My Ten Favorite Movies Set in Texas

My love for westerns and my enamoration with Texas are so tangled up together, I don't know where one begins and the other ends.  Texas has a mystique that has long enchanted me.  How long?  So long, I can't remember a time when I didn't wish I had been born there.

So here are my ten favorite movies that take place (at least partly) in Texas.  Astonishingly enough, two of them aren't even really westerns!  As usual, if I've already reviewed a movie, I'll link the title to my review.

1. The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) Four brothers (including John Wayne and Dean Martin) reunite at their mother's funeral and work together to find out how their parents lost their ranch. My favorite John Wayne movie!

2. The Magnificent Seven (1960) Poor Mexican villagers hire seven gunfighters to defend them from the bandit who's been oppressing them for years. Steve McQueen, Yul Brenner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn... magnificent, indeed!  (This starts off in Texas, and Texas gets mentioned several times, but the bulk of it takes place in Mexico.)

3. The Lone Ranger (2013) John Reid (Armie Hammer) returns to his Texas hometown after years away at law school.  Bad guys ambush him, his brother, and a company of Rangers -- everyone else dies, but a renegade named Tonto (Johnny Depp) saves John Reid's life, and together they try to bring down the greedy men responsible for the deaths of their family members.  It's a twisty, fable-like origin story that I never tire of.

4. Rio Bravo (1959) A sheriff, a recovering alcoholic, an old man, and a young gunslinger fend off a host of bad guys bent on springing a murderer from jail. John Wayne, Dean Martin, Walter Brennan, and Ricky Nelson play the four heroes. Angie Dickinson plays the love interest.

5. The Rare Breed (1966) A British widow and her daughter accompany the prize bull they've sold on its way to its new home in Texas, convinced it will revolutionize the cattle industry. James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Don Galloway, and Juliet Mills -- their characters are like my dear friends.

6. Giant (1956) A spoiled East Coast beauty (Elizabeth Taylor) marries a stubborn Texas rancher (Rock Hudson), and they spend twenty-five years trying to figure each other out. One of the first movies I can remember seeing, and my favorite James Dean movie.

7. Logan (2017) An aging, angry Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman) tries to save his dying mentor (Patrick Stewart) and a young mutant (Dafne Keen) with striking similarities to himself by shepherding them across the country.  It's a poignant, aching meditation on loss, aging, generational gaps, family, and love.  But also brutally violent.  (This one also only takes place partly in Texas.)

8. The Searchers (1956) Bitter, angry Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) spends years and years searching for his niece (Natalie Wood), who was kidnapped by Indians as a child. He intends to kill her to end her shame and misery from being forced to marry an Indian. Probably John Wayne's finest performance. Even if you don't like westerns, you should see this once because it's a masterpiece.

9. Texas (1941) Two young Civil War veterans (Glenn Ford and William Holden) have a series of adventures in Texas as they try to make their way in the world, one of them on the right side of the law and one on the wrong.  It's a romp with a few serious parts.

10. The Alamo (1960) Based on true events, of course, with lots of famous actors playing the roles of real-life heroes like Davy Crockett (John Wayne), James Bowie (Richard Widmark), and William Travis (Laurence Harvey).  It's sad, of course, but also glorious.

This is my first contribution to the Texas Blogathon hosted by The Midnite Drive-In this weekend.  Tomorrow, I'll be back with a movie review!

Release Day for "Cloaked" + Giveaway!

Today's the day!  Cloaked is officially available in paperback and e-book from Amazon right here.  

Wow.  This feels slightly surreal, to be honest.  I mean, I've spent how many decades thinking, "Someday, I will publish a book."  And someday is today.

Thanks to my ARC readers, there are already several reviews up on GoodReads.  Thank you, ARC readers!!!  You can now post reviews on the Amazon page too :-)

Yesterday, I asked people to hold off on ordering copies until today so we can see how big of a splash this book can make on Amazon's charts.  Today is here!  You can order now :-)  I'll pop back in later on to report on its stats.  I'm hoping we can show Amazon that yes, people want to read clean, wholesome, God-pleasing books.  #RebelliousWriting!

