Category: books

“Much like the mad-but-brilliant scientists in this collection’s titular story, Jones has created the tales here with experimental glee, yielding an astonishing assortment of mutated manuscripts. The investigational ‘Let’s see what happens’ mentality at play in this collection means that the story about gigantic soul-storing moonshrimp will also be told by a dime store P.I. It means that elderly love and parenting are monster-mas…

In the ten years since zombies killed the world, Jory Gray has found exactly one person who matters. Her name is Linse. But when he wakes to find her gone, to join the church, his world falls apart all over again. Jory’s suicide mission to save her will lead him deep into the restricted zone, into the bowels of the military, the underbelly of the church, and, worse, it will give him a glimpse into a past that’s supposed to be ten years dead, a past still contained in a document that neve…

Life in a slasher film is easy. You just have to know when to die.

Aerial View: A suburban town in Texas. Everyone’s got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You’re from this town.

Zoom In: Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She’s just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask. Up on the cliff, she …

Man, where to start. How about with John Mellencamp:

When I was five I walked the fence while grandpa held my hand

“Rain on the Scarecrow” came out in 1985, the year Growing Up Dead in Texas happens. Or, that’s when the events happen. Right around that time I remember walking the fence with my great-granddad, Pop. A hot fence, to keep the cattle out of the ten acres my grandma’s house was (and is) on. And I knew it was hot by then, of course; I’d been za…

I tried so hard to make a YouTube playlist for Growing Up Dead in Texas. Songs that are in the book and songs that kind of encompass the book. But it wasn’t meant to be; the songs I needed can’t be included in playlists.

So, in lieu, I’ll put them all here, in the order that feels right — or, how they happen (for me) in the book. And this first one, it breaks my heart every time, but it always puts it all back together, too:

( there’s an ad on this one, sorry…

from the back jacket:

“It’s time for the annual Recipe Days bake-off in Lubbock, Texas. Soccer moms and grandmothers gather to show off their family recipes, learn new secrets for the perfect shortcake, and perhaps earn a chance to be on the famous cooking show, How Would You Cook It, Then?

When the bake-off is crashed by a federation of pro wrestlers — including American Badass, Jersey Devil Jill, Tiny Giant, The Village Person, Jonah the Whale, the Hellb…

some links: LA Review of Books | Dallas Morning News | San Antonio Current | Mixedblood Message | Omnivoracious (Jeff Vandermeer) | Goodreads | Indie Bound  | Bookfight | Foreword | Manarchy (Chris Deal) | TimeStageEmbassy | WordRiot (Edward J. Rathke) |  Do Some Damage | Publisher’s Weekly | Punchnels | Austin Ame…

The Fast Red Road—A Plainsong is a gleeful, two-fisted plundering of the myth and pop- culture surrounding the American Indian. It is a novel fueled on pot fumes and blues, a surreal pseudo-Western, in which imitation is the sincerest form of subversion. Indians, cowboys, and outlaws are as changeable as their outfits; horses are traded for Trans-Ams, and men are as likely to strike poses from Gunsmoke as they are from Custer’s last stand. Pidgin, the half-blood pr…

I can’t imagine I’ve actually remembered every book I’m in, so, if you find one missing, let me know, I’ll see what I can get done. And, these aren’t journals/mags/zines, just anthology-types. And craft books. And annuals/best-of-the-year stuff.

Because this is a “gallery,” that means that when there’s not enough images to fill a row, these bottom one or two covers will balloon up to fill the space. So, they’re j…

seven spanish angels

Life isn’t easy in El Paso, Texas. Neither is death. Caught between them is crime-scene tech in-training Marta Villarreal, trying to work a case that may very well be her last. And she’s having to work it without her assigned homicide escort, who’s also kind of her boyfriend, and would look a lot more innocent if he would just come in, answer some questions about all these dead girls. Have the Juarez murders come north of the border now, o…