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 7 of my 8 western novels (all but my latest, CIMARRÓN) originally published
as hardbacks and paperbacks, are available as e.books. 5 are available from Crowood
Press. They are CANYON OF THE DEAD,
DEATH WEARS A STAR, DEATH SONG and THE
ARIZONA KID and SHADOW MAN. All have received acclaim. I’ll be blogging about them
separately over the coming weeks.
Today I discuss DEATH SONG, which was the third of my
westerns to be published.
I struggled to control my energy
in my first two published westerns. DEATH
SONG was the first time I feel I found the right pace. I think there’s
probably a bigger story inside the framework of these 160 pages, something I could
expand on at length, particularly in relation to the central character, Calvin
Taylor. But I’m happy with the way DEATH
SONG turned out.
DEATH SONG BLURB:
They were two men driven by implacable hatred:
Lieutenant Ranald Neal of the U.S. Cavalry, seeking his place in the roll-call
of history, as the man who ended the Indian Wars, and Sombra the Apache war
chief, bent on revenge.
The two deadly enemies fought each other across the
savage wilderness of the border country. They met for the last time in The
Place of Bones, forbidden ground in the shadow of Ghost Mountain.
Caught in the middle, as this genocidal war reached
its bloody climax, was the white woman who had been the Apaches captive and
whose yellow hair gave Sombra luck in battle. Then, too, there was the
formidable Calvin Taylor, Indian scout, hired gun and man killer. Could he,
against all the odds, succeed in his deadly mission?
All 8 of my westerns 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.
The background to DEATH SONG is the later phase of the
war between the white man and the Apaches, amongst the most formidable of the
Native American tribes that Americans had to contend with as they pushed their
frontier west.
Never very numerous, the Apaches ranged
across a huge area of the Southern Plains and the Southwest from Oklahoma to
Arizona, from high plains to deserts and mountains. One band, the Nednis (or
Nameless Ones) even lived entirely in Mexico. But what they lacked in numbers
they made up in ferocity and fighting skill. GENERAL GEORGE CROOK, probably the
most successful Apache-fighting general, called them ‘the tigers of the human
species.’ The word Apache itself means ‘enemy.’
General Crook with Apache scouts
The Apaches were split into widely-scattered
bands – don’t believe the next western you see where beleaguered whites talk about
being surrounded by the ‘whole Apache nation!’ The nearest the Apaches came to that
was when 3 or 4 bands might make a temporary alliance.
My novel concerns the Chiricahua
band of southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico. In THE PEACEMAKER I’ve written about the struggle of the Chiricahuas
under their great chief COCHISE. DEATH
SONG is set later, when the Chiricahuas have been placed on reservation, but
are prone to break out. During this time leaders such as GERONIMO and VICTORIO
came to prominence.
Chiricahuas 1886. GERONIMO 2nd from left.
Victorio
Against them ranged U.S. cavalry and infantry units, led by
such men as GENERAL CROOK, GENERAL NELSON MILES and LT. HOWARD CUSHING (killed
by Chiricahuas in 1871.)
DEATH SONG concerns
an attempt to rescue a white woman held captive by Apaches. Apaches carried off
women and children during raids, and some of the boy captives grew to be
warriors amongst their captors. PAUL NEWMAN played a white man raised by
Apaches in the classic movie HOMBRE.
Here’s a real Apache captive: SANTIAGO
(or JIMMY) McKINN, a Mexican-Irish boy held by Geronimo’s band until 1886.
DEATH SONG
EXTRACT
Ahead Calvin Taylor saw a break in the encircling
hills. Once through there, he and the woman would be out on the open desert.
They’d be home and dry; the Apaches would never run them down before they got
to help. He angled the dun towards the middle of the gap, the woman heading that
way also. They’d be through in a minute.
Then Taylor glimpsed horsemen, six or seven of
them, coming into the gap from the far side; he knew then their luck was out. These
horsemen were Sombra’s returning warriors, he could tell they were Apaches from
their brightly coloured shirts. Even as he watched, the Indians must have
spotted the two riders coming towards them and he heard Apaches yelling. The
horsemen bunched and veered towards Taylor and the girl. They were all yelling
now, the feral cries of a hunting pack.
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 SONG: ‘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’. Like its predecessors, ‘Death Song’ is the real McCoy, a tautly
written, impeccably researched novel that deals expertly with the themes of
revenge and racial genocide. It’s also a cracking adventure yarn that deserves
the widest possible audience.’
As I say, I’ll be blogging about each
re-issue separately over the coming weeks. Watch this space!
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