Mexican Jail Bait And The Cave Outside Our Window

December 10, 2025

   Sometimes I look around our property and think to myself, how did I get so lucky? I mean, who has a Mexican jail in their front yard?

Mexican Jail Bait

(built by my Kingman Cowboy Cousin Craig Hamilton)

   In the same vein, who has this view out of their living room window?

The Cave Outside Our Window 

(yes, as in Cave Creek)

   So, how did I land this primo casa? Twenty years ago I served on a book panel with Diana Gabaldon at the Flagstaff Book Fesitval. After the panel broke up we chatted and I asked her how she got her breakthrough blockbuster deal with The Outlander and she laughed and said she simply posted scenes and encounters on her online blog until enough people asked, "What happens next?" And when she increased the number who asked that she sent it to a publisher. Doesn't get much more simple than that!

   That's exactly how I got the view.

"There’s a great story about Pablo Picasso, where an interviewer asked him if he was ever intimidated by that blank canvas in the morning and the artist’s response? 'That canvas better be afraid of me when I get up in the morning…'"

—Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire Series

Daily Re-Re-Whip Out:

"Darkness On The Edge of My Hometown

Final Final"

  If I could do one thing better, it would be this.

The whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things."
—Maeve Binchy