Weird Western – Page 5

Theresa DeLucci on Six-Guns and Strange Shooters: A Weird West Primer

Sunday, September 27, 2015 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

You know how we feel about the Weird Western here at Black Gate. It’s a neglected sub-genre with some terrific work that deserves a lot more attention.

Over at Tor.com, Theresa DeLucci clearly feels the same way. She’s done a marvelous survey of some recent additions to the field in books, games, film, and music — including R.S. Belcher’s The Shotgun Arcana, Jonathan Maberry’s Deadlands: Ghostwalker, and John Joseph Adams’s great anthology Dead Man’s Hand. Here she is on Cat Valente’s short novel Six-Gun Snow White:

Similar to [Emma] Bull’s Territory, this fairytale of the half-Navajo daughter of industrialist George Hearst is more of an alternate history than a Weird piece… until the origin of the Evil Queen’s magic mirror is revealed. While Valente’s West is a land of Native American magic, coyote spirits, and the mystery of wide open spaces, the East hold forests choked with ancient dark magic that reaches up from the earth in twisting black tentacles. Tentacles are never attached to anything wholesome in fiction.

Read Theresa’s complete article at Tor.com here.

And in honor of all this recent Weird Western coverage, I’ve created a new — and long-overdue — category at Black Gate. Check out all our Weird Western coverage here.

Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

Saturday, September 12, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 2 comments

REHWesterns_Cover — Intro by James Reasoner…

After Paul Bishop’s excellent post on REH’s boxing stories turned my initial post on hard boiled private eyes into the start of a series, the next topic I knew I wanted to cover was westerns. And James Reasoner was the only person I considered to write it. Historical fiction, noir and westerns: he’s excellent in all of those areas. 1914’s Robert E. Howard Days 2014 Featured Attendee is one of the best western writers alive. Let’s hit the trail!

When Robert E. Howard was growing up in Cross Plains in the 1920s, it was entirely possible that some of the older men in town might have gone on cattle drives in their youth, as the great trails from Texas to the railheads in Kansas opened up after the Civil War and changed the focus of the Lone Star State’s economy. Whether a young Bob Howard ever listened to these old cowboys spin yarns about those days, we don’t know, but he certainly might have.

J. Marvin Hunter’s classic book Trail Drivers of Texas appeared in 1927, and this volume might well have caught Howard’s interest, too, although we have no record of him ever reading it.

What we do know, however, is that Howard wrote several Western stories in which the trail towns which served as destination points for those great herds of Longhorns play an important part, beginning with “Gunman’s Debt”, which went unpublished during Howard’s lifetime but is one of his best Westerns. It’s set in the small Kansas settlement of San Juan, and although Howard tells us that the rails and the trail herds haven’t reached it yet, it’s clear that they’re on the way. San Juan is new and raw and more than a little squalid:

Three saloons, one of which included a dance hall and another a gambling dive, stables, a jail, a store or so, a double row of unpainted board houses, a livery stable, corrals, that made up the village men now called San Juan.

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Vintage Treasures: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt

Sunday, September 6, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Tim Pratt has made a name for himself recently with a popular series of Pathfinder novels, including the tales of Rodrick the thief, Liar’s Blade and Liar’s Island. He also writes the Marla Mason fantasy series under the name T A Pratt. But before all that, he wrote the delightfully quirky The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, his debut novel, a pseudo-weird western about a cartoonist with a hidden talent — and a sacred duty. It appeared in paperback from Bantam Spectra a decade ago, just long enough to make it today’s “Vintage Treasure.” It is still in print, and well worth a look for Pratt fans.

As night manager of Santa Cruz’s quirkiest coffeehouse, Marzi McCarty makes a mean espresso, but her first love is making comics. Her claim to fame: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, a cowpunk neo-western yarn. Striding through an urban frontier peopled by Marzi’s wild imagination, Rangergirl doles out her own brand of justice. But lately Marzi’s imagination seems to be altering her reality. She’s seeing the world through Rangergirl’s eyes – literally — complete with her deadly nemesis, the Outlaw.

It all started when Marzi opened a hidden door in the coffeehouse storage room. There, imprisoned among the supplies, she saw the face of something unknown… and dangerous. And she unwittingly became its guard. But some primal darkness must’ve escaped, because Marzi hasn’t been the same since. And neither have her customers, who are acting downright apocalyptic.

Now it’s up to Marzi to stop this supervillainous superforce that’s swaggered its way into her world. For Marzi, it’s the showdown of her life. For Rangergirl, it’s just another day…

The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl was published by Bantam Spectra on November 29, 2005. It is 402 pages, priced at $12 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition. It is still in print. Read an excerpt here, and Tim Pratt’s complete Rangergirl story “Bluebeard and the White Buffalo: A Rangergirl Yarn” online here.

Future Treasures: Deadlands: Ghostwalkers by Jonathan Maberry

Thursday, September 3, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I’m a big fan of weird westerns, and I think at least part of that stems from my early interest in Deadlands, the classic Weird Western RPG first published by Pinnacle in 1996. It’s one of the most original and inventive games of my acquaintance, and a terrific adventure setting.

