Quick Shots: Dust of the Damned

I was really excited to see this novel announced by my (once) favorite western writer Peter Brandvold. 

His first weird western, Bad Wind Blowing, was one of my favorite reads when I jumped into the genre, and I gave it a glowing review here.  The Lou Prophet series was still running strong with great writing, but was starting to fade a bit as Brandvold was getting more into writing under house names for series like Longarm.  His writing was becoming more just the typical paperback western, but surely something like a weird western would let him write something vibrant and unique. 

So how was the book?  There are… goblins in the west?  The Civil War ended with orcs?  Somehow things are just still humming along?  Something like that.  There was a plot, perhaps, and maybe some characters who were flatter than the Llano Estacado.  I read a few very forgettable chapters, put a bookmark in it, then said I’d get back to it.  That was about eight years ago.  I’ve picked it up occasionally, flipped through, and just couldn’t care enough to got back to it.

To be fair, here's the official description: "A novel about werewolves, ghouls, and cowboys, all fighting for their piece of the American frontier.

The Hell’s Angels are a gang of werewolves who have escaped from Hellsgarde Federal Penitentiary. They were the ones who tore the Confederates into submission at Gettysburg for Lincoln, thus ending the Civil War. Now they’ve headed West—to join the legions of other ghouls . . .

Armed with an arsenal of weapons, the deadliest being Marshal Angel Coffin, notorious ghoulhunter Uriah Zane must stop the hordes of shapeshifting creatures pushing west. Together, Zane and Coffin must stop the werebeasts from attaining final dominion over the earth—with humans as their servants..."

Sounds good, I wonder if we'll get it one day?

I miss those early days when Brandvold’s writing was fresh and it was all still new to me.  The buffalo are gone, the railroad’s come through, and the cat house has turned to a Starbucks.

On Reading Jory Sherman’s Sidewinder While Ordering Chinese Food

On a trip through the Raleigh-Durham airport yesterday I found a used book store in Terminal B, and even more surprisingly it had four shelves of westerns.  With just a few minutes to look before boarding I spotted a copy of Jory Sherman’s Sidewinder.  A vague memory that some blog had given it a good review came to mind, I plunked down my $4.50, threw the book into the backpack that passes as my briefcase, and boarded my flight.  I bypassed Sidewinder, though, and read comics on my Ipod and half of Peter Brandvold’s Dust of the Damned (review forthcoming, I hope).

Today after a long day of work I stopped on the way home at a chinese takeout place.  Knowing it would take a few minutes for my order to come together I reached into my backpack and found Sidewinder.  The girl at the register laughed when I ordered my General Tso’s Bean Curd (what, there are no vegetarian cowboys in China?!?).  Taking a seat, I flipped open the book.

Chapter one, page one, paragraph one.  Already there is a square jawed hero.  No, really, he is described as having a square jaw.  The rest of the page is exacting descriptions of two characters.  Our hero, Brad Storm (seriously?), is given more visual description in this first page than the Kid was given in 327 pages of Blood Meridian.

On to chapter two, in which our hero beats nine kinds of shit out of a rattlesnake.  I think.  That happened really fast and I’m not sure exactly what happened to chapter one.  I go back and reread all of chapter one.  I’m back to chapter two and the snake is still dead and the hero is dying.

Is this the book that got such a good review?  I look at the cover.  Yeah, I think this is it.  I hope the writing picks up.  Wonder what’s taking the food so long?  I like how the delivery guy has his collar flipped up like a bad boy from an 80’s movie.  Is that woman cooking the same woman who took my order?  No, she’s older.  Oh, there’s the cashier, she’s sitting behind the counter playing with her phone.  I’ve really found some good comics for the Ipod.  Wonder if the cook’s married to that delivery guy, they seem to get along.  Can you believe that woman at the other Chinese place by the yoga studio is having another kid?  Amazing.  I don’t have any kids.  She’ll have two.  She seems so young.  Oh yeah, I’m reading this book.

There’s some woman, and she knows how to handle a gun.  Sherman really knows a lot about guns.  I wonder if he knows how to develop characters without direct exposition?  I bet this woman is the wife of the main character and she gets kidnapped.  Let’s read the back cover.  Yup, she gets kidnapped.  Huh, what’s that say:

"Jory Shreman is a national treasure"- Loren Estleman.  

Estleman.  That guy can write.  Didn’t I listen to The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion on my morning walk?  Yeah, I’ll have to listen more in my evening walk.  He writes a lot of good books.  So does F.M. Parker, I should dig some of those out.  Like that trilogy of interconnected novels all taking place in parallel during the Mexican American War?  That was cool.  Amazing how Riders of the Purple Sage turned out to be such a crisply written, proto-feminist, erotic read.  Man I love that book.  Can’t believe Mrs. Slap loved it, too.

Always trust the opinions of Mrs. Slap.

Man, this food is taking a while.  Had to go hunt up extra bean curd.  Where was I?  Chapter four.  Four?!?  Are you fucking kidding?  Okay, now there’s an Arapaho and a Navajo who are helping out the poisoned hero.  Wow, that’s some bad dialog.  Did this come right out of the 1950’s crazy racist Injun dialog book? 

