The Wrap Up

I can't say that I'm sorry to see 2013 go. Livia's mom passed away during the summer, and that loss cast a shadow over much of the rest of the year. But it was also the year we got into the publishing business in a much bigger way, and we bought property down on the Gulf Coast that we hope will someday be a second home for us. Right after Christmas a new dog came to live with us, a big, enthusiastic, affectionate Pyrenees/Shepherd mix we've named Sammy. Mostly it was a year in which there was just never enough time in the day.

So here's a look at how writing and reading went for me this year.

Writing

I topped a million words again this year (good) but my output dropped again for the third or fourth year in a row (frustrating). I finished the year with 5312 pages, which is down about a thousand pages from my best year ever. I'm still shooting for a million words again next year to make it ten years in a row, but if I don't make it...well, three-quarters of a million, or whatever it turns out to be, will just have to be enough. This year's output was all novels, 13 of them, no short stories for a change. Two of those novels (WEST OF THE BIG RIVER: THE LAWMAN and DANCING WITH DEAD MEN) even had my name on them, and both were well received, which is very gratifying.

Reading

Here are my ten favorites from the books I've read this year, in the order in which I read them:

MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY, Sean Howe (as a Marvel fan for more than 50 years, this was great fun, as well as telling me a lot of things I didn't know)

THE LAST RIDE and THE VULTURES OF WHAPETON, Robert E. Howard (I reread these two Howard collections before I wrote the introduction to WESTERN TALES, published by the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press)

SGT. PIGGY'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB COMIC, Stephan Pastis (a massive collection of one of my favorite comic strips, PEARLS BEFORE SWINE)

I TRAVEL BY NIGHT, Robert R. McCammon (a new historical horror yarn by an old favorite, and a lot of fun)

WEST OF THE BIG RIVER: THE ARTIST, Jackson Lowry (Robert E. Vardeman) (all the WEST OF THE BIG RIVER books have been good, but this tale of Charles M. Russell before he was a famous artist is the best of the bunch)

THE MASKED INVASION, Curtis Steele (Frederick C. Davis) (the first novel in the Operator #5 pulp series; man, I had a good time reading this one)

CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS, John C. Hocking (the best Conan story by anybody other than Robert E. Howard I've ever read, hands down)

SADDLES, SIXGUNS & SHOOTOUTS, Charles Beckman Jr. (Charles Boeckman) (a great collection of stories from the Western pulps by one of the few surviving genuine pulp authors)

THE BURGLAR WHO COUNTED THE SPOONS, Lawrence Block (Bernie Rhodenbarr is back, and one of the best writers ever is at the top of his game)

As a bonus, here are three books not even out yet that you need to remember so you can grab them later on:

BULLETS IN THE BLACK, Walt Coburn (I got to read it ahead of time because I wrote the intro; it includes some of Coburn's best work)

THE SOUL OF A REGIMENT, Talbot Mundy (another collection that's in the works for which I wrote the introduction)

MIDNIGHT ROAD, Jada Davis (another almost lost hardboiled masterpiece from Davis, and a fine coming-of-age novel at the same time)

I read 128 books this year, up a little from last year, but it's worth noting that the total includes 30 books I edited and/or proofread for Rough Edges Press, Western Fictioneers, and Prairie Rose Publications. That might have something to do with my own writing output going down, even though I tried to do all the editorial work after I'd gotten my own pages for the day. It does take some mental energy, though.

I have no idea how many movies we watched. Quite a few, although I didn't blog about many of them except the ones featured in the Tuesday's Overlooked Movies series. Maybe one of these years I'll at least keep a list of them. Or maybe not.

I hope all of you enjoy whatever celebrating you do tonight and that 2014 is happy, healthy, and prosperous for everyone reading this.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Warlock

This is another of the Western DVDs Livia got for me, and another one that I'd never seen until now. WARLOCK starts out like it's going to be another version of the Gunfight at the OK Corral story, with the fictional town of Warlock standing in for Tombstone, and Marshal Clay Blaisedell (Henry Fonda) and his friend, gambler Tom Morgan (Anthony Quinn) being thinly disguised versions of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. One of the cowboy faction who's been causing trouble in the area (Richard Widmark) even becomes sheriff, much like Johnny Behan in Tombstone. The character's name, Johnny Gannon, is even similar.

