Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #14: The Bigfoot Issue! - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

I’m no expert on Bigfoot and his cryptid cousins, by any means. I remember reading a comic strip when I was a kid where the characters encountered the Abominable Snowman, and it wasn’t played for laughs like the Bumble in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER. In fact, it scared the crap out of me. But I don’t remember what the comic strip was. If any of you recall a comic strip featuring an Abominable Snowman storyline in the 1960-65 period, let me know!

Then there’s THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, the Seventies docu-drama film about Arkansas’s Fouke Monster. One of my best friends had family in that area and visited often, and he swore the monster was real, although he had never seen it.

So I was ready to be educated about Bigfoot, making me part of the prime audience for the 14th issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE! From the talented editorial due of Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, this volume leans more on non-fiction than some of the previous issues of this great publication. There are lengthy articles from well-known zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, current cryptid expert Loren Coleman, and John W. Burns, one of the first authors to investigate the mystery that came to be known as Bigfoot. Also to be found in this issue are articles about Bigfoot’s appearances in movies, including the above-mentioned THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, and other media. I had no idea there have been so many movies over the years featuring Bigfoot and his assorted cousins! Other articles detail Bigfoot’s several guest-starring turns on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, as well as the series BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY. I remember hearing about those episodes of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, but I don’t recall watching them back when those episodes were new and have never seen them since, so this was all new and very entertaining for me.

And of course, there’s some wild, men’s adventure magazine fiction about discovering and fighting Bigfoot-like creatures, and as always, I had a great time reading those yarns.

As for my own encounters with Bigfoot, I don’t have any. But about forty years ago, Bill Crider and I collaborated on chapters-and-outline for a men’s adventure novel involving a Yeti. Unfortunately, it never sold. Going back farther to 1969, I lived only a few miles from the nature refuge where the Lake Worth Monster, sometimes called the Goatman, had the whole area worked up for the whole summer. You can read about that here. I tend to be skeptical about such things, but you couldn’t have gotten me to go out to Greer Island that summer. No, sir. Since then, people I know have claimed the whole thing was a hoax and they know who was behind it. Could be. But I just don’t know.

To get back to MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE!, this is another great issue of one of my favorite publications, and I give it a very high recommendation. You can find it on Amazon or buy it directly from the publisher.

(Apologies for rambling around a little more than usual. Seems to be the way my brain works these days.)

Coming Soon: Bullets and Other Hurting Things: A Tribute to Bill Crider - Rick Ollerman, ed.

From the Down & Out Books website:

In a career spanning nearly four decades, Bill Crider published more than sixty crime fiction, westerns, horror, men’s adventure and YA novels. In this collection 20 of today’s best and brightest, all friends and fans of Bill’s, come together with original stories to pay tribute to his memory. Authors include: William Kent Krueger, Bill Pronzini, Joe R. Lansdale, Patricia Abbott, Ben Boulden, Michael Bracken, Jen Conley, Brendan DuBois, Charlaine Harris, David Housewright, Kasey Lansdale, Angela Crider Neary, James Reasoner, James Sallis, Terry Shames, S. A. Solomon, Sara Paretsky, Robert J. Randisi, SJ Rozan, and Eryk Pruitt.

William Kent Krueger (Ordinary Grace, the Cork O’Connor series) brings us a story of romance and grift. Bill Pronzini (the Nameless Detective and Carpenter & Quincannon series) offers a taut episode of a midnight raid. Joe R. Lansdale (The Bottoms, the Hap and Leonard series) tells a tale of two hit men working through their differences. James Sallis (Drive, the Lew Griffin series) shows us how a deadly figure once helped out a man called Bill. Charlaine Harris (the Sookie Stackhouse and Midnight, Texas series) reminds us to be careful of what we wish for. Sara Paretsky (the V.I. Warshawski series) shows how truly deadly a terrible storm can be.

These and fourteen more stories are offered here in the appreciation of our friend and colleague, Bill Crider. These stories were written for him.

I'm so happy this book is coming out. Bill was one of my best friends for more than 40 years, and I still find myself thinking nearly every day, "I need to ask Bill about that" or "I have to tell Bill about that." The story I wrote for this anthology is a sequel to "Comingor", the first story ever published under my name, and my second published story overall, 43 years ago. It's set in the same part of Texas as Bill's Dan Rhodes novels, in the next county to the east, in fact. I also think it's one of the best stories I've written. I'm looking forward to seeing what all the other authors came up with. The book is available for pre-order on the Down & Out Books website and will be showing up in all the other usual places later on.

The Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction/Bouchercon Anthology

Bill Crider and James Reasoner, Jackson, Wyoming, 1992

As most if not all of you know, Bill Crider was one of my best friends for many, many years, and Bouchercon is honoring his memory with the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction. You can find all the details on this page, but here are some highlights.

Prizes

• First Prize: $1000
• Second Prize: $750
• Third Prize: $500
• Bill Crider Memorial Scholarship: Registration to Bouchercon 2020

Submissions

• Open to all writers regardless of Bouchercon registration or residency
• Stories must be an original work, not previously published, submitted anonymously (as provided in these rules), and without identifiable series characters
• Theme: Deep in the Heart (relating to Texas, whether locale, characters, history, etc.) with an element of mystery or crime

Lots more info on the Bouchercon page.

Also this from Rick Ollerman regarding the convention anthology:

Attention Writers and Attendees of the 50th Anniversary Bouchercon, 2019:

YES, there will be an anthology this year! And yes, you can submit a story for consideration as long as you’re a registered conference attendee! Here’s all you need to know:

– One of Bouchercon 50’s goals is to make the largest charitable contribution in the history of the conference. All proceeds from the sale of the books will go toward that effort! LIFT, Literary Instruction For Texas, works to enhance and strengthen communities by teaching adults to read. And Bouchercon gets to help in that mission this year!

– For a theme, think no further than the conference slogan: Denim, Diamonds, and Death!

–  Original stories are vastly preferred. Absolutely no reprints, please.

– Stories should be less than five thousand words. Approximately. Sort of. But you know writers.

–  The book itself will once again be published by the fine folks at Down & Out Books.

–  The deadline for all stories will be June 1st.

If you think you’ve got the story for the anthology, not just a story, please send it to rick@downandoutmagazine.com. We’ll have the book for sale in the book room with some signings and hopefully we’ll be able to make a meaningful contribution to LIFT as well as showcase some of the amazing talent in the Bouchercon writing community.

I plan to be in attendance at this Bouchercon, only the second one I've ever been to, and it would be great to meet some of you there.

Best, Bill

So there I was, sometime in 1978, reading a copy of ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, which had a small section of classified ads on the last page. Among those tiny-print listings, there was an ad for something called THE NOT SO PRIVATE EYE, which seemed to be a fanzine devoted to private eye fiction, my long-time favorite sub-genre of mystery fiction. Back issues were available, so I sent off a check to the editor/publisher, Andy Jaysnovitch, and in due time I got a box in the mail containing all the issues that had been published up until then. I was only vaguely aware of what fanzines are, and that was because I’d read about ones devoted to science fiction, although I’d never seen one. The small Texas town where I grew up wasn’t a place where you would run into such things.

But when I started reading TNSPE, as it was known to its subscribers, I knew right away that I loved this sort of thing: articles about private eye fiction and its authors; reviews of books new and old; and maybe best of all, a letters section where fellow fans could get together. A prehistoric version of Facebook, if you will.

As I looked through those letters and saw the names and addresses of the guys who had written in, I noticed one thing right away. Some of them were from Texas! There were fellow fans of the stuff that I loved! I had never met or even corresponded with any. As far as I could tell, I was the only person who read Mike Shayne or Shell Scott novels anywhere in the vast Lone Star State.

Not only was one of those fans in Texas, he actually lived in Brownwood, a town I knew quite well because I had relatives all over that part of the country. Bill Crider, his name was. So I acted on impulse and wrote him a letter introducing myself. (The other two Texas fans who had letters in TNSPE were Joe Lansdale and Tom Johnson, and I could write a lot about them, too, but this is Bill’s day.)

Bill wrote back immediately. He recognized my name from a story I had published in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, “Down in the Valley”. That started a pattern that went on for years: I’d write a letter to Bill, and five or six days later, I’d get one in return. (The post office was a little more efficient and dependable in those days, or at least so it seemed.) We talked about books we’d read and movies we’d seen and got to know about each other’s families. After a while, since Brownwood was only a two-hour drive away from where I lived, I drove down there one Sunday and had lunch with Bill, his wife Judy, and their kids Allen and Angela. Later, Bill took us all out to Greenleaf Cemetery and showed me the grave of Robert E. Howard, a writer both of us admired greatly. And he gave me a bunch of duplicate paperbacks from his collection, great old Gold Medals and other vintage paperbacks.

