BABY SINGS THE BOOS is a short story collection that crosses two series. The miniature bull from THE COWBOY’S BABY and THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN mixes it up with the American mastiff dog Boo Radley from TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS and TEA WITH A DEAD GAL.

In some of the stories only one set of characters is involved, like when the bull wins the photography contest at the Texas State Fair and is invited to attend. And in some of the stories both series characters interact, like in the story where both animals are featured guests at a small local comic-con, and wreck the place.

Both series are meant to have a third book, but right now it is stalled at two. Neither series is for children, although they are suitable for ages 14 and up.

BABY SINGS THE BOOS is available on Audible, read by Steve Cook.

You can also get it here http://amzn.com/B00SBJNRKC and here http://smashwords.com/books/view/511674.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK: An Inheritance to Die For by Bonnie Elizabeth.

A scene from Luling, Texas, just down the road from here.

This is the sequel to The Cowboy’s Baby. And it’s a better book. It really is, and can be enjoyed without first reading the previous book. Part of the plot follows the Puss In Boots fairy tale theme.

I think I made a mistake with the title and the cover, but I’m keeping them as is, which is probably another mistake. I’m stubborn like that.

Heaven is the name of a town, and the bull on the cover is leaping, not ascending to the afterlife. Nobody dies, but both the title and the cover imply that they do.

Why am I telling you this. Basically, to pass on some writer advice. Be careful with your titles, be careful with your covers.

I’ve been pleased with my titles. The Cowboy’s Baby, Arroyo, Talking to the Dead Guys, Twisted Rixter, The Cowboy’s Baby Goes to Heaven, Tea With a Dead Gal, The Safari Bride, The Cimarron Bride, Ill Met By Moonlight, Baby Sings the Boos, The Goodall Mutiny, The Goodall Manifest, The Goodall Marauders, and Brown, a mystery novel.

You can find my books at Nook, at Smashwords, at Audible, and at Amazon https://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK: The Coronation by Boris Akunun and Death Takes A Partner by Dean Wesley Smith.

This is a book by one of my friends.

This was the original cover for THE COWBOY’S BABY. My sister and I scoured the county for something suitable for a book about a reclusive ranch owner who finds love at her doorstep, the manager of a golf course in a gated community who finds he’s built half of the course on the adjoining ranch, and a very strange bull. All loosely re-imagined in the form of a contemporary Sleeping Beauty story.

I spent years writing this. When I moved from the Tyler area of Texas to Lockhart, Texas I packed the bits and pieces of my writing life and brought it with me. But only what I thought I could continue (plus my collection of rejection slips, going back to junior high school, if not earlier). THE COWBOY’S BABY was maybe a fourth finished. I took a year finishing it. It has been my best selling book, although it’s not my best book.

I also bought an unfinished fantasy manuscript. I love the idea. Hope to get to it someday.

Anyhow, this is about the cover. We replaced it with a professional cover about a year later. What was wrong with the original was that it made the book stand out, and not in a good way. Didn’t fit into any of the romance categories, and was even a bit too big.

Worst of all, it didn’t convey the playful tone of the book. I call this romantic comedy.

You can see the current version here http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC. It is also available for the Nook and through Smashwords, and especially as an Audible file.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK. The Last Widow By Karin Slaughter.

This is a book by one of my friends.

This is the last remaining of my original covers. All the others were updated by Streetlight Graphics. A friend who was a graphic designer did this for us from a photo my sister took. This was from our behind- the- scenes encounter with rhinos at the San Antonio Zoo, which was appropriate, since The Taking of Rhinoceros 456 was inspired by one of our other visits to this zoo, and is set at this zoo (under a fictitious name, to protect the …).

This story was about half this length originally. It also didn’t have quite the theme I ended up with here, and has a lot more characters. The change came from comments from a friend who read the original.

While I am proud of the story as it stands now, as a writer I’m going to put out a bit of advice. Only change your story if your editor insists, and even then, do so carefully.

I’m not saying my original was better, but it was certainly not what you see here.

That said, you can find this story for Kindle reading in the collection Twisted Rixter http://amzn.com/B00HQ0PH1O and as a single story at http://amzn.com/B006P10KGM. And it’s narrated by Theo Holland in the Audible version of Twisted Rixter.

And guess what? Every time I type the title The Taking Rhinoceros 456 I have to look up the spelling of rhinoceros (or trust spellcheck).

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK; His At Night by Sherry Thomas. and The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold.

This is a book written by one of my friends.

This is my weird western (a sub-genre of the horror field) ARROYO. The cover is miles different from what I envisioned, but it fits. See the flying saucer? I no longer remember why I wanted to write a weird western. For most of my reading life I’ve disliked pulp fiction (except for the Tarzan books), but sometime in the past twenty years I learned to love them.

This is my take on pulp fiction writing in the weird western genre. Action, adventure, a couple of love stories, Texas history (mostly made up), late 1800’s setting, and all the relevant monsters I could think of thrown into the mix.

One really interesting thing about this book. It is one young man’s favorite book..

A couple of years back we sold books at a pecan festival along the banks of the San Marcos River. A woman approached to talk to us. She said her son had bought ARROYO from me the previous year. I remembered him. I wondered which way this was going. She certainly hadn’t brought the book into the park with her. She smiled and told us ARROYO was her son’s favorite book and he had read it again and again and again and again. He carried it around with him.

You see, he was autistic. I didn’t say this, but I wished he’d picked a better book to love than mine. There are so many to chose from. But what a compliment. Something in ARROYO really spoke to him. I have favorite movies like that. Where there’s a perfectly spoken line, or gorgeous backgrounds, or the loveliness of an actor or actress that takes your breath away. Probably every piece of art has something that speaks to somebody, even when it doesn’t affect everyone.

