A Fistful of Legends - Legend 7: "More Than Meets the Eye" by Gillian F. Taylor

When I read a cowboy yarn, I’m looking for action, conflict and memorable characters. Well, I found all that and more in “More Than Meets the Eye”, one of the 21 new tales of the Old West in A Fistful of Legends.

Along with the essentials, you see, author Gillian F. Taylor delivers some of the most vivid word pictures I’ve yet to come across.  Instead of racing through descriptive passages (as I sometimes do) I found myself lingering - and seeing - the western landscape along with bounty hunter Jonah Durrell.

Yes, the hero of this tale makes his living tracking fugitives from the law, but, as the title implies, there’s a lot more to him than that. Jonah’s mission here is to bring back a mine worker who stabbed and killed a man over a ten-dollar bet in a dice game. Durrell sports elegant duds and a double rig of pearl-handled Smith & Wessons with fancy scrollwork. That says something about his character, to be sure, but the man’s true mettle is revealed only after he catches his man and his hauling him in for trial.

Gillian F. Taylor is the author of twelve Black Horse Western novels so far, with more on the way. Visit her website HERE. One of her recent books, Two-Gun Trouble, features bounty hunter Jonah Durrell.

LEGEND 5: Half A Pig by Matthew P. Mayo

Eamon Riggs is about to hang his own nephew for stealing half a pig.

“You hung yourself, boy. You know that sure as road apples are ripe year round.” Eamon Riggs stared at the sweaty, pocked face, but there was no sign that the boy heard him. His eyes kept that half-closed stare at nothing, as if he were bored and about to doze off. Like that his whole life, thought Riggs. It’s the Mexican in him.

The kid says nothing.

Riggs took a draught of air through his nose, his lower jaw canted as if he were considering how to answer a delicate question. His left hand struck out with his leather quirt and snapped at the beast’s haunch. The mule lurched forward, digging hard, and all three men in attendance watched the boy’s face finally show the light of interest, his eyes wide and pushing forward, his mouth stretched as if pulled from either side with fishhooks, his head and torso working back, then forward, like a pecking bird, black curls bouncing on his forehead.

Witnessing this are Dilly, one of Riggs’ oldest hands, and Pelt, new to the job and no older than the kid being hanged. “Half A Pig” is about what the hanging means to these two men, and what it teaches them about themselves.

There’s some truly fine writing here, and it was recognized recently by the Western Writers of America, as they chose this tale as a finalist for their BEST WESTERN SHORT FICTION STORY of 2009.

“Half A Pig” is just one of the 20 fine short stories (plus one of mine) in the Express Westerns anthology A Fistful of Legends, now available right HERE.

Matthew P. Mayo is the author of three Black Horse Westerns (so far) along with Cowboys, Mountain Men and Grizzly Bears: The Fifty Grittiest Moments of the Wild West. You can visit him at his website HERE.

For more, see the fine interview Richard Prosch did with Matt over at Meridian Bridge.

MORE LEGENDS:
Legend 1: Dead Man Talking by Derek Rutherford
Legend 2: Billy by Lance Howard (Howard Hopkins)
Legend 3: Lonigan Must Die! by Ben Bridges (David Whitehead)
Legend 4: The Man Who Shot Garfield Delany by I.J. Parnham
Legend 19: Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil by Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)

LEGEND 3: Lonigan Must Die! by Ben Bridges

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I’m working my way ever-so-slowly through A Fistful of Legends (savoring it, you might say) and just read “Lonigan Must Die!”

It begins like this . . .

Given that he’d once been the most dangerous man in the territory, Jesse Rayne proved to be a model prisoner. He kept to himself, said yes sir and no sir and never, ever made trouble - which was odd, because Rayne had spent practically his entire life making trouble.

Jesse Rayne, you see, is a man with a plan. He’s doing whatever it takes to earn his parole, get out of prison and kill the man he blames for sending him there. And it works. Everyone is fooled and Rayne is released. First thing he does is hop a train, whisking him straight for Lonigan. He buys a gun. He finds Lonigan and beats hell out of him, all just a warm-up for the revenge he’s waited eight long years to enjoy.

What happens next? Surprising stuff! That’s all I’m saying. You’ll have to find out for yourself, but you won’t be disappointed. This tale is packed with action, wisdom and a healthy dose of heart.

Ben Bridges is the author of more than twenty Black Horse Westerns.  But that’s only the beginning of his story. “Ben Bridges” is actually David Whitehead, who’s sort of the James Reasoner of the Black Horse gang.  He’s written another six as Matt Logan. At least three as Carter West. Three more as Glenn Lockwood. A couple as Leonard Meares. And at least another ten as David Whitehead. For more on this man of many names, visit his website HERE.

