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WORK TITLE: The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE: TX
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in TX.
EDUCATION:Attended college.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
J. Reeder Archuleta grew up in West Texas near the Mexican border. Five generations of his family have lived and been buried there. His great-grandfather is buried in Concordia Cemetery in El Paso, Texas, near the grave of Old West gunfighter and outlaw John Wesley Hardin. After graduating from college, Archuleta worked in various part of the United States and the world.
Archuleta, who noted in an interview for the Texas Book Lover website that he has been “writing off and on since college,” also remarked that he traces his love of reading and writing back to his small high school. His English teacher directed her class of young boys who lived on ranches and farms “to read stories and poems of adventure and derring-do,” including authors such as Stephen Crane and John Steinbeck. Archuleta also credits the teacher with helping to make her students “more critical readers.” Archuleta reminisced that most farms and ranches did not even have telephones or radio, let alone television. As a result, storytelling was a common practice. “To this day, I don’t know how many of those stories were true, but it doesn’t really matter,” Archuleta noted in the Texas Book Lover interview, adding: “They were good stories.”
Rio Sonora
In his first book, titled Rio Sonora: A Story of the Arizona Rangers, Archuleta tells a tale based on a true story that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century. When Arizona Ranger Captain Wheeler learns that a rancher’s wife and daughter have been kidnapped and likely taken to Mexico, he assigns one of his top men, Owen Jones, to the case. Jones heads to Mexico to work with Colonel Kosterlitsky and the Mexican Rurales. Although Jones finds himself at odds sometimes with his counterparts in Mexico, especially when it comes to how the law should be enforced, he nevertheless is dedicated to their common mission of finding the women and their captors.
Readers learn that Jones, who is fifty years old and suffering from arthritis when the story takes place, fled from a Jesuit orphanage near the Mississippi River when he was only fourteen years old. He scraped by as a bare-knuckle fighter but then headed west. He initially became a Texas Ranger but eventually moved further west to Arizona, seeking a more exciting life. While Texas, in Jones’s eyes, had become relatively tame, Arizona at that time was more of a lawless territory, where the primary people responsible for keeping the peace were the Arizona Rangers. “Archuleta excels in painting a vivid picture of the American West just as the modern era is about to change everything,” wrote a BlueInk Review website contributor.
The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories
Archuleta’s short story collection, The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories, contains eight interconnected stories featuring a boy named Josh. Taking place during the 1950s and 1960s, the collection begins with “Jolie Blon” and Josh living with his mother, Belle, and Cecil, an itinerant farm laborer. Belle ends up stealing Cecil’s car, selling it, and then heading off with Josh on a bus. As the stories continue, Josh is left by his mother in a small Texas town, where he ends up working odd jobs to get by and going to school. The tale, however, has some “darker undercurrents,” as noted by a Kirkus Reviews contributor.
Other stories include an infidelity that leads to death and a tale about a disfigured but witty Korean War veteran. Other stories focus on Josh in high school, from his winning touchdown in a football game to his falling for the daughter of a wealthy rancher. “The stories can stand alone, but they combine into something greater than the sum of their parts,” wrote a BlueInk Reviews website contributor. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the collection “an atmospheric Texas bildungsroman reminiscent of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show, adding: The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories is “a well-wrought panorama of small-town dramas and discontents.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2018, review The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories.
ONLINE
BlueInk Review, https://www.blueinkreview.com/ (July 7, 2018 ), review of Rio Sonora: A Story of the Arizona Rangers; review of The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories.
Forgotten Winds, https://forgottenwinds.com/ (April 20, 2018 ), review of The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories.
J. Reeder Archuleta Website, https://www.jreederarchuleta.com (July 7, 2018).
Lone Star Literary Review, http://www.lonestarliterary.com/ (March 11, 2018), review of The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories.
Texas Book Lover, http://www.texasbooklover.com/ (April 19, 2018), “Interview with Author J. Reeder Archuleta.”
That’s What She’s Reading, http://www.thatswhatshesreading.com/ (April 25, 2018), “Character Interview: The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories by J. Reeder Archuleta (Short Stories).”
J. Reeder Archuleta was raised in Texas close to the Mexican Border and five generations of his family are in their final resting place there. His great-grandfather is buried in Concordia Cemetery in El Paso, Texas within spitting distance of the grave of John Wesley Hardin.
Archuleta has authored two books: "Rio Sonora: A Story of the Arizona Rangers" and "The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories".