But from there, WARLOCK, based on a novel of the same name by Oakley Hall, goes off on its own tangents and winds up telling a considerably different story. Some characters you think will be sympathetic turn out, well, not so much. Heroic actions come from unlikely sources. And the final series of shootouts don't turn out to be the ones you'd expect, either.

This unpredictable storyline makes WARLOCK a pretty interesting movie. The cast, which also includes the beautiful Dorothy Malone and stalwart supporting actors DeForest Kelly and Whit Bissell, is also very good. I was never a Richard Widmark fan when I was a kid, but I've really come to enjoy his work. He brings a certain world-weariness to his roles that I don't think I appreciated when I was younger. Fonda is playing to a stereotype and seems to know it, using that familiarity to his advantage. And of course he'd played Wyatt Earp before, in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE.

The movie looks good, as well, and my only real complaint is that director Edward Dmytryck lets the pace lag a little too much in places, so that WARLOCK seems longer than it really is. It's also a movie that has several apparent climaxes, so you get fooled into thinking it's about to be over, and then it's not.

Overall, I enjoyed WARLOCK quite a bit. I'm not sure why I never saw it before, but I'm glad I watched it now.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1953

Despite its name, this magazine from Popular Publications wasn't a mystery or detective pulp. Instead it was a reprint magazine featuring primarily science fiction and fantasy, with the stories sometimes abridged from their original appearances. FFM also had plenty of good covers, including this one by Lawrence Sterne Stevens. This particular issue includes a novel by H. Rider Haggard originally published in 1914, a short story by Margaret St. Clair, and a poem by Stanton A. Coblentz. I haven't read this issue of FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, but I've read several others and always found them enjoyable, although the notion that the stories had been cut is a little bothersome.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, December 1949

The December 1949 issue of DIME WESTERN has a really strong line-up of authors behind that cover. I was able to read this one recently, thanks to Karl Rehn, and it's a fine issue.

The lead novella is "Born to the Smoke" by E.B. Mann, an author I've meant to read before but never have until now. It's a save-the-ranch yarn, as cowhand John Brent is revealed to be notorious gunman John Brant and booted off the Lazy H, thus ending what he hoped would be a budding romance with the owner's daughter. Before Brant can leave the ranch, though, he's bushwhacked and roped into an effort to stop a gang of outlaws from taking over the place. There's one small twist in the plot, but other than that veteran Western readers will probably know everything that's going to happen. Mann's prose is smooth, though, and several excellent action scenes more than balance out any predictability in the story.

I never read much of Roe Richmond's work except some of the Jim Hatfield novels he wrote under the Jackson Cole house-name during the Fifties for TEXAS RANGERS. And I didn't care much for those. They were written well enough, but Richmond saddled Hatfield with a whole gang of sidekicks I didn't like. (Some of those Hatfield novels were later rewritten into Lashtrow novels and published under Richmond's name by Leisure, Zebra, and Ace.) So I didn't really know what to expect from his novelette in this issue, "Battle Call for Last-Chance". This tale of small ranchers caught between sheepherders on one side and a ruthless cattle baron on the other is very good. There's a small but effective twist in the story, and the action scenes are top-notch. I've never gone out of my way to read Richmond's work because of my dislike for those Hatfield novels, but maybe I was wrong about that.

"Gunsmoke Angelus for Mesa Grande" is by an author I'm not familiar with, William Benton Johnston. This is the last story of his listed in the Fictionmags Index. It's the familiar plot of an old enemy returning to town to settle a score with the hero, but the writing is good and the ending is a bit offbeat, so I enjoyed it.

I've been reading and enjoying Clifton Adams' work for a long time, probably starting with the novels he wrote about lawman Amos Flagg under the pseudonym Clay Randall. "Private Manhunt" is an excellent novelette about drifting cowpoke Matt Reynolds, who becomes involved in hunting down some stagecoach robbers because of a pretty girl. This story is in first person, something that's a little unusual for the Western pulps, but it works very well with Adams' terse prose. There's plenty of action, and the touches of dry humor here and there add to the appeal. Top-notch work all around.

The real surprise in the issue is the novelette "Nine Coffins for Rocking H". Not the story itself, which is a well-written cattle baron vs. homesteaders yarn, but because of the author, John D. MacDonald. I hadn't realized that MacDonald wrote any Westerns. But it's not really surprising that he did a few of them since that was still a popular market when he was making his living as a pulpster in the late Forties. This particular story has some excellent action scenes and is a bit bleaker than most Western pulp stories. I'm not sure MacDonald felt all that comfortable with Westerns, though. It has a certain by-the-numbers quality to it. But it's still a good story.