A Fistful of Legends is available from Amazon and other online booksellers. Among the 20 other new tales of the Old West are the three we’ve already reviewed:

Legend 1: Dead Man Talking by Derek Rutherford
Legend 2: Billy by Lance Howard (Howard Hopkins)
Legend 19: Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil by Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)

LEGEND 2: Billy by Lance Howard

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Billy wants to be normal. Or at least just left alone. But he isn’t normal, and the other boys won’t let him forget it. So when they beat him up and destroy his one means of escape - a dime novel featuring his hero The White Ranger - Billy is truly hurt. Hurt in his heart. And he gets himself a gun.

This tale by Lance Howard (aka Howard Hopkins) earned the author much advance praise from editor Nik Morton, co-editor Charlie Whipple, and proofreader Ian Parnham. Words like “courageous”, “stunning” and “amazing” were tossed freely about. And now that I've read the story, I know why. This is an exceptional story, told with conviction by a writer who knows his stuff.

Howard Hopkins has written 32(!) Black Horse Western novels as Lance Howard, plus horror as Howard Hopkins, plus the acclaimed supernatural mystery series The Chloe Files, plus pulp hero adventures, and is now at work on a new graphic novel interpretation of The Spider - Master of Men. Whew!

“Billy”, along with 20 other new tales of the Old West, awaits you in the new Express Westerns anthology A Fistful of Legends, now available from online booksellers worldwide.

ALSO SEE:
Legend 1: Dead Man Talking by Derek Rutherford
Legend 19: Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil by Edward A. Grainger (David Cranmer)
A review of Lance Howard's Guns of the Past.
Howard Hopkins' blog Dark Bits.

Black Horse Westerns Weekend Extravaganza

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The intrepid Gary Dobbs has promised at least 100 posts devoted to Black Horse Westerns this weekend on THE TAINTED ARCHIVE, and he's already halfway there. There are interviews and reviews and articles and guest posts up the wazoo - so many it's tough to single out only a few. But since my fingers are too tired to list them all, here are some I particularly enjoyed:

Charlie Whipple (Chuck Tyrell) gives us the lowdown on his native Arizona.
A two-part interview with Howard Hopkins (Lance Howard). Part 1 is HERE.
Nik Morton (Ross Morton) offers advice on researching the Old West.
An interview with Ed Ferguson (Lee Walker).
An interview with Mathew P. Mayo.
David Whitehead discusses the future of the genre.
Gary reveals what really happened at the OK Corral.

These are all great starting points, but don't stop there. You should have a look at everything, because there's plenty more coming tomorrow!

LEGEND 1: Dead Man Talking by Derek Rutherford

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Jared is in prison, scheduled to hang. Everyone already considers him a dead man, including his cell mate, Mitchell.

“Most people say how they shouldn’t be here,” Mitchell said. As if to reinforce the point, someone started shouting further down the cellblock, the words deadened by the stone walls.

“Uh huh.”

“Yet you admit to killing four men.”

“I’d have killed five if they hadn’t stopped me.”

Jared, you see, feels no remorse. His only regret is that he didn’t get the fifth man. What brought him to this? Mitchell finds out as Jared reveals his history. Then the story dives back into the present for a gripping climax no one (including Jared) sees coming.

Derek Rutherford tells a tight, gritty tale. You won’t be disappointed. This is no surprise, of course, because he’s already the author of two Black Horse Western novels, Vengeance at Tyburn Ridge and Yellow Town, with a third, The Bone Picker, coming soon.

“Dead Man Talking” is the first of 21 stories in the new Express Westerns anthology, A Fistful of Legends. LEGEND 19: Cash Laramie and the Masked Devil by Edward A. Grainger (aka Beat to a Pulp editor David Cranmer) has already been reviewed.

A Fistful of Legends is now available (sooner than expected) from Amazon.

Duggan by Jack Giles

Duggan, I believe, was the fifth Black Horse Western from the pen of Jack Giles (aka Ray Foster), and first published 22 years ago. But this was the first Jack Giles book I could get my hands on, and I just finished reading it, so to me it’s fresh and new. 

Duggan has a dramatic character arc. He begins the story as a drunk, a wretch sunk so low he doesn’t even merit a name. He drinks himself to oblivion each day and sleeps it off under a boardwalk. But by the end of the book he’s wearing a captain’s uniform, commanding cavalrymen and saving the bacon of a whole town. If not for Duggan, it’s likely the entire Apache nation would have banded together under one leader and scoured the West of interlopers.

Duggan, you see, is one tough character, making Duggan a tough book to put down. Jack/Ray has orchestrated things so that each time we see Duggan he grows a little more - until finally becoming the man he once was - plus a little extra. This makes for a compelling and satisfying tale.