Later, I made another trip to Brownwood and delivered a VCR to him. They had just started selling those to the public, and my dad sold them at his TV shop, so I was able to get him a good deal. The thing was enormous and heavy, had a corded remote, and would record a whole two hours on a videotape. But for the early Eighties, it was a pretty cool deal. On that same trip, Bill took me to a couple of used bookstores in Brownwood, so I went home with more books again.

Around that same time, Bill sold his first book, a Nick Carter novel written with a friend of his named Jack Davis. I remember unfolding one of Bill’s letters and seeing the first line: “The Nick Carter book SOLD!” From that beginning, he went on to become one of the most beloved and acclaimed mystery writers of the past three decades with his Sheriff Dan Rhodes series as well as other mystery series and stand-alones. And while he was doing that, he published a bunch of critically acclaimed Western and horror novels and became one of the most reliable authors of house-name men’s adventure and Western novels. We worked together on six books, four in the Cody’s Law series under the name Matthew S. Hart and two in the Trailsman series as Jon Sharpe.

We saw each other fairly often at conventions like Aggiecon and Armadillocon and best of all, the annual Cluefests in Dallas. On the Friday evening of Cluefest, Dallas mystery fan Barry Gardner (who, as it turned out, was the son of Bennie Gardner, aka Gunnison Steele, one of the Western pulp authors I greatly enjoyed) held a barbecue at his house for a small group of fans and writers that included at various times Bill, Scott Cupp, Marv Lachman, Richard Moore, Steve Stilwell, Bruce Taylor, and others I know I’m forgetting. Those evenings are some of the best convention-related memories I have.

With the rise of the Internet, Bill and I traded emails instead of letters, but we stayed in touch. He started a blog (which in the early days featured frequent posts about how much he disliked mowing his lawn) and that blog inspired me to start one of my own. By this time he had moved from Brownwood to Alvin, near Houston, to teach at Alvin Community College. We still ran into each other at conventions but not as often since real life kept us away from them more than it used to. But every time we saw each other, it was like the proverbial no time at all had passed. We could sit down and pick right up talking about books, writing, movies, and anything and everything else.

The trials that Bill has gone through over the past decade are probably well known to everyone reading this. He helped his wife Judy battle cancer and then, after losing her, fought the disease himself. Through it all, he’s continued to turn out fine books, kept producing his blog until very recently, and adopted three kittens whose luckiest day ever was the day Bill found them. He’s been able to make it to a few conventions. I saw him at Armadillocon in Austin in 2016, and again, the times we spent together there will always be favorite convention memories.

At the bottom of that very first letter from Brownwood all those years ago was the signature, “Best, Bill”. That’s exactly what everyone who knows Bill has gotten from him: his best friendship, and it’s very good indeed. Here’s to you, Bill, with thanks for the past forty years. It’s been my honor and my great pleasure.

Best,

James 

Forgotten Books, Bill Crider Edition: We'll Always Have Murder - Bill Crider

I wanted to read something I hadn’t read before for Bill Crider Week, which is no easy task because I’ve read a lot of Bill’s books over the years. But somehow I’d never read WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER, which was intended to be the first of a series featuring Humphrey Bogart, narrated by Terry Scott, a private eye who works for Jack Warner. Like Bill Lennox and Dan Turner before him, Terry Scott is a Hollywood troubleshooter whose job is keeping movie stars out of trouble. In this case, the star is Bogart. Frank Burleson, a sleazy private detective who works for one of the lower-rung studios in much the same capacity that Scott works for Warner Brothers, is trying to blackmail Bogart. Jack Warner wants Scott to get Burleson off the star’s back. But when Scott and Bogart pay a visit to Burleson, they find the guy murdered—with a .45 stolen from Bogart’s apartment during a wild party lying beside the body—and a couple of hostile cops show up mere moments later to complete the frame.

All you have to do is read that description of the opening to know that this is the sort of book I love, and I suspect many of you do, too. Naturally enough, Scott and Bogart set out to find the real killer in order to clear Bogart’s name. If Burleson was trying to blackmail Bogart, it stands to reason he had other blackmail targets as well, and since most of the people who were at Bogart’s party and had the opportunity to steal the murder gun are working together on a jungle picture at Superior Studios, that leads the two investigators into more trouble in a back-lot jungle, where, before you know it, another murder takes place.

