Velda Brotherton

ARKANSAS MEALS AND MEMORIES NOW AVAILABLE. I'LL HAVE IT AT UPCOMING BOOK SIGNINGS. CHECK EVENTS PAGE.

Riding the backroads of time
Between January's ice storm and May's torrential rains my little SUV and I have spent many hours following the back roads in search of long forgotten settlements in the Boston Mountains. Thanks to friends and maps, several lost communities were recently located on paper. Now it remains to let the clay banks and dirt roads and low water bridges dry up. A 4-wheel drive will only do so much. As my hubby says, when you get buried to your eyeballs in mud, you ain't gonna go nowhere.

Still, I'm excited about tracing the routes to some of these old lost places. The biggest problem is the change of road names when 9-1-1 was established several years ago. All the old timers use the old names when telling me where something is, and I have to relate their directions to maps that have different names and numbers. Anyone who has ever wandered through the Ozarks off-road knows what I'm talking about.

I'm apt to hear, "You know where the old Gabriel place is?" Or, "You just go a couple of miles off the road at the top of the hill and there you are."

The Gabriels have been gone for several generations. Top of the hill? Which hill?

But, somehow I'm managing. It helps that I've wandered these hills for the past 25 years and sort of know what I'm doing. It doesn't help that I don't have a compass in my head. My gyrator doesn't work. I'll go the wrong way every time, given two choices.

But this book about the lost communities of the Boston Mountains is so dear to my heart and has been in the planning stages for so long, I will do what must be done, be it drive through creeks, hang on mountainsides, steer my way through the woods, to get the story. The stories, rather, that must be recorded and passed on before there's no one left who remembers who settled there, what they did, where they settled, when they came, why they came here, and how it all came to be. They are almost all gone, those folks who can remember their parents' and grandparents' stories.

The photo below was taken because a reader had found the old cemetery while walking through the woods, called me and asked if I'd like to see it. These are the opportunities I treasure, and they happen often. I urge the readers of my weekly column to share such finds or their family stories with me, and many of them do. We found a French couple's headstones and later I was able to find out a little about them. Stories like this will be in my new book about the lost communities of the Boston Mountains here in our Arkansas Ozarks.

It's such stories that need to be told. Dates are recorded somewhere, names as well, but so many stories about how they lived, worked, played, worshiped, and loved, will soon be lost. They cry out to be woven in time.

Two New Contracts

To my great delight, I've signed two new nonfiction contracts. While in San Antonio to pick up the WILLA finalist award, I met with the publisher of Old American Publishing. He was enthusiastic about my pitch for a book about the lost communities of the Boston Mountains here in our Arkansas Ozarks. I'd long wanted to see this in print, had written a few chapters, but hadn't found a publisher, till then. A few weeks later he sent a contract.

Just prior to traveling to San Antonio, I attended Ozark Creative Writer's Conference in Eureka Springs and was approached to do a book for a series, Meals and Memories of . . . We've since reached an agreement, and the book will be called Raised In The Boston Mountains:Ozark Meals and Memories

So two books about my beloved Boston Mountains, a place that is so ingrained in my heart and spirit I have no trouble internalizing emotions that speak of the remote and rugged terrain, the forests and rivers, the sky, trees and flowers.

My hope is to finish both books in time to see them published in the spring of 2010. It's quite a project to research, draft and interview for two books at one time. Mostly, I worry about confusing the entries, or repeating stories, which I do not want to do. I want each book to compliment but not repeat the other. Something I've never tried before.

Since I already have more old Ozark recipes than I need, I will share some of them over the months prior to publication here and on my blogs. Better that than let them go to waste.

Fly With The Mourning Dove is a WILLA finalist for 2008. The WILLA is a literary award, given in honor of Willa Cather, for outstanding books about women in the west. Each category has a winner and two finalists. Awards will be presented in San Antonio in October at the Women Writing the West Conference.

A native of Arkansas, Velda Brotherton has been writing for 23 years. Her first articles appeared in local newspapers, then she became features editor for a weekly paper near her hometown. Out of that grew a weekly historical article, Wandering The Ozarks, which she continues to write today for The White River Valley News in Elkins, Arkansas.

Her first non fiction book was published in April of 1994 and her first novel under the pen name of Elizabeth Gregg was published in October of that same year. She has a total of six novels and four non fiction books published. Recently, one of her early western historical romances, Images In Scarlet published under the pen name of Samantha Lee, was issued through the back-in-print program with Authors Guild and iUniverse. A total of eight of her short stories have been published in anthologies. Two more are upcoming. Four of her entries are online in the Arkansas Encyclopedia and one in Arkansas Biographies published by the University of Arkansas Press. In 2004 a documentary, Velda Brotherton: Living Among the Shadows of Time, about her efforts to preserve Ozark history, was filmed and shown at the Arkansas FilmFest and on AETN.

Brotherton is a member of Women Writing the West, Ozark Writers League, Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc., Missouri Writers Guild and Northwest Arkansas Writers Workshop. She helped begin a Friends of the Library organization in her small hometown and served as its president for three years. She speaks at conferences and holds writing workshops regionally. Velda is currently finishing two novels and a memoir of her nine years working for a small weekly newspaper.

The author lives in the Ozark National Forest in a home she designed and helped build. She and her husband have two children, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Her favorite pastimes, other than writing, are family get-togethers, traveling, reading, swimming and enjoying the many flower gardens her husband cultivates.

"Writing has become a way of life for me," she says. "In this business I have met so many wonderful people and have made lasting friendships. I can’t think of a better way to spend my time than with the characters who people my books and those who are engaged in this sometimes zany writing life."

The trip to San Antonio to pick up my 2008 finalist WILLA award took us in a roundabout way. We went to the San Luis valley in Colorado to visit Edna Hiller, the subject of my WILLA award winning book, then on to New Mexico for some fishing on the Red River, then headed for San Antonio, some 900 miles away.
The Women Writing the West Conference was a super experience. I served on two panels and attended both the luncheon where I received my award and the banquet where the winners received their awards.
On the way home we drove along the Gulf and took some time at Padre Island to enjoy the "near" ocean breezes. Then we drove home.
Signed a contract with one of the editors I met at the conference and am negotiating with another, so it was a worthwhile trip in more ways than one.