AUTHOR FAVOURITES: HAWTHORNE: TALES OF A WEIRDER WEST by HEATH LOWRANCE

Heath Lowrance  writes across genres from western/horror hybrids to hard-boiled noir fiction.

He can’t pick a favourite of his own work but tells me his short story collection HAWTHORNE: TALES OF A WEIRDER WEST is ‘the best example of how I currently write.’

Hawthorne is a mysterious gunfighter with a cross-shaped scar on his forehead, driven by an all-consuming rage to seek out and destroy evil wherever he finds it. Without mercy.

He travels the Old West battling monsters and demons, encountering black magic, a coyote that’s more nearly a werewolf, an abandoned army fort infected by evil, a train passenger with a large, invisible rat for a companion, dead Native Americans whose mutilated bodies are covered with spiders webs…

Monsters sometimes featured in Native American superstitions. Comanche superstition, for example, included the massive Cannibal Owl, which descended in the dark to devour men. Comanches believed the giant mammoth bones that dotted the plains were the remains of this horrific creature. There were also nenuhpee, manlike leprechaun-ish things no more than a foot high; they shot arrows that always killed.

A Comanche man in 1892

I have to confess I’m not well-versed in western/horror movies.

One of Heath’s stories, ‘The Spider Tribe,’ reminded me of a 1963 TV series episode - ‘The Zanti Misfits’ from ‘The Outer Limits’ – where homicidal spiders from another planet overrun a western ghost town appropriately named Morgue.

Another western/horror hybrid I came across was BLACK NOON from 1971 where a traveling minister (played by ROY THINNES) finds a remote Old West community menaced by a cult of devil worshippers. 

Roy Thinnes and Yvette Mimieux in ‘BLACK NOON’

The last time I looked 86% of HAWTHORNE’s Amazon reviews are 5 star!

REVIEWS:

‘The Spider Tribe… a great deal of fun… will certainly give you the creeps if you're an arachnophobe.’

‘A great collection… a fine addition to the weird western genre.’

‘You’re in for a treat... Lowrance braids his stories together out of bits and pieces of western myth—the lone avenger, coyote legends—and ties them off with a modern, blood-soaked sensibility… enjoy being scared to death.’

https://www.amazon.com/Hawthorne-Tales-Weirder-Heath-Lowrance-ebook/dp/B00FZ0Z9GK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1490731412&sr=1-1-fkmr0

AUTHOR FAVOURITES: DEADLY REPRISAL by MARTYN MARAIS

Martin Marais (writing as Martyn) is, like me, a Brit writing westerns. He tells me a favourite of his own books is DEADLY REPRISAL 'because things happened in it that I was not expecting!'

DEADLY REPRISAL is Book 3 of Martin's 'Bounty Hunter' series centred on the town of Wellhead.

Mary Elizabeth Doyle, driven to prostitution, falls foul of outlaw Billy Parker when she sets a group of Irish bounty hunters, led by the charming and charismatic Tom Callaghan, on his trail. This erupts into a bloody showdown where Mary shows she is no stranger to the gun herself.

The Irish in the Old West merit a blog all to themselves. 

  

In the Old West initially women were a rarity and prostitutes were welcomed by women-hungry settlers, miners and cattlemen.

Some – ‘crib girls’ - operated out of narrow shacks.

Others worked as saloon girls in saloons and dance halls known as ‘hurdy-gurdy houses.’

The most favoured worked in opulent ‘parlor houses’ such as The Old Homestead in the red-light district of Cripple Creek, Colorado.

Western ‘soiled doves’ acquired nick-names like Cowboy Annie, Poker Nell, Diamond Tooth Lil, The Roaring Gimlet and Lady Jane Grey. Such women as Jenny Rogers, Lillian Powers and Pearl de Vere went on to be madams running their own bordellos.

‘Sporting girls’ generally worked on commissions, splitting their fees evenly with the house but keeping tips.