Other strong characters include Duggan’s old friend John Savage - a sergeant nursing a secret grudge, and his old nemesis General MacGregor - a ruthless martinet who gets his just deserts. And then there are the Apaches. These guys are not merely fearless and committed foes - they’re fearless and committed foes who blast away at forts and towns with captured artillery. Yikes.

I caught one in-joke: a bartender named Tom Bendigo, in the town of Shafter. (Someone was reading Louie L’Amour)  I suspect there were others that went over my head.

In all, reading Duggan was a bit like watching a good old cavalry movie. One starring Glenn Ford, maybe, or Randolph Scott. Too bad they don’t make movies like that anymore. Luckily, Jack Giles is still making books. His latest, Lawmen, was published by Black Horse just last year. He blogs at Broken Trails and Open Range.

For more on Jack/Ray, see our earlier post here.

Guns of the Past by Lance Howard

A bullet shattered the farmhouse window. Glass imploded, shards glittering, spiraling in all directions, raining on to the threadbare parlor carpet.

Guns of the Past (Black Horse, 1997 and Linford, 1998) starts with a bullet - and speeds like a bullet on through to the climax.  And woe to anyone who gets in that bullet’s way.  This is one of the hardest hitting westerns I’ve read in a long while.  Characters die here - likable, sympathetic, even innocent characters whom other writers would hesitate to kill. But though it's sad - even shocking - to see them go, they die in a good cause, to give more emotional punch to the book’s protagonist, Matt Brenner.

Matt, you see, was once foolish enough to join the Scarred L Gang, some of the most ruthless outlaws ever to terrorize the West. The gang’s leader is a demon in human form who allows no one to quit. But Matt quit, and ran, and has been hiding ever since, regretting the mistakes of his past. And now, suddenly, that past has caught up with him, making his present a living hell. (One thing the book does not tell us is that Matt bears an uncanny resemblance to Clint Eastwood, as revealed by the Linford edition artwork, below.)

Lance Howard, who has written a whole bunch of westerns, is in reality Howard Hopkins, who has written a whole bunch of horror novels. I tried to count them and ran out of fingers and toes, but I’m pretty sure his total book count is well over forty.

Howard, I’ve learned, is also a great aficionado of pulp heroes like Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Spider - as am I. Howard recently announced that he's been asked to write new comic book adventures of The Spider, The Master of Men, and after reading Guns of the Past, I can see why he got the gig. The Spider requires a courageous writer - one willing to take risks - one willing to take the reader by the throat and drag him places he didn’t expect to go. Well, Howard is all of that. I’m very much looking forward to his version of The Spider, and to more westerns by Lance Howard.

For more, visit his blog, Dark Bits, and his website.

Vulture Gold by Chuck Tyrell

Vulture Gold takes place in the real West. It starts with a real gold robbery committed in a real place by (mostly) real people. It all seems so real, in fact, that the lines between history and fiction blur, and I’m left with the intriguing game of trying to figure who’s real and who’s not. 

Marshal Garet Havelock, I’m pretty sure, is fictional. But he knows a lot of real people, and a lot more real people are familiar with this reputation.  “They tell stories about you, man,” one character tells Havelock. “Some put you in the same corral as Longhair Jim Courtwright, Cullen Baker, and young Bill Bonney when it comes to using a gun.” And Havelock himself seems very real. Mr. Chuck Tyrell knows his Old West, and keeps us grounded in it, with real Old West food, weapons, wisdom, scenery, horses, lingo and attitudes.

To bring the gold back to Vulture City, Havelock battles banditos, Apaches, the elements and whole passel of badmen, all the while struggling with his own troubles - a half-Cherokee heritage and half a left knee. And along the way he meets a vast array of characters who may or may not be real.  Here’s what I think I know so far:

REAL: Marshal M.K. Meade, Francisco Valenzuela, Al Sieber, Ike Clanton, Chief Puma

MAYBE REAL: Mountain Ebson, Big Phil Jackson, Sally Mae Peebles, Marshal Rodney Clayborne, Horn Stalker

JUST POSSIBLY REAL: Tom Morgan, Timothy Hunter, John Frederick Holmes

PROBABLY NOT REAL: Barnabas Donovan, his brother Arch, sister Laura, Juanito O’Rourke

‘Course, I could be way off. Anyone care to set me straight?

Vulture Gold (Hale, 2005 and Linford Western Library, 2006) was Chuck Tyrell's first book. A sequel, Revenge at Wolf Mountain (Hale, 2006 and Dales, 2007) has since appeared, along with a spin-off about Havelock's brother, Trail of a Hard Man (Hale, 2006 and Dale, 2007). More books are on the way, and I'll be watching for them.

