The Scare The Dickens Out of Us and Junior Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story writing contests are done! All that’s left is the partying.

First place prize went to Tyler Miller of Cheney, WA. His submission was  “Not Dead, Not Even Past.”

Second place prize went to Natalie Romero of Corona, CA. Her story was “Lorena.”

Third place prize went to Julia Patt of Chestertown, MD. Her story was “At Glenn Dale.”

Fourth place went to Rowan Cornell-Brown of Monreal, Quebec, Canada. Her entry was “Adelaine, Esther.”

Fifth place went to Scott Richburg of Wetumpka, AL. His submission was “Seven At Any Age.”

Sixth place went to Geoffrey Brough of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK. His story was “The Archivist.”

Seventh place went to Emerson Mayes of Fisherwick, Lichfield, UK. His story was “False Awakenings.”

Eighth place went to John J. Tomashek of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His story was “Dead Letters.”

Ninth place went to Tammy Francis of Lockhart, TX. Her entry was “Mrs. Franklin’s Night Out.”

Tenth place winner was Letizia Martin of San Diego, CA. Her submission was “October On Mendonca Dr.”

We added three Honorable Mention prizes to our contest.

Our Honorable Mention winners were Michael Madigan of Arvada, CO. His story was “Colton’s Panics.”

And Martin Miron of Naples, FL. His story was “Brethren.”

And Karen Leiby Belli of Doylestown, PA. Her story was “Play With Me.”

THE JUNIOR SCARE THE DICKENS OUT OF US WINNERS

First place winner is Ariel Elliott of Meridian, MS. Her story was “The Ants Go Marching.”

Second place winner is Robert Van Aartsen of Farmington Hills, MI. His story was “Giving Thanks.”

Third place winner is Calamity Rose Jung-Allen of Philadelphia, PA. Her story was “Name Omitted.”

Fourth place winners are Clara Francis and Maddie Welvaert of Lockhart, TX. Their story was “Overdue Murder.”

HONORABLE MENTION goes to Samuel Kinchion of Lockhart, TX. His story was “The Green House.”

Best wishes to all our winners. Their stories were some of the best ever submitted to our contest.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK– Blood and Betrayal by Lindsay Buroker.  The Pakistani Bride by Bapsi Sidhwa.

Photos by Roxanne Rix. Scare The Dickens Out of Us logo by Molly Humphrey.

We have another website that is really called Rix Cafe Texican, and from it we promote Central Texas writers. Some are friends and neighbors, some are simply Central Texas writers we’ve heard of. They all have written good books.

Here is our neighbor Jeff Robenalt, a Lockhart schoolteacher who’s written three rip-roaring Texas historical novels and is working on several more. He really is our neighbor. I see him usually when I’m walking our dog Boo Radley and he’s riding his bike through the streets of Lockhart. Or, when we’re both at the same book signing, which is what will happen next Saturday December 1 at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library from 10-3. Come on over and say hello.

Jeff’s books are Saga of a Texas Ranger and Star Over Texas and The Bloody Frontier. You can find out more about him and his writing at http://sagaofatexasranger.com. You can buy the Kindle version his books at http://amzn.com/B0049B2DSS  http://amzn.com/B008OMVPVE  http://amzn.com/B0099VVM6M.

The link to Rix Cafe Texican is http://rixcafetexican.com. There you can see the covers of my books and stories and the books we’re promoting, plus some photos and information about the soon to be defunct Scare The Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest.

All photos by Roxanne Rix.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK–Prisoner’s Hope by David Feintuch.  The Chalk Girl by Carol O’Connell.  Afraid by Jack Kilborn.

This is The Cowboy’s Baby blog site. And also Talking To The Dead Guys. And even Arroyo. All photographs by Roxanne Rix.  The llama hasn’t figured into any of the novels yet, but the Boo dog pictured here is one of the major characters in Talking to The Dead Guys. The angel statue was used for the cover (even though it came from the Tyler, Texas cemetery and not the Lockhart, Texas one.) The wildflowers and trees properly belong in The Cowboy’s Baby scenes.

I am busy at work at sequels to Talking To The Dead Guys and The Cowboy’s Baby. Yes, two at once. Monday through Friday is Dead Guys, Saturday and Sunday belong to Baby. Both are progressing in very interesting ways.

You can find my books at Amazon.com   http://amzn.com/B0094FBA8S  http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC    http://amzn.com/B0067NCEJ4, Barnes & Noble’s web site (especially for Nook books) http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix, and at Smashwords. Talking To The Dead Guys is available at BookPeople in Austin, Texas, and at Buffalo Clover in Lockhart, Texas.

