Writerly advice.
There are a few great blog sites that will help you, and here is one:
The Passive Voice is normally daily news and advice for writers, and sometimes just interesting stories. Well worth your time. I’m not sure how I first found it and suspect it was from J.A. Konrath back when he was actively blogging about the publishing industry. (Thank you, Joe.)
Hope your first week of 2023 was a good week.
I’m not doing resolutions this upcoming year, but I hope to do a lot of writing, publish what I write, and have a fun 2023. Starting with tomorrow. We’re going to take the dog to a great park along a river. Then drive back to eat at Top Notch. This evening we watched the end of season three of The Sinner and are going to cap it off with the Twilight Zone SyFy has going on.
For those of you in Great Britain who are reading this, I have a lot of free Audible codes for my playful mystery novel Talking to the Dead Guys at https://www.freeaudiobookcodes.com
Best wishes to everyone.
I’m going to have to start blogging more often. I’ve lost the knack of it.
Sad news. We had to let our precious cat Yukon go. She was too ill to have any quality of life. Kidney failure and old age. She was somewhere between 18 and 20 years old. Had been our cat as long as I’ve lived in Lockhart. Let’s see if I can bring up a photo of her.
There she is.
I published two books in 2022. A Resurrection of Starlings, probably the best book I’ll ever write. And Read Now, Nap Later, short stories I felt deserved a chance of getting read.
For the time being, all of my books are on sale for 99 cents (except the one that is the 3 book collection of the Goodall Mutiny series and it is $1.99). I don’t know how long I’ll let this go on, but they will never be cheaper than this. Take advantage of it.
My sister and I are in good health. And right now, although my computer tells me is is 25 degrees outside (and was 15 this morning), we have heat, we have lights, and we have food and water.
Merry Christmas. We hope you are well and have an even better New Year.
I’m pretty sure I look like this now, even though it’s a four or five year past photo.
That’s our mimosa tree John that I’m hiding behind. We’re in drought mode now, so it’s not so green (plus it’s almost winter season).
The Texas Book Festival is next weekend. In Austin. Near the capitol grounds. Come out and visit. Buy a book. Buy a couple of books.
Next week is also the annual sale event put on by the Methodist Church in Lockhart located on San Antonio Street. The one with the Jesus statue. The one that was featured in the movie Where the Heart Is.
It’s also the Texas Monthly Barbecue Festival. Saturday up in our city park. Sunday at our courthouse square.
Busy busy. Lots of things to do. Including voting.
Vote. It’s important.
DROPPING NAMES (ALSO KNOWN AS NAME DROPPING)
I ran into Tony Parker Monday evening at the San Antonio Zoo. Literally.
More like bumped into.
He kept on going. No harm done. Saved me the embarrassment of apologizing. We were at a donor’s party for people who’d helped finance the second children’s train the zoo had commissioned. It’s a beauty. Roxanne and I had the privilege of having our names on one of the cars.
So did the rest of the guests, probably millionaires all. Valero executives. Union Pacific executives. And former San Antonio Spurs basketball star Tony Parker.
My sister and I have seen lots of famous people, and met quite a few as well. I think he was our first sports star.
Here’s our list.
Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. Danny DeVito and Sam Jones. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. George R.R. Martin and Harlan Ellison. Peter Straub and Joe Lansdale. Lana Turner and Prince Charles. Kevin Sorbo and Ronald Reagan. Jack Hanna and Matthew McConaughey. Buzz Lightyear and James Patterson.
Lance Armstrong and Forest Whitaker. Quentin Tarantino and Jack Williamson. Lawrence Block and David Morrell. Connie Willis and Ty Pennington. Duff Goldman and Mickey Mouse. Doug Jones and Charlaine Harris.
And I won’t even mention the actors and writers we’ve seen on stage, like Yul Brenner and William Shatner.
Multi-millionaires, not so much. And mostly at charity events.
We even have two celebrity friends, Bill Oberst Jr and Jaston Williams, well known and esteemed stage actors.
Take a look at the train the bunch of us bought for the San Antonio Zoo. Ours is the yellow one. Last Monday evening Roxanne and most of the millionaires rode in the new yellow train they financed.
Tony Parker rode in the green one.
FYI I have written a very good horror novel about a train. A Resurrection of Starlings.
You can find it here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NN64X2S/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3NFYSALUPYO25
2022 is half over.
The idea that time flies by quicker the older you get seems to be true. Where did the time go?
I have a horror novel to complete (I’m maybe 1/3 into it), a short story collection to get out (almost finished with the proofreading), and another novel to begin (don’t know if it will be the science fiction series I have going, or a continuation of my San Antonio detective series, or the third in my Boo-Done-It mystery series, or something completely random.)
My intrepid sister and I sold my books at the Cult Classic con in Bastrop, sold my books at Aggiecon in College Station, and sold my books at Greater Austin Comic Con in Cedar Park. All fun venues with friendly and interesting people. Two more to go.
We had to cancel out of the Watermelon Thump celebration due to the very hot weather. It was outside.
My latest book is called A Resurrection of Starlings, and it’s pretty damned good. BookPeople in Austin has about six copies of it they’d like to sell you. Amazon and Apple have the rest (except for the copies we take to the conventions).
