BLUFF CITY BRAWLER and other stuff

BLUFF CITY BRAWLER, my go at the so-far terrific series FIGHT CARD, will be out and available pretty soon. Created by Paul Bishop and Mel Odom, FIGHT CARD is a tribute to the great boxing pulps, and under the house name Jack Tunney they've so far released stuff from Eric Beetner, Wayne Dundee, Bishop and Odom themselves, and several others. Amazingly enough, the quality has been consistently top notch with every release.

I'm in the final stages of hammering out my contribution, so it shouldn't be long before you see it. It's a fast-paced boxing/noir tale set in 1950's Detroit and Memphis.

After that, it's more Hawthorne. Beat to a Pulp has picked up the rights to re-release "That Damned Coyote Hill", in tandem with the second Hawthorne tale, "The Long Black Train".

Then back to the novel I started writing way back in November. 2012 is shaping up to be another productive year.

Hawthorne

"His sharp gray eyes took in everything relevant in a split second—there were four men, two of them armed. One was leveling his gun at Hawthorne, aiming when he should have been firing already, and Hawthorne shot him in the neck.

The other one was just slapping leather, and as the first gunman fell back into a jail cell, Hawthorne swung the Schofield around in the gun smoke and put a bullet into his chest. The force of it slammed the second man back into a set of metal bars, but he didn’t drop his gun. Hawthorne gave him a second to realize he was dead, but when the realization didn’t come fast enough he gave him another bullet in the gut to put a finer point on it."

Coming soon from Trestle Press, HAWTHORNE: THE LONG BLACK TRAIN

A Good Day

It's been a good day today, so far. Slept in late, and woke up to find that my story "No Account Sonofabitch" was up at the excellent SHOTGUN HONEY. That alone would've qualified this as a good day, but then I saw that James Reasoner (one of my favorite western writers) had favorably reviewed both "That Damned Coyote Hill" and the first episode of "Deadland USA" over at his blog.

So I'm feeling the strut today.

In other news...

My great pal and designer extraordinare Ron Warren has designed a brand new cover for "That Damned Coyote Hill"-- see image above-- that I am just in love with. Yes, I'm going to marry it. It will be the new look for all future Hawthorne stories, since the original image probably breaks at least twenty copyright laws. And besides, I like this one better. What do you think?

If you've already bought "That Damned Coyote Hill", and you want this image, just let me know and I'll e-mail you a jpeg of it. Or I reckon you could just help yourself to the one posted here.

Hawthorne

I’ve been really surprised and pleased by the response to “That Damned Coyote Hill”. In its first week, it got as high as #23 (very briefly!) over at Amazon.UK’s short horror story sub-category, and in the States made it up to #44. And the reviews have been positive right across the board. Not bad for something that was put together on the fly, huh?

I didn’t have a master plan about Hawthorne, the anti-hero of the story, when I started. I just wanted to do a mysterious, taciturn and bad-ass protagonist, an uncomplicated character that exists solely to dole out brutal punishment to wrong-doers. I gave him the ugly cross-shaped scar on his forehead without knowing how he got it (I know NOW, though, no worries). I decided he wasn’t a lawman or a bounty hunter or a gunfighter. He was instead a force of nature.

I borrowed his name from another character I tried to make a go of as a series hero, Grey Hawthorne (wrote two stories about THAT Hawthorne, both published at The Nautilus Engine). No, it’s not the same guy. Maybe this new Hawthorne is the other one’s uncle or something. Or maybe they just exist in two different worlds. It doesn’t matter.

But anyway, in the week since “That Damned Coyote Hill”, I’ve had occasion to think about his future. He has an origin of sorts now, although it’ll be a long time before I tell that one, I think, as it really isn’t important. I’m about half-way through his next adventure, tentatively titled “Long Black Train”, and have another two or three taking shape in my head. What will the readers learn about the mysterious avenger Hawthorne in these new stories? Very little, actually. But the bad guys, victimizers, killers, rapists… they’ll learn what it feels like to be on the other side of the equation.

And there will be no shortage of bizarre creatures and supernatural evil.

Thanks, everyone, for giving me the chance to write this stuff. And if you really dig Hawthorne, tell a friend.

THAT DAMNED COYOTE HILL

The cover for my new e-short from Trestle Press, "That Damned Coyote Hill". As usual, put together with the mad skills of Ron Warren. At my request, he took an existing image and combined it with an original photograph of his own to produce a very evocative cover. I think it turned out pretty goddamn good.