On boots and bars and motorbikes...

Consider yourself warned: Piquing the curiosity of a recovering journalist may lead to strange google searches, chain-smoked cigarettes, and lengthy random message chains from phone numbers you ever seen before that you probably won't find until much later in the day, long after you forgot you actually asked said question, but answer it thorough and complete by old radio show slogans... At least that's what happened to a poor fellow I met for the first time today, someone I've heard about for decades but never had the good fortune to meet. Until today, when me and my bride made the drive out to Gonzales--our old hometown, as it were (Come N Take It! Let's go Apaches! Class of 1990, the both of us)--where some of her closest kin had gathered to celebrate her father's 68th birthday. Among them was a fellow I'll henceforth refer to as Uncle Charlie. Why? Because that's what my bride calls him, and I probably should, too. Seems like polite thing to do anyway,

“Writing is hard for every last one of us — straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” Cheryl Strayed, author of the 2012 bestseller Wild , later made into a 2014 film starring Reece Witherspoon, wrote these words in her “Dear Sugar” advice column, published on the literary website The Rumpus (2010-12). This particular passage appeared in a piece she titled “The Art of Motherfuckitude,” to advise a frustrated young writer who had trouble finding her muse. On title alone, I just had to read that. And while I’m certain my younger days have come and gone, I do hear Strayed’s writing message loud and clear: Get to work! Quit whining, dammit! Dig! Her focus on work resonates with me, stemming from many hard days put in at the farm growing up, I suppose. Work was important to those I cared about most. So I worked hard, and admired those who did l

Off to the opening day of spring classes at my job. Finally. Thanks, Inga. Rather than bore you all with more ramblings, I thought I'd share a few lines from another story. I used this one for a reading I gave a couple years back. It's likely become a novel at some point. True crime thriller. It's on the darker side, but hopefully, you'll want to read more. Enjoy... - 1 - Misti comes to just long enough to realize something is horribly wrong. Her head throbs and she’s never known such thirst. She tries to look around, but something covers her eyes and face, making it hard to breathe. She feels her breath blow back against her face, the air hot and still tinged with the wine she’d had hours before. She tries to wipe away the covering, but her hands are bound. So she lies there, twisted and aching, all her weight somehow pressing down on her shoulder and hip. Moving is impossible. Her way-too-tight jeans seem to slice into her midriff, her legs folded uncomf

First thing I read this morning, on what was supposed to be the opening day of spring semester: Stay the hell home! I may be editorializing a bit, but I'm sure that's what they meant. After all, hell's probably coated ice about now. South Texas soon will be. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what happens when rain, which is falling now at my house, hits a frozen road, which if it ain't yet, soon will be. Temperatures are expected to dip as low as 20 degrees with a stiff north wind blowing, which for anyone who knows this part of the world--20 degrees and a hard wind combined with our always delectable humidity, set to soggy year-round-- it ought to feel downright tundra outdoors today. For a dude who would've otherwise two-wheeled it to school today to teach classes (the Harley's my sole transport), those cancellations were a kindness. I don't think they make clothes warm enough to endure that kind of weather, nothing you'd find anywhere in

Might not be all that surprising to a few folks I know, but I field the question an awful lot these days. Still, considering the vast majority of those who know me now were a bit astounded I could even hold a pen much less use one, it's hardly rocket science.  But when that thing you've always done seems more like work than anything you might've once enjoyed, sometimes you're better off giving it a rest a spell. A rest. A spell.  Hmph. That might be almost humorous were it not so damn life-altering. Nothing I'll elaborate just this second, just know that irony can lead to long and twisted road sometimes, which is great if you're on a motorcycle. Not so much sometimes when you're living it. Of course, that's another story... For now, I'd like to share a little something I wrote two years ago, to the date. Before that particular day ended, I loaded a rather large toolbox into my truck--right about now, actually, two years ago--after the job

I haven't made any absolute decisions one way or another just yet, but for an introductory and rather experimental writing project, I thought it might be best to keep things very plain and simple -- black on white -- but  describing that particular cover design was going to be a nightmare for someone who hasn't played the font name game in some years now... HAP HAZ ARD A poetry collection by bobby Horecka If nothing else, I figure it offers an apt description of my poetic abilities. A poet I am not, nor do I claim I might ever be. It's a fact I've simply come to accept, personally, and it's a fact I doubt I'll need to argue much with anyone after they see an example or two of what I'm trying to pass off as poetry... But there is a heap--if not heap, per se, a pile of some magnitude, at very least--of poetry contests coming up in some of our country's largest and most well-respected literary journals and p

Now before you start calling me a straight up asshole, you’ve got to understand how we two first met. Not that what you might call me matters much. I been called worse. A lot worse. Today, even. If the boot fits, I always like to say, wear that sumbitch proudly. But how we met says an awful lot to how we’ve put up with each other for so long. It says a lot about what makes us tick, how we view the big wide world around us. I didn’t know Bubba at all back then. Seen him around the jobsite a few times, but that was it. We worked different crews in different trades. He was a framer, or carpenter to folks outside the business. Me, I’m an electrician. Were it not for landing on the same floor that particular afternoon—and that dumbass kid—I doubt we ever would’ve said word one to each other. It’s kind of a rule on a construction site: You don’t fuck with other crews and they won’t fuck with you. Makes everything a hellova lot easier, most days. But every crew has its dumbass. Thi