Welcome to this week's Coffee Chat!
Our guest today is Judy Alter, bringing us her featured book, The Second Battle of the Alamo, which she describes as faction, a blend of fiction and historical facts.
Good Morning, Judy! What may I get you to drink?
JA: I start every day with a cup of green tea with honey. I always drank black coffee, until one day a few years ago I had the flu and coffee tasted awful. I never went back to it.
Ally: No problem. I always keep tea handy too. While I pour, please introduce yourself to readers.
Bio:
Some find it a surprise that I’m not a native Texan since my entire career has been writing about Texas, but the truth is I was born in Chicago more years ago than I care to disclose. After a brief college adventure in small-town Iowa and a longer period of graduate study in small-town Missouri, I decided I am a city girl and landed in Fort Worth, Texas, where I have lived for over fifty years.
In college I majored in English, because I liked to read, and some man was going to take care of me. That didn’t work out the way I planned, and I had a wonderful career as director of a small academic press. Today, retired, I am the proud single parent of four, the grandmother of seven, and the author of over a hundred books of various kinds and substance. I live in a 600-square-foot cottage with my dog, Sophie.
Something personal about Judy: "My bio rarely includes my cooking, but I am a pretty darn good cook, and I like to experiment, both in cooking and dining out. In my next life, I’d like to come back as a chef—with temperament, back, and feet young enough to stand that life."
Author links:
http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com, http://www.gourmetonahotplate.blogspot.com
Twitter: @judyalter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/judy.alter and https://www.facebook.com/Judy-Alter-Author-366948676705857/ Amazon: www.amazon.com/Judy-Alter/e/B001H6KPU6
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/dashboard
Some find it a surprise that I’m not a native Texan since my entire career has been writing about Texas, but the truth is I was born in Chicago more years ago than I care to disclose. After a brief college adventure in small-town Iowa and a longer period of graduate study in small-town Missouri, I decided I am a city girl and landed in Fort Worth, Texas, where I have lived for over fifty years.
In college I majored in English, because I liked to read, and some man was going to take care of me. That didn’t work out the way I planned, and I had a wonderful career as director of a small academic press. Today, retired, I am the proud single parent of four, the grandmother of seven, and the author of over a hundred books of various kinds and substance. I live in a 600-square-foot cottage with my dog, Sophie.
Something personal about Judy: "My bio rarely includes my cooking, but I am a pretty darn good cook, and I like to experiment, both in cooking and dining out. In my next life, I’d like to come back as a chef—with temperament, back, and feet young enough to stand that life."
Author links:
http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com, http://www.gourmetonahotplate.blogspot.com
Twitter: @judyalter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/judy.alter and https://www.facebook.com/Judy-Alter-Author-366948676705857/ Amazon: www.amazon.com/Judy-Alter/e/B001H6KPU6
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/dashboard
INTERVIEW:
Ally: Why did you write your featured book, The Second Battle of the Alamo?
JA: I inherited this project from a friend with a terminal illness. I had known Debra Winegarten had a contract to write this book and had urged her to focus on it, among her several other projects. After she was diagnosed with overwhelming malignancies, she called me from her hospital bed and in her whispery voice said, “Will you write my book?” I immersed myself in Alamo history and loved it, and I like to think I helped Debra find peace about the career she was leaving behind.
Ally: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
JA: I have written all my life and cannot imagine not writing. After being read to a lot as a child, I wrote my first short (really short!) stories at ten, submitted to Seventeen magazine in high school (it came right back), and had a long apprenticeship before I found my niche in writing about Texas, primarily the women of its history. With a detour (twelve books) into mystery, I am now back to Texas subjects with a new-to-me publisher.
Ally: Which of your books is your personal favorite?
JA: Having said that Texas is mostly my subject, I must admit that the book I am most proud of is The Gilded Cage, set in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. A fictional biography of Cissy Honoré Palmer, it covers the Chicago Fire, the labor troubles including the Haymarket and Pullman strikes, and the Columbian Exposition. I am fascinated by Chicago history and will write another book set there if I land on the right topic.
Ally: Tell us about your reading habits. What genres and authors do you enjoy?
JA: Although history is my field, I am a lifelong reader of mysteries, especially well-done cozy mysteries. Some of my favorite authors are Susan Wittig Albert, Cleo Coyle, Diane Mott Davidson, and Carolyn Hart—especially the Death on Demand series. I recently read a couple of Murder, She Wrote books and enjoyed them, after having unfairly judged them as lightweight spinoffs of the TV show. On the less cozy side I enjoy Deborah Crombie, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Dick Francis. I also enjoy food books and am a fan of Ruth Reichl.
Ally: Do you prefer to read series or stand-alones?
JA: When I get lost in a good book, I hate for it to end; if it’s one of a series, I know it will continue, and I can return to that world. I like the comfort of knowing the characters and feeling that I am part of the book.
