Johnny Hughes

About the Author

Johnny Hughes, Ph.D. was a professional poker player. He ran poker games to put himself through college. He sold books for McGraw-Hill Book Company. His territory was half of Texas and all of New Mexico. He was an account executive at KCBD-TV, the NBC affiliate in Lubbock. Johnny was a professor and lecturer at Texas Tech University for twenty years. He taught a variety of management subjects to undergraduate, graduate, and Honors students. He was also the Director of Petroleum Land Management.

Johnny was the original manager of the Joe Ely Band, securing contracts with MCA Records and the William Morris Agency for booking. The first three albums, all on MCA Records, were recorded during this time. Johnny is the author of the novel, Texas Poker Wisdom, and Famous Gamblers, Poker History, and Texas Stories, available on all Amazons world wide and by order from book stores. The books are for sale in hardback, paperback, and electronically on Kindle, Nook, Google eBooks, and Sony eBooks. Famous Gamblers is a collection of his best magazine articles and short stories published in several magazines.

My new novel, A TEXAS BEAUTY: SMART and STRONG will be available for sale in two months on all Amazons and by bookstore order. Writing modern fiction gives one a lot of space to explore many themes.

My novel is a mystery, romance, and comedy. The main character, Misty Morgan, has a stalker which reveals himself on page one. There are six.six million stalker victims in America each year. Sixty percent of them are male. Stalkers disrupt lives. Misty flees Las Vegas and her stalker for her beloved West Texas, Lubbock and Amarillo. But will Misty's stalker follow her? Yes!

MODERN THEMES: Themes addressed from research and/or experience include: stalking, strong women, necessary secrets and lies, blogs, facebook, talk radio, sex, sex in the 1960s. All the major characters are admirable, smart, strong, and independent. Young love: Dylan O'Malley begins as a rejected suitor, wins girl, loses girl, and gets married in the last chapter. Guns: most of my major characters carry guns, as do I. However, the guns they have always carried are made obsolete by the machine-gun pistols, and assault weapons they are robbed with. Misty shoots her stalker in the shoulder when he kicks in her door late in the book.

The Oil Rich: Evelyn Morgan, 94, and the Morgan Ranch are based on Helen DeVitt Jones, my close friend, mentor, and protector. Her Mallet Ranch has 1100 oil wells, 53000 acres. She has a foundation, charities, and opportunistic hangers-on, like me.

The Morgan Curse: For four generations, there was one male heir who died in a needless, comic accident. The first froze to death riding his horse in a blue norther and was found frozen to his barb wire fence. The second, Evelyn Morgan's husband, was kicked in the head by a horse when he bent over to pick his gold pocket watch up out of the dirt. The third drown, drunk, and gigging frogs, in three-feet of water. The last, who Misty had briefly married at age 16, saw a rabbit run into an aluminum irrigation pipe and picked up the pipe to empty it out. The pipe hit a high-line wire and he was electrocuted. The real, historic ranches, including the Mallet, have lost key male heirs at a disproportionate rate. The Mallet has been controlled by strong, legendarily-eccentric women since the early thirties. Helen's sister had 300 cats. She was called "the Cat Lady." She owned three houses in a row in a great neighborhood. She lived in one, cats the other two.

THE BIG TEXAS STEAK RANCH in Amarillo is frequently mentioned and the last chapter is there. Billboards in many states, eight limousines. It is an incredibly famous tourist attraction. Misty's mother, Smiling Sally, has been a waitress there 27 years. She is America's most famous waitress with a blog, business, cards, a web site, a movie appearance and costumes.

SINGLE MOTHERS: Dylan and Misty have a lot in common: both 34 in 2013, auburn hair, brown eyes, the children of a religious, singing, single mom. Both were resistant to the Texas high school culture of football, rodeos, fist fights, and popularity.

The novel takes place in Las Vegas, Amarillo, Lubbock, and on a large Texas ranch.