About Judy
I am a lifelong fan of mysteries and, now retired from a career with an academic press, I'm turning my attention to writing mysteries. I read so many of them, I was just sure I could write one - or more. Skeleton in a Dead Space is the first in a projected series, featuring Kelly O'Connell, real estate agent and renovation expert in the historic Fairmount neighborhood on the south side of Fort Worth. A sequel, No Neighborhood for Old Women, is in draft form, and ideas for a third volume are rattling around in my head.
I've been a writer since I was ten or twelve and distinctly remember submitting a story to Seventeen when I was about that age. But my first book, After Pa Was Shot, a young-adult novel, was published in 1978. Since then I've written fiction and nonfiction for young adults, adults, and even second graders. Give me a topic and I'll write about it, but my main focus for years was women of the American West, with novels about Jessie Benton Fremont, Elizabeth Bacon (Mrs. George Armstrong) Custer, Lucille Mulhall, the first woman roper, and Etta Place and the Sundance Kid.
I have had awards from the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame, the Texas Institute of Letters, and Western Writers of America, Inc., including their Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement. I belong to Sisters in Crime, the Guppies subgroup of Sisters in Crime, Western Writers of America, and the Texas Institute of Letters. Most recently, the Fort Worth Public Library elected me to their Texas Literary Hall of Fame.
I am also passionate about cooking. I love to experiment on guests, entertain, and explore new tastes, new techniques. Yet some of my old stand-by dishes are too savory to give up. Hence the cooking pages on this site. You'll find the food-related books I've written, recipes I've tried, and, I hope, contributions from others. Cooking is a community activity! I have a book on Texas chili under consideration at a press right now, with prospects of following with a book on Tex-Mex and one on classic Texas food - can't leave chicken-fried steak out! I blog about food, usually on Sundays and Wednesdays, at Potluck with Judy, http://potluckwithjudy.blogspot.com.
There's a third major element to my life beside writing and cooking. I am the proud mother of four and grandmother of seven. All of them, thank goodness, lives in Texas (at least for now), but only one in Fort Worth - one child, one son-in-law, one grandchild. I keep that grandchild a lot and love it, only wish the others were close enough to spend the night with me more often. When they come, they love my guest house, now christened "Camp Juju."
When there are no kids or grandkids here, I am content in a lovely 1922 red brick bungalow with a great party porch, a garden of wildflowers, an eleven-year-old Australian Shepherd named Scooby and a nineteen-year-old cat, Wywy (my animals are aging faster than I am!) but I've solved that by adding a Bordoodle (Border Collie and poodle cross) puppy to the household.
Keep up with me at my blog, http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com, or email me at j.alter@tcu.edu.