Death at Bethesda Falls

The title of this Ross Morton western is apt, because death does come to Bethesda Falls, and the man who brings it our protagonist, Jim Thorp. The point is hammered home at the end: As Jim leaves town, the livery man is amending the town’s population on the welcome board from 111 down to 107, and that includes the birth of two babies.

Ross Morton, as you may recall from this older post, is actually Nik Morton, a man of many names. This was (I think) Nik’s first Black Horse Western, but hardly his first novel, and shows a writer in command of his subject and his story. Nik’s style is economical and exacting. Every scene has a purpose and does its job well. I was impressed Nik's ability to move easily between several points of view, often for only brief passages, and still keep the story moving quickly forward. As we near the climax, the shifts come even quicker, building suspense on several fronts at once. Needless to say, I’ll be on the lookout for more Ross Morton westerns.

Welcome Jack Giles (& Friends).

When easyrider45 turned up among Davy’s Followers, I didn’t know who he was. But after putting on my Philip Marlowe hat I finally figured out he’s western authors Jack Giles and Ryker Frost, who are really Ray Foster. Confused? It gets better. Ray is the grandfather of western writer Peter Avarillo (whose real name, I think, is Chantel), who will have a story in the upcoming Express Westerns anthology. He also has a cat named Dog who is actually a jackalope. No, I made that part up. Maybe.

Ray has written nine Black Horse westerns as Jack Giles and two as Ryker Frost. His latest book (by Jack) is Lawmen, published last year. You can ride with him on his blog, Open Range, or peek behind the authorial mask on his website. Finding no pictures of Jack/Ray on blog or website, I commissioned a renowned illustrator to come up with an artist's conception. Then, after the painting was done, I found a photo elsewhere. Both are presented here. Can you tell which is which? I didn't think so.

Ridin' the Culbin Trail with I.J. Parnham.

Since 2001, Ian (I.J.) Parnham has seen 17 Black Horse and 5 Avalon westerns published. His latest BHW, Riders of the Barren Plains, came out in July, and two more are scheduled for next year. His latest Avalon book, The Treasure of St. Woody, was released this month. He also wrangles two blogs, The Culbin Trail and Black Horse Express. You can even follow him on Twitter. This is one busy cowboy.

Is there a real Culbin Trail? Yep, sort of. It winds through the Culbin Forest, a huge park and nature preserve on the shoreline of the Moray Firth in northeast Scotland, not far from Ian’s homestead. According to the brochure, it’s a great place for hiking, cycling and horseback riding. They have sand dunes, mud flats, wild critters and tales of settlers who were wiped out in 1694 by a cataclysmic storm.

Ian’s Black Horse books involve a wide cast of characters, but the one who seems to pop up most is Sheriff Cassidy Yates. His Avalon books all feature a couple of gents named Randolph McDougal and Fergis O’Brien, whom he says were oddly inspired by the TV series Blackadder. On his website, you can read the first chapters of 20 different novels. Add them up and it's like getting a whole book free. Proud to have you perusing the Almanack, Ian.

Nik Morton, one-time World Authority on Webb Patent Gas Sewer Lamps, and more.

Here’s Nik wearing his game face as he edits the upcoming Express Westerns anthology, which may or may not be called Where Legends Ride 2. Nik has multiple personalities. His first books were published under the name Robert W. Nicholson. He now writes westerns as Ross Morton (most recently The $300 Man), is half of an author named Faulkner Nicholson (Wings of the Overlord coming soon), and writes mysteries (the latest is The Prague Manuscript, with The Tehran Transmission due this year) under his own name. Assuming, of course, that Nik Morton is his real name. Heck, it could be Ernest Hemingway. He’s also a screenwriter, and has illustrated some of his own book covers. Much more at his website, and at his blog, WRITEALOT. Welcome to the Almanack, Nik!

A tip of the jug to Joanne Walpole.

Davy encourages you all to knock back a dram of good Tennessee corn licker in honor of Follower Joanne Walpole. Joanne rides the Black Horse trail as Terry James. Her first BH book, Long Shadows, was published in May, and her next, Echoes of a Gunman, is coming in February. She's also the instigator of Wild Bunch Wednesday, which looks destined to become an Internet tradition. Limber up your trigger finger and click here to peruse her fine blog.

Welcome Renaissance Cowpoke Gary Dobbs

Davy's newest Follower is an actor, mystery writer, western novelist and author of one of the best (and busiest) blogs on the 'net. How he finds time to do all this is beyond me. Maybe, like the amazing Bill Crider, he just never sleeps. Do yourself a favor and check out his blog, The Tainted Archive. You won't be sorry. Gary's Black Horse Western novel, The Tarnished Star by Jack Martin, is now available through Amazon.