There’s the table with a stack of free magazines.  I should read one of those.  Maybe I’ll leave the book here.  No, someone’ll just throw it away.  People really seem to like this guy’s writing.  I wonder why?  If I review it on my blog and he reads it will he be pissed?  Last time I published an article someone told me to never read the comments.  Then I read the comments.  One day I’ll publish my novel and people will hate it.  That sucks.  Got to finish it first.  First comes my yoga certification, then I’ll finish the book.  Where’s my food?

I really should be reading something better than this.  Ed Erdelac sent me a copy of Merkabah Rider, what, a year ago?  And I still haven’t read it.  I bet it’s better than this.  

Ah, my bean curd.  Smile at the Chinese girl, she’s laughing at your bean curd.  That’s fine, I don’t have to read any more of this book now.

Howling Through the Moonshine

Breckinridge Elkins

Despite all the yoga, what I really want to do today is to drink a gallon of moonshine and howl my way through a drunken brawl with teeth and fists a’flying, rather than fly to a board meeting.  C’est la vie.  Must be time to break out some of Mean Pete's drunk old bastard heroes.

Quickshots: Outlaw Territory Vol 3 (Plus Good Things To Say About Peter Brandvold!)

Outlaw Territory, Image’s anthology of short western comics, is back for its third and reportedly final installment.  If this is the last, well, I think that’s okay.  Volume 1 has some genius storytelling and artwork.  Volume 2, never quite rising to the heights of the first, none the less was a solid collection of action packed, sexy westerns.  In Volume 3 the good ideas started running dry.

The stories is Outlaw Territory Vol 3 have more rape than sex, more violence than gore.  O Henry’s legacy as a western writer was evident in the first two volumes, where ironic twists were the order of the day.  Here, the key message is that the west was not so romantic, with bloody bodies and traumatized survivors to drive the point home. 

One exception to this was Peter Brandvold’s Rogue Lawman comic- short, fun, sexy, with an ironic twist at the end.  Even the weirdly stylized art, which I hated at first, ended up working well.  I liked this comic better than his first Rogue Lawman novel.

I still respect the folks at Image for making this series, which took some guts to pull off.  I just wished the last hurrah was better.

Crazy artwork, great story, two thumbs up for Mean Pete!

Tantric Lone Ranger Rides Again!

As you may be able to tell by the sharp drop in frequency of my blog posts, this is the year that I almost gave up on westerns.  The Lone Ranger and yoga may be what redeems them, but more on that later.  

There were just so many disappointments in westerns this year.  On the comic book front, All-Star Western continues to suck the life out of the genre.  I picked up the latest issue this week and flipped through.  Dr. Jekyll made an appearance, then there was some kind of fight in a slum, and then a Chinese lady is stockings started kung fu fighting.  It is an embarrassment to call this a western.   The backup stories are still great (ironically written by the same very competent team) but I don’t want to spend $4 for a backup story.

Then Peter Brandvold, who I have written so much about in the last year, seems to have lost whatever touch made his Lou Prophet books work for so long.  I’ve tried half a dozen of his more recent novels looking for a return to that wit that made his books great and been disappointed each time (including the one where he said he’d eat the manuscript if I didn’t like it).  His new Rusty Spurr book, which has so much potential, has flat characters that are indistinguishable from one another.  The only time in the last few years that I’ve really enjoyed his books are when he writes weird westerns (Ghost Colts, Bad Wind Blowing); I found Dust of the Damned under my Christmas tree, maybe he’ll be back to form there.

What really killed my desire to write this blog is a tragedy from earlier this year that I still want to write about.  In brief, I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons weekly with the same group of friends for seven years.  Six months ago I worked out a plan with the friend running our game to introduce a gunslinging cowboy into the otherwise pure fantasy game.  It was so much fun that I planned out a five part series of posts to write about it.  That friend died soon after in a tragic accident, leaving behind a wife and two kids.  I can’t come back to the blog without thinking about it.

Oh, and after a sudden onset of gout I’ve become a teetotatling vegetarian.  Takes a lot of the fun out of reading about whiskey swilling fellers eating buffalo when you are sucking down tap water with your tofu.

With all of this disappointment I also almost gave up yoga, something that helped me get over the host of mental, emotional, and physical problems that follow massive invasive surgery.  Something in the practice just wasn’t coming together and I couldn’t figure out why.  I decided before I gave up all together I would go try Bikram, the program that was described to me when I walked in the door as “Simon Says for 90 minutes in a 105 degree room”.  I went in and found a practice that didn’t look a thing like yoga, and though I walked out disappointed I felt somehow good and kept going back.  After my second class I left the building, drove to the local supermarket, and put together a pack of food, water, and hot coffee for the homeless guy at the end of the road.  After my third class I returned to my original yoga home and signed up to learn to be a yoga instructor. 

This is because of westerns, or more specifically because of the Lone Ranger.  I’ve written about the connections between yoga and the Lone Ranger before, and as I move through life they are becoming more palpable.  The notion that one can serve the betterment of humanity, seek to protect life, and do it without the notion of reward (hence the mask) is really entrancing.  Also, he has two Colts and a cool cowboy hat.  It helps that, like the Lone Ranger, I have my own silver mine to support me (in the guise of a great job with a Fortune 100 company).  So the Lone Ranger is my guru, a comic book battle cry is my meditative mantra, and I dream of wearing a mask as I move through the postures of my yoga practice.

Having said that, this movie looks terrible.