herself photographed the stages of her own “Bowl of Red” recipe.