• Home
  • popular
  • EVENTS
  • submit-new-event
  • CHARITY GUIDE
  • Children
  • Education
  • Health
  • Veterans
  • Social Services
  • Arts + Culture
  • Animals
  • LGBTQ
  • New Charity
  • TRENDING NEWS
  • News
  • City Life
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Home + Design
  • Travel
  • Real Estate
  • Restaurants + Bars
  • Arts
  • Society
  • Innovation
  • Fashion + Beauty
  • subscribe
  • about
  • series
  • Embracing Your Inner Cowboy
  • Green Living
  • Summer Fun
  • Real Estate Confidential
  • RX In the City
  • State of the Arts
  • Fall For Fashion
  • Cai's Odyssey
  • Comforts of Home
  • Good Eats
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2010
  • Holiday Gift Guide 2
  • Good Eats 2
  • HMNS Pirates
  • The Future of Houston
  • We Heart Hou 2
  • Music Inspires
  • True Grit
  • Hoops City
  • Green Living 2011
  • Cruizin for a Cure
  • Summer Fun 2011
  • Just Beat It
  • Real Estate 2011
  • Shelby on the Seine
  • Rx in the City 2011
  • Entrepreneur Video Series
  • Going Wild Zoo
  • State of the Arts 2011
  • Fall for Fashion 2011
  • Elaine Turner 2011
  • Comforts of Home 2011
  • King Tut
  • Chevy Girls
  • Good Eats 2011
  • Ready to Jingle
  • Houston at 175
  • The Love Month
  • Clifford on The Catwalk Htx
  • Let's Go Rodeo 2012
  • King's Harbor
  • FotoFest 2012
  • City Centre
  • Hidden Houston
  • Green Living 2012
  • Summer Fun 2012
  • Bookmark
  • 1987: The year that changed Houston
  • Best of Everything 2012
  • Real Estate 2012
  • Rx in the City 2012
  • Lost Pines Road Trip Houston
  • London Dreams
  • State of the Arts 2012
  • HTX Fall For Fashion 2012
  • HTX Good Eats 2012
  • HTX Contemporary Arts 2012
  • HCC 2012
  • Dine to Donate
  • Tasting Room
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2012
  • Charming Charlie
  • Asia Society
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2012
  • HTX Mistletoe on the go
  • HTX Sun and Ski
  • HTX Cars in Lifestyle
  • HTX New Beginnings
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013
  • Zadok Sparkle into Spring
  • HTX Let's Go Rodeo 2013
  • HCC Passion for Fashion
  • BCAF 2013
  • HTX Best of 2013
  • HTX City Centre 2013
  • HTX Real Estate 2013
  • HTX France 2013
  • Driving in Style
  • HTX Island Time
  • HTX Super Season 2013
  • HTX Music Scene 2013
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2013 2
  • HTX Baker Institute
  • HTX Comforts of Home 2013
  • Mothers Day Gift Guide 2021 Houston
  • Staying Ahead of the Game
  • Wrangler Houston
  • First-time Homebuyers Guide Houston 2021
  • Visit Frisco Houston
  • promoted
  • eventdetail
  • Greystar Novel River Oaks
  • Thirdhome Go Houston
  • Dogfish Head Houston
  • LovBe Houston
  • Claire St Amant podcast Houston
  • The Listing Firm Houston
  • South Padre Houston
  • NextGen Real Estate Houston
  • Pioneer Houston
  • Collaborative for Children
  • Decorum
  • Bold Rock Cider
  • Nasher Houston
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2021
  • CityNorth
  • Urban Office
