The Wrap Up

This was a year of being nagged at by lots of little annoyances, mostly health-related, as well as the year one of my best friends, Ed Gorman, passed away. I still halfway expect to get an email from Ed promising me another Maserati is on the way in appreciation for something I did for him, when in truth Ed did more to help me than I ever did for him. More than a hundred Maseratis could ever pay back.

But not to dwell on the bad, 2016 was also a year in which a lot of good things happened. Bill Crider won the Sidewise Award for a story I published in TALES FROM THE OTHERVERSE, and one of my stories was a finalist for the same award. I read a bunch of good books and watched a bunch of good movies and TV shows. I attended my first ice hockey games and discovered that I'm a hockey fan. (Actually, now that I think about it, it may have been right at the end of 2015 when I went to my first game, but it was this year I became a real fan. I even know what icing is!) The world is still a good place and I intend to enjoy it.

Writing

I topped a million words again this year, for the 12^th straight year. I just take it year to year and don't know how much I'll get done in 2017, but based on the contracts I have, I should be in the neighborhood of a million words again. This year it broke down to ten novels, five more novels written in collaboration, and two novellas, both of which will have my name on them when they're published next year. I had a really good first half of the year, then slowed down some in the second half, largely due to my eye problems. Those seem to be under control for now, so I'm optimistic about my production for next year.

Reading

Here are my top ten favorite books I read in 2016, in alphabetical order by author, as usual.

SINNER MAN, Lawrence Block

THE SAVAGE PACK, Fred Blosser

ANGEL'S FLIGHT, Lou Cameron

PISTOL PASSPORT, Eugene Cunningham

A HANDFUL OF HELL, Robert F. Dorr

THE MAN FROM NOWHERE, T.T. Flynn

THE KNIFE SLIPPED, A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

POWDER SMOKE, William Colt MacDonald

MY FATHER, THE PORNOGRAPHER, Chris Offutt

NIGHTRIDER DEPUTY, Ralph R. Perry

Two that almost made the list are SOME BURIED CAESAR by Rex Stout and A GENT FROM BEAR CREEK by Robert E. Howard. I dropped them off because they were rereads. I also debated with myself whether to include Fred Blosser's THE SAVAGE PACK since I published it, but finally I decided to put it on there because I think it's a great frontier adventure novel. I think I blogged about all of these except the Offutt book, which is fascinating and disturbing and very well-written, and Lou Cameron's ANGEL'S FLIGHT, which I'll be posting about probably next week. I'll say this, though, as a teaser: it's the best book I read in 2016. My reading this year was dominated by Westerns, and pulp Westerns, at that. That should come as no surprise to anyone. I read 111 books in all, down quite a bit from last year's 125. I don't make New Year's Resolutions, but I am going to try to read more next year. Seems like I always say that. We'll see.

So I'll close with a quote from my favorite philosopher (bet you didn't know I have a favorite philosopher), Marcus Aurelius: "When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." Have a great 2017, everyone.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, November 1951

I don't believe I'd ever read an issue of NEW WESTERN until now, but this is an issue I own and read recently. Most of the Western pulps from Popular Publications are pretty much interchangeable. Their two flagship titles, DIME WESTERN and STAR WESTERN, ran more novellas, especially STAR WESTERN, but other than that the same authors appeared in all the titles across the line and the magazines featured good, solid hardboiled Westerns, for the most part.

This issue gets off to a good start with "First Stage to Sundown", a novelette by George C. Appell, whose work appeared frequently in a variety of pulps during the late Forties through the Fifties. This story uses a fairly standard plot: a stagecoach has to make a long, dangerous run in a set period of time in order to secure a government mail contract. Along the way, the coach and another wagon that accompanies it are plagued by a gang of outlaws. Appell throws in a couple of decent twists and there are several tough action scenes, along with some nice descriptive writing in places. Appell was never in the top rank of Western writers, but he seems to have produced some pretty good work. I've enjoyed the few stories I've read by him.

Next up is "Cactus-Eatin' Lady" by Robert Trimnell, an author whose name I've seen, but I don't know anything else about him. This is a humorous tale about a couple of cowpokes and a camel. It read like it might be part of a series, but I don't know for sure about that. As I've said before, with a few major exceptions, comedy Westerns just don't work for me. This is not one of those exceptions. I didn't care much for this story.

James B. Hendryx's Halfaday Creek series, featuring the good-hearted outlaw Black John Smith and Corporal Downey of the RCMP, ran for many years, mostly in the iconic pulp SHORT STORIES. "Black John—Claim Jumper" is a late entry in the series. How it wound up in NEW WESTERN, I don't know, but it's a good yarn about Black John helping out a young couple who get caught up in a mining swindle. This story could have used a little more action, but it's very well-written. This is actually the first Halfaday Creek story I've read, but I'm going to have to try some more of them.

"The Drifter Stops Off" is by James Charles Lynch, an author I know nothing about except that I think I've read somewhere he ghosted some for Ed Earl Repp. This is a pretty good story about a hobo and former printer who runs afoul of the most powerful man in town and takes measures to settle the score with him in unusual ways.