What do you want in a book like this? Snappy patter? Gangsters? Thuggish henchmen? Night clubs? Beautiful actresses? Fistfights and shootouts and our heroes being taken for a ride? You get all that and more in WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER, and all of it told in a smooth, fast-paced style. Bill does a great job of blending historical characters with fictional ones (Peter Lorre’s cameo appearance is wonderful). Writing a historical mystery like this can be tricky. It’s easy to go overboard with the period details. Bill never does this, and as a result, the setting is very evocative without being heavy-handed.

I can’t even pretend to be an objective reviewer in this case, since Bill and I have been friends for more than 40 years, but I can tell you this in all sincerity and you can believe me or not: WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER is a wonderful book, one of the most entertaining I’ve read in a long time, and I give it my highest recommendation. And I’d say that whether I knew the guy or not.

Now Available: The Digest Enthusiast, Book Five

A new volume of THE DIGEST ENTHUSIAST is out, which means plenty of good reading for fans of digest magazines such as myself. For me the highlights of Book Five are a lengthy interview with Bill Crider, my oldest friend in the writing business; Gary Lovisi's review of the fine noir novel HONKY TONK GIRL by Charles Beckman, Jr.; and a couple of articles/checklists by Peter Infantino, one covering the relatively obscure crime digest JUSTICE, the other an extensive look at a magazine I've read a great deal about but never seen, MAGAZINE OF HORROR, edited by Robert A.W. Lowndes. I've long been interested in Lowndes' ability to put out some pretty entertaing pulps on tiny budgets, and he did the same with this digest. There's also a summary by DIGEST ENTHUSIAST editor/publisher Richard Krauss of a 1949 WRITER'S YEARBOOK article by Lowndes about writing fiction for the pulps. Great stuff all around, and highly recommended.

Sidewise Award Nominations

I'm beyond pleased and proud that my short story "The Hero of Deadwood", which appeared in TALES FROM THE OTHERVERSE, is a finalist for the Sidewise Award in the Best Short-Form Alternate History category. Even better, one of the other stories is the book is also a finalist, but I'll let the author of that one post about it. TALES is the only publication to have two finalists in it, so as editor and publisher I'm really excited about that, too. All the details and finalists can be found here.

Now Available: Tales From the Otherverse

Other times, other places, other stories than the ones we know...These are the Tales From the Otherverse, where anything is possible and things never work out quite the way you'd expect. Some of today's top talents in popular fiction turn their hands to tales of alternate history. Featuring new stories by bestselling, award-winning authors Bill Crider, Lou Antonelli, Scott A. Cupp, Robert E. Vardeman, James Reasoner, and more. Explore the Otherverse and see what might have been! (Amazon links are below. Also available from Smashwords for all platforms.)

Coming Soon: Tales From the Otherverse

Other times, other places, other stories than the ones we know...These are the Tales From the Otherverse, where anything is possible and things never work out quite the way you'd expect. Some of today's top talents in popular fiction turn their hands to tales of alternate history. Featuring new stories by bestselling, award-winning authors Bill Crider, Lou Antonelli, Scott A. Cupp, Robert E. Vardeman, James Reasoner, and more. Explore the Otherverse and see what might have been!

Now Available: Weird Menace Volume 1

The Weird Menace pulps flourished for less than a decade, from the mid-1930s to the early '40s, but while they were popular, they delivered adventure, excitement, and spine-tingling thrills in quantities rarely seen before or since. Mad scientists, deranged henchmen, damsels in distress, and stalwart heroes raced through their pages in breathless, over-the-top, never-ending action. A good Weird Menace yarn really is just one damned thing after another. 

Rough Edges Press asked some of today's best authors of popular fiction to write Weird Menace stories, and they delivered. Settle back and let us spin a few yarns for you... 

But keep an eye out behind you. You never know when something might be sneaking up on you. 

Stories in this volume include: 
"Bodies for the Brain Butcher" by John C. Hocking 
"A Night on Madhouse Mountain" by Bill Crider 
"The Curse of the Monster Makers!" by Scott Dennis Parker 
"Farmhouse of the Dead" by Keith West 
"The Hideous Blood Ray" by Robert E. Vardeman 
"Blood Treasure for Satan's Buccaneers" by James Reasoner

 

Coming Soon: Weird Menace Volume 1

That cover sort of says it all, doesn't it? And this is only the first volume. Volume 2 will also be out later this month.

