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.’
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