  • Villa Cotton
  • Luck Springs Houston
  • EightyTwo
  • Rectanglo.com
  • Silver Eagle Karbach
  • Mirador Group
  • Nirmanz
  • Bandera Houston
  • Milan Laser
  • Lafayette Travel
  • Highland Park Village Houston
  • Proximo Spirits
  • Douglas Elliman Harris Benson
  • Original ChopShop
  • Bordeaux Houston
  • Strike Marketing
  • Rice Village Gift Guide 2021
  • Downtown District
  • Broadstone Memorial Park
  • Gift Guide
  • Music Lane
  • Blue Circle Foods
  • Houston Tastemaker Awards 2022
  • True Rest
  • Lone Star Sports
  • Silver Eagle Hard Soda
  • Modelo recipes
  • Modelo Fighting Spirit
  • Athletic Brewing
  • Rodeo Houston
  • Silver Eagle Bud Light Next
  • Waco CVB
  • EnerGenie
  • HLSR Wine Committee
  • All Hands
  • El Paso
  • Avenida Houston
  • Visit Lubbock Houston
  • JW Marriott San Antonio
  • Silver Eagle Tupps
  • Space Center Houston
  • Central Market Houston
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Travel Texas Houston
  • Alliantgroup
  • Golf Live
  • DC Partners
  • Under the Influencer
  • Blossom Hotel
  • San Marcos Houston
  • Photo Essay: Holiday Gift Guide 2009
  • We Heart Hou
  • Walker House
  • HTX Good Eats 2013
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2013
  • HTX Culture Motive
  • HTX Auto Awards
  • HTX Ski Magic
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2014
  • HTX Texas Traveler
  • HTX Cifford on the Catwalk 2014
  • HTX United Way 2014
  • HTX Up to Speed
  • HTX Rodeo 2014
  • HTX City Centre 2014
  • HTX Dos Equis
  • HTX Tastemakers 2014
  • HTX Reliant
  • HTX Houston Symphony
  • HTX Trailblazers
  • HTX_RealEstateConfidential_2014
  • HTX_IW_Marks_FashionSeries
  • HTX_Green_Street
  • Dating 101
  • HTX_Clifford_on_the_Catwalk_2014
  • FIVE CultureMap 5th Birthday Bash
  • HTX Clifford on the Catwalk 2014 TEST
  • HTX Texans
  • Bergner and Johnson
  • HTX Good Eats 2014
  • United Way 2014-15_Single Promoted Articles
  • Holiday Pop Up Shop Houston
  • Where to Eat Houston
  • Copious Row Single Promoted Articles
  • HTX Ready to Jingle 2014
  • htx woodford reserve manhattans
  • Zadok Swiss Watches
  • HTX Wonderful Weddings 2015
  • HTX Charity Challenge 2015
  • United Way Helpline Promoted Article
  • Boulevard Realty
  • Fusion Academy Promoted Article
  • Clifford on the Catwalk Fall 2015
  • United Way Book Power Promoted Article
  • Jameson HTX
  • Primavera 2015
  • Promenade Place
  • Hotel Galvez
  • Tremont House
  • HTX Tastemakers 2015
  • HTX Digital Graffiti/Alys Beach
  • MD Anderson Breast Cancer Promoted Article
  • HTX RealEstateConfidential 2015
  • HTX Vargos on the Lake
  • Omni Hotel HTX
  • Undies for Everyone
  • Reliant Bright Ideas Houston
  • 2015 Houston Stylemaker
  • HTX Renewable You
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • Urban Flats Builder
  • HTX New York Fashion Week spring 2016
  • Kyrie Massage
  • Red Bull Flying Bach
  • Hotze Health and Wellness
  • ReadFest 2015
  • Alzheimer's Promoted Article
  • Formula 1 Giveaway
  • Professional Skin Treatments by NuMe Express

