Western filming in Austin

The western film The Legend of Hell’s Gate: An American Conspiracy has been on my radar, but I'm just now getting around to posting about it. San Antonio natives Henry Thomas of E.T. fame and Summer Glau are among the stars. It heads to Austin for shooting and has also shot recently in Granbury and Boerne. Here's more about the film, but it's basically about "three men who cross paths with three gunmen and are forced to go on the lam while being pursued by a sheriff's posse and a tribe of Indians."

Football, poetry and me

A view from the podium.


Larry Thomas reads.

It's been an interesting week. Monday I went to my first Mack Brown press conference as The Austin Chronicle continued in its quest to turn me into a sports writer, specifically on the University of Texas Longhorn football beat. It resulted in two pieces that you can see here.


Friday, poet Joe Hoppe, prose writer Maxine Beach, who is also the new head of the Austin Community College Creative Writing Department, and I got up early to drive to Granbury. After biscuits and gravy at a local diner, we read at Langdon Weekend, an event sponsored by Tarleton State University. In the photo above you can see my view out on the audience with a copy of my novel Evacuation Plan in the foreground.

Later we listened to a reading by Texas' new poet laureate Larry Thomas at a private residence overlooking the local lake.

On the way back we stopped in Dublin for some of that real-sugar Dr Pepper minus the period.