So I was excited to see Pinnacle partner with bestselling author Jonathan Maberry (Rot & Ruin, Dead of Night), to launch a line of Deadlands novels. The first, Ghostwalkers, goes on sale later this month from Tor.

Welcome to the Deadlands, where steely-eyed gunfighters rub shoulders with mad scientists and dark, unnatural forces in the Weirdest West of all. Where the Great Quake of 1868 has shattered California into a lawless labyrinth of sea-flooded caverns… and a mysterious superfuel called “ghost rock” sparks as much greed and bloodshed as it does miraculous new machines and weapons of destruction.

Grey Torrance is a hired gun literally haunted by the bloody specters of his past. Heading west with no particular destination in mind, he joins forces with a brilliant Sioux scientist to defend the struggling town of Paradise Falls from a diabolical madman out to take over the entire territory… and build an army of the living dead!

It’s about time the market realized the potential of this great setting. Anything that gleefully mixes steampunk, zombies, RPGS, and the Weird West is A-OK in my book.

Deadlands: Ghostwalkers will be published by Tor Books on September 22, 2015. It is 480 pages, priced at $15 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Aaron Riley.

New Treasures: Edge of Sundown: Tales of Horror in the Wild West, edited by Kevin Ross and Brian M Sammons

Thursday, August 6, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’m a big fan of weird westerns. But you already knew that, just based on my recent articles on R. S. Belcher’s The Shotgun Arcana, Molly Tanzer’s Vermilion, Guy Adams’s Heaven’s Gate trilogy, and the anthologies Ceaseless West, Razored Saddles, and Dead Man’s Hand.

But here’s something new — an original anthology of western horror from Kevin Ross (Dead But Dreaming) and Brian M. Sammons (Tales of Cthulhu Invictus, World War Cthulhu, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu), and published by Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu). Here’s a snippet from the guidelines.

We’re looking for stories set in the American west (west of the Mississippi River) in the latter half of the 19th century, basically from about the Civil War era until the dawn of the 20th century… This is an incredibly rich historical period, full of possibilities for good stories, from real-life heroes and villains to Indians and their legends, cryptozoology, and yes, even opportunities to use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Most importantly, what we’re looking for are good, SCARY stories set in the old west. We’re not looking for tongue-in-cheek works, but ones that take the genre seriously. (Compare, for example, the old Gene Autry serial The Phantom Empire and the more recent western creature-feature The Burrowers.) There can be elements of pulp, fantasy, or adventure, but in the long run the story must have a very strong horror element to it. Other examples of the type of thing we’re looking for would include the serious western (and western horror) fiction of Robert E. Howard, films such as High Plains Drifter, Django the Bastard (AKA The Stranger’s Gundown), and the novel and film The White Buffalo…

With Edge of Sundown our target is very specific, like a bullet straight through the heart: good, serious, scary western horror tales.

Edge of Sundown was published by Chaosium on July 1, 2015. It is 306 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition.

New Treasures: Quaternity by Kenneth Mark Hoover

Sunday, August 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

U.S. Marshal John T. Marwood is a soldier in an eternal war, and he’s been traveling a long, long time. Some of the epic battles he’s seen include Thermopylae. Masada. and Agincourt. And when he came to New Mexico Territory, circa 1874, and a small town called Haxan, it became one of the most epic showdowns of his long career.

But before he was a Marshall, Marwood followed a darker path. In this prequel novel, Kenneth Mark Hoover explores some of Marwood’s mysterious past, telling the tale of his search for the fabled golden city of Cibola… and a battle against something very dark inside himself.

I bought the first John Marwood weird western novel, Haxan, at the World Fantasy Convention last year, and I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Quaternity at this year’s Nebulas here in Chicago. This look like one of the better dark fantasy series currently on the market. If you’re a fan of weird westerns, check it out.

Hell is Truth Seen Too Late! Before he became a U.S. federal marshal in Haxan, John Marwood rode with a band of killers up and down the Texas/Mexico border. Led by Abram Botis, an apostate from the Old Country, this gang of thirteen killers search for the fabled golden city of Cibola, even riding unto the barren, blood-soaked plains of Comancheria. And in this violent crucible of blood, dust, and wind, Marwood discovers a nightmarish truth about himself, and conquers the silent, wintry thing coiled inside him.

Quaternity was published by ChiZine Publications on May 21, 2015. It is 299 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Erik Mohr.

New Treasures: Legends of the Duskwalker by Jay Posey

Monday, June 22, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Legends of the Duskwalker Morningside Fall-small

Legends of the Duskwalker Dawnbreaker-small

Jay Posey’s writing career is rich and varied, and he’s had more success than the vast majority of writers of his generation… but that doesn’t mean you’re likely to have heard of him. That’s because Posey is primarily a videogame writer. As the Senior Narrative Designer at Red Storm Entertainment, he’s spent over eight years writing for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six franchises, and his stories have been enjoyed by millions of fans around the world.

