Writing
I love talking to people about writing. It is such a process, a creative
process, that requires concentration and yet an opening, a letting-go, of
the logical mind; it requires skill and yet the willingness to break the
rules, to think outside the box. Writing, and all art, is constantly
evolving, so what is accepted today may be passe tomorrow. My
dream--one of them-- is to teach writing at a university or college. I'd
love to develop a community of writers, people who understand that the
process takes time; a finished product is, in many respects, a work of
art. The wait for a superb piece of writing is worth the effort it takes to
create it.
I've included a sample of my writing on this page,something I've written
and published that is not part of Ask Me No Questions. Writers
produce all kinds of work, from poetry to essays to stories, and I am no
exception. I've written hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pieces that
have been published in a variety of media, and I would like to find new
homes for them. As I read these pieces written anywhere from twenty
years ago to last week, I can see things in them that I like, and things
that I will change to improve them. If you see anything you like and can
think of a place for them, please let me know! Email me at
cindie@cindiemiller.com with your ideas.
process, that requires concentration and yet an opening, a letting-go, of
the logical mind; it requires skill and yet the willingness to break the
rules, to think outside the box. Writing, and all art, is constantly
evolving, so what is accepted today may be passe tomorrow. My
dream--one of them-- is to teach writing at a university or college. I'd
love to develop a community of writers, people who understand that the
process takes time; a finished product is, in many respects, a work of
art. The wait for a superb piece of writing is worth the effort it takes to
create it.
I've included a sample of my writing on this page,something I've written
and published that is not part of Ask Me No Questions. Writers
produce all kinds of work, from poetry to essays to stories, and I am no
exception. I've written hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pieces that
have been published in a variety of media, and I would like to find new
homes for them. As I read these pieces written anywhere from twenty
years ago to last week, I can see things in them that I like, and things
that I will change to improve them. If you see anything you like and can
think of a place for them, please let me know! Email me at
cindie@cindiemiller.com with your ideas.
Was he real? An agent or a con artist? Young Stephani marries him, vows to help him, and is whisked into a world of secrets, deception...and danger. But she begins to wonder--too late--what is real, and what is Victor's fantasy. Buy it now! Ask Me No Questions by Cindie Miller at www.publishamerica.com 300 pages ISBN #1-60813-799-6 |
| High school students love Ask Me No Questions! My high school librarian ordered four copies of Ask Me No Questions after she read the book--and a waiting list began almost immediately! "Every teenage girl should read it," was the comment made by our school counselor, (who also bought a book for her office) and that comment was reiterated by the librarian. It is so gratifying to see my book being read by students I know--they're discussing abuse in home rooms, in the library, and on the campus. I'm not saying it's a "hot topic," but it's certainly getting attention. As a result of this feedback, I went to the Arizona Library Assoc.Convention in Glendale, AZ, on Dec. 7-9 to bring Ask Me No Questions to libraries all over Arizona! I met dozens of librarians and have made commitments to go to several to speak about the writing process. First up is Parker Public Library on January 14. What a great way to start the new year. Thank you, librarians! |
| Did you know.... Approximately 1 in 5 female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner 1 out of every 4 women in the United States has been assaulted by an intimate partner. A woman is battered every 9 seconds in the United States 30% of all American say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year **Domestic Violence Resource Center** |
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| Available at Amazon.com, publishamerica.com, and at your local Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and other distributors. ISBN #1-60813-799-6 |
This article appeared in the Cookeville Herald-Citizen the year before LeDoux’ death I had the privilege of interviewing
cowboy singer/rodeo champion Chris Ledoux; I was impressed by his humility and quiet pride in his accomplishments.
Cowboy Troubadour: Chris Ledoux
In a world of where image matters, where the real becomes unreal and the fantasy becomes life, the hype spins like
cotton candy around a man until his truth is hidden behind a padding of foggy gauze; it’s easy to lose yourself. But when
the trail has been long and hard and the years lean, a man grows close to his soul, leans hard on his dream, and pushes
until whatever’s real inside of him is bound to either suffocate or explode.
For Chris LeDoux, there is no hype. No image to consider. No cotton candy padding his secrets. To put it in vernacular,
he’s the real McCoy.
A cowboy troubadour.
Ledoux was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1948. His family migrated to Texas when he was still a boy. He began to play the
guitar and write songs about the same time he climbed on his first bronc, and the two have been entwined ever since. The
songs are about the rodeo life, and the men and the animals who live it. They‘re clean and clear as the Wyoming sky,
where the LeDoux family moved while Chris was in high school. By then he was a rodeo State Champion. He was so good
he won a rodeo scholarship, and in 1969 he won the National Intercollegiate Bareback Riding Championship.
His songs became part of the ride. He sang to his fellow contestants, and, perhaps spurred by their encouragement, he
produced his first album himself. “We recorded that first album in the basement,” he said, his voice coming over the
wires from his ranch in Wyoming. It was eight o’clock, his time, and he’d been out taking care of the cows. “ I only have
a couple of hundred right now,” he said, as if a couple hundred cows was just a hobby farm. “We sold (the cassettes) out
of the back of my pickup, and by mail order.”