UPDATE: When I posted this earlier, there were a couple of things I wasn't sure of, but now I can add the table of contents:

"Bodies for the Brain Butcher", John C. Hocking
"A Night on Madhouse Mountain", Bill Crider
"The Curse of the Monster Makers!", Scott Dennis Parker
"Farmhouse of the Dead", Keith West
"The Hideous Blood Ray", Robert E. Vardeman
"Blood Treasure for Satan's Buccaneers", James Reasoner

Plus I'll write an intro for the book.

Forgotten Books: The Iron Horse - William Grant (James Reasoner)

Today is my birthday, so I thought I'd write about one of my own books for a change. It's certainly forgotten, being the first book in a short-lived series from a publisher that's long since defunct. THE IRON HORSE launched the Faraday series, which was packaged by Book Creations Inc. and created by one of my editors there, Paul Block. The publisher was Lynx Books. The concept was that the stories would center around railroad detectives who worked for an agency headed up by Matthew Faraday, who in my mind always looked like Randolph Scott, although on this cover he looks more like Ted Knight from THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. These agents would be the actual heroes of the books, with Faraday serving more as a mentor and supervisor.

I remember very little about the plot of this one. It had something to do with some villains sabotaging the construction of a railroad. The hero looked like Audie Murphy, at least in my head. There was an old scout/buffalo hunter who wasn't old enough and whiskery enough to be a Gabby Hayes character. More like Ben Johnson. There was a lot of ridin' and shootin', a little romance, and the good guys won in the end. What can I say? It was more than 25 years ago, and I've written a lot of books since then. I recall that I enjoyed the book and thought it turned out pretty well. There are cheap copies available on-line if you want to judge for yourself.

THE IRON HORSE is the only Faraday novel I wrote. Paul Block, who was a writer as well as an editor for BCI, wrote the second one. Robert Vaughan wrote a couple, as did Bill Crider. Only one of Bill's was published, since Lynx Books collapsed unexpectedly. I've heard that Chet Cunningham also wrote one that went unpublished, but I don't know if that's true. The business was a lot different in those days, but it was fun, too.

Check 'Em Out: Outrage at Blanco and Texas Vigilante - Bill Crider

OUTRAGE AT BLANCO 

It’s True Grit meets Gran Torino in a blazingly original crime novel from Bill Crider, an Edgar and Shamus finalist and a two-time winner of the Anthony Award 

On a bloody day in 1887, death came to Blanco, Texas. 

Before the sun went down, the livery stable was torched, an outlaw gang robbed the bank, two men were killed, and young newlywed Ellie Taine was raped. One of the dead was the man who planned the robbery – the son of dying, legendary Texas Ranger Jonathan Crossland – the other was Ellie’s husband, an innocent bystander. 

The dead don’t know fear. 

Ellie is dead inside. She takes a gun and rides out after the desperadoes, cold-blooded and fearless, determined to kill the men who ruined her life. She’s joined by Jonathan Crossland, who only has days left to live… but would rather die in his saddle making amends for his son than rot in his bed. Together, Ellie and Jonathan set out on a mission of vengeance and justice, one that neither of them expects nor hopes to survive. 

“In the hands of Bill Crider, noir seems as atmospheric and doomful as ever,” Publisher’s Weekly 

"Bill Crider is one of the most unpretentious and versatile pure entertainers in the mystery field." Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine 

TEXAS VIGILANTE

The powerful sequel to Outrage at Blanco, Edgar & Shamus Award nominee Bill Crider’s startlingly original western crime novel 

Six months ago, Ellie was a newlywed, working the dry land in 1880s Texas. Then the desperados came. They raped her and killed her husband, leaving her for dead. But she hunted them down and, along the way, found an inner strength and relentless determination that no man can match. Ellie thought the killing was over…that she’d put her guns away for good to run a ranch that she’d inherited from a legendary Texas Ranger. She was wrong. 

A prison wagon is on its way to Huntsville when one of the prisoners, ruthless killer Angel Ware, engineers a bold escape. Now free, and blaming his sister Sue for his arrest, Angel and a gang of three other escaped murderers track her and her family down to Ellie’s ranch. Angel and his gang mount a bloody attack and take Sue’s young child with them. There’s a posse on its way, but Ellie Taine isn’t going to wait. She saddles her horse and loads her guns, prepared to enforce the only justice she can rely on...her own. 