No surprise is that "Once a Gun-Wolf—" by T.T. Flynn is my favorite story in the issue. I don't think Flynn ever wrote a bad story. At least I haven't run across any so far. This one is an "outlaw trying to go straight and escape his past" yarn, and while the plot isn't surprising (except for one late twist I didn't see coming), Flynn's writing is so good it swept me along and easily kept me entertaining and engrossed. He's just one of the most solid Western writers I've encountered, in or out of the pulps.

DIME WESTERN is one of the best Western pulps overall, and even as late in the game as 1949 could still put out exceptional issues like this one on a regular basis. There's not a bad story in the bunch. In fact, they range from very good to excellent. It's issues like this that tend to spoil the pulp reader.

Now Available: The Saint in Miami - Leslie Charteris (Introduction by James Reasoner)

Today's mail brought a fine Christmas present two days after the fact: a copy of the new British reprint of THE SAINT IN MIAMI, my favorite Saint novel, for which I was fortunate enough to write the introduction. When Ian Dickerson, the series editor, asked me if I'd like to do one of the intros and did I have a preference which volume it would be, I didn't waste any time in answering him. I've loved this book ever since I first read it, lo, those many years ago, an event which I go into in more detail in the introduction. I can't tell you how pleased I am to see my name on the cover of this book. It seems to be available through Amazon UK (here's the page) but not the American Amazon, but I'm sure that if you're in the U.S. and want to get your hands on a copy, there are ways that can be done. You'll just have to use your imagination, as the actress said to the bishop...

Forgotten Books (combined with the Annual December 27th Post): The Emerald Land - Livia James

Since Friday falls on December 27^th this week, I thought I'd combine my Forgotten Books post with my traditional December 27^th post and talk about a book from very early in my career. THE EMERALD LAND has been out of print for 30 years, so I think it qualifies as forgotten.

For those of you coming in late, a quick word of explanation. I sold my first story on December 27^th, 1976, so today marks 37 years as a professional writer for me. Of course, the story was actually bought earlier than that, in the offices of Ideal Publications in New York, but December 27^th is when I got the check for it, which was the first I knew that it had been accepted. So that's the day I celebrate my anniversary as a pro. You can go back and check the December 27^th posts in previous years if you want to learn more about that.

My first novel, TEXAS WIND, sold in the fall of 1979 (I don't remember the exact date; you'd think I would) and was published in October 1980. I was trying to sell other novels along the way, writing chapters-and-outline proposals for several of them that I don't even recall now. Livia and I managed to get an agent, Lea Braff, who had a literary agency along with Sharon Jarvis, who later became an editor at Ace, if I recall correctly. I believe Lea was representing Joe Lansdale at the time, and that Joe put us in touch with her. (If I'm remembering any of these details wrong, I'm sorry. It was a long time ago, and any correspondence from those days is long gone.) Livia and I wrote a proposal for a historical romance novel and sent it to Lea, and she promptly sold it to the first place she submitted it, Fawcett Gold Medal, which by that time was owned by Ballantine.

This sale was a big deal for us. The advance was pretty good: $8000. That was far and away the most we'd ever made from writing. With the first half of the advance in hand, and my regular job writing Mike Shayne stories for MSMM (300 bucks a month, doesn't sound like much, but we saved up and bought a used van with it, high cotton in those days), plus fairly regular short fiction sales to MSMM and various men's magazines, in January 1981 I was emboldened to quit my job running the office of my dad's TV and appliance repair business to concentrate solely on writing.

Nowadays I feel pretty bad about that decision for a number of reasons, one of which is that I was too young and inexperienced to be a full-time writer and didn't really take advantage of the opportunity. I had already finished the first draft of THE EMERALD LAND while still working at the TV shop, starting on it as soon as Fawcett made the offer and writing about 80,000 words in a crazed three-week stretch. Once I was working full-time at home, Livia rewrote the manuscript while I wrote Shayne stories, then we both polished it and sent it in. The editor at Fawcett who bought the book was Michaela Hamilton, but the person who actually edited it was Michael Ossias, who I never heard of before or since. He wanted some fairly extensive revisions, which in those pre-computer days meant that the whole manuscript had to be retyped. Once we'd done all the rewriting, covering the pages with handwritten revisions and new material, we embarked on a marathon retyping session, switching off at the typewriter and doing the entire book in one stretch from eight o'clock at night until six o'clock the next morning. Then we got some sleep, had a late breakfast, took the manuscript into Fort Worth to have it photocopied (pre-computer days, remember?), and shipped the original off to New York.

