RE-ISSUE Tomorrow!!
What Happens in Texas!
On Sale Tomorrow!
It's got a new cover and a new title but the characters are the same.
A little excerpt from the beginning of the book...
If Prissy Parnell hadn’t married
Buster Jones and left Cadillac, Texas
for Pasadena, California,
Marty wouldn’t have gotten the speeding ticket. It was all Prissy’s damn fault that
Marty was in such a hurry to get to the Blue-Ribbon Jalapeno Society monthly
meeting that night, so Prissy ought to have to shell out the almost two hundred
dollars for that ticket.
They were already passing around
the crystal bowl to take up the voting ballots when Marty slung open the door
to Violet Prescott’s sunroom and yelled, “Don’t count ‘em without my vote.”
Twenty faces turned to look at her
and not a one of them, not even her twin sister, Cathy, was smiling. Hells
bells, who had done pissed on their cucumber sandwiches before she got there,
anyway? A person didn’t drop dead from lack of punctuality, did they?
One wall of the sunroom was glass
and looked out over lush green lawns and flower gardens. The other three were
covered with shadow boxes housing the blue ribbons that the members had won at
the Texas State Fair for their jalapeno pepper entries. More than forty shadow
boxes all reminding the members of their history and their responsibility for the
upcoming year. Bless Cathy’s heart for doing her part. She had a little garden
of jalapenos on the east side of the lawn and nurtured them like children. The
newest shadow box held ribbons that she’d earned for the club with her pepper
jelly and picante. It was the soil or maybe she told them bedtime stories but
she, like her momma and grandma, grew the hottest jalapenos in the state.
“It appears that Martha has decided
to grace us with her presence once again when it is time to vote for someone to
take our dear Prissy’s place in the Blue-Ribbon Jalapeno Society. We really
should amend our charter to state that a member has to attend more meetings
than one every two years. It looks like you could appreciate the fact that we
did amend it once to include you in the membership with your sister, who by the
way has a spotless attendance record,” Violet said.
Violet, the queen of the Club as
most of the members called it, was up near eighty-years-old, built like Sponge
Bob Square Pants and had stove pipe jet black hair right out of the bottle. Few
people had the balls or the nerve to cross her and those that did were put on
her shit list right under Martha, aka Marty, Andrews’ name which was always on
the top.
Back in the beginning of the Club
days, before Marty was even born, the Mayor’s wife held the top position on the
shit list. When they’d formed The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeno Society, Loretta Massey and
Violet almost went to war over the name of the brand new club. Loretta insisted
that it be called a society and Violet wanted to be called a club. Belonging to
Club just sounded so much fancier than saying that one belonged to Society. Loretta
won when the vote came in but Violet called it Club anyway and that’s what
stuck. Rumor had it that Violet was instrumental in getting the Mayor ousted
just so they’d have to leave Grayson County and Loretta would have to quit
Club.
Marty hated it when people called
her Martha. It sounded like an old woman’s name. What was her mother thinking
anyway when she looked down at two little identical twin baby daughters and
named them after her mother and aunt: Martha and Catherine? Thank God, she’d at
least shortened their names to Marty and Cathy.
Marty shrugged and Violet snorted.
Granted it was a lady-like snort but it still went right along with her round
face and a three layered neck. Hell, if they wanted to write forty amendments
to the charter, Marty would still do only the bare necessities to keep her in
voting standing. She hadn’t even wanted to be in the damned club and had only
done it because if she didn’t, then Cathy couldn’t.