The home-produced cassettes were considered a sideline, something to do while maintaining a real job as a bronc rider,
but they were good enough, and he was persistent enough, to sell millions of dollars of them over the years. He won the
World Bareback Championship in 1976. He worked this way through 22 albums, recording the life of a modern day
cowboy and living it, too.
His music and his life gained the recognition of David G. Brown, an author who wanted to put LeDoux’ remarkable
testament into print, and a book was published entitled Gold Buckle Dreams. In it, Chris speaks of the rodeo, just as in
his songs:
“Bucking horses can kill ya. They can cripple you for life. They can make an old man out of you before your time…You’
ll draw sorry horses no one has ever won a nickle on. You’ll draw the rank ones that will rip your hand out of the riggin’
and throw you out the back end.” (Chris LeDoux, Gold Buckle Dreams).
And:
“Son, it ain’t the age that makes me look this way – It ain’t the years, boy, it’s the miles. It ain’t the years that I’ve
known that have taken their toll, They’ve been few. If you took all the mashin’s, the draggin’s and the crashin’s, You’d
probably look the same way that I do. It’s a million miles of road, of getting snatched around and throwed, That finally
put a cramp in my style. It ain’t the age that makes me look this way, It ain’t the years, boy, it’s the miles.” (“It Ain’t
the Years, Boy, It’s the Miles,” by Chris LeDoux)
By 1984, the years and the miles had moved up on him enough to where he decided it was that time – time to hang up his
spurs. He had the ranch in Wyoming, a wife and a family, and he had his music. He and his band, The Saddle Boogie
Band, began recording and booking performances. He recorded in Utah and produced his own work, one of which was a
song called “Much Too Young to Feel This Old,” which caught the attention of a rising star named Garth Brooks. Garth
and Chris met, and a connection was made. The two are alike in many ways. They performed together a number of
times, finally releasing “Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy” in 1992, for which LeDoux earned his first gold record.
“Cadillac Ranch” followed, reached the top 20, and LeDoux became an “overnight success.”
Capitol Records in Nashville signed him, and he began working with a real producer in a real studio.”I wasn’t getting the
sound I wanted (in the earlier recordings,) with “Saddle Boogy,” it began to move in the right direction. It was kind of
what I was looking for.
“But I’m not really musically educated,” he said. “It was hard to tell the band and the producer what I was looking for. I
communicate in colors. I’d say, ‘I want this to sound like a winter evening, where the sound’s kind of purple and pink.’
That’s hard for people to understand. So it took awhile. That’s what was good about Capitol, when Jimmy Bowen was
running it.”
The label let him find the sound he was looking for, and the result was a minor hit with “This Cowboy’s Hat.” The album
sold an excess of 100,000 units.
“It’s been a wonderful age to live in,” he said. “The sixties, the seventies – we’ve seen a lot in the last fifty years, a lot of
change, a lot of good things. During the Viet Nam era, it seemed there was a big division (in music). There was the rock
and roll, which went into acid, and turned a lot of us that are country away from it. Sometime after that, it began to cross
over. Charlie Daniels had a lot to do with kicking down the walls.”
LeDoux remarked on the ability of many country singers to move into pop. “As long as they do it because that’s who
they are,” he said, “There’s those country singers who are known as traditionalists like George Straight, the perfect
country singer, and he’ll always be successful. Then there’s Garth, who can do anything he wants and it works. But you
gotta be true to your heart…You gotta be true to your heart, and not just do it because it’s a market. The fans pick up
on that.
“Music always evolves,” he said, “it moves in a forward spiral. Sometimes pop, sometimes rock, sometimes country is at
the top. Right now, the technology is better, and musicians seem to stretch more.”
That stretching is something Ladoux is familiar with. His music touches all the edges – it’s called honky-tonk, rockabilly,
cowboy folk, and western soul. It’s really about a cowboy’s life, and it reflects the ups and downs in its energy, at times
low and lonesome, at times chaotic and scared, at times loving and peaceful. Ledoux’s best, in my opinion, are the
ballads, the stories, the simple melodies that sound like the morning sky, with lots of purples and pinks.
cowboy singer/rodeo champion Chris Ledoux; I was impressed by his humility and quiet pride in his accomplishments.
Cowboy Troubadour: Chris Ledoux
In a world of where image matters, where the real becomes unreal and the fantasy becomes life, the hype spins like
cotton candy around a man until his truth is hidden behind a padding of foggy gauze; it’s easy to lose yourself. But when
the trail has been long and hard and the years lean, a man grows close to his soul, leans hard on his dream, and pushes
until whatever’s real inside of him is bound to either suffocate or explode.
For Chris LeDoux, there is no hype. No image to consider. No cotton candy padding his secrets. To put it in vernacular,
he’s the real McCoy.
A cowboy troubadour.
