On boots and bars and motorbikes...

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 fo...

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...

And for some reason, I don't think it'll sound half as good when it actually is... Still one of my favorite musicians...

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.                                           ...

Jamey Johnson: High Cost of Living From YouTube

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...