New Story for Hallowe'en at Beat to a Pulp

Over at the fantastic Beat to a Pulp website today, you can read an oddball little yarn of mine called "One Night Near Hangtown". Many thanks to David and Elaine for publishing it. I've been trying to write more short stories in recent months, and I'm also attempting to do some different things in them than I do in my novels. I think it's good for a writer to shake things up a little, and it's also fun. I have three or four more stories that will be appearing in print anthologies, but I think it'll be a while before any of them show up. I'd also like to write some more flash fiction. I published half a dozen or so of those a couple of years ago, one under my name and the others under a pseudonym, and thought it was great fun writing them. I haven't had any ideas lately that seemed to fit the format, though. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy "One Night Near Hangtown".

Forgotten Books: Secret of Death Valley - William Heuman

Hamp Cameron comes to Mormon, a town on the edge of Death Valley, looking for the gambler who seduced his sister and then abandoned her to die. That’s a book right there by itself, right? Not in the hands of William Heuman, who often begins a book where others would probably end it. Hamp Cameron’s vengeance quest becomes something else entirely, as he finds himself caught up in a war between two rival outfits hauling borax out of Death Valley.

When I was a kid, we always watched the TV show “Death Valley Days”, which was sponsored by Twenty Mule Team Borax. So I was a little familiar with this background before I read Heuman’s book. He doesn’t go into great detail about the borax industry, but he puts in enough to be interesting. There are also a couple of romantic triangles, some shootouts, and several brutal fistfights, all told in Heuman’s terse, hardboiled prose that reminds me of the work of Ben Haas, Dudley Dean McGaughey, Peter Germano, and Gordon D. Shirreffs.

I’ve read several of Heuman’s books and enjoyed them all. Since he started out in the pulps, he knew how to spin a yarn and keep the reader turning the pages, that’s for sure. True, his work is very traditional and, yes, predictable if you’ve read very many Westerns, but there are always a few unexpected touches along the way, too, and the little moments of poetry that often crop up in hardboiled fiction. SECRET OF DEATH VALLEY is a very entertaining novel, and I intend to read more of Heuman’s work soon.

And the Winner is . . .

Rick Ollerman, who was selected by random drawing to receive a free copy of Norman German's new novel, A SAVAGE WISDOM. Congratulations, Rick, and thanks to everyone who entered.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Okay, am I the only one who can’t tell what the hell is going on half the time in these movies? I mean, when the giant robots start transforming and whaling away at each other, I can’t tell which one is which and what they’re doing. At least most of this second entry in the series takes place during the day, so it’s a little easier to follow the action.

I wasn’t real fond of the first TRANSFORMERS movie, but we watched the second one anyway and I was surprised to discover that I liked it considerably better. I thought the plot was pretty good, as it delves into the history of the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons that eventually spreads to Earth and reveals that the Transformers have been here in disguise a lot longer than anyone suspected.

Shia LeBouef is fine as Sam, the sometimes hapless, sometimes heroic human befriended by the good guy Autobots. The always good Kevin Dunn and Julie White play his parents, and Megan Fox is, well, Megan Fox. Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson reprise their roles as soldiers from the first movie but don’t have much to do this time around. My biggest complaint about the film is that numerous battle scenes go on interminably long. This is a two-and-a-half-hour movie that could have easily been cut to two hours just by making some of those fights a little shorter. I think it would have been more effective that way.

Overall, though, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is pretty entertaining, even if you weren’t a fan of the action figures and the original cartoon. (I certainly wasn’t.)

Guest Blog (and Book Giveaway!): Norman German's A Savage Wisdom

(Here's some information from Louisiana author Norman German about his latest historical crime novel, which sounds like an excellent book. I plan to read it soon. In the meantime, the publisher is giving away a free copy to one of the readers of this blog, and if you'd like to be entered in the drawing for it, post a comment saying so between now and 6 pm CDT Thursday October 29. That's a little over three days from now. I'll hold the proverbial random drawing for the winner on Thursday evening.)

Texas Completes the Circuit to Louisiana’s Electric Chair

The only woman to sit in Louisiana’s electric chair wound up there by killing a Texan.

In a portable electric chair nicknamed “Little Sizzler,” Annie Beatrice McQuiston was executed on November 28, 1942 for the Valentine’s Day slaying of a Houston salesman.

Annie grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, the daughter of a hard-drinking, abusive Irishman. Her mother died of tuberculosis, compelling her to work in a macaroni factory until she was fired when the TB risk was discovered. She left home at 13, became addicted to cocaine, and resorted to prostitution to make her way in the world.