Ledoux was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1948. His family migrated to Texas when he was still a boy. He began to play the
guitar and write songs about the same time he climbed on his first bronc, and the two have been entwined ever since. The
songs are about the rodeo life, and the men and the animals who live it. They‘re clean and clear as the Wyoming sky,
where the LeDoux family moved while Chris was in high school. By then he was a rodeo State Champion. He was so good
he won a rodeo scholarship, and in 1969 he won the National Intercollegiate Bareback Riding Championship.
His songs became part of the ride. He sang to his fellow contestants, and, perhaps spurred by their encouragement, he
produced his first album himself. “We recorded that first album in the basement,” he said, his voice coming over the
wires from his ranch in Wyoming. It was eight o’clock, his time, and he’d been out taking care of the cows. “ I only have
a couple of hundred right now,” he said, as if a couple hundred cows was just a hobby farm. “We sold (the cassettes) out
of the back of my pickup, and by mail order.”
The home-produced cassettes were considered a sideline, something to do while maintaining a real job as a bronc rider,
but they were good enough, and he was persistent enough, to sell millions of dollars of them over the years. He won the
World Bareback Championship in 1976. He worked this way through 22 albums, recording the life of a modern day
cowboy and living it, too.
His music and his life gained the recognition of David G. Brown, an author who wanted to put LeDoux’ remarkable
testament into print, and a book was published entitled Gold Buckle Dreams. In it, Chris speaks of the rodeo, just as in
his songs:
“Bucking horses can kill ya. They can cripple you for life. They can make an old man out of you before your time…You’
ll draw sorry horses no one has ever won a nickle on. You’ll draw the rank ones that will rip your hand out of the riggin’
and throw you out the back end.” (Chris LeDoux, Gold Buckle Dreams).
And:
“Son, it ain’t the age that makes me look this way – It ain’t the years, boy, it’s the miles. It ain’t the years that I’ve
known that have taken their toll, They’ve been few. If you took all the mashin’s, the draggin’s and the crashin’s, You’d
probably look the same way that I do. It’s a million miles of road, of getting snatched around and throwed, That finally
put a cramp in my style. It ain’t the age that makes me look this way, It ain’t the years, boy, it’s the miles.” (“It Ain’t
the Years, Boy, It’s the Miles,” by Chris LeDoux)
By 1984, the years and the miles had moved up on him enough to where he decided it was that time – time to hang up his
spurs. He had the ranch in Wyoming, a wife and a family, and he had his music. He and his band, The Saddle Boogie
Band, began recording and booking performances. He recorded in Utah and produced his own work, one of which was a
song called “Much Too Young to Feel This Old,” which caught the attention of a rising star named Garth Brooks. Garth
and Chris met, and a connection was made. The two are alike in many ways. They performed together a number of
times, finally releasing “Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy” in 1992, for which LeDoux earned his first gold record.
“Cadillac Ranch” followed, reached the top 20, and LeDoux became an “overnight success.”
Capitol Records in Nashville signed him, and he began working with a real producer in a real studio.”I wasn’t getting the
sound I wanted (in the earlier recordings,) with “Saddle Boogy,” it began to move in the right direction. It was kind of
what I was looking for.
“But I’m not really musically educated,” he said. “It was hard to tell the band and the producer what I was looking for. I
communicate in colors. I’d say, ‘I want this to sound like a winter evening, where the sound’s kind of purple and pink.’
That’s hard for people to understand. So it took awhile. That’s what was good about Capitol, when Jimmy Bowen was
running it.”
The label let him find the sound he was looking for, and the result was a minor hit with “This Cowboy’s Hat.” The album
sold an excess of 100,000 units.
“It’s been a wonderful age to live in,” he said. “The sixties, the seventies – we’ve seen a lot in the last fifty years, a lot of
change, a lot of good things. During the Viet Nam era, it seemed there was a big division (in music). There was the rock
and roll, which went into acid, and turned a lot of us that are country away from it. Sometime after that, it began to cross
over. Charlie Daniels had a lot to do with kicking down the walls.”
LeDoux remarked on the ability of many country singers to move into pop. “As long as they do it because that’s who
they are,” he said, “There’s those country singers who are known as traditionalists like George Straight, the perfect
country singer, and he’ll always be successful. Then there’s Garth, who can do anything he wants and it works. But you
gotta be true to your heart…You gotta be true to your heart, and not just do it because it’s a market. The fans pick up
on that.
“Music always evolves,” he said, “it moves in a forward spiral. Sometimes pop, sometimes rock, sometimes country is at
the top. Right now, the technology is better, and musicians seem to stretch more.”
That stretching is something Ladoux is familiar with. His music touches all the edges – it’s called honky-tonk, rockabilly,
cowboy folk, and western soul. It’s really about a cowboy’s life, and it reflects the ups and downs in its energy, at times
low and lonesome, at times chaotic and scared, at times loving and peaceful. Ledoux’s best, in my opinion, are the
ballads, the stories, the simple melodies that sound like the morning sky, with lots of purples and pinks.
Samples of Cindie's writing