I’m temporarily going back to the one hundred words a day challenge introduced by the Austin Chapter of Romance Writers of America. After all, it is what got me The Cowboy’s Baby and Arroyo written, edited, and published.  It’s nothing to snicker at. One hundred words a day translates to a full novel in a year or less.

I had more ambitious plans for myself this year than just writing one novel, but you know what they say about plans. I’ve just finished day two. It’s very hard because I’m typing with only my left hand fingers (except when I get carried away and use the right hand by mistake.) And I have to force myself to stop with just the hundred words (or thereabouts). Now I’m finished with day three. The plot progresses. Now I’ve done day four.

I fell last week and got hurt. Strangely enough, though, I’m making painful and clumsy efforts to keep writing. Seems I’ve got some stories I want to tell. It’s really hard using the mouse from the left side of the keyboard, not to mention hunt and peck typing. My injuries are minor. But I could easily let them stop me. Have a look at this instead (and read the comments). Kristine Rusch has got a lot more to say than I do. http://kriswrites.com/2012/04/25 .

You can find my novels at http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix for the Nook reader.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK–Dodger by Terry Pratchett. The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker.  Fidelity by Thomas Perry.  Winter Study by Dakota Barr.

Is this the end of Scare The Dickens Out of Us?

In a word, yes. The 2012 contest will be the last of it. We will make a formal announcement at the end of the year at http://clarklibraryfriends.com , but this is our first informal announcement.

Scare The Dickens Out of Us has always been primarily a fundraiser for the Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library; only secondarily was it a ghost story writing contest. So, as we have never been able to raise more money than we spent running the contest (prize money, trophy money, advertising, postage, reading party), we will be calling it quits and turn to donating the money we’d have used on the contest directly to the Friends (and ultimately to the library). The Friends and the library will get more from this than they every got from the contest, only the writers will lose (and we are very sorry about that, but there are a lot more contests out there to choose from).

Rather than dwell on the negative, we’d like to address the positive. In the four years of the contest we raised $5,000.00 for the Friends. We received helpful cooperation in promoting the contest from many organizations across the country, and abroad, mostly from literary contest sites (thank you each and every one of you), regional branches of the Romance Writers of America (from which we got a couple of our winning stories), and also the regional branches of Mystery Writers of America (from which we got some really interesting stories). We also got a lot of support from many of the individual writing clubs throughout the country. We appreciate you. A very big thank you goes out to the several writers who submitted to our story contest for consecutive years. And thank you Logos of Lockhart for helping us find some of the most beautiful and unusual glass trophies available for our top winners. Of course we’d be nothing without our two great final judges Sue Smith and Erin Pringle. Thank you, ladies.

We’d like to thank each and every one of  you who entered Scare The Dickens Out of Us and Junior Scare The Dickens Out of Us. Contrary to popular legend, ninety-nine percent of the stories submitted to our contest were not crap. Only about ten percent were. The remaining eighty percent of the stories were good, and then we got about ten percent that were outstanding. It was a pleasure and honor to read your submissions. However, we did notice a marked lack of paperclips on the entries (use paperclips, guys) and far too many stories that were folded three or four times and then stuffed into an envelope meant for letters (no, don’t do that), and way too many writers thought it was just peachy keen to submit their entries the very last day of the contest.

Enough bad news. Here’s the good news. We are hard at work right now selecting the stories that will go forward to the final judges for the 2012 contest. We should have the winners at about Thanksgiving time. Emails will go out this week letting everyone know where they stand. Check http://clarklibraryfriends.com after Thanksgiving to see if the winners have been posted yet.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK—Rising Sun by Michael Crichton. Charming Blue by Kristine Grayson. Tales of a Traveller by Washington Irving. The Assassin’s Curse by Lindsay Buroker. (Actually, this is what I read between this post and the last one.)

Photo by Roxanne Rix.  Scare The Dickens Out of Us logo by Molly Humphrey.

 Good Fences

Meet Morris Payne, misanthrope, loner, agoraphobiac, and out and out the most engaging computer hacker you could ever invent.  He’s pretty much a prisoner in his own house, and he likes it that way. And he’s very much a believer in the old saw that good fences make good neighbors. He stays in his house, he wants everyone else to  stay in theirs.

Along comes a horrendous snow and ice storm. He’s only got the electricity and time to finish one vital hacking  job when he gets the rug pulled out from under him in the form of his neighbor’s cute kid who’s just done his own hacking job right up to Morris’s back door where his security system shot him full of darts. The rest of the family is out in the snow banging on his front door to let them in.

