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

I’ll make a good horror writer yet! Just published my third, and I’m very proud of it.

A RESURRECTION OF STARLINGS.

For your consideration:  A horror novel set in the Piney Woods of East Texas near the town of Palestine where a train has mysteriously stalled.

It’s 1885. The snow has finally stopped and the train’s twelve passengers have just begun to realize they’re in deep trouble. There’s something out there and it’s calling up at them to be let in. The Buffalo Soldier on board might not be enough to save them, and the legendarily brutal mass murderer he guards is no one’s hero.

But it’s not a single hero that’s required. It’s all of them.

A Resurrection of Starlings.

Available through Kindle, Nook, Kobo and others (through Smashwords).

Got bit by an insect this morning. Looked quickly enough to see what it was. A damned ladybug. Brushed it off. It’s happened before, so I knew that they would bite. (Or maybe the term is sting). Be careful out there!

Dean Wesley Smith. Remember that name.

If you want to improve your writing he has a long slate of courses to help you. Through Teachable and WMG publishing.

Cat Rambo. Remember her name too.

She also has a long slate of writing courses worth your time.

Writers get better through writing. But they also get better through study.

Give them a try.

And if you’d like something different for Halloween, try my Audible stories (also available as e-book and paper copies)

That’s me several years ago in my favorite dress. But counting back from 2021 twenty years or so, I looked a little different (which has no bearing on my essay here). This is about the novel I’m writing. It has taken me more than twenty years. I started writing the novel that I am now close to finishing in 2001. Its working title was Warm Heart, you know–Cold hands, warm heart–which had nothing to do with the story. Its inception (the novel’s) is interesting, however.

My sister and I attended the 2001 World Horror Convention in Denver, Colorado. By far that event has been the best writers experience I have ever had. (Bouchercon a couple of years back was also great). We were probably the only two fans in attendance, everyone else was a published novelist or short story writer. We met just about everyone. Everyone was nice to us. And best of all, right from the beginning we made a couple of temporary friends in a Canadian horror writer and a gay anthologist who we kept going from session to session with. They hosted us at their table during the awards ceremony. That’s how nice they were. I’ve still got a picture.

We talked with Harlan Ellison. We surprised Peter Straub with the admission that The Hellfire Club was one of our favorite books–“But you look so nice!”–he said, a shocked expression on his face. We saw Neil Gaiman walk though the halls. We met David Morrell, Ellen Datlow, Edward Bryant, Steve and Melanie Tem, and many, many more of the best writers on earth. And we sat at a table with artist Rick Lieder. This artist is why I’ve got the book I’m writing on this year.

I bought two paintings from Rick Lieder at this convention. And I came home from Denver so stoked with writing enthusiasm that I used one of these paintings as a writing prompt. It’s a steam train. By looking at that steam train, I got my setting, I got my time period, and I got my main character and opening scene. Plus a lousy title I don’t plan to keep.

Back in 2001 I wrote about 30,000 words of a horror novel I was proud of, and then I just stopped. The story had got away from me and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. So, in a drawer it sat. I knew better than to throw it away.

About four or five years ago I passed it around to my writing critique group. And then I put it back in a drawer. Where it stayed until 2021. Now I’m actively writing it, and almost done.

This is a warning along the lines of do what I say, not what I do. Don’t leave projects unfinished. If I’d continued writing it back in 2001 who knows what might have happened. It was quite good, as much as I finished.

What’s really interesting now is how the book is playing out. This is a totally different book than the one I started writing. Is is better? Probably. I will never know. Am I going to go back and dig up the one other project I started and abandoned decades before 2001? Maybe. It’s not something I recommend. It’s better to go forward than to go back.

Okay. End of my short cautionary piece. I wish I’d have finished my book long ago. And you will too if you make a habit of abandoning stories.

What to take from this: science fiction conventions, fantasy conventions, horror conventions, and mystery conventions are great ways to learn your craft, to meet the best of the best, and to make friends

So, next year, or the next, when the covid virus has been tamed, get out and go to the local science fiction conventions and the comic cons. Lots to learn there and plenty of people to meet.

In the mean time, get vaccinated, wear masks, and be cautious.

And finish those projects.

My favorite bookstore in the world. BookPeople in Austin, Texas. That’s my book there in the middle of the table up by the checkout stand. If you’re in there browsing, take a look at it.

BROWN, a mystery novel by G. L. Rix is only the most recent of my books that are available on Audible. There are a few ways to get it free as well.

ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT is another.

https://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Ill-Met-by-Moonlight-Audiobook/B0744QRVDD

TWISTED RIXTER is another

http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Twisted-Rixter-Audiobook/B01MDNU438

THE GOODALL MUTINY is another

http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Goodall-Mutiny-Audiobook/B01N4GFCQ6/

Also THE COWBOY’S BABY, THE COWBOY’S BABY GOES TO HEAVEN, TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS, TEA WITH A DEAD GAL, THE GOODALL MANIFEST, THE GOODALL MARAUDERS and BABY SINGS THE BOOS.