Writing for
Zelmer Pulp really pushes my limits. Sci-Fi was a tough gig for me and ROBOTS
took me about as far out of my comfort zone as I ever want to be. FIVE BROKEN WINCHESTERS on the other hand was a stone cold blast. Brian Panowich’s RED
DECEMBER was already slated to open the collection. It’s a killer story from a
writer at the top of his game and when I’d finished reading it I knew I had a
really tough act to follow.
As much as I
dig the horror mix of the weird western, I wanted to bring something more
traditional to the 5BW party. Okay, now some of you are going to get all uppity
here and say how the traditional western has been a dead genre since the 70’s
and that there are no more stories to tell. With respect, that’s a load of
crap. As David Cranmer said to me recently, when the name Bass Reeves rolls off
the American tongue like Wyatt Earp then we might be halfway there. Go ahead and Google
him. I’ll wait.
The old west was home to some really amazing characters. The true stories of these pioneering men and woman are often far more fascinating than the dime novel myths that have since grown up around them. Everybody has heard of Calamity Jane, right? No doubt that name calls to mind the tooth-achingly sweet rendering afforded her by Doris Day in the musical of the same name. What Hollywood failed to mention was that in real life, Martha Jane Canary (AKA Calamity Jane) was at times a prostitute, a manic depressive and an alcoholic. Instead of riding off into the sunset with Howard Keel, she ended her days washing the whore's undergarments in a South Dakota brothel. The wild west might not always have been as glamorous as the movies would have you believe, but there are plenty of stories still to be told.
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MJC - Definitely not Doris Day |
I wanted to create the kind of female lead who had what they would have called sand back in the day. She wasn't going to be the kind to jump on top of the nearest cowboy at every opportunity and she certainly wouldn't be bursting into tears at the first sign of trouble. I also wanted a touch of the mysterious bad ass about her. A bit like the man-with-no-name thing that Sergio Leone had going on in the Dollar movies. Above all I wanted the story to have blood and dying and plenty of action. I can’t write the sort of beautiful prose that sings and fills up your heart like my ZP brother, Isaac Kirkman. I’m a pulp hack and for me it’s all about the action. Having said that a degree of authenticity is also important to me.
The end
result was the debut of a tough little female bounty hunter who goes by the name of
Justice McCann. I haven’t been kind to her; she’s had a hard life up to this
point and it doesn’t get much easier for her in THE GUNS OF JUSTICE, but she’s a real
fighter. And thanks to Chuck Regan’s red ink she’s a much better protagonist
now than when she started out.
It was an
honor to be part of FIVE BROKEN WINCHESTERS, not only did I get to have a story
of mine in the same book as a Hawthorne tale (That's Heath Fricking Lowrance, people!) I also got to play in my favorite genre with
my best pals.
I really
hope you dig the collection. And if you
want to know how Justice came by those God-awful scars of hers, you can find
out in my novella GOSPEL OF THE BULLET, which will be released through Zelmer
Pulp next year.
Did I really just write this whole post without mentioning Ryan Sayles once?
Did I really just write this whole post without mentioning Ryan Sayles once?