    The Arthropologist

    Love on a Goat Farm: Chick lit writer Katherine Center returns to ranch roots in latest novel

    Nancy Wozny
    nancy wozny
    May 5, 2013 | 3:57 pm

    I met Katherine Center while traipsing through Donald Judd's manly steel sculptures on a trip to Marfa. The author regaled me with tales about what makes a love story work. (The heroine meets her love interest early on and we spend the rest of the book waiting and wanting for the two to get together.)

    After reading The Bright Side of Disaster,Everyone Is Beautiful andGet Lucky, I was hooked, and couldn't wait to cheer on her next heroine.

    Center's new book, The Lost Husband, chronicles the tale of Libby, a young widow who leaves Houston to go live and work on her aunt's goat farm. And don't you a know it, a handsome farm hand is good at more than milking goats.

    Center reads from The Lost Husband at Brazos Bookstore on Tuesday at 7 p.m. and at Blue Willow Bookshop on Thursday at 7 p.m. The author brings us into life on the goat farm and her process for The Lost Husband.

    CultureMap: What was the seed for The Lost Husband?

    Katherine Center: I went out to visit my childhood friend Christian Seger and his wife Lisa at their goat farm outside Houston. It’s called Blue Heron Farm, and they make the most divine goat cheese you can imagine. We took the kids to spend the day, and as they showed us around, I could not get over how charming it was. I thought, “I need to set a book on a goat farm!” And then I had to come up with a story.

    CM: Once you hone in on the story elements, do you go into your writing space and not come out until it's done? Can you talk about your writing practice?

    KC: I wish I could disappear and not come out. But I have two little kids, and so I am needed in the real world. But I’m very obsessive when I’m writing, and I’m a terrible multi-tasker, so there’s a real tension I feel, having to shift back and forth between the story and my real life. It’s often like I’m watching a split-screen with the imaginary people in my life and the real ones. As long as they take turns, that’s fine.

    CM: You write so vividly about the texture of life on a farm. I know for a fact that you do not live on a farm. How ever did you conjure all those goats, chickens and the languid pace of life on the pasture?

    KC: My mom runs a working cattle ranch outside of Houston that’s been in our family for 50 years. We all live in the city, but I grew up going to the ranch, and we still get out there at least once a month. So that feeling that’s so unique to the country—of being out in the open, surrounded by something so much bigger than you—is definitely in my bones. The thing I always notice most out there is the wind—what it does to the trees and the long grass and how it feels sweeping over you.

    CM: That's so interesting that you mention the wind. I felt as if I was breathing in country air while reading. Did you milk a goat in the research process?

    KC: We did! Christian showed us how to milk a goat—and it’s not as easy as you’d think!

    CM: Really?

    KC: There’s a scene in the book where a character squirts milk straight from the goat and tries to get it in a kid’s mouth across the barn —and he really did that with my daughter! He had great aim, too.

    CM: Texas features heavily in you work, and for good reason, there's such a sense of place here. As a writer, what are the joys and challenges about writing about your home turf?

    KC: My family’s been in Houston since the 1860s, and I love that. I love driving past my grandfather’s old building materials company—which sits on the site of the old family grocery store… We are a big, close, loving family, and I love the way those roots connect us. My mom lives in the house her dad built in 1939, for example, and she just found a trunk up in the attic filled with every letter she’d ever written to her mother. It’s been up there since the 1950s, and she didn’t even know. There’s something so comforting and heartbreaking about holding onto those connections. It’s rich territory, for sure—and my books are richer for it.

    CM: I love your Lone Star heroines too. Complex, quirky, funny, slightly flawed women rule your novels. Libby has more on her plate, though, than any of the others. What drew you to dealing with bigger issues for this novel?

    KC: I am really interested in the ways that people bounce back. I talk about this with my kids a lot—that life is going to knock you down over and over, and the trick is not to cower, but to get good at getting back up. As terrible as the human race can be, that’s one of our best qualities—and I adore seeing people at their best. All my books are bittersweet in their ways, but I agree this book has some bigger issues. Maybe it’s because I’m older than I used to be and I’ve seen more of life now.

    CM: Maybe it's all that bouncing back that lends such a sense of energy in your writing. We can really feel the motion of a life moving toward a resolution. Can you talk a little bit about plot momentum?

    KC: Well, as a culture we love to hate love stories.

    CM: I didn't get that memo. Say more.

    KC: We’re too jaded to believe in them. We insist that they’re silly. But I just don’t feel that way. There’s something really profound that goes on between people when they fall in love. That connection is so precious and valuable—especially because we do spend so much of our lives alone. That longing we all have to connect—it’s powerful, and a driving force in everything we do. If you think about it, the whole of human history springs from people finding each other and connecting—it’s big stuff, and I’m a total sucker for it.

    CM: You have been named "an intelligent chick lit writer." How do you position yourself in that genre?

