Holidays

Hey, everybody. Lots of things have been happening, all exciting news. People from Frost, Corsicana, and the whole area have been reading the book, and some have contacted me to tell me how much they loved it. I have enjoyed hearing from people I went to school with, people I’ve lost contact with through the years. It’s been very gratifying.

We’re in the middle of the holiday season. Remember, books make great gifts!

Get yours now

Happy holidays to you all. Make it a safe, relaxing, special time.

Love,

Sandy

Frost

Bett had her nose up close to her laptop peering intently at something and said “Sandy come here I’ve found Frost! Come show me the old house!” She was on a web site where she could go down city streets but her mouse couldn’t be coaxed into traveling down country gravel roads.

“I want a picture of the town!  Show me Frost!” I had to tell her she was looking at Frost that she had been through it three times already.

“What street does Rose live on?” I told her to slow down and go north from downtown and turn left at the post office.  She had to back the mouse up several times on account of too much enthusiasm. There I found myself staring right at Rose’s house!  It made me want to cry that I couldn’t go in and hug my sister.

“Show me the Frost news paper and I’ll send them a book.” There isn’t a newspaper in Frost. It would have to be sent to the Corsicana Daily Sun.  (We are still waiting to hear from them.)

A few days later Bett says “Sandy find me the address of the Frost Library and I’ll send them a book.”

I told Bett if she wanted to see something amazing we’d need to travel to Frost some spring where I could show her seas of the most beautiful blue bonnets in the world.

If we could go there today, I would hand her some cotton, still in its bolls, pulled from Strain Farms that my cousin Jimmy now owns.

We would drive by the house, and I would tell her about the last time I visited it.

I would introduce her to my sister Rose. She is still there, and she is still the same.

welcome to sandy’s house

Hello. Welcome to my new site.

Please have fun with me as I learn how to navigate and work this thing.  I am limited on computer knowledge and it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

My newly published book Beside Myself, a memoir about growing up on a cotton farm in central Texas, is filled with humor and laced with a serious look at the conflict of growing up as a tomboy, trying not to become the southern belle my mama longed for.

I was born in 1943 and as an adult spent my time as an artist.  The pen and ink drawing of the house you see was our actual farm house.

The pages of  Beside Myself contain many photographs along with my illustrations as a young artist and some current work.

I started out writing  short stories laughing and crying my way along.  I hope you have the same reaction as you read the book.  The purpose was not to write a book but to remember.  My writing is unconscious and spontaneous.  I simply wrote the truth allowing the little girl’s voice in me to speak after all these years.

Now I find that I have created a permanent record for my children, grandchildren, and the little town where I grew up.

My partner, author Bett Norris, read these stories and I will let her tell you how they became a book.

Hi, Bett here. Sandy wrote her stories some years ago. When I read them, I laughed and cried, just as she described her reactions as she wrote them. I told her they should be published, that they offer a look, both unique and universal, into a family dynamic that would touch anyone who reads them.  For anyone who loved animals as a child, for every little girl who loved horses and idolized her father, for any child who  resisted her mother’s efforts to raise her to a conforming image of that society’s idea of a proper woman, for those who simply love to read good stories, her memoir will both entertain you and tug at your heart. In writing about her family, Sandy unknowingly created a snapshot of the small, close-knit farming community that sustained and nurtured her and which serves as a poignant recollection of a simpler time.  The stories are very funny, and the glimpse into her family very moving.

As to my editing,  each story stood alone, and I merely arranged them into a narrative flow. The unique voice and perspective of that little girl comes from the artist’s natural creative fount.