For his first novel Three, the opening book in the Legends of the Duskwalker series, Posey tried his hand at a futuristic weird western, and succeeded in reaching a brand new audience. Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the series features augmented humans, advanced weaponry, cyborgs, and dangerous creatures known as the Weir.

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New Treasures: Medicine For the Dead by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

Friday, June 12, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

One of the more popular books I featured in my New Treasures coverage last year was the debut fantasy novel by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson, a delightful weird western titled One Night in Sixes. The border town of Sixes is quiet in the heat of the day, but at sunset wake the gunslingers and shapeshifters and ancient animal gods whose human faces never outlast the daylight. Appaloosa Elim had to enter Sixes to find his so-called ‘partner Sil Halfwick, who disappeared inside in the hope of making a name for himself among Sixes’ notorious black-market traders.

And now the story of Appaloosa Elim continues in Medicine For the Dead, Book Two of Children of the Drought, published by Solaris in March.

Two years ago, the crow-god Marhuk sent his grandson to Sixes. Two nights ago, a stranger picked up his gun and shot him. Two hours ago, the funeral party set out for the holy city of Atali’Krah, braving the wastelands to bring home the body of Dulei Marhuk.

Out in the wastes, one more corpse should hardly make a difference. But the blighted landscape has been ravaged by drought, twisted by violence, and warped by magic — and no-one is immune. Vuchak struggles to keep the party safe from monsters, marauders, and his own troubled mind. Weisei is being eaten alive by a strange illness. And fearful, guilt-wracked Elim hopes he’s only imagining the sounds coming from Dulei’s coffin.

As their supplies dwindle and tensions mount, the desert exacts a terrible price from its pilgrims – one that will be paid with the blood of the living, and the peace of the dead.

Read the first pages at Thompson’s website. Medicine For the Dead was published by Solaris on March 24, 2015. It is 480 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tomasz Jedruszek.

New Treasures: Vermilion by Molly Tanzer

Saturday, May 16, 2015 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Wasn’t I just saying that I love weird westerns? (Yes, I was.) And now comes the debut novel of British Fantasy Award nominee Molly Tanzer from Word Horde, featuring a gun-slinging 19-year-old, an undead villain, geung si (wait… what the heck are geung si?), ghosts, and an alternate San Francisco. Life is good.

Publisher Word Horde has been doing some terrific work recently, including The Children of Old Leech, Ross E. Lockhart’s Giallo Fantastique, and the upcoming anthology Cthulhu Fhtagn! Vermilion looks like a terrific edition to their catalog.

Gunslinging, chain smoking, Stetson-wearing Taoist psychopomp, Elouise “Lou” Merriwether might not be a normal 19-year-old, but she’s too busy keeping San Francisco safe from ghosts, shades, and geung si to care much about that. It’s an important job, though most folks consider it downright spooky. Some have even accused Lou of being more comfortable with the dead than the living, and, well… they’re not wrong. When Lou hears that a bunch of Chinatown boys have gone missing somewhere deep in the Colorado Rockies she decides to saddle up and head into the wilderness to investigate. Lou fears her particular talents make her better suited to help placate their spirits than ensure they get home alive, but it’s the right thing to do, and she’s the only one willing to do it. On the road to a mysterious sanatorium known as Fountain of Youth, Lou will encounter bears, desperate men, a very undead villain, and even stranger challenges. Lou will need every one of her talents and a whole lot of luck to make it home alive… From British Fantasy Award nominee Molly Tanzer comes debut novel Vermilion, a spirited weird Western adventure that puts the punk back into steampunk.

Vermilion was published by Word Horde on April 15, 2015. It is 386 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. The splendid cover is by Dalton Rose.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 172 Now Available

Wednesday, May 13, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I love a good weird western. So you can imagine how intrigued I was by the latest issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Scott H. Andrews’ magazine of literary adventure fantasy. It’s a special weird western issue, celebrating the release of their new themed anthology Ceaseless West. Issue 172 contains three new stories, a reprint, a podcast, and more.

“Splitskin” by E. Catherine Tobler
My love reveled in winter’s sunbroken days, when the light spills to the fresh-fallen snow to stab a person in the eyes. Gugán flit from path to stone, a trickster comfortable with his Raven heritage. I, as Eagle, startled at every shift of snow, caught always unawares in the bright sun as he pelted me with clumps of melting cold.

“Swallowing Silver” by Erin Cashier
John Halpern knew it should be a heavy weight on his conscience, to wake up and know that he was going to kill a thing that used to be a man. Whether it was or wasn’t was a topic of much internal contemplation for him as he walked up the long path to his brother-in-law’s house to ask for help. The fact that his brother-in-law was himself a devil-man did not escape him.

“The Snake-Oil Salesman and the Prophet’s Head” by Shannon Peavey
Leaving Leo alone, with his brother’s head. Leo stepped closer to the jar. Cary’s white-blond hair floated up from his skull, the tips waving slightly. It looked like strands of spiderweb, or exposed nerves. “You still telling people things they don’t want to hear?” He tapped on the glass. As if he might rouse it to speech.

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