So. I’ve written someone’s favorite book.

I’m honored.

You can see it here http://amzn.com/B0067NCEJ4

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK; The Luckiest Lady in London by Sherry Thomas. His at Night by Sherry Thomas. Oh, Fudge by Nancy Coco.

Below is a book by one of my friends.

Those are my books up there, serving as eye candy and accompaniment to a lovely-looking tea. A very delicious-looking tea and an absolutely beautiful tea setting. And not one I planned or attended. One of my readers sent me her photos of one of her personal tea parties. And she didn’t even know how much I also love teas, as in tea with delicious little treats, but Talking to the Dead Guys and Tea With a Dead Gal are cozy mysteries I wrote about Lockhart, Texas and our dog Boo Radley. She made a good choice of books for her tea. There will be a third book in the series someday. I’ve even got the title for it.

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My favorite part of a tea party is the little sandwiches. Then the tea. The pastries are scrumptious of course, but give me the little sandwiches!

Before everyone turned housebound (covid virus strategy), my sister and I had the habit of going to almost all the tea services that were available. Big hotels in big towns sometimes have them, Las Vegas has them, New Orleans has them. Austin has two Steeping Room restaurants that are designed around the tea ceremony. Alamo Drafthouse has a monthly movie and tea. But the best by far have been the teas they have at the DeGolyer Tea Room at the Dallas Arboretum. They’re taking reservations for late Fall this year, but I’d not chance it just yet. We’ve never tried the Adolphus Hotel tea in Dallas. They will likely have a holiday tea, but aren’t open just now.

Thank you Becky Matthews Haynie for sending me your tea photos, and for using my books as props and reading material. I hope you enjoyed them.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK: Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas. Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. Tempting the Bride by Sherry Thomas.

You can find all my books at https://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix. Almost all of them are also on Audible.

WHEN GYMKHANA SMILES, the short story. This is a standalone available on Kindle for 99 cents http://amzn.com/B005CWGIQ6 and in the short story collection TWISTED RIXTER http://amzn.com/B00HQ0PH1O. It’s a horror story, as you might guess from the cover.

It’s also the only story I’ve ever sold professionally to a magazine. Unfortunately, the magazine folded before it was published. I later asked for my rights back and put it in the TWISTED RIXTER collection.

One other thing. A low-budget horror film producer once considered making a film from WHEN GYMKHANA SMILES. I was so flattered, but didn’t expect it to go anywhere, which it didn’t. The story as it is would only have made the ending of the film. Something the producer realized before I did.

At the time, I thought it was the best thing I’d ever written. I’ve gotten a lot better since then. I still like the plot and the characters.

WHAT I’VE READ THIS WEEK: The Mailman by Bentley Little.

THE CIMARRON BRIDE is one of my most recent novels.I absolutely love the cover. I love the story, too. This novel proved to be the most difficult I’ve ever done, because I had to write it twice. Not edit it after I’d written it, or done a second draft. It was a total rewrite. Very little of the original remains, except for the basic plot.

I hope this is not apparent in the final product.

I’d meant to write a romance novel with a more realistic hero. What happened was that I ended up with an asshole character even I hated. Junyur Wilde had to be completely restructured. Which changed the dynamics of the story.

So, did I succeed? You tell me.

You can find it at https://amzn.com/B07GTSD421 and through Smashwords and the Nook.

WHAT I’VE READ SINCE LAST POST: Immortal Heights by Sherry Thomas.

This is one of my favorite covers. It is one of the earliest, too, back before my cover artist and I weren’t as attuned as we are now. We went through many different concepts before this one. And I’ve stayed with the same company ever since–Streetlight Graphics.

Truepenny has a kernel of true story to it, unlike most of my quirky stories. It’s cute seeing a mouse in your house darting from a corner and then disappearing somewhere. It’s not cute catching mouse after mouse after mouse in mousetraps. Especially the break- their- necks type of mouse traps. We finally decided to go for the sticky trap. And that was where the basis of this story originated. The mouse we caught on our first sticky trap was not dead. Just resoundingly stuck in the glue.

What happens in the story about that particular sticky trap is what happened in real life.

Truepenny the story came about because my sister Roxanne asked me to write something about this mouse. It’s not a children’s story, although the animals talk. And it’s a story I’m very proud of.

You can read it here http://amzn.com/B007181Y0Y or here http://amzn.com/B00HQ0PH1O or you can listen to it here http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Twisted-Rixter-Audiobook/B01MDNU438

WHAT I’VE READ SINCE LAST POST: The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas. The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas.

The picture is the cover for one of my early short stories, published in Kindle format, and also available in the collection Twisted Rixter. Streetlight Graphics designed it, with help from me. I wrote the story, “Saints & Sinners,” in the car while my sister drove us down to Galveston for our first big cruise (we’d previously done a Barefoot Cruise on a sailing ship, a completely different experience). I wrote the rest of the story while sitting on the main deck, hanging out in the bar, sitting in the library all by myself, etc. It was a great experience, and since this was pre-laptop, all of it was written by hand. I still have the writing tablet with the original story in it. What else I remember of this experience was that it was fun writing in different locations, but it was also difficult. And truth be told, I always felt like I was broadcasting “Look at me! Writer writing!”

WHAT I READ SINCE LAST POST: Shortcake by Lucy Watson. Along Came A Spider by James Patterson.

I never say anything more here about my reading list. Today’s an exception. Shortcake by Lucy Watson is the funniest romance novel I’ve ever read, and it’s completely romantic as well.

You can read my recent stories on our website http://rixcafetexican.com. Look for it under the news tab.