“As clean and sharp as a fine Bowie knife. Crider’s prose slices through conventions and expectations,” –Booklist 

I read the original editions of these books and think they're excellent. They're probably my favorites of all the Westerns Bill has written and two of my favorites of his books, period. They're now available again in e-book and print editions from Brash Books. Check 'em out!

Now Available from Rough Edges Press: Fast Track - Ed Gorman and Bill Crider

Dev Mallory has been a Secret Service agent, a detective, and a cowboy...which makes him the perfect man for the job of protecting a British nobleman's Thoroughbred race horse and saving the U.S. government from embarrassment. But there's more going on than sabotage, as Dev's beautiful redheaded partner is kidnapped and Dev finds himself up to his neck in murder, lust, and intrigue.

Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Ed Gorman and Bill Crider team up for this fast-paced Western mystery now available again from Rough Edges Press. Packed with action and colorful characters, FAST TRACK is an adventure novel where the suspense never lets up!

FAST TRACK on Amazon

FAST TRACK on Barnes & Noble

FAST TRACK on Smashwords

Among the Anthropophagai! - Bill Crider

Bill Crider's "Among the Anthropophagai!: A Story of Gorillas and Gasbags" is pure pulp adventure of the finest sort. Take away the modern-day framing device that introduces the story and this yarn of exploration and danger in darkest Africa could have been published in ADVENTURE or ARGOSY during the Thirties.

The narrator, a retired anthropologist named Caleb Brown, spins a yarn of how he and his friend, explorer Richard Hawkins, penetrate the supposedly impenetrable Forest of Bwindi in search of the Anthropophagai, a possibly mythical race of cannibalistic creatures who resemble gorillas, except for the fact their heads grow beneath their shoulders. Do they and their expedition find what they're seeking, along with deadly danger? Well, what do you think?

Crider keeps the action hurtling along in true pulp fashion, leading up to a great action-packed climax. Sprinkled throughout the story are references to their other adventures, and I for one want to read them. This story is great fun, and if you want to have a fine pulpish time, you need to check it out. Highly recommended.

Now Available: Rancho Diablo: Songbird - Colby Jackson (Bill Crider)

Yowza! The new Rancho Diablo novel is out. And speaking of yowza . . . check out that cover featuring the gorgeous Kasey Lansdale. Bill Crider is the author behind the Colby Jackson pseudonym this time around. If you're a Western fan you won't want to miss this one.

Forgotten Books: The Prisoners - Matthew S. Hart (James Reasoner and Bill Crider)

I'm probably fudging a little by writing about a book I had a hand in, but the Cody's Law series is long out of print and probably won't ever be reprinted, so it's pretty much forgotten. Besides, Bill mentioned this book recently on an email group we both belong to, and I thought some of you might be interested in it. Warning: this post is as much memoir as it is about the book and has some behind-the-scenes stuff in it, so if that doesn't appeal to you, feel free to move on. My feelings won't be hurt, I promise.

The Cody's Law series came about because the Western editor at Bantam at the time had worked at Leisure earlier in his career and edited a series of Westerns by Roe Richmond about a Texas Ranger named Lashtrow. Some of you have probably read some of those books. Richmond must have been a believer in the freelancer's adage, "Never throw anything away." Because those Lashtrow novels were actually rewrites and expansions of novels that Richmond wrote for the pulp magazine TEXAS RANGERS during the Fifties, featuring Ranger Jim Hatfield. For the paperback version, Hatfield became "Lash" Lashtrow, but the supporting characters all remained the same.

The Bantam editor approached an editor at Book Creations Inc., the book packaging company I was doing a lot of work for at the time, and asked BCI to come up with a Texas Ranger series similar to the Lashtrow books. The editor at BCI was also an author and planned to write the first book in the series, and he asked me if I would continue it from there. I agreed, of course, since back then I never turned down work (I still don't turn it down very often, and only when I just don't have time to do anything else). As it turned out, the editor at BCI was too busy to write the book, so after doing an outline and a couple of chapters he gave it to me and told me to use whatever I wanted out of it. By this time he had mentioned the Roe Richmond/Lashtrow connection to me and asked me if I was familiar with those books. I just said that I was and didn't mention that I was very familiar with the original versions, having read dozens of issues of TEXAS RANGERS including some of Richmond's Jim Hatfield novels. I think I was the only one in this particular loop aware of the true origin of the Lashtrow books.

