This site replaces a long running diary on typepad that ended and became inaccessible after typepad closed shop. I don’t care. It’s not like I’m Hemingway and a suitcase of all my work was lost at the train station. Has any one ever claimed to have found them? That might make a good story if if isn’t written yet.
My writings to date consist of two partially drafted historical fictions and multiple short story tales about a fictional village and fictional families that figure prominently in both novels.
I tried to describe these works to someone at a holiday party who seemed genuinely interested. At first. I rambled too much. I digressed into the subtext a lot. Admittedly, US Senator Bronson Cutting may not seem like an interesting person. Eyes glaze seconds into my initial description of him.
Mentioning that he may have been gay isn’t so interesting. There is the supposition that this is why his mother destroyed decades of Bronson’s personal correspondence with his best friend. And his biographer makes slightly overly emphatic denials with no evidence either way.
His support for the first amendment, banking regulation, and Hispanics in New Mexico and other progressive legislation is sort of delicately sniffed at when I mention he was a Rebuplican and had a falling out with Roosevelt during his second administration. To some people that seems boring too.
The most interesting things about Bronson Cutting to me are not limited to his life alone, but to the lives of his family members, friends, and the community in New Mexico then. Take his sister, Justine, for example. Justine Cutting Ward lived with her brother even after she married and helped him design, build and furnish their house on Old Santa Fe Trail. She designed a vocal music teaching method named after her. She’s got a terribly long entry in Wikipedia. Longer than her brother’s.
The lives surrounding Bronson is sort of what that book is about.
The other is about Escadero, a New Mexico village established on or near an ancient pueblo. There are stories about its history as the center of a Spanish Land Grant and about the former grazing lands blanketed with subdivisions.
Cocoposts 