In 1939 in a brothel she called home, Annie, now going by “Toni Jo,” fell for Claude “Cowboy” Henry, an ex-prize fighter. On November 25, 1939, shortly after he isolated her in a hotel room and forced her to go “cold turkey,” they secured a marriage license in Lake Charles and married in Sulphur.

Cowboy’s arrest for murdering San Antonio policeman Arthur Sinclair (before meeting Toni Jo) cut their honeymoon short. In January 1940, Cowboy was sentenced to fifty years in the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville.

Her thinking clouded by desperation, Toni Jo hatched a plan to rob an Arkansas bank for money to shorten her husband’s sentence by legal appeal or perhaps bribery. On Highway 90 just east of Orange, Texas, outside the Night Owl bar, Houston tire salesman Joseph Calloway picked up Toni Jo and Army deserter Horace Finnon Burks. Wanting his Ford V8 as their getaway car, they forced him at gunpoint to a field south of Lake Charles and led him by pliers clamped to his penis to a rice-stalk stack, where Toni Jo plugged him once in the forehead with a .32.

At home in Houston that frosty Valentine’s night were Calloway’s wife and nine-year-old daughter.

Four days before Toni Jo was sentenced to die, Cowboy stole a truck from a Sugarland prison farm and headed for Lake Charles to spring her from jail. He was captured at a Beaumont hotel and thrown in solitary back in Huntsville. The day before her execution, Toni Jo told Cowboy via telephone to lead a straight life and “go out the front door” of the Texas prison instead of trying to escape again.

Cowboy was freed six years later because of terminal heart disease but a few months later was shot to death before he could die naturally.

About the Author

Dr. Norman German is Professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University, Fiction Editor for Louisiana Literature, and Winner of the Deep South Writers' Contest for No Other World. A Savage Wisdom is his third novel.

A specialist in twentieth-century American literature, he has also published award-winning short stories, poems, and literary criticism. His stories have appeared in commercial and literary magazines, including Shenandoah, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Sport Fishing, and Salt Water Sportsman. His scholarly articles cover a wide range of major American authors including Ernest Hemingway, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Raymond Carver, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, James Dickey, and Anthony Hecht.

Visit the author and buy the book at www.asavagewisdom.com.

Marvel Masterworks: The Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 1

I went ahead and read this first volume of reprints from THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which includes the origin story from AMAZING FANTASY #15 and the first ten issues of Spider-Man’s own title.

The first issue of ASM I ever saw was #11, and once I read it, I was hooked. My favorite Marvel title has always been FANTASTIC FOUR, but SPIDER-MAN was a strong second, and looking back on it now, I’m not sure but what these stories are even better than what was being published in FANTASTIC FOUR at the same time. The eleven-page origin story is an iconic classic, maybe the best origin story ever in comics, packing in a staggering amount of pathos, drama, and even a little humor. (I think I’ve been reading Stan Lee too much. I’m starting to sound like him.) But there’s no denying that this short yarn set the stage for all the decades of stories that came after, including a caption that has entered the public consciousness, albeit in truncated and slightly misquoted form: “And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come – great responsibility!”

It takes a few issues for the scripts to really hit their stride, but by the third issue, which introduces the villain Dr. Octopus, all the elements are pretty much in place: the nerdy secret identity, the wisecracking during the heat of battle, the skirmishes with crusty publisher J. Jonah Jameson (who Stan based on himself, or so the legend has it), the perpetually feeble aunt, the terrible luck that hangs over Peter Parker’s head like a cloud, and the angst-ridden final panels that show up nearly every issue. The fourth issue introduces the Sandman, the Lizard shows up in #6, Electro in #9, and the tenth and final issue reprinted in this collection showcases Spidey’s battle against The Big Man and his henchmen The Enforcers, the first real example of Spider-Man fighting against organized crime, which would continue over the years and give the book a noirish feel that was similar to, though not as pronounced as, the one to be found in the Batman titles over at DC.

Stan Lee always seemed to be having a wonderful time writing Spider-Man. While his scripts in the Avengers collection I just read were good, they have a certain workman-like feel to them. But Stan definitely had a fondness for certain characters: Spider-Man, Ben Grimm, Nick Fury, Thor, and the Silver Surfer come to mind. As for Steve Ditko’s art, well, I had forgotten just how good Ditko was. His layouts flow seamlessly, and his style is utterly distinctive, unlike the work of any other artist in comics before or since. He’s one of those rare artists whose work is instantly identifiable, and he was particularly well-suited for the dark, ominous backgrounds in many of these stories.

