There was a time once when the only book I imagined writing or editing was my own fantasy series. Santa Cruz was a place, trains were cool but irrelevant, and history was a fun hobby but nothing more. One by one, those dominos fell. In 2003, I shifted my major from Media Communications to History. In 2011, I began writing blog posts about Santa Cruz County’s railroading history. And in 2019, I embarked upon a… Read More »The Memories of Ernest Otto
Thank you to everyone who came to my talk on March 25 at the Felton Branch Library, “Off Track in Scotts Valley: Exploring the curious absence of railroads in Scotts Valley.” It was definitely one of my stranger talks, considering it was actually about why a railroad wasn’t built there rather than the history of a current or former railroad line. A YouTube version of the talk should be available sometime in late June. Most of… Read More »Getting Sidetracked with Santa Cruz Trains
For the past four years, I have been working on editing and publishing Ronald G. Powell’s mostly lost manuscripts into The History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation trilogy. Throughout the course of doing this, I did not forget about my first passion: Santa Cruz Trains. Indeed, editing Parts 2 and 3 reminded me of what I had set aside to finish Powell’s work, but it also gave me inspiration to move beyond what I had originally… Read More »Out of Isolation and Into the World Beyond
Editing the three volumes of The History of Rancho Soquel Augmentation by Ronald G. Powell has been an unexpected journey for me that has had some major highs and major lows. As I wrap up editing the third and final volume of the series, Powell did what he has often done to me over the past three years and thrown a curve ball. In this instance, it has to do with the history of the Molino… Read More »The Rise and Fall of the Molino Timber Company
My journey from being introduced to Ronald G. Powell’s forgotten magnum opus on the history of Rancho Soquel Augmentation in May 2019 and publishing the final book derived from it—The Shadow of Loma Prieta—this autumn has been long with many unexpected turns. When Stan Stevens sent me scans of the first-draft manuscript that Powell had donated to the UC Santa Cruz McHenry Library in the late 1990s, I almost immediately set aside the work I… Read More »On wrapping up a trilogy
![Holiday Lighting Along Main Street, Watsonville, 1920s [Santa Cruz Public Libraries]](https://zayantepublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Holiday-Lighting-Along-Main-Street.jpg)