    KC: Well, I am unapologetically writing for women. When you’re lucky enough to have a good friend who you can be totally honest about your life with, that’s kind of magical. And that’s how I want my books to feel: like a long letter from a best friend. A best friend who cracks you up and isn’t afraid to tell it exactly how it is. The books are conversational and warm and chatty, but they also talk about the real complexities and heartbreaks of women’s lives.

    CM: What's next for you?

    KC: I am working on my fifth novel—about a woman who goes on a wilderness survival course. I’m very in love with it right now. Danger! Adventure! Kissing!

    Author Katherine Center

    Nancy, Love on a Goat Farm, author Katherine Center
      
    Photo by Karen Walrond
    Author Katherine Center
    unspecified
    news/entertainment
    CULTUREMAP EMAILS ARE AWESOME
    Get Houston intel delivered daily.

    Movie Review

    28 Years Later revives zombie franchise for new generation

    Alex Bentley
    Jun 20, 2025 | 5:00 pm
    Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later
    Photo by Miya Mizuno
    Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams in 28 Years Later.

    The 2000s brought two of the best zombie movies ever made in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. Both films, despite being made by different filmmakers, featured intense action with fast-moving zombies, harrowing sequences, and real emotional connections with their main characters. Now the original director and writer — Danny Boyle and Alex Garland — have returned with the first of a possible three sequels, 28 Years Later.

    The rage virus from the first two films that turns humans into insatiable monsters has successfully been contained to the United Kingdom, and one group of survivors has managed to band together on a small island off the coast of England. We’re introduced to the group through Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), his wife, Isla (Jodie Comer), and his son, Spike (Alfie Williams).

    Isla is sick with an unknown illness, while Jamie is set to take the 12-year-old Spike on his first trip to the mainland to hunt zombies. That trip not only gives Spike an education as to the different types of feral zombies that now populate England, but also a clue that other people have survived there. When he discovers that one of them may be a doctor, he makes plans to take his mother there in hopes of finding a cure for whatever ails her.

    While the first two films were notable for their brisk pace that kept the potency of the stories high, Boyle and Garland almost go in the opposite direction for much of this film. The first 90 minutes are relatively slow, with only a couple of sequences that raise the blood pressure. The final half hour or so go a long way toward filling that void, so it’s clear that the filmmakers were biding their time for the story to come in the sequel. A bit more balance in this film would have served them well, though.

    What they do show involves some weird, wild stuff that is objectively upsetting, even for fans of the genre. The zombies have evolved in strange ways, giving them a variety of body shapes and abilities to suit the environment in which they live. These storytelling choices may thrill some and have others scratching their heads. Another human character living on his own (played by Ralph Fiennes), appears to have gone the way of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, with a revelation that is bone-chilling.

    Boyle, who’s directed everything from Trainspotting to Slumdog Millionaire, doesn’t have a signature style, and he makes some choices in this film that test your patience. He occasionally employs an odd technique in which the film stutters, for a lack of better term. It’s a bit jarring, especially since it doesn’t seem to improve the storytelling. He also inserts scenes from older films involving medieval warfare that emulate the bow-and-arrow weaponry used by characters in this film, but the exact connection he’s trying to make is unclear.

    The young Williams has a lot put on his shoulders in the film, and he proves to be up to the task of carrying the story. He isn’t precocious or annoying, instead reacting almost exactly like you’d expect a boy of his age to do when faced with extreme situations. Taylor-Johnson and Comer are good complements for him, drawing him out with their polar opposite characters. Fiennes makes a huge impression in the final act of the film, while Jack O’Connell makes a very brief appearance, teasing a bigger role to come.

    It’s difficult to fully judge 28 Years Later because it’s designed to only give you part of the story; part 2, The Bone Temple, is due in 2026, while a third film will follow if the first two do well. This film has its moments and winds up on the positive side of the ledger, but it’s also a frustrating experience that could have used a more stand-alone story.

    ---

    28 Years Later is now playing in theaters.

    moviesfilm
    news/entertainment
    CULTUREMAP EMAILS ARE AWESOME
    Get Houston intel delivered daily.
    Loading...