Up until April 2017 I had 2 acclaimed
western novels, THE PEACEMAKER – published
by Sundown Press as a paperback and e.book – and SHADOW MAN published by Crowood Press as an e.book – available to
buy.
Reviews of THE PEACEMAKER:
‘A great book’
Spur award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author ROBERT VAUGHAN
‘For pure writing style, McBride’s
gritty prose nails the time and place of his story with bold authority. …this
relatively new author has thoroughly, and rightly so, claimed his place among
the top Old West storytellers.’ RALPH COTTON (also a Pulitzer-Prize
nominated novelist.)
SHADOW MAN: ‘A
little masterpiece waiting for you to turn the page.’
Well, now there’s 4 more! My 4 other western novels, originally published
as hardbacks and paperbacks, have now been re-issued as e.books by Crowood
Press. They are CANYON OF THE DEAD,
DEATH WEARS A STAR, DEATH SONG and THE
ARIZONA KID. They too have received acclaim. I’ll be blogging about them
separately over the coming weeks.
Today I discuss DEATH WEARS A STAR, which was the
second of my westerns to be published.
We authors often admire our early work for its freshness
and energy even if we’re still working out how to do the job properly – a bit
like having affection for your young, if sometimes foolish, self.
I have the same affection for DEATH WEARS A STAR, although – and this
might be a more honest confession than you often hear from authors – I wouldn’t
rate it as a favourite. Reading it now, I think its weakness is there’s too
much plot – I was too ambitious in tackling a quite complicated set-up in a short book. I compounded that by making a proof-reading error – a paragraph or
so in Chapter 8, giving an important piece of information you really need to
understand the story was left out. Overall, it’s probably too busy, there’s too
much going on, and the pace is too breathless. Having said that I’m still proud
of DEATH WEARS A STAR and think it’s
a highly enjoyable read.
DEATH WEARS A STAR BLURB:
The
Tengen brothers planned to make themselves all the law there was in Coffin
Creek and the surrounding Cochise Country. Then the whole south east corner of
Arizona would be theirs to plunder at will. Behind the tin stars they wore, the
brothers were killers, pure and simple...
But they'd reckoned without Calvin Taylor, former Indian scout turned Wells Fargo agent. Taylor would bring real law and order to the town, even if he had to do it at the point of a gun. The result was an explosion of violence and killing. Blood ran on the streets of Coffin Creek and a twisted trail of vengeance led high into the mountains of Apache country.
But they'd reckoned without Calvin Taylor, former Indian scout turned Wells Fargo agent. Taylor would bring real law and order to the town, even if he had to do it at the point of a gun. The result was an explosion of violence and killing. Blood ran on the streets of Coffin Creek and a twisted trail of vengeance led high into the mountains of Apache country.
All 8 of my westerns, including
the 4 re-issues, are set in the territories of Arizona and New Mexico in the
1870s and 1880s. All feature CALVIN TAYLOR as the central character – former
Indian scout turned man hunter, Wells Fargo agent, Range Detective and
sometimes sheriff.
Anyone familiar with western
history will have no difficulty in recognising DEATH WEARS A STAR as a fictionalisation of the story of Wyatt
Earp, Doc Holliday and the Clanton Gang in the area of Tombstone,
Arizona in the early 1880s – events including probably the most famous
shoot-out in western history - the ‘Gunfight at the OK corral.’
Tombstone, Arizona c. 1880
WYATT BERRY STAPP EARP (1848-1929)
is also probably the most famous lawman of the whole era, and a controversial
figure even to this day.
I consulted various sources about Earp and found
myself most drawn to the portrait of him in ‘The Earp Brothers of Tombstone’ by Frank Waters. I am well aware
that not everybody is going to agree with my interpretation!
Killed at the OK Corral: from left - Tom McLowry (spellings vary), Frank McLowry, Billy Clanton.
Earp was a figure who blurred
between reality and myth even in his own lifetime, even meeting the great film
director John Ford (and, it’s said, his young actor friend John Wayne) in 1928.
Earp told his version of events at the OK Corral to Ford who used it in his
1946 film MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. The accuracy of his account is a matter of
dispute; regardless, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE is usually held (and certainly held
by me) to be one of the greatest of all western movies.
Earp has been depicted in
numerous movies over the years, sympathetically and unsympathetically, from
GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL (Burt Lancaster) to HOUR OF THE GUN (James Garner) to
DOC (Harris Yulin) WYATT EARP (Kevin Costner) and TOMBSTONE (Kurt Russell.)
Hugh O’Brian also played him in a long-running TV series.
And let’s not forget
his startling appearance (played by Ron Soble) in STAR TREK’s ‘Spectre of the
Gun.’
Ron Soble (as Wyatt Earp) centre.
Fictionalisations have also been
done, perhaps most notably in WARLOCK, with Henry Fonda playing the Earp role,
as he did in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE.
Just as controversial as Earp was
his shady sidekick DOC HOLLIDAY. John Henry Holliday (1851- 1887) was a dentist
from Georgia who, developing tuberculosis, came west for the good of his health;
but he soon became a denizen of saloons and a professional gambler.
On screen Holliday has often been
an even livelier presence than Earp, strongly portrayed by Jason Robards in
HOUR OF THE GUN
James Garner (Wyatt Earp) Jason Robards (Doc Holliday) HOUR OF THE GUN (1967)
Stacy Keach in DOC, Val Kilmer in TOMBSTONE, Anthony Quinn in WARLOCK
and, a particular favourite of mine, Kirk Douglas in GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL.
Kirk Douglas (Doc Holliday) Burt Lancaster (Wyatt Earp) GUNFIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL (1957)
DEATH WEARS A STAR
EXTRACT
The coach was in a narrow, high-walled gully,
deep in shadow, straining up a grade. Hazy shapes moved on the slope above:
horsemen. Calvin Taylor glimpsed metal: rifles and pistols in the riders’
hands. One of the horsemen called, “Hold up and nobody’ll get hurt!”
The coach juddered to a halt. As the grey
light slowly turned pink, Taylor saw there were six horsemen: one man riding
downslope towards the coach, four more behind him, the most distant up on the
ridge, silhouetted there. Some of them wore long dusters covering their
clothing. All of them had gunnysacks over their heads, with eye-holes cut in
the sacks. Taylor felt fear, an aching in his stomach. His common sense told
him they were just men with their heads covered in cloth, yet their masks made
them somehow inhuman, terrible.
From the floor Schneider whispered, “Road
agents?”
Taylor said, “Yes.”
To find out more, where to buy
etc. see my Amazon author pages, Amazon.com:
And Amazon.co.uk:
REVIEWS OF MY WORK GENERALLY:
‘Tough, taut and elegant…
characterised by assured storytelling… the Calvin Taylor books are quietly
remarkable for their subtle reinvention of the western, eschewing clichés… the
writing is powerfully evocative of time and place.’
‘If McBride's stories can't bring the western back to life,
then someone better call an undertaker.’
Of DEATH WEARS A STAR: ‘I have derived immense pleasure from Andrew
McBride’s superb sequence of ‘death’ westerns, Canyon of the Dead, Death Wears
a Star… and Death Song.’
As I say, I’ll be blogging about
each re-issue separately over the coming weeks. Watch this space!
Great post. I really like the BHW covers. They remind me a little of the Ace Doubles from the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteGlad you liked the blog, Ben. I'll have to investigate the Aces Doubles. I particularly like the cover of DEATH WEARS, not only for its effective colour scheme but because the character looks very 19th Century authentic, not a million miles from Wild Bill Hickok!
Delete