Jumpin' catfish! It's James Reasoner!

See that little cowpoke in the Wyatt Earp vest on the Followers roster? Yep, that's James Reasoner. Davy is in awe of this guy. And why not? James is one of the true Fictioneers of the modern age. He’s written so many books, under so many names, that if I started listing them now I’d still be typing next week. In any given year, he writes more books than most humans even read. There's a list on his web site to prove it. I’m particularly fond of his 10-volume Civil War saga. Start with Manassas and you’ll see why. Somehow he also finds time to blog, at Rough Edges. His latest books under his own name, as far as I know, are Dust Devils (a mystery) and Death Head Crossing (a western). His latest under other names, are (I think) Longarm and the Valley of Skulls and The Trailsman 325: Seminole Showdown. Of course, he probably has a couple more coming out next week. Plus, as this unretouched photo illustrates, he’s a snappy dresser. I'm with Davy. I’m in awe of this guy, too.

Ellery Preening.

The contract came in the mail yesterday.

“Dear Mr. Lewis,” the cover letter said, “your story, SKYLER HOBBS AND THE RABBIT MAN, has been selected for inclusion in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.” There was more, of course, but it was hard to read while jumping up and down whinnying like a wild stallion. I’d received email notification a few days earlier, but there was always the chance some merry prankster (the name Cap’n Bob Napier comes to mind) was yanking my chain.

The story’s about a guy who lives right here in Portland, Oregon (on SW Baker St), and is convinced he’s the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes. I had a great time indulging my Sherlockian side and poking fun at all things Portland. The story will appear in the February 2010 issue of EQMM.

I also look forward to seeing my tall tale, “The Devil and Strap Buckner” in the first volume of Kerby Jackson’s Six Guns & Shootouts. Strap Buckner was a real-life member of the Austin Colony who became a Texas legend. Google the title (it’s been used before) for earlier versions of the story.

Gotta go rub Ben-Gay on my arm now. It aches something terrible from patting myself on the back.

Paul S. Powers, King of the Wild West

Way back whenever, I read the chapter on Wild West Weekly in John A. Dinan’s Borgo Press book The Pulp Western, and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. But even then, WWWs were hard to come by, and I let the feeling slide.

Then Laurie Powers popped up on the Black Horse Westerns Yahoo group, mentioning her grandfather’s memoir, Pulp Writer: Twenty Years in the American Grub Street by Paul S. Powers, to which she’d written an introduction/conclusion, and the two collections of stories currently in print, Desert Justice and Kid Wolf of Texas.

So I read all three books. And wasn’t sorry.

By way of intro, Paul S. Powers was one of WWW’s most prolific writers. Under the pen name Ward M. Stevens, he created Kid Wolf and Sonny Tabor, who remained two of the magazine’s most popular characters for nearly fifteen years. Under a variety of other names, he had series featuring Johnny Forty-Five, King Kolt, Freckles Malone, Poet Pete, and others, in addition to non-series stories. By 1949 he estimated he’d written over 10 million words.

Pulp Writer is two books in one. About a third of it is sort of a combination detective tale and coming-of-age story about how Laurie came to discover who her grandfather was and what he’d written. In the beginning, all she knew was that he’d written for obscure western magazines and had authored two books: Doc Dillahay (reprinted by Bantam as Six-Gun Doctor) and a “Little Big Book” (a Big Little Book wannabe) called Spook Riders of the Overland. As Laurie begins to investigate, meeting lost relatives and others, she visits the Street & Smith archives and is astounded to discover he wrote as many as 80 stories for WWW. Imagine her shock as she eventually learns the number was at least 440, with sales to other mags as well.

Laurie’s intro is a good story, well told. It’s quite personal, and after reading it I almost feel I know her. An illusion, no doubt, but a pleasant one. Laurie now gives lectures on pulp westerns and has a great blog called, quite appropriately, Laurie’s Wild West.

Still another of Laurie’s surprising discoveries was the manuscript for her grandfather’s unpublished memoir, which forms the rest of the book.