A couple of years later in 1983, the book was published under the wildly original pseudonym Livia James, the only time we've used that name. The cover was pretty good, and I was proud to have a book published by Gold Medal, even though it wasn't the "real" Gold Medal.

So what's the book about? It centers around the lives of this beautiful Irish girl and her family in the 1850s, first in Ireland, then in New York when they come to America, and finally Kansas after they head west to settle on a farm just in time for the bloody lead-up to the Civil War. There are dastardly villains, a couple of heroic mountain men, some romance and angst, and a considerable amount of action. In other words, it's the sort of historical soap opera that Livia and I have written on a number of other occasions in our careers.

Despite the decent cover I mentioned above, the book didn't sell very well. There were a lot of historical romances competing for rack space and readers' attention in those days, and "Livia James" was a complete unknown. It certainly didn't sell well enough that Fawcett clamored for another book from us. By the time it came out, I was working part-time in a comic book store owned by a friend of mine and writing as many short stories (some of which sold) and book proposals (none of which sold) as I could. We were about to branch out and start our own used bookstore, in hopes that would provide enough cash flow to keep us afloat while we continued trying to sell novels. That idea didn't work out, either. We ghosted a few books for friends, one of which paid pretty well but didn't lead to anything else, but by and large it was a dry spell that lasted for several years and was bad enough that I remember being excited when I got a $60 check from a men's magazine for a porn story. We had parted ways with Lea Braff, who was never a good fit for us as an agent despite her successful sale of THE EMERALD LAND, and had been with another agent for a while who wound up dropping us as clients after selling one book for us (a contemporary romance that remains unpublished to this day, and always will). In the mid-Eighties it looked like my career as a writer was going to come to a screeching halt less than a decade into it.

Of course it didn't, but that's a story for another time. To get back to THE EMERALD LAND, I've never reread it so I don't know how well it holds up, but I remember it as being fairly entertaining and I doubt that it's completely cringe-worthy, although I know we would do some things differently if we were writing it today. It's never been reprinted and likely never will be, but if there are such creatures as Reasoner completists who want to read it, there are used copies available on-line and none of them are expensive. (By the way, if there actually are any Reasoner completists, they're bound to be disappointed, because probably a third of my novels don't have my name anywhere on them and I'm contractually forbidden from claiming them. Just another of the odd turns my career has taken.)

So, 37 years in and I'm still at it, thanks to an enormous amount of help from Livia, our daughters, and any number of editors who had faith in me, from Sam Merwin Jr. to Gary Goldstein. I have no plans to retire, although I wouldn't mind slowing down a little. But there are still too many good books I want to write, so I hope I'm around for a while yet, turning out those pages.

Upon My Soul - Robert J. Randisi

As many excellent hitman novels as there have been over the years—Lawrence Block's Keller series and Max Allan Collins' Quarry series come to mind—you wouldn't think there would be much left to do with the sub-genre. But you'd be wrong, as Robert J. Randisi's new novel UPON MY SOUL proves quite handily.

Sangster, the protagonist of this novel, was an efficient, highly skilled killer for hire until the morning he woke up and realized he had a soul. This discovery led him to retire from the business, and he's spent the last several years leading a quiet, peaceful life in Louisiana.

But people at that deadly level of the underworld usually aren't allowed to walk away, as readers of Peter Rabe's Daniel Port novels and Ennis Willie's Sand series (not to mention the Butcher men's adventure novels) know very well. Sangster's past catches up to him in bloody fashion, and he's forced to choose between preserving his new-found soul by honoring his vow not to kill again or avenging several brutal murders for which he feels some responsibility. It's a dangerous conundrum, and Randisi uses it to ratchet up a considerable amount of suspense.

As usual in a Bob Randisi novel, UPON MY SOUL is very fast-paced, but it's not quite as dialogue-driven as some and is a bit more reflective, which works very well. Sangster is an interesting and sympathetic protagonist, despite his ruthless background, and the supporting cast is good, too, especially a Jamaican cab driver in Las Vegas who becomes an unlikely ally and an elderly butler who is more than he seems. There are some nice twists in the plot as well.

