Patricia Grady Cox I recently discovered a new author, at least new to me. Mari Sandoz, born in Nebraska in 1896, writes about that part of the country: Native American history, biographies, short stories, and novels. In 1964 she received a Saddleman’s Award and a Western Writers of America Spur Award for juvenile fiction for […]
Patricia Grady Cox August 10, 2016 I can’t seem to stop reading this book! “The National Farmer’s and Housekeeper’s Cyclopaedia” contains too much useful information, especially if one is writing a novel set in this time period. This 1888 portal into the past offers not only the “science” but also the culture and attitudes of […]
Patricia Grady Cox August 3, 2016 I haven’t posted in a while due to a couple of relatively minor and totally fixable (now fixed) medical issues that kept me from typing. Instead, I worked on research for my current novel-in-progress and discovered I have a book entitled “The National Farmer’s and Housekeeper’s Cyclopaedia.” This book […]
Patricia Grady Cox January 6, 2015 One of the most common questions asked of authors is, “Where did you get your inspiration?” For me, reading about the history of the southwest, particularly Arizona, inspires me. The scenery of the southwest, the Sonoran desert, inspires me. Visiting places that remain untouched by time inspires me. […]
Author Julia Robb has just released her fourth historical novel (previous titles are Saint of the Burning Heart, Del Norte, and Scalp Mountain). This one, The Captive Boy, is about the U.S. Army and the 1870s war with the Comanches. But it’s really about the fictional Colonel McKenna and his relationship with August Schiltz, a […]
Patricia Grady Cox October 31, 2015 Ghostly encounters flare up throughout my novel CHASM CREEK. Ruben Santiago, an elderly Navajo, experiences most of these visions, visitations, and vexatious occurrences. In the following short excerpt, Ruben goes to a place called Haunted Hill, hoping to conjure up the image of his long-dead grandmother. Instead he gets […]
Patricia Grady Cox October 29, 2015 I love looking inside homes that are not mine. I used to be addicted to HGTV for just that reason—all those house hunter shows! All those fixer-upper shows! So I cut down my cable in order to get other things done, such as attending a conference in Sacramento last […]
by Patricia Grady Cox October 14, 2015 With all the news about discovering running water on Mars and the drought in California, I thought it would be fun to provide a simplified history of the origins of water supplies in Arizona. The Arizona Territory, created in 1863, consisted primarily of prospectors and gold miners, various […]
Text and photos by Patricia Grady Cox September 30, 2015 I took a ride to Sedona yesterday. I have been to Sedona about a million times. Every time someone from back east visits me; many times for hikes (nothing like the West Fork Trail in autumn);, just for the fun of it, and once—in 1988—to […]
Patricia Grady Cox September 23, 2015 Some of us spent our childhoods watching westerns on TV: Gunsmoke, Wanted—Dead or Alive, Palladin, Wagon Train, Rawhide, The Big Valley, Bonanza . . . Westerns were the NCIS of the late 50s and early 60s. You could find at least one every night. And then they were no […]
Patricia Grady Cox 