Journal Notes

GENE AUTRY, OK

-The Academy of Western Artists is proud to announce the finalists for the 2013 Elmer Kelton Book Awards for Western Fiction and Non Fiction.

In the fiction category, the final three nominees are “The Coyote Tracker” by Larry D. Sweazy; “Rio Tinto” by Michael Zimmer and “The Nations” by Farmer and Stienke. This year’s winner is “The Coyote Tracker” by Larry D. Sweazy.

In the Non Fiction category, the final three nominees are “Sam Sixkiller” by Kazanjian & Enss; “A Cowgirl Always Get Even” by Dawn Nelson and “Object Matrimony “by Chris Enss; This year’s winner is “Object Matrimony” by Chris Enss.

The Elmer Kelton Award will be presented March 29, 2014 in the Grand Ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel in Irving, Texas.  In addition to the Elmer Kelton Book Awards, the Will Rogers Western Awards will also be presented in western entertainment, western art, chuckwagon, gear and trappings, cowboy poetry and media.

This year’s Lifetime Achievement will be awarded to Leon Rausch, western swing singer who sang with the legendary Bob Wills band.

The event is open to the public. For more information, you can go to the website AWAAwards.org, facebook, or email: working_cowboy@hotmail.com

“This town ain’t big enough! Not for me and that frilled-up, flirtin’, man-rustlin’ petticoat, it ain’t!”  Doris Day as Calamity Jane from the movie Calamity Jane.  The real Calamity Jane was so infatuated with Wild Bill Hickok it’s not hard to believe she would have said something like this to any lady making time with the famous lawman.  To learn about Calamity Jane’s relationship with Hickok read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West:  Wisdom from Wild Women.  Order your copy now through Amazon.com. Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned at www.chrisenss.com. The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way. To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Contact, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned. The best love lesson wins the gift package. A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014. Good luck!

Edith Wharton won a Pulitzer Prize in 1921 for Age of Innocence and again in 1927 with Twilight Sleep.  Born into wealth as Edith Newbold Jones, she was married at age twenty-three to Teddy Wharton.  After nearly twenty-five years, she divorced in 1913 and then went on to have a number of highly publicized affairs.  She was strongly drawn to all things European and made cross-Atlantic trips sixty-six times, no slight undertaking in those days.  She was friends with all the big names of the age, including Henry James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, as well as Theodore Roosevelt.  Wharton continued writing until her death at age seventy-five in 1937 of an apoplectic stroke.  This Women in History brief has been brought to you by Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women.  Visit www.chrisenss.com for more information.  Follow Chris Enss on Twitter, perhaps there she won’t refer to herself in the third person. 

Don’t be afraid to go against the law to hold on to the man you love.  Emma married Bat long before her divorce to her first husband was finalized.  You can’t let bigamy stand in the way of holding on to a man like Bat Masterson.

For more quips and other stories about love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon. Order your copy now through Amazon.com. Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned. The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way. To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Contact, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned. The best love lesson wins the gift package. A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014. Good luck!

Love Lessons from the Old West:  Wisdom from Wild Women

National Book Launch on February 8 @ the

Nevada County Railroad Museum Nevada City, CA.

Noon – 2 p.m.

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.

Love Lessons from the Old West:  Wisdom from Wild Women

National Book Launch on February 8 @ the

Nevada County Railroad Museum  Nevada City, CA.

Noon – 2 p.m.

For more quips and other stories about love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon. Order your copy now through Amazon.com. Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned. The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way. To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Contact, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned. The best love lesson wins the gift package. A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014. Good luck!

People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.

For more romance advice and other stories about love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon. Order your copy now through Amazon.com. Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned. The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way. To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Contact, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned. The best love lesson wins the gift package. A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014. Good luck!

Christmas carolers sing about peace on earth, but they don’t tell us where.  Hope you find that place and have a Merry Christmas!

Love conquers all things – except poverty and toothaches.  For more quips and other stories about love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon. Order your copy now through Amazon.com. Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned. The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way. To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Contact, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned. The best love lesson wins the gift package. A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014. Good luck!

Don’t be a woman that needs a man.  Be a woman a man needs.  For more quips and other stories about love lessons learned by wild women of the west plan to read Love Lessons Learned from the Old West coming soon. Order your copy now through Amazon.com. Register to win a Love Lessons Learned gift package when you submit your own love lessons learned. The gift package includes a copy of Love Lessons Learned from the Old West: Wisdom from Wild Women, Love Lessons Learned coffee mugs, cocoa, soap, candles, day planners, pen, and a journal to keep track of every love lesson that comes your way. To enter Love Lessons Learned gift package giveaway visit www.chrisenss.com, click on Contact, and send a brief note about the love lessons you’ve learned. The best love lesson wins the gift package. A winner will be announced on February 14, 2014. Good luck!

It’s that time of the year again.  That time when many well-meaning people say to me “Oh, you don’t have any children of your own to spend the holidays with.  How sad.”  Now, I love kids.  I’ve spent several years teaching Sunday school and have met some wonderful children, but I’ve never had that maternal instinct.  Well, I say never but that’s not entirely true.  It kicks in when I’m lying on the couch and the remote is on the other side of the room.  I can’t image a more difficult job than being a parent.  I’ve known some kids who obviously have had no parenting at all.  These are the children whose first contact with an authority figure will come while being read their Miranda rights in the backseat of a squad car.  Raising a child is a labor of love, but it is labor nonetheless.  It is a job.  I can imagine a fun job, but sometimes it must be so frustrating, menial, and dull, it makes working the corn dog concession in the Ringworm Brothers Carnival seem like a stint as a secret service agent with Artemus Gordon on an episode of the Wild, Wild West.  And while there’s no health or dental, no vacation pay, no sick leave, no 401K, one thing you’ve got plenty of is job security.  You’ll be a parent until the day you die.  UNTIL YOU DIE!  What a frightening proposition and not much room for error.  I’d crack under the pressure.  I think I’m better suited for Sunday school teaching.  I can love on the kids in my class, give them Skittles and Kazoos and send them home with grateful parents who will cherish them and make them bring them the remote.  By the way parents, now is the perfect time to buy your child a book about the Old West.  Might I suggest Outlaw Tales of California or the Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest.  Don’t let them learn about such things on the street.