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The Taos Massacres
A well-written story that follows several real-life characters through the turmoil of the rebellion that rocked northern New Mexico in 1847. Supplemented by battle diagrams from the official military history of the campaign to put down the rebellion, and a first-ever chronology of events.
Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
John Durand
9 booksI was born and raised in Spooner, Wisconsin, a small town in the northern part of the state, the middle child of a family of nine kids whose births spanned twenty years.
After earning my bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire and the University of Tennessee respectively, I served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, was active in Wisconsin politics for several years, and served in various administrative capacities in Wisconsin's human services system in both the private and the public sector.
My first published work, The Taos Massacres, deals with the rebellion of Mexicans and Indians against American authority in 1847 in the aftermath of the Mexico-American War. I published it through Puzzlebox Press, which I established to get the book before the reading public. I believed in this story, and as I was already in my mid-60's, I realized that the usual process of submission/rejection, submission/rejection would not work for me. Life was too short! During the process of learning how to self-publish, I discovered how much I enjoy creating a print-ready book and its cover.
The second book I published, The Odyssey of Mary B, was actually my first serious attempt to write since college, a work that I began in the 1980s with the encouragement of a dear friend. The story follows a young convict woman sent to Australia who later escaped and was returned to England, where James Boswell of biography fame took up her cause. It was while I struggled to get my arms around this big story that I decided I loved researching and writing and trying to get the story right. From then on, I worked to earn money to sustain myself so I could write. However, after going through a couple years of submission/rejection, submission/rejection, I gave up on this book, and the manuscript lay dormant for several years. Then, a friend read it and loved it. I decided to self-publish Mary B as I had The Taos Massacres. So I did.
Some writers use history as a departure point and basically create a story. In The Taos Massacres and Mary B, I stuck as close as I could to what we consider to be historical fact, However, I felt free to create (or to re-create) in what I call the "interstices of history," where events are connected, but we do not know how (at least now), or characters are mentioned, but we know little about them (at least now). Some call this kind of writing "faction."
My third book was a memoir titled Behind Enemy Lines, which tells of my childhood polio and its effect on my early life. I found the process of writing this book therapeutic,and I'm glad I got it out of me. Readers admire the memoir's honesty and its rich detail about small town life in northern Wisconsin.
During the last years of my mother's life, I took notes on stories she told me about her family and her growing up. These notes and my research resulted in Anna's Story, which I'm happy to say she saw in manuscript before she died. Like Mary B, however, this manuscript lay dormant for several years before I prepared it in book form for printing. Although I published just a hundred copies or so of Anna's Story for "family," I put it on Kindle and Nook just for kicks, and have been surprised by the steady trickle of digital readers.
The Boys: 1st North Dakota Volunteers in the Philippines was my first purely historical work. I had wanted to make my grandfather's unpublished narrative of his service with the 1st North Dakota more accessible, but that process grew into this comprehensive history of his regiment and the early days of the war in the Philippines, 1898-99. I'm pleased that The Boys has garnered good reviews, as history!
Since then, I've been stuck in 1898-99, repurposing information I gathered in writing The Boys. This I did for my grandfather's war narrative, which I published as Tom Stafne, a Volunteer Soldier in the Philippines. I did the same to make another soldier's unpublished narrative available: Avenge the Ma
After earning my bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire and the University of Tennessee respectively, I served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines, was active in Wisconsin politics for several years, and served in various administrative capacities in Wisconsin's human services system in both the private and the public sector.
My first published work, The Taos Massacres, deals with the rebellion of Mexicans and Indians against American authority in 1847 in the aftermath of the Mexico-American War. I published it through Puzzlebox Press, which I established to get the book before the reading public. I believed in this story, and as I was already in my mid-60's, I realized that the usual process of submission/rejection, submission/rejection would not work for me. Life was too short! During the process of learning how to self-publish, I discovered how much I enjoy creating a print-ready book and its cover.
The second book I published, The Odyssey of Mary B, was actually my first serious attempt to write since college, a work that I began in the 1980s with the encouragement of a dear friend. The story follows a young convict woman sent to Australia who later escaped and was returned to England, where James Boswell of biography fame took up her cause. It was while I struggled to get my arms around this big story that I decided I loved researching and writing and trying to get the story right. From then on, I worked to earn money to sustain myself so I could write. However, after going through a couple years of submission/rejection, submission/rejection, I gave up on this book, and the manuscript lay dormant for several years. Then, a friend read it and loved it. I decided to self-publish Mary B as I had The Taos Massacres. So I did.
Some writers use history as a departure point and basically create a story. In The Taos Massacres and Mary B, I stuck as close as I could to what we consider to be historical fact, However, I felt free to create (or to re-create) in what I call the "interstices of history," where events are connected, but we do not know how (at least now), or characters are mentioned, but we know little about them (at least now). Some call this kind of writing "faction."
My third book was a memoir titled Behind Enemy Lines, which tells of my childhood polio and its effect on my early life. I found the process of writing this book therapeutic,and I'm glad I got it out of me. Readers admire the memoir's honesty and its rich detail about small town life in northern Wisconsin.
During the last years of my mother's life, I took notes on stories she told me about her family and her growing up. These notes and my research resulted in Anna's Story, which I'm happy to say she saw in manuscript before she died. Like Mary B, however, this manuscript lay dormant for several years before I prepared it in book form for printing. Although I published just a hundred copies or so of Anna's Story for "family," I put it on Kindle and Nook just for kicks, and have been surprised by the steady trickle of digital readers.
The Boys: 1st North Dakota Volunteers in the Philippines was my first purely historical work. I had wanted to make my grandfather's unpublished narrative of his service with the 1st North Dakota more accessible, but that process grew into this comprehensive history of his regiment and the early days of the war in the Philippines, 1898-99. I'm pleased that The Boys has garnered good reviews, as history!
Since then, I've been stuck in 1898-99, repurposing information I gathered in writing The Boys. This I did for my grandfather's war narrative, which I published as Tom Stafne, a Volunteer Soldier in the Philippines. I did the same to make another soldier's unpublished narrative available: Avenge the Ma
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 26, 2023
An otherwise passable literary work obscured by unnecessary vulgarities. There's no need to add fictitious accounts about historical figures getting erections and masturbating. Also, no need for for descriptions of characters urinating and defecating themselves, of "last evacuations", of "urinating and playing with his white member", nor of ogling female breasts.
Obviously, no one proofread the work. There are so many typos and spelling errors that if I was not fluent in Spanish I would have understood that the troublemakers were incarcerated in a pumpkin instead of a jail. Many words are spelled correctly in one part and misspelled in other.
The best part of the book is the Afterword, recounting what happened to the survivors' lives.
Obviously, no one proofread the work. There are so many typos and spelling errors that if I was not fluent in Spanish I would have understood that the troublemakers were incarcerated in a pumpkin instead of a jail. Many words are spelled correctly in one part and misspelled in other.
The best part of the book is the Afterword, recounting what happened to the survivors' lives.
Displaying 1 of 1 review