UPON MY SOUL is a fine crime novel, and I'm glad to report that it's also the first in a trilogy. I'm looking forward to reading more about Sangster's continuing struggle for his soul.

New for Christmas

Great books to read, a bunch of exciting DVDs to watch, some fine music, and a couple of vital writing accessories in the calendars (I read each day's strip before I sit down to work). Also a bunch of vintage issues of the magazine FRONTIER TIMES on CD, a great research tool. Plus some warm clothes (I get cold easier than I used to) and a new pair of shoes, a code reader for auto repair work, and assorted goodies in my stocking. I am a lucky, lucky fella. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas Music I Like: White Christmas - Bing Crosby

This series of Christmas music comes to an end with my favorite, "White Christmas" as sung by Bing Crosby. I wanted to find a clip of the ending of the movie WHITE CHRISTMAS, but there doesn't seem to be one on-line at the moment. I don't know if my little experiment was a success or not. I don't seem to be any more in the Christmas spirit than I usually am, but in recent years, Christmas Eve is usually when it kicks in anyway. I hope it's a wonderful holiday for all of you.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movie: Christmas Twister

I wanted to find an obscure Christmas movie to write about today, and they don't get much more obscure than this one. Actually, one of my daughters saw it last year when it debuted on the Ion television network and told me about it. My reaction at the time: "CHRISTMAS TWISTER? There's no such movie as CHRISTMAS TWISTER!"

Well, there is, and I'm here to tell you about it, if not wholeheartedly recommend it.

First of all, it's set in the area where I live, although it was filmed elsewhere, as quickly becomes obvious to anyone familiar with this part of Texas. In fact, the first scene takes place in Dublin, Texas, which has to be the only time I've ever seen a movie set partially in Dublin. Any movie. Other locales include Stephenville, Granbury, Lake Worth (about five miles from where I'm typing this), and Fort Worth.

The plot is pretty simple. A rare, unseasonal outbreak of killer tornadoes threatens Fort Worth and the surrounding area. Climate scientist Caspar Van Dien (who has certainly been in his share of less than stellar movies) realizes what's coming and tries to warn people, including his news broadcaster wife, but nobody will believe him. Sure enough, the tornadoes hit just before Christmas, chaos and destruction ensue, and the scientist and his wife and kids (who are all in different locations starting out, of course) try to survive and find each other. A few soap operatic sub-plots stretch things out.

Christmas is in December, but that's about the only thing CHRISTMAS TWISTER gets right as far as facts go. The science, the geography, the way people actually talk and act in Texas, all of that is pretty much wrong. One of the guys who wrote the script lives in Austin, but there's still a strong sense that he and his co-author just called up Google Maps and plucked names off of it. It doesn't help that the actors refer to highway numbers with "the" in front of them, as in, "Let's hop on the 1-9-9" or "We'll cut over to the I-30". I don't know how widespread that practice is in other parts of the country, but I've never heard anybody say such a thing around here. I've always thought that was a Southern California thing. County names are mispronounced, too.

Yes, I know I'm being picky about things that I happen to know even though they probably wouldn't bother people in other parts of the country. I'm sure I've made similar mistakes in my own work. You try your best and you go on. So I feel bad about pointing them out, but such things do make it hard for me to take the movie seriously.

That's probably the point, though. Movies like CHRISTMAS TWISTER aren't meant to be taken seriously. And in that respect it does manage some moments of goofy, over-the-top entertainment. Richard Burgi, who's made a career out of playing smarmy lawyers, smarmy doctors, and smarmy businessmen, is a smarmy meteorologist in this one, and one of his scenes is particularly effective. A statuesque blond actress named Kassandra Clementi plays the best friend of the scientist's daughter and actually puts some spark and humor into an underwritten part. The fact that she spends her on-screen time in extremely short cut-off jeans and cowboy boots probably doesn't hurt. She's Australian and currently featured on a soap opera down there, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her turn up again in American productions.

Other than taking place just before Christmas, there's not much holiday spirit in this one. It's cheaply made and for the most part very workman-like, but I stayed awake for the whole thing, which is worth something. Ion has shown it several times already this Christmas season. I don't know if it's scheduled again, but you should be able to look that up if you're interested. And hey, there's always next year, when I'm sure they'll show it again.