The Marfa Lights "Shimmer"

Updated: Moving this post to the top for today's event. And click on the "Comment" icon at the end -- it's the tiny little cloud on the left -- and ask Spacedark what size he thinks they are.)

(Note: Author David Morrell -- whose sponsorship of this blog appears at right -- will be signing copies of "The Shimmer" at Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet, on Tuesday, July 14 at 6:30 p.m.)

Football-sized lights hover over the dark horizon outside Marfa, Texas, bouncing, shimmering, even changing colors. Some can see them, others can't. Theories abound as to what they are, but no one seems to know for sure.

A newspaper article about this real-life mystery inspired David Morrell to give it his own, very creative spin. The result is "The Shimmer," a high-caliber, one-of-a-kind action thriller only the creator of "Rambo" could have conceived and executed to perfection.

In the novel, Marfa becomes Rostov, but otherwise, the two towns are almost identical. Like the real town, Rostov is located in grassland near the Mexican border. Standing a short distance away are a radio observatory, an abandoned World War II airfield, and an observation platform to view the lights. As the author says in the afterword, the novel contains a "surprising amount of 'reality.'"

The story begins as Dan Page, a sheriff's deputy in Santa Fe, N.M, receives a phone call from the Rostov police chief: His wife Tori, missing for two days, has been found there. Page, a private pilot, hops on his Cessna and flies to the small town. He finds Tori on the observation platform, but before he can have any significant conversation with her, a man appears with an AK-47 and begins shooting toward the lights, shouting "Don't you see how evil they are?" He then turns the gun on a crowd gathered around the platform, killing a dozen.

More here.