The author, J. Reeder Archuleta, was raised on the Mexican border and his roots are four generations deep in the region. He has great admiration and respect for those hardy folks who, in the face of great adversity, settled and thrived in the great Southwest. The many stories he listened to while growing up, some true, some not, served as the inspiration for Rio Sonora.
Interview with Author J. Reeder Archuleta
How has being a Texan influenced your writing?
I left Texas to follow a job after college. I lived all over the U.S. and worked in other parts of the world. When I would run into another Texan no matter where, we would fall into telling stories about Texas. I realized that all the Texas history and mystique that I grew up with was a big part of me, so I began writing these stories in whatever part of the world I happened to be in as a way of keeping a foot in Texas.
Where did your love of books and storytelling come from?
In the small high school I attended, there was an English teacher, an older woman who was somewhat aloof. But she realized very quickly that the bunch of rowdy ranch and farm boys in her class would be more apt to read stories and poems of adventure and derring-do, so she steered us on to Stephen Crane, Steinbeck, and others. She also taught us how to be more critical readers and to see beyond words on the pages. I will never forget her. Also, working on farms and ranches there was no TV, radio, or phones. So spare time was spent telling stories. The older hands who had been around had stories of their life experiences, and many were so well told that story-telling became second nature. To this day, I don’t know how many of those stories were true, but it doesn’t really matter. They were good stories.
How long have you been writing?
I have been writing off and on since college.
Are you a full-time or part-time writer? How does that affect your writing?
I am definitely a part-time writer. This gives me time to develop the ideas for my stories and only after I have almost completed the story in my head, do I sit down and begin writing. I am not a disciplined writer. I don’t have specific routines or methods, or locations set aside for writing.
What projects are you working on at the present?
At present, I am working on a sequel to Rio Sonora and digging more short stories out of my trunk.
What do your plans for future projects include?
I have two novels sketched out that take place between World War I and World War II. I also have a batch of short stories that do not take place in Texas but are based on my experiences elsewhere.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
CHARACTER INTERVIEW: THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION AND OTHER STORIES by J. Reeder Archuleta (Short Stories)
THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION
AND OTHER STORIES
by
J. REEDER ARCHULETA
Genre: Fiction /Short Stories / Coming of Age
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing, LLC
Date of Publication: December 8, 2017
Number of Pages: 132
Scroll down for the GIVEAWAY!
These short stories are about coming of age in rural far West Texas. The stories are about the people who have come to stay in a remote part of Texas with a climate that can be harsh and unpredictable and that is demanding and unforgiving. The stories are told through the eyes of Josh, a young boy, who finds himself alone in a small farm and ranch community and who realizes that he will have to make his own way in this place. Along the way he meets a group of characters with different takes on life. Some try to help shield him from the chaos of the world, some try to add more chaos. But all of them, in their own distinct way, through jobs, advice, or actions, play a part in his life.
PRAISE FOR THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION:
“Punchy, plainspoken dialogue…colorful and charismatic characters…The result is an atmospheric Texas…reminiscent of Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show.” -- Kirkus Reviews
“The universality of Josh’s journey gives it a timeless quality…a rich tapestry…The stories are conveyed in lean, elegant prose reminiscent of Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy” -- Blue Ink Review
“Archuleta’s collection offers poignant and hopeful stories of determination in the face of need. Thoroughly engaging…narrated with passion and eloquence…” -- The Clarion Review
CLICK TO ORDER ON
AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE
In 1965, the West Texas Sportswriters Group decided to do a ten-year anniversary feature article on high school basketball and sent reporters out to interview members of championship teams. One reporter caught up with Sue Ann at her place of employment, The Lone Star Café.
REPORTER: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for what we are calling “The Championship Season.” Before we get started on the season and the tournaments, I would like to ask you a few questions for the personal interest portion of the article.
SUE ANN: OK.
Tell me a little about your background. Like, where were you raised, and do you have any brothers and sisters?
I was raised right here in the Valley on a cattle ranch. Four brothers, three sisters.
Are you still living on the ranch?
No. When Daddy died, we sold the ranch because only half of us wanted to keep ranching, and a section would only support six or seven head of cattle, so it wasn’t enough to make a living for all of us.
Thank you. I was out here last week during the rodeo, but they told me that you were over in Sierra Blanca at the magistrate court. Mind telling me what that was about?
Uh-huh. Will you be putting this in your newspaper?
Not if you don’t want me to.
