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Thursday, December 20, 2007

Author Working on 2nd Book

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
    Mike Smith, a 28-year-old who is thin and seems to be often excited, is also a scholar.
    Smith wrote "Towns of the Sandia Mountains," a collection of more than 200 images and a number of stories about the history of the East Mountains area, gathered from public archives, historical societies and private collections.
    He is currently working on a second book, "Sandia Mountain Settlements," and hopes to ultimately have a trilogy on the history of towns in the Sandias.
    Smith said he doesn't do the extensive research required to write the books for the money he makes selling them.
    "This is a subject that is just not going to ever make me rich," he said in a phone interview Dec. 13. "This is a fun subject . ... I love writing about it."
    Smith said he thinks he first became interested in the history of places that are all but forgotten as a boy, when he and his brother used to go exploring around the Sandias from his home in Cañoncito, between Cedar Crest and Sandia Park.
    "We would find these places we just couldn't explain," he said.
    Smith presented some of the photos from "Towns of the Sandia Mountains" at the Dec. 12 meeting of the East Mountain Coalition of Neighborhood and Landowner Associations, where he told some of the stories that didn't make it in to the book.
    For example, Smith retold a story about a game played by patrons of Molly's Bar in Tijeras, which opened in the 1950s. During a thunderstorm, he said, they would dump dirt into an arroyo and take bets on how long it would take to wash away.
    Smith said he wants to use new research and new locations for the next book, which will feature more than 200 pictures and about 130 pages.
    "I don't want this to be the leftovers from volume one," he said.
    He would like to feature at least nine new towns or locations in this volume, including the historic excavations of the Native American Paa-Ko pueblo and history from the La Madera area.
    "Aside from I just love La Madera Road ... it's got so much lore there," Smith explained.
    Smith said there are stories of ghosts, witches and mysterious fireballs in the night sky.
    Beyond gathering old stories, Smith said the historical changes in the landscape are "something that has always been so interesting to me ... to see how things have turned themselves inside out ... to kind of look at things different, at least in your mind."
    Smith signed a contract with Arcadia Publishing, the same company that published the previous book, in late November for his second book. The deadline for getting the completed book to the publisher is in May.
    "Towns of the Sandia Mountains," $19.95, is available through amazon.com, where Smith also has a blog.
    He is also actively looking for photos and stories for his next book and asks that anyone who can help call him at 242-3365.
    He still has 16 complimentary copies of the first book to give out to contributors he has not been able to track down.