I realize I may sound like a gushing fanboy here. Modern comics readers might look at these stories and find them crude and silly. But I loved them when I first read them more than forty years ago, and rereading them now, I think they hold up remarkably well. I had a great time reading them, but it may be a while before I get around to the other two volumes I have on hand. Or it may not.

Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers, Volume 1

I like Marvel’s Essentials series and DC’s Showcase volumes, those thick, black-and-white reprints of classic comic book stories. But I have to admit, when it comes to super-heroes, I miss color. War and horror comics work just fine in black-and-white, and so do most Westerns, but super-heroes are just so darn colorful. That’s why I picked up some of the full-color Marvel Masterworks trade paperbacks when I came across them recently: THE AVENGERS, VOLUME 1, and the first three volumes of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. I just finished reading THE AVENGERS, which reprints issues #1 – 10, so naturally I have some comments about it.

First of all, I remember where I bought most of the original issues, back in 1963 and ’64, and to a certain extent, the circumstances in which I bought them. For example, I was sick and stayed home from school, but my mother took me to the drugstore with her anyway the day I bought AVENGERS #8 off the spinner rack there. I won’t bore you with the rest of those reminiscences, but reading those stories again really took me back.

As for the stories themselves, I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. The dynamic art by Jack Kirby, the breathless, over-the-top prose of Stan Lee, the words and images that are still burned in my brain more than forty years later, all those things are still very entertaining. It's also interesting to see the introduction of storylines that would resonate through the Marvel Universe for years, and in some cases, decades afterwards. But (you knew there was a "but" coming, didn’t you) something struck me about those stories as I read them now, and to talk about it, I have to commit something like comic book heresy. You see, the conventional wisdom these days is that Jack Kirby created all the characters, plotted all the stories, and deserves all the credit for Marvel’s success, while Stan Lee just rode his coattails and screwed him over. Well, I wasn’t there, of course, so I can’t say for sure who did what, but I can tell you this: some of those stories that Kirby plotted and drew make almost no sense. You’re reading along, and suddenly you think, “Wait a minute. How did those characters get over there?” or “Wait a minute. Where’d all those characters go who were in the last panel?” or “Wait a minute. How could they possibly know that?” Numerous times in reading the first eight stories in this volume, I got the impression that Lee’s scripts were desperately trying to impose some sort of logic on art that looked great but didn’t come close to telling a coherent story. That changes to a certain extent in the final two stories, which were drawn by Don Heck. My memory is that comic book fans, even in that era, considered Heck a second-rate artist, but in reading the stories now, while Heck’s work lacks Kirby’s sense of drama and flair, the stories themselves flow a lot better.

I really don’t mean this to come across as Kirby-bashing. I love Kirby’s work. But I think Lee deserves a lot of credit, too, which he usually doesn’t get these days. Although he probably did hog too much credit back in the Sixties, so maybe it balances out. And I’m talking strictly about the creative end of the process, too. I know next to nothing about the business end of the comic book business, then or now.

All that said, what’s really important to me about books like this is that while I’m reading them, I feel like I’m eleven and twelve years old again. That’s worth a lot these days.

And I’ll have some comments on those Spider-Man volumes in the near future.

Forgotten Books: Baal - Robert R. McCammon

Back in the Eighties, I was a big fan of horror writer Robert R. McCammon and read about half of his books. His werewolf novel, THE WOLF’S HOUR, is hugely entertaining, and his poignant and nostalgic novella, “Night Calls the Green Falcon” (which you can find in the excellent collection BLUE WORLD) is one of my all-time favorite stories by any author.

Then McCammon stopped writing horror and produced a couple of odd, unclassifiable novels, BOY’S LIFE and GONE SOUTH, which I liked but not nearly as much as I liked his other work. Then he retired from writing, and I never got around to going back and reading the earlier books of his that I’d missed.

Which brings us to BAAL, McCammon’s first novel, originally published in 1978, which I just read as the opening shot of my attempt to catch up on the unread McCammons. It’s the story of a cult leader, who may or may not actually be an ancient demon, and the three men who oppose his rise to worldwide power: an elderly professor of theology, a Russian/Eskimo hunter who claims not to be a shaman (although the other Eskimos say that he is), and a mysterious individual known only as Michael (no fair guessing who he really is, although of course you will, and of course, you’ll be right).

