Category: All About Books

All About Books: Amber Foxx

4/9/2021

Health educator Amber Foxx talked with Lynn Moorer about her mystery book, The Calling, in which her protagonist Mae Martin begins a personal training certification course at a local university, is introduced to alternative medicine, and reconnects with her psychic powers which she first experienced as a youth and which enable her to help other beings in the past and the present but which she doesn’t understand very well. Mae is faced with a conflict between her family—especially her husband, who takes a dim view of her psychic powers, and her strong urge to help people and other beings. As she delves into resources available to her in the university community, she becomes more confident in her abilities and resolves to solve the mystery as to why her mother cast her father out of their life when Mae was a teenager.

All About Books: Sandra Marshall

3/26/2021

Former anthropologist and public historian Sandra Marshall discussed with Lynn Moorer her novel, Death in the Time of Pancho Villa: A Rose in Old El Paso Mystery, set in 1911 during the time of the Mexican Revolution and whose protagonist photographer Rose Westmoreland travels to El Paso in search of her missing husband, an accountant for an oil company. During her search, she meets famous historical figures like Pancho Villa, Pascual Orozco, and Francisco Madero as well as not-so-well-known historical figures El Paso Herald reporter Timothy Turner and photographer Esther Lovell who also become caught up in Rose’s investigation and search for clues.

All About Books: Catalina Claussen

3/12/2021

Award-winning author and English teacher Catalina Claussen returned to the show to chat with Lynn Moorer about her book of short stories, Being Home: A Southwestern Almanac. These stories encapsulate, for each month, gentle, congenial, quirky, and amusing characters of the Mimbres Valley as they meet in their kaffeklatch at the Chisme Café, offer wise pronouncements in a rocker on its front porch, save a kitten frozen to a highway, help the bees pollinate flowers, and experience a wild adventure in a wheelchair hooked to the back of a pickup.

All About Books: David Lee Summers

2/26/2021

Science fiction and fantasy author and astronomer David Lee Summers returned to the show to discuss with Lynn Moorer the second book in his Space Pirates’ Legacy series, The Pirates of Sufiro, which begins in the year 2925 and features the space privateer Captain Ellison Firebrandt and his crew members and close friends, Suki Mori and Carter Roberts. After Firebrandt’s spaceship Legacy is raided by another ship helmed by his mother Admiral Barbara Firebrandt and left with little fuel and few supplies, Firebrandt, Suki, and Roberts decide to take their chances with crashing onto an uninhabited planet on the far side of the galaxy which is similar to Earth before it became overpopulated and virtually ruined. Besides an exploration of space and the settlement of a new planet, the story explores the birthing of new government and the potential exploitation of newly-found resources.

All About Books: Eric Norway

2/12/2021

Retired DEA pilot and mechanic and Border Patrol agent Eric Norway chatted with Lynn Moorer about his latest book, Better Lucky Than Good: True Stories of Aviation, which recounts stories of hair-raising and unforeseen escapades and close calls experienced while flying or preparing planes for flight. Drawn from experiences in South America, Europe, and the United States, Norway illustrates that skill can often take a back seat to good fortune in aviation.

All About Books: Kris Neri

11/13/2020

Award-winning fiction writer and writing teacher Kris Neri discussed with Lynn Moorer her latest book, Hopscotch Life, whose protagonist, Plum Tardy, is quirky, goofy, and missed getting a copy of life’s rulebook. Just as she discovers that her executive chef job has evaporated because one of the owners has absconded with the restaurant assets, she finds her fiancé has taken both another woman to bed and Plum’s share of house payments. Jobless and essentially homeless, she flees on a whim to Applewood, Arizona to the heart of a battle to site a new big box Budget-Mart—a battle which involves characters who turn out to have historical and familial connection to Plum and who savor her uniqueness.

All About Books: Ellen Roberts Young

10/23/2020

Poet and co-editor of Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders Ellen Roberts Young spoke with Lynn Moorer about, and read from, her book of poetry Made and Remade which was inspired by Natural Theology, a book published in 1802 by English clergyman William Paley (1743-1805) which argues that the physical and social order of things evince God’s design of the whole creation. Young explained how her interest with Paley’s book, which grew into an obsession, was sparked by learning that her great grandfather had studied the book seventy years earlier as part of his coursework. A thread that weaves through both Paley’s book and Young’s poems is his watch analogy: if one finds a watch on the ground, the inference is inevitable that the watch must have had a maker. Her poems reflect on how much has changed in the two hundred years since Paley.

All About Books: Bruce Wilson

10/9/2020

Western New Mexico University history professor and award-winning author Bruce Wilson returned to the show to talk with Lynn Moorer about his book of historical fiction, No Place That Far, a spinoff of his previous novel, Death in the Black Patch, which interweaves actual historical events and genuine figures to trace the exploits of J. D. Hooper, a former Night Rider who terrorized Kentucky tobacco farmers and who is on the run after killing a man then masterminding a huge conflagration of train cars in Memphis. A greedy man who likes to hurt people, Hooper makes his way to El Paso, then Juarez, and carries out tasks for Pancho Villa and other real-life characters in his quest to avoid getting caught. He settles in Bisbee, Arizona where his encounters with a respectable widow and her 10-year-old son hint that his life may take a different course.

All About Books: Rus Bradburd

9/25/2020

NMSU English professor and former assistant basketball coach Rus Bradburd chatted with Lynn Moorer about his memoir, Paddy on the Hardwood: A Journey in Irish Hoops, which recounts his quest for an easy job in the Republic of Ireland coaching basketball while learning traditional Irish fiddle tunes and finishing a short story series. Coaching the Tralee Tigers, headquartered in a small town in southwestern Ireland, turned out to be an unexpected coaching challenge, not least because the Tigers didn’t have their own gym to train or play in, basketball had to compete with many more popular sports in Ireland, and his Irish players had other jobs while playing only for the love of the game and practicing only five hours a week. Instead of writing short stories, he found himself embracing his unique coaching challenge and creating an entertaining and, at times, riveting journal about his vivid experiences.

All About Books: Deanna Dickinson McCall

9/11/2020

Award-winning poet, author, and rancher Deanna Dickinson McCall talked with Lynn Moorer about her book of poetry and short stories, Mustang Spring, which is populated with characters who are at once tough, disciplined, fallible, vulnerable, and lucky. Having ranched more than sixty years, beginning as a child with her family in California, then Nevada, Idaho, and New Mexico, McCall explained that her writing reflects the realities of women’s tenacity, endurance, and strength of character in ranching and their fight to preserve their livelihood which reveres land and livestock.

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