Weird Western – Page 5

Future Treasures: Your Brother’s Blood by David Towsey

Saturday, November 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Here’s an imaginative debut novel set centuries in the future, that sounds more like a weird western than science fiction. And you know how we feel about weird westerns! I’ve already pre-ordered a copy.

An unnamed event has wiped out most of humanity, scattering its remnants across vast and now barren lands reminiscent of the 19th century western frontier of America. Small clusters of humans still cling to existence in a post-apocalyptic world that is increasingly overrun by those who have risen from the dead — or, as the living call them, the Walkin’.

Thomas, a thirty-two year old conscripted soldier, homeward bound to the small frontier town of Barkley after fighting in a devastating civil war, is filled with hope at the thought of being reunited with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Mary, both named after characters in the Good Book. As it turns out, he also happens to be among the Walkin’.

Devoid of a pulse or sense of pain, but with his memories and hopes intact, Thomas soon realizes that the living, who are increasingly drawn to the followers of the Good Book, are not kindly disposed to the likes of him. And when he learns what the good people of Barkley intend to do to him, and to his family, he realizes he may just have to kidnap his daughter to save her from a fate worse than becoming a member of the undead.

When the people of Barkley send out a posse in pursuit of father and daughter, the race for survival truly begins…

Your Brother’s Blood will be published by Jo Fletcher Books on December 1, 2015. It is 336 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: The Curse of Jacob Tracy by Holly Messinger

Saturday, November 14, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Molly Tanzer, author of Vermillion, in her blurb for Holly Messinger’s upcoming novel The Curse of Jacob Tracy, says “The weird western renaissance is upon us!” Pretty high praise for a debut fantasy novel. If, like me, you’re a fan of the Weird Western, I think it might be rewarding to pay attention to this one.

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts — mangled soldiers, tortured slaves, the innocent victims of war — and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country’s restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated cities as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains West with his pragmatic and skeptical partner, Boz.

Then, just before the spring rush, Trace gets a letter from the wealthy and reclusive Sabine Fairweather. Sickly, sharp-tongued, and far too clever for her own good, Miss Fairweather needs a worthy man to retrieve a dead friend’s legacy from a nearby town — or so she says. When the errand proves far more sinister than advertised, Miss Fairweather admits to knowing about Trace’s curse, and suggests she might be able to help him — in exchange for a few more odd jobs.

Trace has no interest in being her pet psychic, but he’s been searching eighteen years for a way to curb his unruly curse, and Miss Fairweather’s knowledge of the spirit world is too tempting to ignore. As she steers him into one macabre situation after another, his powers flourish, and Trace begins to realize some good might be done with this curse of his. But Miss Fairweather is harboring some dark secrets of her own, and her meddling has brought Trace to the attention of something much older and more dangerous than any ghost.

The Curse of Jacob Tracy will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on December 1, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente

Saturday, November 7, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

With all the fuss around Catherynne M. Valente’s new novel Radiance, I almost missed the fact that Cat’s 2013 award-winning novella, Six-Gun Snow White, was being brought back into print by Saga Press.

Six-Gun Snow White is a delightful reimagination of one of the best-known fairy tales of all time, featuring Snow White as a gunslinger in the mythical Wild West. It was nominated for every major award our field has to offer — including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards — and it won the Locus Award for Best Novella of the year, for the limited edition from Subterranean Press. Now Saga is reprinting the book as an attractive trade paperback, with cover and interior art by Charlie Bowater.

Forget the dark, enchanted forest. Picture instead a masterfully evoked Old West where you are more likely to find coyotes as the seven dwarves. Insert into this scene a plain-spoken, appealing narrator who relates the history of our heroine’s parents — a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. Although her mother’s life ended as hers began, so begins a remarkable tale: equal parts heartbreak and strength. This girl has been born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child. After being hidden for years, a very wicked stepmother finally gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, this is an utterly enchanting story… at once familiar and entirely new.

Six-Gun Snow White will be published by Saga Press on November 10. It is 154 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $14.99 in trade paperback. The cover and interior illustrations are by Charlie Bowater.

New Treasures: Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

Saturday, October 24, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Laura Anne Gilman’s 2009 novel Flesh and Fire, the opening book in The Vineart War, was nominated for a Nebula Award. Her latest novel is an immensely appealing Weird Western featuring Isobel, who on her sixteenth birthday makes the choice to work for the devil in his territory west of the Mississippi. But this is not the devil you know. This is a being who deals fairly with immense — but not unlimited — power, and who offers opportunities to people who want to make a deal… and they always get what they deserve.

East of the Mississippi, in the civilized world, dime store novels and gossips claim that the territory to the west is home to monsters and magic, wild Indians and disreputable whites. They claim that in order to survive, any who live there must make a deal with the Devil.

Some of this is true.

Isobel is a child of the Territory. She grew up in a saloon, trained to serve drinks and fold laundry, to observe the players at the card tables and report back to her boss on what she saw. But when she comes of age, she is given a choice….

Isobel chooses power. Chooses risk. Chooses to throw her cards in with the Devil, Master of the Territory.

But the costs of that power are greater than she ever imagined; the things she must do, the person she must become… And she needs to learn her new role quickly: pressures from both outside the Territory and within are growing, and the Devil’s Hand has work to do…

Silver on the Road it the opening novel in a new series titled The Devil’s West. It was published by Saga Press on October 6. It is 382 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by John Jude Palencar. Read an excerpt at Laura Anne Gilman’s website.

New Treasures: The Incorruptibles and Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs

Thursday, October 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

John Hornor Jacobs’ first novel was Southern Gods (2011), which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award. His new fantasy series began with The Incorruptibles (2014), and the second volume, Foreign Devils, was just published by Gollancz in the UK. Both novels feature the mercenaries Fisk and Shoe, in a fantasy western setting that mixes ancient Rome, savage elves, the wild west, daemons, and the Autumn Lords’ Empire, which hides a terrible truth at its heart.

Here’s Black Gate author Myke Cole on the first volume:

The Incorruptibles gives us the very thing we read fantasy for: something new. The Incorruptibles joins Red Country in what I hope will become a new sub-genre, the fantasy western. Westerns are American stories, and Jacobs’ Arkansas roots show in his gritty, hard-bitten tone. The Incorruptibles shakes like a rattlesnake, sings like a bullet, whispers like a tumbleweed dancing over hardscrabble.

And Pat Rothfuss on the same volume:

One part ancient Rome, two parts wild west, one part Faust. A pinch of Tolkien, of Lovecraft, of Dante. This is strange alchemy, a recipe I’ve never seen before. I wish more books were as fresh and brave as this.

…

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.

…

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.

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