Here’s a sample of what readers have said about it.
The Ain’t No Ordinary Train Ride
What just happened?
That’s what I kept asking myself as I read Gretchen Rix’s latest tale of the fantastic and horrible. Death and rebirth. Nightmarish recollections of concentration camps from prior centuries. Vicious zombie fights.
Reading this novel felt strangely familiar, as if the author had watched a nightmare of mine and took careful notes so she could recreate it on the page. Have you ever had a bad night’s sleep, where the same bad characters keep floating in and out of focus, trying desperately to harm you, succeeding, failing, exiting the frame one moment and coming back the next? That’s this novel. I felt twisted and turned and at the writer’s mercy.
And she ties it all together with a satisfying ending.
If horror is your thing, you really should read A Resurrection of Starlings.
AND THEN THIS
Who or what is in control?
This book has all the elements of things to keep you up at night. Repeated mistakes, days, events, the inability to leave, weather, remote area, the only nightmare of mine it did not have was the one about forgetting a locker combination. And the biggest question of all is who or what is in control? This was a quick read with light horror in a lot of ways yet heavy on the psychological aspects. It will leave you thinking. I did enjoy the alternate scenarios the author offered at the end of many chapters.
AND THEN THIS
A perfect bedtime read…short chapters peopled with the strange, the brutal, and the oddly familiar
Like Agatha Christie, Gretchen Rix in person (as those who’ve met her at conventions will attest) is the last soul you’d suspect to be a writer of death and mystery. And like Agatha Christie, Gretchen Rix on the page seems absolutely born to write about death and mystery.
You don’t have to know the above to enjoy Ms. Rix’s short historical horror novel “A Resurrection of Starlings.” I only mention it for an added layer of enjoyment.
Set onboard a mysteriously halted (and mysteriously abandoned) steam locomotive in the winter woods of circa 1885 Texas, it’s the perfect bedtime read, a page-turner of pleasingly short chapters peopled with the strange, the brutal and the oddly familiar: a strong, flawed and distinctly unglamorous female hero, a malevolent child specter prone to tossing bloody snowballs, a horribly dismembered passenger gazing at their own corpse and, best of all, ethereal half-states of life and death, shifting between this world and the next in the drifting snows of silent woods and the hissing steam of a trapped train.
Put “A Resurrection of Starlings” on your nightstand. It’s the kind of book horror and mystery fans should love to dog-ear. And when the book slips out of your hand each night you, heavy-lidded and fading, will hear, just faintly, the satisfying thud of a thing well done and all done…til tomorrow.
But it did.
WHAT I’M READING: Mindscape by Andrea Hairston
WHAT I’M WATCHING: Eight Legged Freaks, Calendar Girls. We are going to keep one in our DVD library and get rid of the other. Any guesses which?
WHAT I’M WRITING: A haunted house horror novel, no title yet. I’ve also decided to put together another collection of my short stories, no title yet.
Here’s a photo for you.
I don’t do this often–making a book nearly free. So I hope some of you take advantage of it. When the sale’s over I may start experimenting with a price tag of over seven dollars. Or not. Haven’t decided.
Anyhow, A RESURRECTION OF STARLINGS is my best book so far. A horror novel about a mysterious and deadly train trip to nowhere. Here’s one of the reviews.
Like Agatha Christie, Gretchen Rix in person (as those who’ve met her at conventions will attest) is the last soul you’d suspect to be a writer of death and mystery. And like Agatha Christie, Gretchen Rix on the page seems absolutely born to write about death and mystery.
You don’t have to know the above to enjoy Ms. Rix’s short historical horror novel “A Resurrection of Starlings.” I only mention it for an added layer of enjoyment.
Set onboard a mysteriously halted (and mysteriously abandoned) steam locomotive in the winter woods of circa 1885 Texas, it’s the perfect bedtime read, a page-turner of pleasingly short chapters peopled with the strange, the brutal and the oddly familiar: a strong, flawed and distinctly unglamorous female hero, a malevolent child specter prone to tossing bloody snowballs, a horribly dismembered passenger gazing at their own corpse and, best of all, ethereal half-states of life and death, shifting between this world and the next in the drifting snows of silent woods and the hissing steam of a trapped train.
Put “A Resurrection of Starlings”on your nightstand. It’s the kind of book horror and mystery fans should love to dog-ear. And when the book slips out of your hand each night you, heavy-lidded and fading, will hear, just faintly, the satisfying thud of a thing well done and all done…til tomorrow.
I’m so glad I encountered this author, a prolific sweet lady who writes of strange things in books that are just plain fun. Gretchen Rix’ writing feels real, and (take it from someone who knows) it feels really, really weird. Agatha would approve. So do I.
You’ll enjoy.
From Bill Oberst, Jr.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NN64X2S/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3NFYSALUPYO25
Loved attending this Central Texas (Bastrop) horror convention. Horror fans are the best!
By mid-February I’ll be deep into writing my next novel, but right now I’m reading the three novels that come before it.
The Goodall Mutiny. The Goodall Manifest. The Goodall Marauders.
Damn, but The Goodall Manifest is better than The Goodall Mutiny. Wow.
Here it is on Audible http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Goodall-Manifest-Audiobook/B06XK8QY48