I don’t. It was like this. We were having a beer at the Cotton Club, celebrating my boyfriend winning the ‘doggin’ event when….
Doggin’?
Bulldogging. Anyway, one of the calf ropers was pestering me for a dance. I had told him no three or four times, but then he came over and put his hands on my … that is, he touched me where I didn’t want to be touched. I had put up with his tacky behavior, ‘bout what you’d expect from a roper, but he crossed the line when he put his hands on me. So, I hit him.
They tell me that they had to take him to the hospital in El Paso.
That’s about right. Anyway, Etienne, that’s our deputy, gave his report to the judge and they let me go.
I see. Now before you take me back to the “Championship Season” and tell me about the awards you won, do you have any questions for me?
I do. If you know any of the big shots down in Austin, would you see if you can get them to change the rules in girl’s high school basketball? It’s silly to break the game down into two separate halves, with guards on one side and forwards on the other. We can damn sure play full court basketball just like the boys. Sorry, but that’s always stuck in my craw.
Yes. A good idea. Now will you take me back to the winning season and tell me and our readers what it was like?
I would like that.
The author was raised in far West Texas and five generations of his family are in their final resting place there. His great-grandfather is buried in Concordia Cemetery in El Paso within spitting distance of the grave of John Wesley Hardin.
Archuleta, J. Reeder: THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Archuleta, J. Reeder THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION Dog Ear Publishing (Indie Fiction) 1, 18
A boy growing up alone in a hardscrabble Texas town weathers poverty, violence, and heartbreak in this coming-of-age saga.
Archuleta's (Rio Sonora, 2010, etc.) tense stories unfold like chapters in a novella about a boy named Josh struggling to make his way in the 1950s and '60s. In "Jolie Blon," readers meet little Josh living in a tent with his mother, Belle, and an itinerant farm laborer named Cecil. The boy's unsettled life is upended when the frustrated Belle steals Cecil's car, sells it for quick cash, and packs Josh onto a Greyhound. In the gothic "La Tormenta," readers discover Belle abandoned Josh in a nameless west Texas hamlet. He goes to school, earns his keep--a cot and meals--by doing odd jobs, and observes the town's darker undercurrents. In "Tormenta," a wife's infidelities spark macabre bloodshed, and in "Old Dan's Lament," the blighted life of a reclusive, bookish ranch hand maimed in the Korean War becomes grotesquely immediate. As Josh enters high school, the tales merge into episodes in a more conventional adolescent yarn. He scores a touchdown in the homecoming game--rendered with gripping play-by-play by Archuleta. And Josh gets the attention of Missy, the flirty daughter of an affluent rancher who tantalizes him by playing Beethoven on the piano and making out with him in a truck, and Roble, a down-to-earth Mexican-American girl who dreams of becoming a doctor. Dirt poor and with few prospects, Josh wonders how he could fit into either girl's life as he scrounges work, hangs out at the gas station, and fends off hooligans. Josh is a bit blank--good-hearted but unformed and unambitious. Fortunately, Archuleta surrounds him with more colorful and charismatic characters, from a no-nonsense deputy and a flinty rancher to a tart-tongued, motherly diner waitress. Josh's town is convincingly crafted from punchy, plainspoken dialogue--"Anyone helping me on this, well, no more beer until it's over," a lawman admonishes his posse--and windswept landscapes. ("Tumbleweeds bounced and rolled across dry fields until they became tangled and trapped along the fence lines and as the wind blew south toward the town, it gathered more dirt from the fields and pushed it higher until it formed a great dark rolling cloud, gaining speed and dimming daylight.") The result is an atmospheric Texas bildungsroman reminiscent of Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show.
A well-wrought panorama of small-town dramas and discontents.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Archuleta, J. Reeder: THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525461301/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0f9bd977. Accessed 23 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525461301
The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories
J. Reeder Archuleta
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing Pages: 132 Price: (paperback) $9.99 ISBN: 9781457559198
Reviewed: December, 2017
J. Reeder Archuleta’s The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station is a novella about love, loss, and reconciliation in 1960s west Texas told through a collection of interconnected short stories.
A latter-day western, the story weaves a rich tapestry from vignettes in the life of Josh, a fatherless boy subsequently abandoned by his free-spirited mother. This leaves him to fumble through adolescence with the sympathies of the grownups who look out for him, such as Sue Ann, a vivacious waitress who treats him like a little brother, and Rip, a hard-drinking, sharp-witted Korean war vet.
