Donna Marie Miller

Family, friends, and neighbors came out Saturday Jan. 14, 2023, to Book People in Austin to hear me discuss my new nonfiction true crime book, Texas Secessionists Standoff; the 1997 Republic of Texas ‘War,’ published by Texas A&M University Press. I showed a slideshow and talked about how I met Jo Ann Turner, and interviewed Richard Lance McLaren, Texas Rangers, FBI agents, law enforcement agents, prosecutors, both state and federal judges and residents of the Davis Mountain Resort over a span of two and a half years.


 

Audience members asked several questions including:

How did I meet Jo Ann Turner, who provides the thread throughout my book?

Molly McKnight introduced me to Jo Ann Turner in September of 2017

soon after a book signing for my first book, The Broken Spoke; Austin’s Legendary Honky-Tonk, published in 2017 also by TAMU Press. Molly and Jo Ann had met years earlier while working in the networking industry. Jo Ann had been born and raised in Austin, where Molly has lived for the majority of her life. Jo Ann began meeting with me once a week in the early afternoons at my house or at a nearby restaurant where I would interview her and record our conversations. Later I transcribed those interviews, and she approved them for use in my book either verbatim or as narrative summaries. As I learned more about Jo Ann, I also learned a great deal about her involvement with the Republic of Texas militia and the 1997 standoff in the Davis Mountains. Before long, I sought out 75 other primary sources to interview and those interviews also were added to my book