Snow, a beautiful woman, and Sand Creek
Posted April 25, 2013

Website & blogs © Louis Kraft 2013-2020
Contact Kraft at writerkraft@gmail.com or comment at the end of the blog

I’m going to link this post to Sand Creek POV for Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway is now front and center in my life. More at the end of this post.

Dear friends, this ol’ boy is home in sunny SoCal, and he has had enough of the “winter wonderland” they call Colorado to last a lifetime. A wimp? No way, … actually it was just the opposite (will attempt to detail what turns out to be a successful trip to Colorado in the coming days, successful in many ways except for money which I may discuss once I confirm my notes).

I flew into Denver, drove to Fort Collins where new/long distance friend Layton Hooper (who had hired me to speak at an Order of the Indian Wars symposium in Centennial, Co.) lives w/his pretty wife. After my arrival I was snowed in for three of four days. Boy, did I get lucky. Layton & Vicki are cool people, and I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed getting to know them. More at a later date.

People often accuse me of name dropping, and I don’t mean to do this. Actually, when I name people, they are usually friends of mine for I usually ignore people that rub me the wrong way. More in another post.

Quick change of subject … tonight at the Denver airport I watched a slender woman with long dark hair eat half a sandwich. She was gorgeous. A white top, dark pants, and tennis shoes. As luck would have it, she and I didn’t hear the boarding announcement for our flight. She asked, and I delightedly replied. A short conversation. I learned a little, mainly that she was from Austria and would be visiting SoCal. Her English was as good as mine (no joke, for her pronunciation was masterful). I am usually very passive toward the opposite sex. Usually they have to hit me over the head before I realize they have any interest. Alas, this lady didn’t hit me over the head (read, most likely, no interest). I enjoyed watching her eat, hope she visits this blog/website, reads these words, and contacts me (this a reach for me, and it doesn’t happen often). I enjoyed our few minutes talking. Will I see her again? Hope always burns eternal. If she does contact me, you can bet I’ll enjoy whatever the future holds. If not, I enjoyed a few minutes with a very pretty lady I wish would enter my life.

Back to Sand Creek and the Tragic End of a Lifeway. Research has begun (in Denver), I will complete the proposal for editor Chuck Rankin at OU Press by the end of the month, he’ll pitch it, we’ll sign the contract, and I will deliver the manuscript in three years. For those of you who read and enjoy my writing, this will be a people book (as always) but it will be different. I will walk with my leading players in ways I haven’t in the past. Chuck has bought into free-flowing prose that is close to fiction (for the attack on the Cheyenne-Arapaho village) that if I can maintain it, it will become the most page-turning nonfiction prose since the Custer book. If I can pull this off, it will be the best book I have written to date. The challenge is front and center, and it is for me to deliver.