Inked a set of characters for a project today and sketched this bunny which I’ll be including in another upcoming project I’ll be sharing here soon.

From Bradenton to Lake Mary and a wedding. Here are just a few of the drawings done there:

I ran into fellow city of Orlando employee Elaine, who started when I did at the City. She retires in April with 31 years in Streets and Drainage.

Shirley is the mother of the bride. She sews her own dresses, including the one she wore that night. 

Here’s the dress Shirley made.

Sherry claims to have far too many purses. Thus the situation I drew involving trying to purchase a movie ticket.

From Gainesville to Bradenton and an “independent living facility”. Here are just a few of the drawings done there:

Nancy loves singing hymns and helps as a school crossing guard.

Sandra has two last names: Wall and Knight. Two last names that are legends in Florida history. She is also a painter. I highly recommended her persue painting members of her family, like the infamous Tampa mobster, Charlie Wall.

Jack has traveled a bit in his life to be where he is now. A kayak is his favorite way to get around these days.

Alice is a fellow Florida native and worked years for Tropicana orange juice. She also loves playing cards.

Betty loves to sing.

Apalachee Gold by Frank G. Slaughter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a lesser of Slaughter’s books. The depth of the narrative is sorely missing and the dialogue is irritating. The plot is, as usual, very tight to the historical known evidence. This being the most fascinating part of any Slaughter historical novel.

Slaughter’s characters are almost entirely based upon people noted in the journey of Cabeza and his gang across north America and, it appears, Slaughter has done a fantastic job depicting who they were, what they did and how they did it.

The narrative of this Slaughter book is very weak. In other books involving early Florida, you can almost feel the effort to cut through saw grass and palmetto, as written by Slaughter. In this book, Slaughter skims descriptions of landscape and settings and sticks to much more dialogue than usual for him.

It’s Slaughter’s dialogue in this book that disturbs me, as accurate as it may be. He well represented typical banter translated from Spanish. The Spanish language is a simplistic one. The incredible nuances of the English language just don’t exist. It appears Slaughter wrote out his dialogue, had it translated & edited in Spanish and then translated back in English to give the book further authenticity. Slaughter is usually so eloquent with the exchanges of characters. Here there’s a bluntness I don’t care for, much as I am not fan of the Spanish language. So, that I find Slaughter’s effort to be authentic to be admired and irritating as well.

All of this comes to what seems to be a quick effort by Slaughter lacking depth.

Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book. 5 out of 10 points.

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From Dawn to Sunset, Recollections of a Pioneer Florida Judge, Volume II by E.C. May
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Author May continues his life experiences in this sequel to his first book. The tales take place mostly in Alachua, Citrus and Marion Counties in Florida. The tales reveal much of the lives of those living in those areas in the late 1800s and early 1900s that is missing in most histories of Florida. Little is recognized of the very violent ways of folks back then all over Florida. While Florida preceded the west with cowboys and saloons, it also continued those ways after most of the west settled down. May’s writings back that up.

The first collection of stories was a very good collection. This one has a weaker lot. The most interesting stories are of the characters that crossed May’s path.

The largest trouble of May’s book is, it seems, that May was trying to write better and made many, many, many missteps throughout the book. It’s not typographical errors, it’s using words in the wrong places or using words that don’t make any sense at all. The contextual errors made me have to stop and wonder what he was writing about at times. The book is confusing.

Bottom line: I recommend this book for Florida history folks. 7 out of 10.
All others probably best to pass. 4 out of ten points.

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Lots more drawing in the 2018 SprngsFest coloring storybook and seeing more friends learning about our water and springs in #Florida!

See individual pictures for descriptions!

I admit these two days hit me like a herd of trains. It’s good to have a workout like this to realize how out of shape I am for it. Time to do some real workout ….-and get some rest!

At Florida SpringsFest March 3-4, 2018! Drawing in a couple hundred books. Good to see so many friends nearby and from afar at the event. Hope to see more Sunday!

The call came in at the last minute Wednesday night to have complete by Thursday. Worked on an idea, penciled, got approval, inked and then digitally colored. Also removed all of the identifying information involved.

Creed of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

What a disaster. How did this one get past Johnstone, who was still alive when this one was published? This racks up all the worst a book can conjure: Very poor writing, poor plotting, vast inconsistency, poor history, bad characters, scant settings and that’s enough.

I have no idea who wrote this book, but can maybe, possibly forgive if there were a dozen people involved, in different countries writing in different languages. How on earth did Johnstone let his foundation character get this mangled? Smoke Jensen goes from confident farmer, to child sounding lost soul to bloody killer to lion of the law. Worse there are flashbacks where parts of other books are lifted making this all even more apparent.

As I’ve been mostly reading the Mountain Man series in order I’ve found the last few to have flashbacks with parts of other books included. I put up with it once. then twice and now after more lazy acts like this, I strike this book down. This is the worse of the others in that much larger chunks of other books are used. This is a lousy way to cheat the reader.

The plot is a mess. There is a good idea at the hear t of it all, but it’s all old territory traveled more than Preacher has traveled the mountains. There are all kinds of problems to point out, including all of the lifted material. Let me focus on one obvious detail. Jensen is a witness to a crime. He knows he and another mountain man are the only witnesses. Jensen then chases down those who did the crime and goes WAY out of his way to bring them to trial and threatens everyone if the verdict isn’t against the bad guys.

So, what does, always written as smart & clever, Smoke Jensen do. He leaves. Thus undermining the very trial he fought for. Thus, the bad guys have to be freed with no evidence and that places Jensen tracking them down to just threaten them again. So what next happens? The book is ended with zero resolution to the threats. The book ends with some sappy silliness with Jensen’s wife, who, in this book, is a nymphomaniac.

Of the 75+ Johnstone books I’ve read, this is one of about three I’ve panned so hard. The others are just written poorly and not of the western genre.

Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book. 1 out of 10 points.

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