Joan Chikage is a young and untested lieutenant on the deep space cargo ship Goodall. She lives in her head most of the time, and what she wants most in the world is to stop being scared. To prove her mettle. To show her capricious captain that she's worth his respect.But that's not possible stuck in the laboratory running tests on beetles. So she tries excelling at her task, until suddenly her beetles don't matter anymore. The captain she both admires and fears unceremoniously jet...

All the normal sounds usually reaching the lower decks of the USS Goodall during routine subspace flight have just been cut off.As if someone at the controls suddenly wants the crew isolated.No loudly arguing male voices, no deliberately mishandled supplies tumbling down the corridor, no nothing.Has the impossible happened? Is this the Goodall mutiny everyone expected?Or is it something even worse?Marooned, with failing systems and inexperienced offi...

Lumen could not move, but she could let her imagination run riot. So far there had been a David who wasn't really David, and a Sir Bertram who was a tiger, but the tigers weren't really tigers, not to mention Taylor Finch, with and without his hand. And a ghost of Rebecca. It always came back to Rebecca.Tigers, tigers everywhere."Nice kitty. Good kitty." Lumen couldn't control the inanities coming out of her mouth, she was so scared. But boy, oh boy, how soft their fur!...

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 h...

READ NOW, NAP LATER short stories for insomniacs.Welcome to my world (insomnia). I'm the author of the short story collections Ill Met By Moonlight, Baby Sings the Boos, and Twisted Rixter.Most of these READ NOW, NAP LATER stories are cozy-level mysteries, but then you have my vampire tale Things Go Better and what's maybe a science fiction story Burning Down the Barn. Most of these stories are quirky, some out-and-out funny, a few serious.For insomniacs? Well, I ho...

An aging and cantankerous small-town newspaper editor who keeps her pet chicken in the office runs The Watermelon Pump. Luling, Texas' weekly paper, known primarily for its wedding announcements and garage sale ads.High school students do the reporting and photography, and there's never been trouble before. But they've never had an intern like Myron Wesley. A true born sociopath instantly recognizable to anyone who knows anything about life.A good Texas yarn alternatively h...

When an irascible San Antonio P.I. attracts the wrong kind of attention from a family of cops, his whole life changes in an instant. They love him. Think he's cute.He's not.At least, he wasn't.BROWNER, another mystery novel by G.L. Rix, picks up where BROWN started, at a parking lot meeting a new client who has a familiar beef he wants Brown to check out--El Condor, San Antonio's most interesting crime boss, who was abducted by aliens when he was just a kid....

Name: BROWN (just Brown, ma'am)Physical Appearance/Demeanor: BEAR (that's grizzly - consider yourself warned)Occupation: Private DickClients: San Antonio's FinestArea's most notorious Gang BossHitmenWorld Renowned ArtistsOlmos Elementary School entire third grade classCases: Find Some Body and return them to their forever homeFind Wife-Beating Boyfriend before Contracted Hitman DoesPerform Background Checks on the Ba...

All that stands between Captain Carmady and an exceptionally ugly death is his First Lieutenant Joan Chikage.And she will not budge.The Goodall Marauders, book three in the Goodall series of science fiction mysteries.

The adventure continues for Lieutenant Joan Chikage of the USS Goodall.Surely, after all she'd gone through, he couldn't mean to put her back in the same boring assignment.Even if it was important in some way, she was done with that job. And ready for something else.She'd commanded a small troop of men since then. Led the survivors to safety. Quelled the mutiny. Discovered the murderer. She'd even brought in Van der Ryn so he could pay for his crimes. Accidently or ...

How can you run a successful annual Writers' Tea party when your guest author turns up murdered, and when your choice for a substitute speaker might be the prime suspect?Think old timey British mystery novel, but set it in Texas and put some barbecue in it. Add the unruly American mastiff Boo Radley into the mix and you get chaos.Sometimes funny, always quirky, this Texas cozy is the second in the Boo Done It mystery series that began with Talking To The Dead Guys.W...

Former diplomat Leona Robin wonders if she made a mistake moving to rural Texas. Her son loves it here, but in a place where it's normal for a prize bull to have his own pet pig and hay bales are raining from the sky, Leona wonders how she'll ever fit in. That is, until she's thrown right into local preacher Ralph Maybeath's arms.Is this love? Maybe, maybe not. Ralph is being coached by a six-year-old orphan called little Leon who is trying to make the three of them into an instant...