And yup, there's a giveaway.  Because, you know... I just can't resist doing them.

The picture shows one bookmark, but I'm giving away FIVE of them.

This is open world-wide.  Enter using the widget below, and please be sure to use an email address you check often.  I'll draw FIVE winners on Saturday, October 7, and notify them at the email address provided.  If you don't reply to claim your prize within one week, I will have to draw a new winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks to everyone who has supported me with your encouragement, time, prayers, and assistance!  Today would just be any other day without you, not my someday come true.

A Song about "Cloaked" and a Request

The Song:

My book will come out
Tomorrow!
Bet your bottom dollar that
Tomorrow
You can read
My western version
Of Little
Red Riding Hood because
Tomorrow
It's released!
Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I love ya, Tomorrow!
Release day in one more day.
Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I love ya, Tomorrow!
There's only one day to wait!

The Request:

If you have not ordered Cloaked yet (both paperback and e-book are now available), would you be willing to wait until tomorrow (Friday, the 29th) to order it?  I'd like to see how high it would go on Amazon's charts if a whole bunch of people order it on the same day.  Here's a link to its page on Amazon.

And I'll leave you with another quotation from one of the advance readers who have already posted on Goodreads:

I'm also planning a little giveaway for tomorrow to celebrate release day, so be sure to check back by my blogs then!

Is "Slow West" a Retelling of "The Great Gatsby"?

While hosting the read-along for The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald this summer, I happened to re-watch Slow West (2015) one evening.  And while watching it, I realized there are a TON of similarities between the two stories.  I'm wondering if anyone else thinks so too.

(There are lots of spoilers here and I'm not marking them, just so you know.)

Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee)

Gatsby is about a dreamer named Jay who loves a girl named Daisy.  West is about a dreamer named Jay who loves a girl named Rose.

Both Jay Gatsby and Jay Cavendish go to extreme lengths to chase down the flower-named girl they dream of.

Rose (Caren Pistorius) and Daisy (Carey Mulligan)

And both Daisy and Rose don't actually love the Jay who loves them.

There's a scene in Gatsby where Jay reaches for the light on the end of Daisy's dock across the water.  There's a scene in West where Jay reaches for the stars above him.

Both Jay Gatsby and Jay Cavendish die of a gunshot wound.  Both of them are killed over a case of  mistaken identity -- Wilson shoots Gatsby because he thinks Gatsby killed his wife.  Rose shoots Cavendish because she thinks he's one of the bounty hunters come to kill her.

Both The Great Gatsby and Slow West are narrated by an unreliable character who both admires and looks down on the character named Jay.

Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) and Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender)

And both stories revolve around class conflict.  Gatsby has a rich girl loved by a poor boy, and West has a poor girl loved by a rich boy.

Maybe I'm just seeing things, or I'm very drawn to stories with these themes, so of course I see parallels?  I don't know!  But I thought it was cool.

Advance Praise for "Cloaked"

Cloaked won't be released until this weekend (and I have something fun planned for a release party, so stay tuned for that), but reviews are popping up on Goodreads from some advance readers, and I want to share some of them with you over the course of this week.

The Kindle version is available for pre-order right now, and the paperback will be in a few days (just waiting on Amazon to post it, at this point).

So... "Cloaked" is on a Best-seller List...

Um, yeah.  I took that screencap about 7 minutes ago.  My book Cloaked is currently in the top 100 of Amazon's best sellers list for YA fairy tale adaptation e-books.

It's not even released yet!  This is just pre-orders!  I am... almost in tears, to be honest.  Wow.  So exciting and awe-inspiring that people are pre-ordering my book.  And this is the e-book -- I know some people are waiting for the paperback to get listed for pre-order too.  Which it will in a couple days.

Wow.

Thank you so much to everyone who has encouraged and supported me, here in the blogosphere and in other parts of my life!  This is YOUR doing.  YOU put this book on that list.  Thank you.

