Elizabeth Lee | Capturing the Heart of Texas

So my editor asked me if I wanted to do a series set in Texas. I said “Sure,
I’ll be happy to do a series set in Texas.” Then I wrote the proposal and my
three chapters and the synopsis and the editor called my agent and said, “Why,
Elizabeth knows Texas like the back of her hand . . .”

Well, hold on now. It’s not all that easy. Elizabeth doesn’t only not know
Texas "like the back of her hand,” she’s never been there.

Next thing, after having the hubris to think I could take on the whole state of
Texas without ever going there, was to get there fast. My daughter, Kathy, was
up for the trip and we were off. It was June—getting hot in some parts of
Texas—but still nice in the hill country where I got to visit a pecan farm like
the one my story family: the Blanchard’s, own in Riverville, which is down in
south central Texas.

Now, don’t ask me why I put my town there—I’ve got no idea—but when I got there
and was hiking along the Colorado River and visiting the little towns, it was
all pure Riverville. I’d made it up in my head—the people, the places—but here
they were and I was walking down Riverville’s main street and even felt like
waving to the folks around me, as if I’d known them all my life—the way Lindy
Blanchard, my protagonist, does.

Along one lonely stretch of road, where every gully had a sign measuring how
deep the water gets in case of flood, we were met with a rash of vultures
sitting beside the road and in the skeletal trees behind fences. How could I
not get ideas for more murders, out there where the only living things seem to
be vultures?

We went to Luckenbach for the heck of it. Not much there but the post office,
but something about being in that sung-about place made it feel special and
important. In real small towns there were still Five and Dime stores where they
sold honest-to-God gingham aprons, and not the frilly kind for show. We drove
into Bandera on a dusty Sunday afternoon as ten horses and their riders rode
into town, tied up outside the local saloon, and went inside (well, not the horses).

Texas is real. Anything you read or hear—it’s happening in some part of Texas.
History’s alive and celebrated. The arts are important. Music is the backbone
of Austin. I couldn’t be happier about discovering the real Texas and now
putting the places I came to know into books. Of course, I have to murder a few
of the folks along the way but, as they say in Texas: “Ya gotta take a little of
the bad to get yerself some good.”

The second book in the series is coming out in January: SNOOP TO NUTS. They’re poisoning each other in this book. Next book they’ll take up arms and do in a few of their own. One woman wrote a review of A TOUGH NUT TO KILL (first in the series), saying she felt exactly like she was in one of the saloons I wrote about. She could smell the beer and liquor. She could see the line dancing. She could hear the cowboys—hats pushed to almost falling from their head—as they guffawed and beat each other on the back.

Well, if all of that’s Texas—along with a lot of good people—that’s exactly what
I want to be writing about, come hell or high water.

About SNOOP TO NUTS

Murder gets nutty in the latest in Elizabeth Lee's delectable Nut House series

Lindy Blanchard’s family pecan farm is known county-wide, but it’s the goodies
her grandmother sells at their store, the Nut House, that really bring in the
crowds—until someone turns one of her tasty treats deadly...

The “Most Original Pecan Treat” contest at the Ag Fair is the talk of
Riverville, Texas, especially when it’s clear that Miss Amelia Blanchard’s
Heavenly Texas Pecan Caviar will take home a blue ribbon. Which is why everyone
is amazed when her dish doesn’t even place—and even more shocked when one of the
judges, Pastor Jenkins, keels over dead, right after taking a second taste of
Miss Amelia’s food.

No one in town truly believes that Amelia would even hurt a fly, but all the
evidence points to poor Pastor Jenkins’ death being caused by poison in the
caviar. Now, unless Lindy figures out who wanted to frame Amelia for murder, her
meemaw may have baked her last famous pecan pie...