Pat Krapf's Blog

To our readers, Summer is heating up and we are ramping up, setting new deadlines to push book four—CLON-X —closer to a fall release. It’s taken time to reboot from the delays caused by the two-year pandemic, but we’re back on track and working hard. Also on our agenda is the complete redesign of our current […]

It was brought to my attention that some readers couldn’t open a hyperlink I included in last month’s post, so I am posting the article for those who are interested in knowing how did Dallas get its name? It’s a bit of a mystery, actually. Who exactly is Dallas named after? Well, it turns out […]

I had visited Dallas on many occasions after moving to Texas to dine, shop, or attend art shows at the DMA—Dallas Museum of Art. But I had never been to the BAD, and quite frankly I had no idea what the acronym stood for, until my brother, a recent transplant to Dallas, said he would […]

One day, shortly after we relocated to Texas, I was driving from Keller to Grapevine on FM 1709 when I noticed an elderly man walking slowly down the sidewalk. Behind him he dragged a dog. I had to do a double take to be sure the dog was a stuffed toy and not real. I […]

Alliance, Texas is a 27,000-acre master-planned community located in Denton and Tarrant Counties. However my focus in CLON-X is not on the residential aspect of the city, but on AllianceTexas—the business park—a 9,600-acre development of office, industrial, flex, and retail space designed for large-scale distribution, manufacturing, and e-commerce fulfillment companies. The current owner is Hillwood, […]

In 1940, talks began for a regional airport in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The new airport would be midway between the two cities, and both cities were interested since expansion of the current airports, Meacham Field in Fort Worth and Love Field in Dallas, would require extensive construction to accommodate not only the increase in […]

My first giant schnauzer was named Shotz. One of her favorite pastimes, besides a walk in the park, was to simply go for a ride in her 4Runner. One morning, I loaded her into our SUV and we drove to north Southlake to check out a new park—Bob Jones Park. We walked the trails for […]

Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Elizabeth Parker met in Texas in 1930. Bonnie was 19 and married to a jailed murderer. Clyde was 21, single, and a free man, but not for long. After his arrest for burglary, he went to jail, but escaped with Bonnie’s help. She smuggled a gun to him. He was […]

Grapevine Lake is an artificial reservoir in the Trinity River basin northwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The lake lies in north Grapevine near the border of Denton County and Tarrant County on Denton Creek, a tributary of the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. The reservoir, which was built for flood control, is […]

Chapter 1 Fifteen-year-old Payton Lord peddled faster and faster, small legs pumping high, knees thumping her chest. The burn in her calves worked its way up her thighs and into her hips, but she pressed on, pushing Ruby, her new ten-speed, to its limits. She mustn’t be late. Not today, or her stepdad would end […]