See what others have to say after reading Bobby’s one-of-a-kind story collection:

“Bobby’s stories grabbed us right from the start. It’s the “true and otherwise” part that stops us in our tracks. There is a heavy dollop of truth in every story. We applaud the man who grew up, through these very hard times, to be someone with gritty, wonderful, integrity. And we congratulate him on being shortlisted for a Texas Institute of Letters first work of fiction award.”

—Kim Davis, founder and director of Madville Publishing

“I saw the author’s ad in our small town’s weekly blatt. Mr. Horecka’s the editor there and his news stories were always good. Let’s give it a whirl! Wow! This guy is a master story this guy is a master storyteller. As I slowly worked my way through the book, I chuckled, I felt sympathy, I sometimes howled at what he had written. Anyone who has spent time in Lavaca County, as Mr. Horecka has, will have been exposed to gobs of raw material, and I mean raw. The author throws a shovelful of hyperbole onto an ordinary situation and nurtures it into a riotously funny story.”

—Bob Zumwalt, author of Trapped by a Mouse and Other Stories

SUPPORT LOCAL ART AT LOCAL BUSINESSES!

As someone who regularly promotes shopping local in his day job with newspapers, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the following businesses who were kind enough to allow me to occupy their store space with my stories. Be sure and stop by if you happen to be in the area. Each is a treasure all its own (We linked their Facebook pages here so you learn more about the communities where Bobby and his family have made their home for six generations now:

What better way to support any local community than by checking out its local newspapers and their visitor’s guide? And this one is just chock full of great reads, we think. Of course, we’re a biased. We wrote it. Still, we don’t think you’ll be disappointed, no matter where you live.

This isn’t your average come-see-our-stuff visitor’s guide. Of course, we’re not just any ol’ ordinary place, either. Come see for yourself! Who knows? You could be the person we focus on for our next edition, coming early summer.

Do enjoy, and if you happen by, be sure to stop by the local news office and let us know you saw it here OutlawAuthorz.com first.

Back to our Book

LONG GONE & LOST: TRUE FICTIONS AND OTHER LIES

Bobby Horecka writes short fictions packed with plenty of gritty, real-life truths. He opens with a tale of a kid who’s practically gone feral to survive and a pot smoking Vietnam vet who we’re pretty sure lost touch with reality some years back. Living where he does, doesn’t help a lick. While tragedy might’ve made it all possible, the boy later moves to a faraway elsewhere, where things take definitive turns toward better. Readers come to know a child’s resilience and how love can redeem even the most damaged. As the boy takes to his new surroundings, he learns to love another thing, too. Stories. And there’s never any shortage of those.

He hears a ton of them, and in so doing, begins to realize something else, too. A couple of things, actually. The first is that stories themselves can and do resonate, but a story told well, by someone with a knack for such things, can send even the most mediocre, flimsiest of tales soaring to heights unimagined. He learns fast, and soon turns it to a talent all his own, borrowing grand fireside bardic traditions of old to catapult the most common among us to the front pages of the world, and land them all above the fold.

That he turned to newspaper journalism isn’t hard to fathom. It’s the only job he was ever truly born for, and he excels. That those very same newspapers might one day turn their backs him is something he never quite comprehended or recovered from. How the once vast empires built on our news. The old gloried institutions of yesteryear today dwell on borrowed time, barely even shells of their former selves. Talk about your bad run of luck. If it weren’t so goddam true, you just might shed a tear or two.

A bit wiser, perhaps, and a lot more jaded, you might even succumb to your inner smart-ass and laugh your fool head off, just because you know it’ll piss ’em off good. Bobby must’ve played that dogeared card lot because even in some of the darkest, most blistering scenes he builds, he can still find ways to make you smile. Some dark, some tongue-in-cheek, all bearing his unmistakable mark. He hurls you headlong into a story, front and center, then gallops you through the starkest, most sinister parts as only a seasoned journalist can do, sweeping you breathless through the scenes unforgettable. Then, stops on dime, just to point out the tiniest and obscurest detail.

As only someone who was there might note. Who saw it close up, pored over its magnificent contours or, possibly, who did the act themselves. Like most good stories, too, some are truer than the rest, either to guard the few innocents abroad or paint an alternative ending to stay out of jail. And don’t be surprised if your narrator should laugh right out loud while taking dire looks at the demise of everything from the American newspaper to the American work ethic. As they like to say in the mental wards, sometimes laughing like a lunatic is the only way to stay sane.

Hang on tight and he’ll take you for a little beer-joint-drinking, pasty the fly-swatting and tale-telling corners of the world—not unlike the communities in and around Lavaca County, Texas, where Bobby grew up, built on the backs of hard-working, hard-drinking Czech immigrants—before they all become just another faded memory. Then, gone. Forever lost, as so many places he remembers already are.

Proving daily that every road traveled brings you one step closer home, Bobby continues to tell salt of the earth stories still, as editor of five weekly newspapers, a couple of magazines and handful of websites and social media pages, all based near his boyhood farm, where today he and his wife raise a few goats, pick eggs by the handful, and aim for the quiet life as much as they can these days.

Have a favorite online bookseller? We’re likely there already…

You might have a working man’s callused hands, the callused soul that only the mistreated know or the callused heart that comes with having yours shattered too many times. Everybody needs to catch an occasional break, or they risk becoming Long Gone & Lost…

Available in trade paperback and digital e-editions at these online retailers:

Of course, that lone collection isn’t the only place to find a Bobby Horecka’s work. Here are just a few others we thought we might share:

A look at the mad rush that was the making of the Winds of Change, A 75-Year History of Texas Farm Bureau, Waco, 2008. Book authored, designed and edited by Bobby Horecka, Texas Farm Bureau, Waco, 2008

Horecka also producer, editor and writer of this short feature film, OutlawAuthoz.com, Worthing, 2023