The Tag for the Tolkien Blog Party 2017

My fifth annual Tolkien Blog Party is in full swing over on my book blog, The Edge of the Precipice!  I've got games, giveaways, and more -- be sure to check it out if you're a Tolkien fan.  There's also a tag with ten questions to answer, and as usual, I'm going to answer them over here :-)


1. How long have you been a Tolkien fan? 

Since the first time I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in the theater in 2001.  Sixteen years!


2. Has your love of Middle-earth affected your life? 

Indeed, it has.  It's brought me quite a few friends, both in the blogging world and in real life.  Well, I guess I haven't met anyone in real life just because of Tolkien, but a shared love of his works has definitely deepened several friendships.

I think it's affected me as a writer too, because I have a deeper appreciation for mythic stories thanks to Tolkien.  I like to use the "hero's quest" form in my own stories a lot of times, and I wouldn't have wanted to learn about that if I hadn't read things about how Tolkien used it himself.


3. If you had to take the One Ring to Mordor, which character would you choose for your sole companion? 

Glorfindel!  He's extremely awesome, even if he does have a tiny role in LOTR.  He was such a great person, he actually got sent back to earth after dying during The Silmarillion.  In LOTR, he rode openly against the Nazgul and successfully fought off several of them.  I definitely want Glorfindel on my quest.  (But he doesn't go along in the books cuz yeah, that would make it too easy.)

He's not really in the movies, though supposedly he shows up at the end of Return of the King:

(Source)

I'm not exactly a fan of the "smug Ken doll" look, to be honest. If I were casting him in a movie, I'd probably cast Chris Hemsworth.  Yeah, yeah, I'd probably want to cast Chris Hemsworth in just about any movie, but he wears long hair well and can do "warrior dude" brilliantly, so I stand by my casting choice.

4. Which is scarier, Shelob or the Balrog? 

Shelob.  I hate, loathe, and despise spiders.


5. Which two towers do you think Tolkien was referring to in the title The Two Towers? (i.e. Orthanc, Barad-dûr, Cirith Ungol, Minas Morgul, or Minas Tirith) 

I think Tolkien meant Barad-dûr and Minas Tirith, the dark tower and white city opposing each other.  But I think Peter Jackson meant Orthanc and Barad-dûr.

6. Whose wardrobe would you like to have? 

Bard the Bowman's. I especially love his animal-skin coat.  I actually found a replica on Etsy once, but it cost many hundreds of dollars, so yeah, didn't get that.  But I would wear anything of his!  His practical coat, his makeshift fingerless gloves, his plain homespun tunic and trousers, his sturdy boots... and also the fancier blue coat and chain mail he gets later on.  These are comfortable clothes I could live in, which is what I want from clothes.

7. What do you think an Ent Draught would taste like? 

Like a clear vegetable broth, a sort of celery-plus-onions-plus-mushrooms flavor.


8. Where in Middle-earth would you like to live?

Either the Shire or Rohan.  I do like comfort and books and good food, but I also like horses and wide-open spaces, so I'd like to live in either place.  (But for vacations, I want to go to Rivendell.)

9. Do you have any Tolkien-related opinions that surprise other people? 

Well, I like the movies of The Hobbit better than the book, which I know is pretty shocking to some people.  The awful truth is, I don't actually like the book all that well, for a variety of reasons.  But I really love the movies, especially The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

Also, Boromir is my favorite LOTR character, which kind of confuses some people.

10. List up to ten of your favorite lines/quotations from the books or movies. 

 "Books ought to have good endings." -- Bilbo 

"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear." -- Aragorn

"Courage is found in unlikely places." -- Gildor

"Oft the unbidden guest proves the best company." -- Eomer

"Look out for me, especially at unlikely times!" -- Gandalf

"The time of my thought is my own to spend." -- Dain

"May your beer be laid under an enchantment of surpassing excellence for seven years!" --Gandalf

"In the morning counsels are best, and night changes many thoughts." -- Theoden

"Need brooks no delay, yet late is better than never." -- Eomer

"Short cuts make delays, but inns make longer ones." -- Frodo


There!  Now I've finished this and can go read all the tag posts people have been sharing at the party.  Yay!