Witchery Plus: A Weird Tales Trilogy - Keith Chapman

Several years ago my friend Keith Chapman published a pair of stories--a fantasy in the mold of Clark Ashton Smith and a sword and sorcery yarn--in a double volume. He's redone that book, added a third story, this time a modern-day horror yarn set in Australia, and published it as WITCHERY PLUS: A WEIRD TALES TRILOGY, which is available in both e-book and print editions on Amazon.

"Night Howl" is the new story in this volume. Chapman sold a number of comic book scripts to Charlton for their horror titles, and the original version of this story was one of them, but it went unpublished when Charlton switched over to mostly reprints. Converted to prose, it appeared first on the BEAT TO A PULP website and now is in print for the first time. It's about a pair of lovers on the run from a murder charge, and in that respect, it works very well as a noir crime yarn. But there's also a possibly supernatural element involving an old Gothic paperback featuring a heroine with the same name as one of the characters in this story. Are the bizarre events of that old paperback replaying themselves in real life? Chapman uses that question as the springboard for a very well-written tale that generates suspense all the way to the end.

Now here's what I had to say (slightly edited) about the other two stories when I reviewed them back in 2013:

"After an interesting introduction that addresses the genesis of these tales, Chapman produces a fine Clark Ashton Smith pastiche set in Smith's evil-haunted French province Averoigne, "Black Art in Yvones". A young protagonist, a beautiful blonde, and a sinister femme fetale even give this tale a slight noirish feel. In the second novelette in this collection, Chapman ventures into sword-and-sorcery territory with "Wildblood and the Witch Wife", featuring a very likable pair of adventurers reminiscent of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It's set in historical England rather than a fantasy world, but there's still plenty of sorcery and action."

Although probably best known for his Westerns, Keith Chapman is one of those authors who can write just about anything and do a good job of it. He's a fine storyteller, as these stories amply demonstrate. If you've never sampled his work before, WITCHERY PLUS would be a very good place to start.