So I kept the outline, rewrote the first couple of chapters the editor had done, renamed the hero Sam Cody (I don't recall what his name was in the first draft), and finished the book, going one step further back than the Lashtrow books and basing my version very much on the Jim Hatfield character from TEXAS RANGERS, while still trying to make him a distinctive character in his own right, of course. Sam Cody was never a Jim Hatfield clone . . . but I tried to get that same sort of Western pulp hero spirit into the books.

So time went by and I wrote the first six books in the series, all published under the pseudonym Matthew S. Hart. I was doing a lot of other work for BCI, and the editor got worried that the workload might be too much for me. He wanted to bring in another author to write a couple of the books. I wasn't real crazy about this idea. I felt like I could do it all (a feeling that still gets me in trouble from time to time). But since BCI owned the series I couldn't really object.

The editor also wanted me to team up with yet another author on the other books, with me providing outlines and the other author doing first drafts, which I would then edit and polish. The person he had in mind was Bill Crider, who had written a couple of books for BCI.

Now, as it happens, Bill is my oldest friend in the writing business and a fine author, so I was pretty pleased with this arrangement. The first book we did together was #8 in the series, EAGLE PASS.

Which brings us to THE PRISONERS.

I've mentioned many times how Livia helps me with the plots on some of my books. She wrote a half-page outline for the book that became THE PRISONERS, which I developed into a much more detailed outline (the editors at BCI loved detailed outlines). The plot involves Sam Cody having to fetch in a prisoner from an isolated mansion on the West Texas plains during a freak blizzard and ice storm. The family that lives in the mansion is . . . unusual, to say the least, and gives Cody a lot of trouble as he tries to complete his assignment, which is also complicated by the captured outlaw. So after a while I started telling people that THE PRISONERS was the world's only vampire/lesbian/cannibal/incest Western. Which as far as I know it is. I believe that description is a little exaggerated, though, since I don't remember them being vampires. But I suppose they could have been.

What's odd is that despite all those bizarre elements, I think THE PRISONERS turned out to be a decent traditional Western with a stalwart hero, a villainous outlaw, and plenty of ridin' and shootin'. I'm not sure how we pulled all that together, but I believe we did.

On a related note, some years ago I was at a convention where Elmer Kelton was the Guest of Honor, and I wound up with the job of doing the GOH interview with him. During the interview I pointed out the rather strange juxtaposition of having the man widely regarded as the world's greatest living Western writer (and maybe the greatest Western writer of all time) sharing the podium with the co-author of the world's only vampire/lesbian/cannibal/incest Western. But hey, that's the writing business for you, isn't it? You never know who you're going to wind up sitting next to.

Copies of THE PRISONERS, and all the other Cody's Law books, can be found pretty cheaply on the Internet. I wrote #1 – 6, and Bill and I collaborated on #8, 9, 11, and 12. I think they're all solid, entertaining Westerns.

One more side note: the contract was supposed to run through #14, but after #12 had been turned in, Bantam told BCI they were cancelling the series. In fact, they not only cancelled Cody's Law in mid-contract, they cancelled the other three series I was working on for BCI at the same time, effectively putting me out of work, a condition that didn't last long, thank goodness. But for years after that whenever Livia and I got bad news, we would groan and say, "Oh, no! We've been Bantamed!"

Now Available: Wolf Creek: Kiowa Vengeance

The second Wolf Creek novel is out from Western Fictioneers, available in both e-book and trade paperback editions. Writing as Ford Fargo this time around is an all-star group of bestselling and award-winning authors: Bill Crider, Jackson Lowry, Kerry Newcomb, Troy D. Smith, Frank Roderus, and Robert J. Randisi. Check it out!

Free Rancho Diablo!

Today only, you can get Bill Crider's Rancho Diablo novel DEAD MAN'S REVENGE absolutely free on Amazon. Grab this one while you can!

The New Rancho Diablo Book is Out, Yuh Whippersnappers!

The new Rancho Diablo book, GABBY DARBINS AND THE SLIDE-ROCK BOLTER, is now available from Amazon. Bill Crider, writing as Colby Jackson, is the author of this entry, which focuses on Gabby Darbins, the colorful ranch hand. It's full of action and humor, and if you love tall tales, you've got to read this one. Check it out!