On boots and bars and motorbikes...

I just got word from my publisher that my 2020 story collection,  Long Gone & Lost: Tru e   Fictions and Other Lies , was just added today as a new selection now available on the iBooks app. Do check it out when you have the chance:  ‎Long Gone & Lost on Apple Books Recently picked as a Finalist for the 2021 Sergio Troncoso Best First Book of Fiction Award presented by the Texas Institute of Letters, Long Gone & Lost touches on several stories/events from my own life, often blurring that oft fine line that can sometimes exist between fact and fiction. Most of the stories it contains were written in 2017/2018 as part of my thesis/final writing project to complete the requirements of my MFA creative writing program at the University of Houston-Victoria, in Victoria, Texas.  Copies of the originally submitted book manuscript, which includes three more stories in the manuscript version than we used in the final published version of the book, are on file as part of the UHV Libra

Three dozen writers from across the Lone Star State—including this weary blogger—were recognized during a recent awards ceremony by the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL), one of the state’s oldest and most respected literary organizations. According to TIL president Sergio Troncoso, this year’s contest saw a record number of entries, all vying for the more than $25,000 in cash prizes given across the 12 award categories. Troncoso—who rose from the son of poor Mexican immigrants to become a distinguished Ivy League scholar, award-winning novelist (several times over now), short story author and noted essayist, with works published in everything from academic journals and anthologies to Texas Monthly and The Dallas Morning News —hosted the awards ceremony held Saturday, April 17, in El Paso , offered virtually for the first time ever as part of ongoing pandemic precautions. “I’m thrilled we had such a successful awards season,” Troncoso said. “I want to thank the judges for their w

Some monsters will keep you up nights. But in the heart of Texas, our monsters are all too often, all too real... That's how Madville's editorial director Kimberly Davis teased the stories that have become my book, after picking a picture for the cover that you'd swear slipped right out of an old family album someplace, based on little more than a few words I lumped together in an attempt to express a coherent thought. Believe me, "attempt" was just about all I managed in some of those earlier drafts.  Still, the Davis officially added Long Gong & Lost: True Fictions and Other Lies to its 2019-2020 Catalog, a week before the start of the annual AWP Conference in Portland, Ore., and mere days after they officially signed yours truly as one of their newest authors.  In case that title is seeming awfully familiar, it is the same basic manuscript I submitted for my final thesis project in the University of Houston-Victoria's MFA creative wr

I spent 25 years writing for the cheap sheets. Then, after a while away, I shot for the impossible from the cheap seats. I returned to writing. I decided one day I'd call it Author-ized in ’18… Why? Because it sounded good and slogany, and that’s exactly what I needed right then as I built pages like this one. God knows how many pages built on social media platforms before I finally settled on a few that I liked. As 2018 draws to a close, I thought I might do well by revisiting some of where all this has been in just these few short months. Of course, like most things you'll ever read by my hand, you're about to get some back story. You can take that to the bank. Besides, that MFA program I was in, you see, required me to write an entire book. If I didn't pad the backgrounds, how the hell else would I have pulled off something like that? No, really, I didn't intentionally pad a damn thing. Not saying it ain't there, just that I didn't intend for i

Holing up  for the holidays?  Can't say I blame you. Just way too much in states of transition right now, especially since it seems to be taking the slow walk  around the world right now. Too many people I know who spent the season alone. Several for the first time. In their present situation, anyway We've lost too many this year...  I know its coming.             I can feel it.             Prickles on                 golden hairs                      long lost ghosts of my phantasmal              fortune.  Time to                     fortify, fluidly.                                                                                       Nuff said.                                                                       To borrow                                                                                        a phrase:                                                                            Most nuff…                                      

Ever had one of them days where everything goes from roses and sunshine to something much more akin to the southernmost drafts of northbound horse? I never was all that great at geography, but something about all this just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve always been a lot better at getting a story told, I always thought. And the editors over at The Ocotillo Review and Kallisto Gaia Press seemed to think so, too, because they recently notified me that they planned to publish my fourth story from my Long Gone & Lost collection, which I’ll be turning in for my MFA here in the very near future. I’m fairly certain that the two fellows from my story would know all about those ill tasting after effects I mentioned, however. They may be all fiction themselves, but they were indeed inspired by real life events in a real life newsrooms. Dave Kindred wrote about a few folks just like these two who, mere days after everybody was riding a high that only those who win six Pulitzers wil

Oldies but goodies: Got notified today that two previously published  Bobby Horecka stories will be running again, this time in the May /June 2019 Down in the Dirt literary magazine  Mr. Man Candy | The Legend of Chunk Two of our reader favorites, both on this blog and https://OutlawAuthorz.com   are now part of Down in the Dirt literary magazine!

