Lubbock, Texas: Saturday, March 20, 2-3 PM. Local author Duane Simolke will sign copies of The Acorn Stories, The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer, and Degranon at Hastings, 5005 50th Street. The Acorn Stories is already in stock there, in the Local Authors section. Most other local or online bookstores can order Simolke’s books.
Simolke remained in Lubbock after receiving his Ph.D. in English at Texas Tech University. Aside from its educational institutions, people across America know Lubbock for cotton, the American Wind Power Center, the National Ranching Heritage Center, singer Buddy Holly, singer Mac Davis, Dixie Chick Natalie Maines, TTU Women’s Basketball Coach Marsha Sharp, TTU Men’s Basketball Bobby Knight, and much more.
West Texas made the ideal setting for most of the stories that Simolke wrote for The Acorn Stories and for The Acorn Gathering, a collaborative spin-off that raises money for the American Cancer Society. Lubbock resident Shawna Chandler contributed her story “The Flamenco Painter” to The Acorn Gathering and will appear with Simolke, so both authors can sign copies of that book.
Jan Chandler (Austin, Texas), Huda Orfali (Damascus, Syria), Timothy Morris Taylor (Houston, Texas), and Bill Wetzel (Cut Bank, Montana) also wrote stories for that important collection, which features a variety of characters in unusual or challenging situations.
Simolke’s most ambitious work, though, is the science fiction novel Degranon, which chronicles a racially diverse group of people, caught in a battle between two oppressive worlds. Besides creating a history for two worlds and following three generations of characters, this epic adventure sends one of the characters though a doorway in time, where he learns the secrets of Degranon that connect both worlds.
