On boots and bars and motorbikes...

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...

A forthcoming Q&A with the Writer's League of Texas and my story "Lubbock 1974," in the October issue of the University of South Carolina's Amarillo Bay, a literary magazine, the second one published from book Long Gone & Lost: True fictions and other lies... Which is now due in 21 days, to finish out my MFA by year's end. And believe me, I'm going to try and get the whole thing published right alongside HAP.HAZ.ARD the poetry collection I've been steady building as wrestle my way through stories.  Plan to get back to the novels I started a year or so back, now. and hopefully, I'll have to fits around my full time job. Thankfully, the electrical classes are behind me because I found out yesterday that one of the big classes I've taught since I started is canceled this semester due to a lack of enrollment. Apparently, student numbers are some of the worst ever at Victoria College this semester. For a dude who gets paid by the number ...

Just got word from an editor at a literary magazine out of South Carolina that they'd like publish another piece I wrote. They'd like to place it in their upcoming October edition. This current offer is with an online magazine called Amarillo Bay , (so named to reflect the hometown locations the magazine's founders, one from the Texas Panhandle and the other from San Francisco, back in 1999). It's published the Department of English at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, S.C., and as best I can tell, it's another one of those exposure-only type publications, no monetary perks involved. I've got the same piece in with a possible four other publishers, some of them actual paying contests and paid submission sites. This is where multiple submissions will give you an ulcer if you start thinking on it too hard. The piece that caught their eye is one of the more experimental pieces I wrote for my book I'm calling "Lubbock 1974," about what sc...