What happens when a medically discharged combat veteran, an oddball albino and a runaway toddler all cross paths one day? Toss in a big pile of pups and you'd have the start of a character list to Lubbock 1974 , one of the newest and darkest stories from my Long Gone & Lost collection, and it went live on the East Coast today at Amarillo Bay, the University of South Carolina's online literary magazine. The story offers an unsettling glimpse at a day in the life of a bunch of misfits tossed together by chance in the Texas Panhandle during the early 1970s. I tried writing something like this almost thirty years ago now, when I first went off to the university in San Marcos. Called it the Red Rubber Ball, a truly awful piece college freshman-year poetry that I'm fairly certain the fates destroyed for me finally, in a late night house fire during the mid-1990s. Few are left who ever even saw those particular words. But the story it told is where started when I wrote th

Although I knew it would be coming soon, I can't tell you how big a kick it was finding this in my Inbox when I got back to my house yesterday. September was a rough month for me. For several reasons. Not least of which was losing Gramma and a new job within the exact same week. So, this was welcome news indeed, something I kinda needed after some true head-spinners these last few weeks...  This interview was actually put together months ago (back when my website launched in January 2018, to be precise). I figured it was lost months ago already. Until I got word from them last month, which was good because I just didn't have it in me for another Try, Try Again moment. Not then. Not with everything else. But I'll be damned if another job didn't walk up out of nowhere, one I started the exact same day this published. And other than a bit sunburnt, I can't complain in the least. It was even kinda fun. So, here's hoping for some hellova lot better weeks in st

That little light-haired kid is me, a recurrent character in the book I just finished, just behind Major, this ancient German Sheppard we had on the farm when I was young, and my Grampa driving what I thought was a jalopy of a tractor because it needed a hand crank to start (and would probably hand over what's left of my teeth to get back again as a restoration project). But like that tractor, those bright white locks are long gone. What's left of my hair is mostly gray now, and sadly, there ain't much of that. But that's not why I write today. Rather, I'm hoping perhaps some of you can help me with something... At my gramma's funeral services last week, several people commented about things remembered from the eulogies I wrote for Viola's husband, Victor Konvicka, (my grampa, someone I was very close to and the first person I ever wrote parting words for) and her daughter, Lillie Horecka (my mom, who despite seeming a healthy woman at the time of his

At the request of many of you in attendance on Tuesday at St. Mary's in Hallettsville, my eulogy for Gramma.  Father John had already begun the faith and family parts when I got in touch. He asked that I provide some color, so that's what I shot for. Oddly, he told me before the service the salesman part was a bit long, but he loved the rest. He wound up sharing the salesman part and not much else. So here's what I came up with, color and all, in my uncut, original version: Sweet. Salt of the earth. Pretty. Unique. Generous. Hardworking. Protective. Kind. Caring. Dependable. Beautiful. Special. Loving. Proud… Those are just some of the words that a few of YOU used to describe Viola, my gramma, as I shared the news of her passing last weekend on Facebook. I never thought I’d ever use those two words used in the same sentence—Grandma and Facebook, that is—unless the words “ said she never heard of ” came in between them. Technology was never one of her

Viola Konvicka, 90, of Hallettsville passed away Sept. 7, 2018. She was born on Aug. 4, 1928 to Anton J. and Angelina Berckenhoff Koncaba in Moulton. She married Victor F. Konvicka on Sept. 24, 1947, at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Moulton. Viola was a lifelong farmer and rancher, as well as working for Weingarten’s and Stephen’s Nursing and Rehab Center in Hallettsville before retiring from Kaspar Wire Works in Shiner in the late 1990s to care for her husband Victor and his brother, Leon Konvicka, who lived with them most of his life. Viola is survived by daughter, Irene Remlinger and husband Chuck of Katy; son-in-law Jim Horecka and wife Marty of Yoakum; sister, Patsy Faltisek of Rosenberg, three grandsons, Bobby Horecka and wife Jennifer of Victoria, Kirk Remlinger and wife Asli of Katy, and Craig Remlinger and wife Mary of Katy; 10 great-grandchildren, Bradley Horecka, Aryn Horecka and Cheyanne Mathis of Terrell; Preston Remlinger, Jake Remlinger, Claire Remlinge