Prostitutes sometimes doubled as laundresses and cooks. Some fell victim to the hazards of their trade: venereal disease, a crude abortion, too much alcohol, an overdose of laudanum or a violent assault by a client.

As settlements grew and more ‘respectable’ women arrived social attitudes changed and prostitutes were often ostracised, though some went on to make respectable marriages.

The ‘world’s oldest profession’ has often featured in western movies and TV, generally viewed sympathetically. To pick just a few examples:

Clint Eastwood’s aging gunfighter comes to the defence of abused prostitutes in ‘UNFORGIVEN.’

Julie Christie plays a ‘high-class’ madam in ‘McCABE AND MRS MILLER’

and hard times drives Faye Dunaway to prostitution in ‘LITTLE BIG MAN.’

Reviews of DEADLY REPRISAL:

‘A Fantastic Read… superb… It certainly has everything you want in a Western, with plenty of gun fights, and great characters that you can’t help but like.’

‘A must read series and a must read book.’

‘A rip-roaring western full of action and adventure.’

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRWOWIC and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deadly-Reprisal-Martyn-C-Marais-ebook/dp/B01MRWOWIC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1531566006&sr=1-1

AUTHOR FAVOURITES: THE BOUNTY HUNTERS by MARTYN MARAIS

Martin Marais (writing as Martyn) is like me a Brit writing westerns. He tells me a favourite of his own books is his first, THE BOUNTY HUNTERS.

Michael ‘Tidy’ Callaghan isn’t your average bounty hunter. On arriving at Wellhead, Tidy’s well-trained nose picks up that there might be some trouble brewing in this one-horse town. His cousin-cum-ex-partner Scully arrives on the scene, disguised as a priest and clearly up to no good.

Then Tidy encounters Brett Maverick, casing the bank and alarms bells start ringing. 

With the clock ticking, Tidy only has a small window to discover what Scully’s up to and investigate the true identity of Maverick and what he’s planning before all hell breaks loose. Can Scully and Tidy forget their troubled past and join forces, or is Scully mixed up in the same business as Maverick?

Historical evidence for western bounty hunters is slight, (I’ve blogged before about prototype bounty hunters like TOM HORN and CHARLES SIRINGO) but they’re certainly popular in western fiction!

Naturally the plot, a few bounty hunters turning up in the same remote community, clearly in competition with each other, made me think of Sergio Leone’s ‘dollar’ trilogy, particularly FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE.

Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in ‘For a Few Dollars More’

That one of the bounty hunters is tracking down seven men brought to mind 7 MEN FROM NOW.

Lee Marvin and Randolph Scott in ‘Seven Men from Now’

Brett Maverick, of course, was the character played by JAMES GARNER in the TV Western series ‘Maverick,’ (19557 – 1962) - when his name was spelled Bret – and its spin off ‘Bret Maverick’ (1981-82.) The show was atypical of TV Westerns of the time in being often comedic and tongue-in-cheek. Its varying leads were a collection of brothers and cousins who made a living as Old West gamblers, and, whilst likable, were not notably heroic. James Garner’s Bret Maverick has sometimes been described as the first TV anti-hero.

In 1994 these shows spawned a movie ‘Maverick’ where MEL GIBSON played the lead.

Reviews of THE BOUNTY HUNTERS:

‘Martin Marais has such an easy and fluid writing style… captivating and entertaining story.’

‘Interesting characters and an ingenious plot keep you reading…a fresh take on the story of the bounty hunter.’

‘Enthralling first novella from an exciting new author… near impossible to put down.’

https://www.amazon.com/Bounty-Hunters-Hunter-Book-ebook/dp/B01MPXMVU5/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&dpID=51HBQpRydHL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=detail and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounty-Hunters-Hunter-Book-ebook/dp/B01MPXMVU5/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531297060&sr=1-1&keywords=the+bounty+hunters+martyn+marais