Ally: Which short answer questions did you choose?
Ally: Why did you write your featured book, The Second Battle of the Alamo?
JA: I inherited this project from a friend with a terminal illness. I had known Debra Winegarten had a contract to write this book and had urged her to focus on it, among her several other projects. After she was diagnosed with overwhelming malignancies, she called me from her hospital bed and in her whispery voice said, “Will you write my book?” I immersed myself in Alamo history and loved it, and I like to think I helped Debra find peace about the career she was leaving behind.
Ally: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
JA: I have written all my life and cannot imagine not writing. After being read to a lot as a child, I wrote my first short (really short!) stories at ten, submitted to Seventeen magazine in high school (it came right back), and had a long apprenticeship before I found my niche in writing about Texas, primarily the women of its history. With a detour (twelve books) into mystery, I am now back to Texas subjects with a new-to-me publisher.
Ally: Which of your books is your personal favorite?
JA: Having said that Texas is mostly my subject, I must admit that the book I am most proud of is The Gilded Cage, set in Chicago in the late nineteenth century. A fictional biography of Cissy Honoré Palmer, it covers the Chicago Fire, the labor troubles including the Haymarket and Pullman strikes, and the Columbian Exposition. I am fascinated by Chicago history and will write another book set there if I land on the right topic.
Ally: Tell us about your reading habits. What genres and authors do you enjoy?
JA: Although history is my field, I am a lifelong reader of mysteries, especially well-done cozy mysteries. Some of my favorite authors are Susan Wittig Albert, Cleo Coyle, Diane Mott Davidson, and Carolyn Hart—especially the Death on Demand series. I recently read a couple of Murder, She Wrote books and enjoyed them, after having unfairly judged them as lightweight spinoffs of the TV show. On the less cozy side I enjoy Deborah Crombie, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Dick Francis. I also enjoy food books and am a fan of Ruth Reichl.
Ally: Do you prefer to read series or stand-alones?
JA: When I get lost in a good book, I hate for it to end; if it’s one of a series, I know it will continue, and I can return to that world. I like the comfort of knowing the characters and feeling that I am part of the book.
Ally: Which short answer questions did you choose?
JA:
- a. Most memorable book: Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose
- b. Book you're currently reading: The Years and the Wind and the Rain, by Steve Smith, a biograph of western author Dorothy M. Johnson
- c. An author you'd like to take to lunch: Deborah Crombie
- d. Ebook or print? Ebook—I mostly read on my computer, not a pad. I sort of live at my desk.
- c: Your pets: Sophie, an eight-year-old Bordoodle (deliberate cross of miniature poodle and border collie). She is whip smart, energetic, loving, and medium well trained. I adore her, and I think it’s mutual.
The Second Battle of the Alamo
Genre: Faction, carefully researched history with some fictional scenes woven in.
“By 1900, the tale of the 300 Texians who died in the 1836 battle of the Alamo had already become legend. But to corporate interests in the growing city of San Antonio, the land where that blood was shed was merely a desirable plot of real estate across the street from new restaurants and hotels, with only a few remaining crumbling buildings to tell the tale.
When two women, Adina Emilia De Zavala, the granddaughter of the first vice-president of the Texas Republic, and Clara Driscoll, the daughter of one of Texas’s most prominent ranch families and first bankers, learned of the impending demolition, they hatched a plan to preserve the site—and in doing so, they reinvigorated both the legend and lore of the Alamo and cemented the site’s status as hallowed ground.
These two strong-willed, pioneering women were very different, but the story of how they banded together and how the Alamo became what it is today, despite those differences, is compelling reading for those interested in Texas history and Texas’s larger-than-life personality.”
Book Buy Link (Amazon): www.amazon.com/Second-Battle-Alamo-Texass-Landmark-ebook/dp/B07Y1HB6V6
Genre: Faction, carefully researched history with some fictional scenes woven in.
“By 1900, the tale of the 300 Texians who died in the 1836 battle of the Alamo had already become legend. But to corporate interests in the growing city of San Antonio, the land where that blood was shed was merely a desirable plot of real estate across the street from new restaurants and hotels, with only a few remaining crumbling buildings to tell the tale.
When two women, Adina Emilia De Zavala, the granddaughter of the first vice-president of the Texas Republic, and Clara Driscoll, the daughter of one of Texas’s most prominent ranch families and first bankers, learned of the impending demolition, they hatched a plan to preserve the site—and in doing so, they reinvigorated both the legend and lore of the Alamo and cemented the site’s status as hallowed ground.
These two strong-willed, pioneering women were very different, but the story of how they banded together and how the Alamo became what it is today, despite those differences, is compelling reading for those interested in Texas history and Texas’s larger-than-life personality.”
Book Buy Link (Amazon): www.amazon.com/Second-Battle-Alamo-Texass-Landmark-ebook/dp/B07Y1HB6V6
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