Spicewood Novel

The incredible town of Spicewood, Texas, has been my home for the past 17 years. I don’t know if this place and its people are unique in terms of some of the stories that I've heard (some seem unbelievable to me, until they happened to me), or if I just lived a sheltered life and did not hear many stories of my environment beforehand. Or maybe it appears extra-ordinary to me because I’ve had a goal to write a book all of my life, so I have been collecting stories for the past several years, since the years for me are adding up. Encountering the various people of Spicewood, with their habits and hangups, attractiveness and distastefulness, funny and fun descriptors gave me inspiration to begin composing.

Not many of the stories deserve an entire book, in my opinion, but to write about my favorite place in the world, which I can call home, and put it out there for the world to read is a wonderful privilege for me.

I have enrolled in a program called NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, during which the month of November, enrollees are encouraged to write their novel. My goal is to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month, and I have dived in by using a gift card that I won this summer at a local hotel to hang out for a couple of days and write. After the first three days, I plan to go stake my space in local establishments in Spicewood - a park or two, a local bar, a restaurant, and maybe even school grounds, to soak up the flavor and write.

Spicewood is changing, and before you know it, there will no longer be horses and cows pastured along Hwy 71. The traffic lights will increase from three flashing lights and one stoplight in 2000 to five traffic signals now, with more to come. We won’t see $50,000 jeeps and $1,000 Monte Carlos for sale along the road. No more people riding on the back of a truck hanging on to items inside, or horses trotting behind a truck on the highway. Our precious "no city government," post office address Spicewood could be gobbled up by a Lakeway, Bee Cave or Marble Falls Municipality, with the potential for a split. Change is certain, and who wouldn’t want to live in our beautiful, no, Gorgeous, community?

That is one of the reasons I am writing the book. To capture the flavor, the essence, of the friendly (and a few not so friendly) faces that makes it the best place on earth to live.

Don't look for the name Spicewood in the title or anywhere in the book, but hopefully you will recognize the beautiful flavor and color of our town.