The memoir is a change of pace, diving immediately into the wise-guy style of a pulp pro. Powers broke into magazines by writing jokes, and it shows. His style is breezy and fun. All the trials of an aspiring writer are there, and his tales of pulp writing are fascinating. To those of us who view the great Pulp Era as a magical time, this is like getting a peek behind the legend. On reaching the end, I couldn’t wait to sample his fiction. So I didn’t.

Thrilling reviews of the thrilling Desert Justice and Kid Wolf of Texas will be coming soon.

Davy welcomes Laurie Powers.

Davy loves pulp magazines. The rough feel and sharp scent of the paper reminds him of life in the backwoods, and the no-holds-barred storytelling follows the tradition of his own tall tales. So he gets a special kick out of Laurie’s Wild West, a blog just packed with pulpy wonder. And when he learned that Laurie Powers had joined his merry band of Followers he let out a whoop that startled the neighbors for miles around. I’d planned to review the book she co-wrote/edited with/about her grandfather sooner or later, so I might as well do it right now.

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.

Flashback: 1835

Like any pennywise publication, the Almanack will occasionally feature “encore presentations” (yeah, okay, they’re reprints) from our illustrious history. Think of it as recycling.

Pictured here is the cover of our special Collector’s Item 1st Issue. This particular run of Almanacks is called the Nashville Series because it claimed to be published there. Was it really? Historians don’t know, and neither do I. Davy knows, of course, but he’s not telling.

What follows is the introduction to that first issue, purportedly written by old Davy himself. Did he really write it? Again, he won't say. But by the twinkle in his eye, I can tell he likes it.

“Go Ahead” Reader

Arter the great fuss the public have made about an individual of my humble pretensions, and the mighty deal of attention and good cheer which I have received in all sections of the country, where I have been ahead, my heart has swelled as big as a Bison’s, with pure gratitude. To repay all this, I mean to amuse them with some of my adventures with the wild varments and colts of the West, and with the adventures of the backwoodsmen generally.

Owing to the partiality of my fellow citizens, I have been made a Congressman, and am from home (at Washington) half the year; but should any of my readers find me “at home” on the Big Clover Creek, Tennessee, they shall be treated with a good raccoon pie, and bush eels (i.e. rattlesnakes) fried in butter—which are dishes my wife cooks to parfection. They shall have the softest white-oak log to sit on, and the best bearskin to sleep on, which my house affords. I will take them out on a coon hunt, show ‘em how to tree a catamount, and take a blizzard at a bear. They can take a walk in my crab-apple orchard, and see the alligator pear trees. And as a plain matter of fact, I will convince them that I can run faster, —jump higher, —squat lower, —dive deeper, —stay under longer, —and come out drier, than any man in the whole country.

A big frontier howdy to Cap'n Bob.

Davy salutes his newest Follower, the world-renowned author of Love, Death and the Toyman (and a soon-to-be sequel), hard-driving ramrod of the Old West APA Owlhoot, leading candidate to play Curly in the new Stooges flick, die-hard Custer enthusiast, swell tap dancer, and one of the premier collectors of plastic toy soldiers on the planet. Pull up a stool and bite into a b'ar steak, Cap'n.

John Wayne Westerns Pt. 1: The Big Trail

This is where it all began. In the first five years of his film career, John Wayne appeared in 19 movies. 18 of those parts were unbilled. His third film, The Great K&A Bank Robbery, was a Tom Mix western, but Wayne was only an extra. Finally in 1930, in The Big Trail, he got his first leading role.
Legend has it director Raoul Walsh wanted Tom Mix or Gary Cooper for the part. When he couldn‘t get them, he settled for the relatively unknown 23-year-old Wayne. Wayne was paid only $75 a week, a move that allowed Walsh more money for production. The film eventually cost $4 million, and was released in the full bloom of the Great Depression. Ouch.

“The Most Important Picture Ever Produced” didn’t quite meet expectations. Had the film been a success, Wayne’s star might have risen right then. As it was, he was relegated to serials and B-pictures for nine more years until getting another big break in Stagecoach. The Big Trail was filmed in an early version of 70mm widescreen. Since most theaters didn’t have the equipment to play it, a 35mm was released at the same time. The widescreen version was unavailable to the home market until just last year. It’s a half hour longer, and reportedly pretty cool. Among the supposedly 20,000 other cast members were Ward Bond and Iron Eyes Cody.