What’s a good and twisted neighbor to do? Leave them out there to freeze, to die from the poisoned darts? What a treat to read an exciting short from beginning to end in fifteen minutes. Good Fences is a prequel short story to the exciting full-length novel Fate’s Mirror.

Riding Fourth 

Too short by half!  Riding Fourth is the short story intro to M.H. Mead’s upcoming novel Taking The Highway which is excerpted after The End of the short story in question.  I wanted more (obviously), and that’s a good thing.  This story is about the sub-species of job that opens up for hitchhikers when it becomes illegal to drive the highways with less than four people in the vehicle. You can drive the side streets, take public transportation, or hire a fourth, which is a lot like picking up the day laborers you see in the convenience store parking lots as you drive early into work. Lots and lots of trust is involved, so you can pretty much guess what happened to the fourth.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK—The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.  Good Fences by M.H. Mead.  Riding Fourth by M.H. Mead.

Promoting your books isn’t really a necessary evil, it just feels that way sometimes. I gave my first talk as a writer this week to the McMahan Community Women’s Club. Turned out it wasn’t evil at all. About halfway into it I felt I was talking to a group of friends.

I lucked out, actually. The room was small enough and the women gathered close enough that there was no need for a microphone. (I’d only used a microphone once before in my whole life.) I was really pleased with the venue.  I’d been practicing my talk in my head for a couple of months, but had only put it to paper the previous Friday. The talk was on Tuesday. I ended up with seven pages of single-spaced type. They’d asked for about a twenty minute talk and this had taken me twenty minutes to read it out loud when I practiced.

They’d asked for a short talk about how I wrote so I put together a short talk about how I published that was to segue into its a finale with a bit about how I wrote my first novel (actually my second novel, the first will forever remain nameless). Then the day before the talk I changed my mind and turned my notes around to where how I wrote The Cowboy’s Baby would come first and how publishing had changed in the last five years would come last. But when I got to the meeting and saw the ladies and I was seated at the table, I took a pen and wiped out half of my speech. As they ate their late afternoon lunch I took my pen back in hand and wiped out much of the rest of it. Publishing information would probably put them to sleep.

Even so, I did put one of them to sleep. Bless her, I know exactly how she felt. I only wish she hadn’t been right in the front row where I could see her so well. Now I know what I look like in boring meetings. I think I’ll take to sitting further in the back from now on. But I got some laughs out of them, explained how some writers are plotters and some are pantsers and some are a combination of the two, and told them in some detail how I came to write The Cowboy’s Baby.

Personally, I don’t want to know how or why someone wrote something. I have always thought less of Moby Dick knowing there really was a whale like that and that Melville hadn’t made it all up himself. Worse, I can’t watch that great scene in The Fellowship of the Rings where our heroes are running through the mines of Moria without seeing them as Legos. I made the mistake of watching all the extras that came with the extended DVD. Jackson used Legos to sketch out his action scenes. But many people do want to know this sort of stuff.

They bought my books when I was done and I sat through the rest of their program, full of admiration for how they’re raising money for their Volunteer Fire Department. And when I was sitting in my car afterwards, getting ready to drive home, I realized I’d given a talk all about one book, but almost all the ladies who’d bought a book from me chose the other one instead. Oops.

Actually, a sale’s a sale. Thank you women of McMahan, Texas. I had a really nice time in your company.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK—Conspiracy by Lindsay Buroker.  The Shining by Stephen King.

Photo by Roxanne Rix.

Catch up to my novels and short stories at Amazon.com for the Kindle at   https://www.amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

Catch up to my novels at Barnes & Noble for the Nook at   http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK—Bat Wing by Sax Rhomer.

My books can be found at 

https://www.amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

My new novel TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS is now available on the Amazon.com Kindle (soon on the Barnes & Noble Nook, too).  See it at  http://amzn.com/B0094FBA8S

This is a Texas mystery about a dog, strong women, and small town living (or is it dying?), sort of a Texas cozy. Cue in the theme music from “Dallas.”

Shoot! I’ll cut right to the chase. This is about how me and my sister’s mastiff Boo Radley dragged me off my feet during the damned cemetery tour in Lockhart right onto a dead corpse. And that’s just chapter one.

Welcome to Lockhart, The Barbecue Capital of Texas, where there is more than indigestion brewing.

This is the newest novel from Gretchen Rix (me), the author of THE COWBOY’S BABY,  ARROYO, and several quirky short stories.

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK—The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

POSTING PHOTOS WHILE WAITING FOR TALKING TO THE DEAD GUYS PUBLICATION!!! 

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK—‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King.  The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (Vol. 1)  by Arthur Conan Doyle,  edited by William S. Baring-Gould.

All photos by Roxanne Rix.