50

50
This Number Has Great Significance For Me

Let me tell you why.

I’ve just celebrated 50 years of marriage with Liz. The best years of my life. And that’s the truth.

My first two books Pepperman’s Promise and Perplexity were launched in 2017,
50 years after my college graduation. Put down your calculator! My age ain’t that important.

Panic Point, my third book released in 2019, the 50th anniversary of man’s first step on the moon.

https://www.defense.gov/observe/photo-gallery/igphoto/2001094237/

Read Panic Point and you’ll get a “hint” about our wedding night 50 years ago. It had something to do with the XIT Rodeo in Dalhart, Texas and an old hotel forty-five miles down the road that cost us a staggering sum of $5.00 for the night. It was our only option. (Are you sort of getting the picture of our first night of marriage?)

The name of the hotel was the Eklund. That dilapidated piece of junk has now been refurbished and is a fabulous place to stay. We spent our 45th anniversary there. (And NO, the price of the room was not $5.00.)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hotel_Eklund_Clayton_New_Mexico.jpg

In Panic Point, Earl and Morgan had a similar first night together. Their hotel was the Eckland. And neither Earl nor I would change one thing about the first night with our brides 50 years apart.

Tennessee Book Has a Name

In June of 2017, I met Dallas and Todd Bell at the Roundup Dinner at the West Texas Writers’ Academy. They had recently opened Burrowing Owl Books on the Square in downtown  Canyon, Texas. The store has new and used books. In fact, it’s the only used book store from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque. Check out their website: https://www.burrowingowlbookstore.com. Better yet, drop in for a browse.

Dallas said they displayed a section in the store for local authors. My books Pepperman’s Promise and Perplexity had been released a month prior. It’s exciting to have my books on a shelf in a book store.

One day Dallas and I were talking and she told me she liked my book titles starting with a P and hoped I would continue doing that. She said her family had been discussing the P alliteration at their dinner table and came up with some P words that would be good in a mystery title.

She gave me some great words, but I didn’t tell her I had already chosen the title for my next book. It’s nearing completion and will be out in the near future.

I think it will make Dallas and the Bell family happy.

  PANIC POINT

Click here to watch the video.

http://safeYouTube.net/w/J6Vd

Bill Briscoe
www.billbriscoe.com
https://twitter.com/BillDBriscoe
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Tennessee Research Trip--Part Two

Last summer Liz and I traveled to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to do research for the next book in The Pepperman Mystery Series. Our hotel was across the street from Log Cabin Pancake House. The first morning we walked in the restaurant and knew we would enjoy this place.

Suspended from the rafters are college flags, about seventy-five total. We looked for the flags of the schools where our daughters attended. Prominently visible from our booth was the flag of The University of Oklahoma.

 We snapped pictures and then noticed the OU flag hung directly across from Ohio State’s. Our Oklahoma Sooners would play the Buckeyes in a couple of weeks. The meeting in Columbus, Ohio would be big.

Check out the picture. I think the OU flag hangs little bit higher than the Ohio State flag.

If you like pancakes, Log Cabin Pancake House is the place to go. I ordered a full breakfast of ham, eggs and pancakes. A triple winner.

Breakfast was so good we went back the next day. I wore a shirt with the OU logo on the pocket. We were about finished with our meal when a couple from a nearby table walked by, and the lady said, “We’ll see you September 9^th.”    

September 9^th—I wondered the significance of that date.

She said, “We’re Ohio State fans and that’s when your team is coming up.”

We followed them through the payout line and stopped on the porch and made introductions. We spent thirty minutes talking football and even made a t-shirt bet on the game. They asked where we lived and why we were in Gatlinburg. I told them I was doing research for my upcoming book.

A few weeks later, a package arrived from Ohio. The box contained the smoothest chocolate buckeyes you’d ever want to put in your mouth, plus some real buckeyes. Legend has it a buckeye in your pocket brings good luck. To reciprocate I sent them a waffle iron in the shape of Texas. I may be an Oklahoma football fan, but I’m a TEXAN.

I want to thank the people at the Log Cabin Pancake House, 327 Historic Trail Drive, Gatlinburg, for allowing me to use their name in this blog and in my book.

My research travels have given me the opportunity to become friends with people across our country. That’s a benefit I never realized when I started this writing journey. 

Tennessee Research Trip

Book Two of The Pepperman Mystery Series is set in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The title and cover will be revealed later.

The main character is Earl Helmsly.  Readers told me they liked Glynna Helmsly and her family in Pepperman’s Promise, the prequel to the mystery series. Earl is one of Glynna’s children who was first introduced as a three-year-old with his twin Burl--ornery guys. Pepperman’s Promise covers a span of twenty years and we learn Earl joins the military after high school.

Book Two starts with Earl as a retired Navy SEAL.

Research for the book started with a trip to Tennessee with my wife Liz. First we toured the Cumberland Mountains with her cousins and stayed in a little cabin where nights are extremely dark with only the stars and lightning bugs for illumination.

Liz’s cousins told mountain stories as we drove throughout the area. They showed us a tombstone of a Revolutionary Soldier born in 1765. He was quite young to be a soldier at the start of the war, but lived to be eighty-seven.

Several days later we drove to Gatlinburg, one of the main entrances to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A thirteen mile drive through the park took us to Newfound Gap, an entrance to the Appalachian Trail. The trail is approximately two thousand two hundred miles long and goes through fourteen states from Georgia to Maine. Records show that over two thousand people hiked the trail in its entirety in 2014. If someone hikes the trail from one end to the other, and turns around and hikes back, it is call a “yo-yo.”  I admire those people, but not something I want to do.  

Fun people crossed our path on this trip. I’ll write about that next time.