The stories are conveyed in lean, elegant prose reminiscent of Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy. At their heart, they are most often about regret. We meet women bent on escaping the confines of convention, men driven to murderous rage by betrayal or to fatal heartbreak by lost love, and more. But on the whole, The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station is the story of a boy assembling lessons from the battered optimists who help him grow up and learn to do the right thing. Simply put, it’s about a boy discovering how to be a man.
The novella succeeds on multiple levels. The stories can stand alone, but they combine into something greater than the sum of their parts. Archuleta’s characters are captivating: wise but never preachy, weary but not cynical. Their dialogue is distinctly laconic but swollen with subtext, and the world they reside in is sublimely rendered through expertly selected details. As Josh struggles with rage, for example, the author’s simple description of him sweeping the floor cunningly echoes the emotion: “The stiff bristles of the broom made crisp hissing sounds as they moved over the uneven concrete.”
Archuleta’s ability to distill a story to its raw elements brings a weight and depth belied by its brevity, and the universality of Josh’s journey gives it a timeless quality. The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station is a lovingly rendered portrait of a Texas life by a notable talent. Any lover of literary fiction, or anyone simply hungry for a good book, is sure to find sustenance in Archuleta’s prose.
The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories – My Review
April 20, 2018 Christena 4 Comments
THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION
AND OTHER STORIES
by
J. REEDER ARCHULETA
Genre: Fiction /Short Stories / Coming of Age
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing, LLC
Date of Publication: December 8, 2017
Number of Pages: 132
Scroll down for the giveaway!
These short stories are about coming of age in rural far West Texas. The stories are about the people who have come to stay in a remote part of Texas with a climate that can be harsh and unpredictable and that is demanding and unforgiving. The stories are told through the eyes of Josh, a young boy, who finds himself alone in a small farm and ranch community and who realizes that he will have to make his own way in this place. Along the way he meets a group of characters with different takes on life. Some try to help shield him from the chaos of the world, some try to add more chaos. But all of them, in their own distinct way, through jobs, advice, or actions, play a part in his life.
PRAISE FOR THE EL PASO RED FLAME GAS STATION:
“Punchy, plainspoken dialogue…colorful and charismatic characters…The result is an atmospheric Texas…reminiscent of Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show.” — Kirkus Reviews
“The universality of Josh’s journey gives it a timeless quality…a rich tapestry…The stories are conveyed in lean, elegant prose reminiscent of Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy” — Blue Ink Review
“Archuleta’s collection offers poignant and hopeful stories of determination in the face of need. Thoroughly engaging…narrated with passion and eloquence…” — The Clarion Review
CLICK TO ORDER ON:
Amazon ┃ Barnes & Noble
“The cottonwood trees that stood between the high school building and the football field still held onto most of their leaves but they had begun to take on that dry brittle appearance which along with the dormant Bermuda grass and a chilled breeze out of the north signaled the start of winter in west Texas.”
Reeder Archuleta’s book The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories is a small book of 122 pages and is one of the most readable books I’ve encountered in a while. Archuleta transports readers ever so fleetingly in this small book into the coming of age character, Josh.
Each little story in this well-written and engaging book reveals ever so slightly the life of Josh in a small West Texas town not far from El Paso. From Josh being taken away from his father as a young boy, to being abandoned by his mother just what seems mere months later – Josh lives his life the best way he can given his circumstances.
Archuleta blends the story well with other characters in Josh’s life that you get a good succinct background on each one without much verboseness. Especially on Roble, the girl that fell in love with Josh.
You can clearly tell Archuleta grew up in West Texas from the short, vivid descriptions of the often-harsh landscape that many of us currently call home. The above selection from the book is a perfect example of how I can tell winter is near.
If you love short stories, especially ones based in Texas that can quickly transport you from your world – then Archuleta’s book should be on your reading list.
The author was raised in far West Texas and five generations of his family are in their final resting place there. His
great-grandfather is buried in Concordia Cemetery in El Paso within spitting distance of the grave of John Wesley Hardin.
3.11.2018
LITERARY FICTION
J. Reeder Archuleta
The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories
Dog Ear Publishing
Paperback, 978-1-4575-5919-8 (also available as an e-book), 132 pages, $9.99
December 2017
Where most of us might see only dry, windy, hardscrabble land, Far West Texas native J. Reeder Archuleta can see beauty. Of course, it's beauty that can turn harsh and unforgiving if you forget to pay much attention to the vast sky sweeping overhead.
