CARL PRESENTATIONS AT THE RECENT READERS MAGNET FESTIVAL OF STORYTELLERS. WWW.FESTIVALOFSTORYTELLERS.COM/BOOTH/CARL-BRUSH
THE YELLOW ROSE 2ND PRINTING
Did you know?
Historically, the term “yellow rose” referred to an attractive mulatto woman. Also historically, the original “Yellow Rose of Texas” was for sure one Emily West, and her story is intertwined in song and legend with the Texas Revolution of 1836. That series of battles, led by Sam Houston, made Texas a Republic, its own country until it joined the union in 1845.
The Yellow Rose is set during the revolution and supposes that Emily and Sam not only collaborated in certain incidents that gave the Texans victory, but became romantically involved in the process.
Coming soon
My sixth novel Swindle In Sawtooth Valley awaits publication. Any day now
There’s plenty of Writer Working news till Swindle emerges. Browse through the works already out there, and take a peek at some new reviews and commentaries.
Read my latest already-publnovel
YOU CAN’T KEEP HER
This is the first sequel to Bonita, the story of a mother’s search to find her lost daughter and then her fight to maintain a relationship with her.
“A compelling story of self-discovery and courage”
Silvia Villalobos, author
Excerpt from Chapter 1 of You Can’t Keep Her
BLOCKADE
We were in the library, which smelled of the same leather and stale cigar smoke left behind by its late owner, Benito Alvarez. It was quite a mansion Alvarez had built high on this San Francisco hill where i now stood opposite his daughter, Flora Torres. She face me with her arms folder across her chest, so straight and stiff I wanted to cut her corset strings, fancying she’d go all wobbly like a marionette. The image amused me, but I couldn’t indulge in humor now, with her stern dark eyes locked so intently on mine.
“You live an unsavory life, Bonita Kelly. Your parents were horse thieves. Your business partner, that disgusting Sylvia Gonsalves, is a prostitute. You live in a hotel instead of a proper house. You are unfit to enter my home, let alone associate with my daughter. We won’t allow it any longer.”
She gestured to the maid, who had escorted me in. “Laura will show you out.”
Her lips squeezed together like pincers. By “We” she meant her husband, Miguel, who was away on business as he so often was, leaving her to manage, and she was managing with even more than her usual ferocity.
“Two years I’ve been calling on ‘Margarita,'” I said,using the name Flora had given my daughter instead of ‘Bonita,’ the name I’d given her at birth but had yet to broach with her.
“I should never have let things go this far, but now it’s over. From this day forward, you will not cross our doorstep.”
Other novels…
Bonita
The Yellow Rose
Romance amid the cannons of the Texas Revolution.
Emily West, the original Yellow Rose of Texas, and Sam Houston fall in love and establish a new nation. Just click on the left image for a trailer, click on the right to make the adventure all yours.
The Maxwell Vendetta and The Second Vendetta
THE MAXWELL VENDETTA
AND
THE SECOND VENDETTA
Experience a family’s struggle against a marauder intent on destroying every trace of them and their legacy.
Set in 1908-1910 San Francisco, these historical thrillers comprise two volumes of a California frontier trilogy. The third book in the series is Bonita
With the e-book at just $2.99 and the paperback at $14.99, this is one of the greatest bargains in literary history. Just click on a cover image to buy immediately.
NOW LET’S MOVE ON TO PAST AND CURRENT BLOGS:
- AN ARC, AN ARC, MY KINGDOM FOR AN ARC - Now, I seldom, maybe almost never, talk much about the arc of a story. Even books I don’t much care for have one, for good or ill, and I tend to concentrate on character story in terms of reader impact. But I […]
- WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO DIE - Because I could not stop for death It was Emily Dickinson who wrote that. I thought of her lines a couple of nights ago when we gathered to remember, to laugh and pray and praise our dear friend and colleague, Peter. He […]
- AIRPORT FANTASY - An airport you’d think was set up as a place for transportation, and I mean the swiftest known on earth outside rockets and spaceships. But add it all up, the time, I mean, getting to and from an airport, sitting in […]
- BARBARA LEE SPEAKS FOR ME (AND FOR THEE) - I am just now sitting down at the computer after having watched the new film Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power, and I confess to being a bit awestruck. Lee has been my congressional representative much of my politically aware life. In 1998 […]
- RUN FOR YOUR LIFE - MASTER SLAVE HUSBAND WIFE recounts the 1848 escape from slavery of Ellen and William Craft, a “married” couple from Macon, Georgia. I put “married” in quotation marks because their union was illegal on two counts. First, the enslaved were forbidden to marry […]
- WRITER’S BLOCK? DON’T THINK SO - Not that I don’t feel like writing or don’t have ideas. It’s that I have a certain (uncertain?) ennui hovering about me. I almost wrote “like a shroud”, but, Lord what an image that is. Is “like a shroud” like a shroud? […]
- NO SAFE HARBORS - Billie and Stevie meet at a San Francisco bus stop seven years after graduating from the same Brooklyn high school. Coincidence? That’s the question Ron Kemper’s A Coincidental Life poses as it reaches back into the past and forward into the future […]
- A TMI VERSE - TMI For god’s sake spare me Your TMI Please shut up I want to cry. I don’t care about your ghosting friend Let alone that turd of a guy Stop with your recital I will not lie My cocktail is calling Good […]
- NEW GROUND - THIS IS ME. Apparently content and affable. Indeed, at the moment the shot was taken, both those words described my mood. However, when I began to construct this blog, I found that I could not manipulate the images as I once could […]
- THE CAPERS OF BUSTER’S COPPER CANYON CREW - [DISCLAIMER: APOLOGIES THAT IT TOOK SO LONG TO PRODUCE THIS LITTLE TRAVELOGUE. APOLOGIES AS WELL FOR SOME OF THE LAYOUT. I’VE ENDED UP PUBLISHING IT AS AN EXAMPLE OF ALL THE PROBLEMS I’M HAVING WITH THE NEW REVISIONS TO THE WEB PROVIDER […]
- A REAL LIFE OZYMANDIAS - I feel that nothing sums up Eugene Rogan’s The Fall of The Ottomans better than this poem by Shelley:Ozymandias / PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY I met a traveler from an antique Land who said “two vast and trunklessLegs of stone Stand in the […]
- INCHING TOWARD BETHLEHEM TO BE BORN - On your left is an image of the great poet, William Butler Yeats. Yeats was born in 1865, and this post’s title poem is from “The Second Coming”, published in 1920, so we can presume that the photo is of a younger […]
- HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME - It was a beautiful weekend in the the neighborhood. The neighborhood of San Joaquin County, that is. We’d traveled there in November for my “How To Turn True History Into Historical Fiction” presentation. We’d also been there several years back for a […]
- BACK TO IT - I’ve had to take a break from this space for a number of reasons, some good, some not so. We are renting out space. We have a big house (3500 square feet or so) with an apartment in the garage in the […]