Please check out the Big Easy video on YouTube.  Just follow the link below.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqpIqaHJUBE 

Kang's Asian Kitchen and Eric Wilder are hosting a book signing of Wilder's latest thriller, Big Easy. Set in Post-Katrina New Orleans, the book features a spicy taste of the venerable city.   more »

All the recent rainy weather in Oklahoma has produced some spectacular cloud formations.  Here are a couple.

http://www.ericwilder.com  http://www.gondwanapress.com 

 

Eric will be signing his new book Big Easy, Monday, June 4th at Kang’s in Edmond, Oklahoma.  Please join us. http://www.ericwilder.com  http://www.gondwanapress.com

Caddo Lake, in East Texas and Northwest Louisiana, is the location of Eric Wilder's new novel, Ghost of a Chance. Protagonist Buck McDivit leaves his home in Oklahoma and travels to East Texas. Someone has murdered his newly found Aunt Emma Fitzgerald. Buck is apparently the sole heir to Fitzgerald Island, and the marina and fishing lodge on it. Here is an excerpt from Ghost, describing what Buck saw when he first arrived:

"James T. "Buck" McDivit had come to Texas for answers. What he found was a giant lake amid a maze of vines, creepers and lily pads. A place that seemed more like Louisiana than Texas. He quickly realized it was different from both states. Cypress trees grew in abundance, both in the water and out, and Spanish moss, wafting in slow-motion waves, hung from their limbs, caressing the lake's coffee-colored surface. Only the head of a slow-swimming snake disrupted the lake's tranquility.

East Texas is a place far different from Buck's own home on the flat plains of central Oklahoma – a mysterious locale that seemed like a virtual botanical garden replete with subtropical greenery and a climate to match. Buck felt a thousand miles from home.

Interstate highway, replaced by rural Texas blacktop, had long since disappeared in his rearview mirror. Untended hollyhocks, blooming in lavender flower falls that saturated humid air with their cloying fragrances, grew wild beside the road. Damp pathways, none leading anywhere in particular, pierced the tangle of vegetation as a flock of cattle egrets winged high overhead.

Egrets weren't the only wildlife in abundance, nor were oak, cypress and hollyhock the only plants bordering the road. Cascades of blue impatiens, crimson-blossomed rosebushes and clumps of green willow painted the terrain from a diverse palette of color.”

East Texas is indeed an exotic and mysterious area. Buck meets Pearl and Raymond Johnson, caretakers of Fitzgerald Marina, and their two sons, Ray and Wiley. He soon learns that someone has designs on the islands and is intent upon wresting it from him. Could it be relentless land developer Hogg Nation? Maybe it's Colonel Clayton Richardson, bank and ultra-wealthy plantation owner that has a mortgage on the island. Possibly it's Jefferson Travis, racist judge that leads the New Southern Right, a local hate group, or Bones Malone, amateur archeologist and relic hunter, and former lover of Emma Fitzgerald. And, there are the two recently released recidivists, Deacon John and Humpback. These skinheads are after lost Confederate gold from a sunken riverboat and don't care who they have to kill to find it.

Buck meets beautiful Lila Richardson, local antiquities expert and daughter of Clayton Richardson, and is instantly smitten. Is she as complicit as her father and racist uncle, Judge Jefferson Travis? Can Buck really trust her?

Many interesting characters inhabit Fitzgerald Island and the touristy village of Deception. Will Buck get the girl? Will he save the island? Will he save himself? Read Ghost of a Chance and find out. It is available at many places on the web and at http://www.gondwanapress.com .

I am hesitant to say that rain has plagued central Oklahoma for the past two months.  This year, we have already had more than 14" of rainfall in Edmond.  Last year, we were in the throes of a world-class drought.  Still, toadstools are popping up in my front yard, joined by mold, mildew and giant mosquitoes.

It's not all bad.  Tonight, I saw something I've seen only once or twice, and then only in the tropics:  strange lights.  At dusk, the sky looked like something from a filter-crazy Adobe Photoshop artist, high on hallucigenic drugs.  The colors were all violets, mauves and strange shades of blue.  I took a few pics with my digital camera, but I will be surprised to see in pixels what I saw tonight.  The sky, in short, was quiet spectacular, and it reminded me of my hippy days in the sixties, this time without the pot and LSD.

http://www.gondwanapress.com  http://www.ericwilder.com

For those of you that follow this blog, you know everything about the subsurface interests me.  The New Madrid Fault caused the mighty Mississippi River to change its direction from south to north for a day or so.  Legend says that it was responsible for creating Caddo Lake in northwest Louisiana and east Texas.  If a quake of the same magnitude occurred today, it would result in death and devastation beyond what anyone in this country has ever experienced.  http://www.ericwilder.com

Source of Major Earthquakes Discovered Beneath U.S. Heartland - Yahoo! News