Likewise, we might notice a few weathered, seemingly nondescript people if we stopped for gas in a small town near the Texas–New Mexico border. Archuleta, however, would see human stories spanning much of life’s emotions and experiences.
The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories, Archuleta's second book, is an absorbing coming-of-age tale that unfolds within a collection of eight short stories. Set in the 1950s and ’60s, in a small town that is not named, the stories have changing viewpoints and changing casts of interconnected characters. Yet one figure is present in each story — an abandoned child named Josh, who grows into manhood over the course of this well-written collection.
Josh sometimes is a story’s central character. Other times, he is mentioned in somebody’s conversation. Or, he is one of several observers witnessing a tense, dramatic, or violent between two or more townspeople. Yet each appearance helps reveal more of the young man the abandoned boy will become.
During the 1950s, Josh’s mother has left him sitting on a bench outside of a bar, the Cotton Club Saloon, and promised to return for him later that day. Instead, she flees, and Josh is taken in and given a cot in a back room of the bar. There, he grows up, watched over by several of the bar regulars, including a Korean War veteran named Rip O’Leary. Josh does his schoolwork while sitting at the bar, and he runs errands for the bar’s owner and others.
In one story, Rip reflects on Josh’s hard childhood, impressed that “the boy never complained and never asked for anything except work, so he could earn his own way” and how he “would not stop working until he was told to.”
Once Josh is in high school, he becomes a star linebacker and pass receiver on the football team, and he begins dealing with the complexities of trying to have a girlfriend. Here, it becomes easy for readers to start sensing echoes of Larry McMurtry’s classic small-town Texas novel, The Last Picture Show. Yet, Archuleta has his own voice. And he is very good at describing West Texas people, how they speak, and how their stark surroundings can both shape their lives and tear them down. Some of his scenes and descriptions, such as that of a dust devil gathering strength and debris and swirling into town, may linger in readers’ minds for a long time.
The book’s only noteworthy flaws are about a dozen or so typos involving punctuation, capitalization, or missing quotation marks. These are not significantly distracting, but careful proofreading seems to be a lost art among publishers these days.
In The El Paso Red Flame Gas Station and Other Stories, Josh gains some new maturities while fighting in the Vietnam War. And those new strengths are put to the test again, once he returns home to a changing town that has almost abandoned him during his absence.
J. Reeder Archuleta wisely has left this book’s pathways open for a sequel story collection or a spinoff novel. Add him to your list of writers to watch.
Rio Sonora: A Story of the Arizona Rangers
J. Reeder Archuleta
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing Pages: 214 Price: (paperback) $13.95 ISBN: 9781608445042
Reviewed: January, 2018
Author Website: Visit »
J. Reeder Archuleta’s utterly captivating turn-of-the-century Western recalls the old TV series 26 Men. Based on true incidents, episodes centered on the Arizona Rangers’ attempts to maintain order. It rivaled Gunsmoke and Bonanza in an era when Westerns dominated the networks, and true fans were loath to miss even one of the 78 installments between 1957 and 1959. Rio Sonora could have easily been the basis for several episodes.
Owen Jones, Archuleta’s protagonist, is the consummate lawman, among the last of a dying breed. Jones escaped a Jesuit orphanage on the banks of the Mississippi at 14 to make his living as a bare-knuckle fighter before moving west to become a Texas Ranger. But when Texas became too tame, Jones, like many of his cohorts, headed farther west to join the Arizona Rangers.
Rio Sonora takes place as Jones, nearing 50 and suffering from arthritis caused by his pugilist past and the hard Ranger’s life, heads to Mexico to help the federales round up a gang of Mexicans and Americans who are guilty of rape, murder, rustling and bank robbery. Along the way, he helps school a rookie Ranger, takes a bullet, falls in love with a beautiful Mexican widow and conveniently fails to capture all the villains, leaving open the possibility of a sequel.
Archuleta excels in painting a vivid picture of the American West just as the modern era is about to change everything. As automobiles begin to take over the streets of Phoenix, Jones doubts there is any future for them (autos need roads, but horses can go anywhere). Jones is a charismatic hero: honest to a fault; charming to women, fellow lawmen and the villains he captures; thirsty for justice; and fearless in battle. The story is fast paced and exciting.
In all, Rio Sonora is pure pleasure for any Western fan. After reaching story’s end, readers will hope the wait isn’t long before Archuleta reprises Jones in another adventure.
Also available as an ebook.