This book has some major problems, particularly with the pacing, which may well be because it was a first novel, after all. The entire first half is just set-up, and it’s pretty much of a slog to get through. One of the major characters isn’t even introduced until the final section of the book. So why am I recommending it? Because the plot finally gets going in the second half, and the last eighty pages or so are really good, giving the reader a taste of the full-throttle action that would dominate some of McCammon’s later novels. There are also several genuinely creepy scenes that are very effective, and the ending is a good, satisfying one.

In recent years, McCammon has come out of retirement with a couple of extremely long historical mysteries. I have both of them and will get around to them, though they may have to wait until I have more time to devote to reading. In the meantime, I plan to continue catching up on his earlier novels. I mean, good grief, Bill Crider recommended THEY THIRST, McCammon’s vampire novel, to me nearly thirty years ago, and I still haven’t read it. I need to remedy that.

Movies I've Missed (Until Now): Next of Kin

We had this movie on our Netflix list for several months before Patrick Swayze passed away, because neither Livia nor I could remember whether we’d ever seen it. It finally worked its way to the top of the list, and as it turns out, we hadn’t seen it. And that’s fine, because it left us with a good movie to watch for the first time.

NEXT OF KIN finds Swayze playing Truman Gates, a Chicago cop who hails from the mountains of Kentucky, where he still has a lot of relatives who work in the coal mines there. His younger brother, though, has followed him to Chicago and works for a vending machine company, and not surprisingly, said brother gets killed in a mob takeover of the company. Swayze’s character wants to find the killer and bring him in legally, but his other brother back in the mountains (Liam Neeson) wants to come to Chicago and avenge the death personally, as mountain tradition demands. Naturally this brings him into conflict with Swayze’s character.

This whole “hillbillies vs. the mob” scenario is pretty predictable but still very entertaining. Swayze is impossibly young and athletic and charismatic, although not as impossibly young as Ben Stiller, who is oddly cast but fairly effective as a mob leader’s son who wants to get into the family business. Adam Baldwin makes for a smarmy and menacing bad guy, and although Neeson’s backwoods accent slips over into the bizarre at times, he’s good as the vengeance-driven brother. There’s an occasional lapse of logic in the script, but it all ends up in a fine showdown that plays as if the screenwriter read one of Louis L’Amour’s Sackett books and thought, “Hey, you could do a modern version of this!”

I’m not sure how we missed this when it came out twenty years ago. Most of you probably saw it then. But if you haven’t, it’s well worth investing a couple of hours of your time.

Guest Blog: Mike Cox on Time of the Rangers

I remember a time when letters – those rectangular white envelopes sent not by pressing a button but by affixing a postage stamp that gets more expensive every year or so – used to bear real news instead of bills or solicitation flyers.

So when I opened the envelope from the Writers’ League of Texas a few weeks back, I expected to be reminded that it was time to pay my dues again. Instead, I found a letter from director Cyndi Hughes saying that Wearing the Cinco Peso, the first book of my two-volume history of the Texas Rangers, had been selected as a finalist for the League’s 2009 Texas Book Award for Nonfiction.

In addition to being pleased, not to mention impressed at having received some good news the old-fashioned way, that letter got me thinking about something that every long-time writer faces sooner or later: Will my Ranger history (the other is Time of the Rangers: The Texas Rangers 1900 to Present) be my signature work? Is it all down hill from here? At 60, have I written my best work?

That question aside, I am pretty sure I have written my longest work. Combined, the set covers more than 180 years of Texas history with more than a quarter-million words filling almost 1,000 published pages. Researching and writing it took 10 years, though I wrote a couple of other books along the way.

Coincidentally, about the time I got that letter from the Writers’ League, I read where Larry McMurtry, who won a Pulitzer for his epic novel Lonesome Dove, has declared that after 30 novels he may stop writing fiction. No one older than 60, he opines, has ever written a great novel. I get the feeling what he’s really saying is that no one older than 60 has anything of value left to put into a book or the energy to do it.

Oops! Not having checked with Larry first, I have two pending book contracts and plans for even more books. My dilemma is not running out of things to say, but time to say them. Of course, I write nonfiction.

But thinking about Larry’s pronouncement finally helped me get comfortable with my own question: My Texas Ranger history may or may not be my definitive work, but I’m going to keep writing books, with apologies to the National Rifle Association, until someone has to pry my cold, dead fingers off my laptop.

(Mike is doing a virtual tour for this book. If you want to check out some of his other appearances, the schedule can be found on his excellent blog, Lone Star Book Blog. You can also check out his website here.)