"Gun-Fighter's Brand" by John C. Colohan is a reprint from the August 1934 issue of DIME WESTERN. I've probably read a few stories by Colohan—he was a prolific contributor to the Popular Publications Western pulps—but nothing that I recall. This yarn is about a wounded lawman who has to couple of people who have a grudge against him, one a killer and the other a beautiful young woman. It's fairly well-written and has a nice twist ending I didn't see coming.

Bill Colson was actually Verne Athanas, who was more well-known under his real name. As Colson, he wrote a series about stagecoach driver and teamster Seven-Foot Sanders and his sidekick Shorty Shamrock. This sounds like a comedy series, but the entry in this issue, "Seven-Foot Sanders' Private War", is a fairly straightforward tale about trying to get a stagecoach and then a freight wagon full of supplies through Apache country. The tone is a little light in places, but there are also some gritty action scenes. I enjoyed this one enough that I'd read more in the series.

"The Hoodoo Trail Drive" by Stone Cody is another reprint, originally appearing under the title "Signed On With Satan" in the May 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. It features a thinly disguised version of real-life cattleman Shanghai Pierce, here called Shanghai Pearson, and is about a danger-filled, seemingly cursed trail drive from Texas to Kansas. It's an excellent yarn and achieves an almost epic feel, which is hard to do in a novelette. I enjoyed it a lot, more than any of the other stories in this issue, in fact. Stone Cody was really Thomas Mount, the first husband (if I recall correctly) of bestselling author Laura Z. Hobson. I'm sure I've read his work before, but I'll be keeping a better eye out for his stories in the future after reading this one.

There's one other thing of interest in this issue of NEW WESTERN: a little house ad for the then-current issue of Popular Publications stablemate DIME WESTERN that includes the line A Riproarious "Tensleep" Story by Harry F. Olmsted. Well, other than the word "Riproarious", which I like, the interesting thing about this is that all the Tensleep Maxon stories (and there were scores of them) were published under the name Bart Cassidy. Only in the last year or so has Harry Olmsted's name been linked with that pseudonym, but here's another indication of it. Cassidy may have been used as a house-name at times, but I'm starting to believe that Olmsted was responsible for most of the stories published under that name. (Something similar happened to me many years ago, when the November 1978 issue of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE had a house ad in it listing the next issue's Mike Shayne story: "Death in Xanadu" by James M. Reasoner. When they were making up the issue, they obviously got my name off the manuscript and forgot to replace it with the usual Brett Halliday pseudonym. As far as I know that's the only time a prose Shayne story was credited to someone other than Halliday.)

Overall, a decent issue of NEW WESTERN, with several good stories, several readable ones, and only one that I didn't finish. The scan, as usual with this sort of post, is of the copy I read, and it's a pretty good cover.

Forgotten Books: The Knife Slipped - A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

Well, fry me for an oyster. I didn't expect to ever see a new Donald Lam and Bertha Cool paperback with a cover by Robert McGinnis again. But that's what we have in THE KNIFE SLIPPED. Granted, it's not actually new, although it's never been published until now. It's the second Cool & Lam novel Erle Stanley Gardner wrote, but it was rejected by the publisher. Also, it's a trade paperback from Hard Case Crime instead of a small-sized Pocket Books edition. And the McGinnis cover is okay, but I'm not fond of model Dita Von Teese, so it's not in the top rank of covers as far as I'm concerned. Still, it's Bertha and Donald, and man, do I love this series.

In this one they're working on a divorce case, with Donald trailing a suspected cheating husband who turns out to have not one but two apparent love nests hidden from his wife. Only it's not hanky-panky going on (although there's a little of that, too) but rather something more sinister, and before you know it, the guy Donald's been shadowing winds up dead and either he or the switchboard girl he's fallen for is on the hook for the murder. Corruption, crooked cops and politicians, an empty shell casing switched from one gun to another, Donald being taken for a ride by gangsters, Bertha pinching every penny she can, lots of smoking and drinking . . . Gardner just keeps things rocketing along in very entertaining fashion. The plot is complicated (did you ever read an ESG book where it wasn't?), but Gardner pulls a nice double-reverse in the last chapter and it all makes sense in the end.

There are a few differences. The characterizations aren't quite what we're used to from the other books in the series. They're very close, of course, but Russell Atwood explores some of the differences in an insightful afterword. And although the title fits the book, it doesn't seem to have quite the same ring as the other titles in the series. Or maybe that's just me.

I don't recall for sure which of the Cool & Lam books I read first. I think it may have been SHILLS CAN'T CASH CHIPS. I know for sure, though, that I checked it out from the bookmobile, which means it was around 1964. I've read a bunch of them since, although not all of them. I sort of ration them out and read one now and then. I'm glad THE KNIFE SLIPPED is available at last. I grew up on stuff like this, and I had a great time reading it.

40 Years Later; or The Annual December 27th Post

Earlier this morning I posted about the Overlooked Movie GENIUS, which is mostly about writing and editing, and talked a little about my own influences and what my goals were during my early career. That leads into this post, where I'll expand a little on those things. Because today is the 40^th anniversary of the day I became a professional writer.

If you've been reading this blog for very long, you know the story: newly married, working for my dad at the TV repair shop, pounding out short stories as fast as I could on an old manual typewriter, sending them out to any possible market, and more than a few impossible ones, because, hey, you've got to hope, right? Livia and I lived in an apartment attached to the side of an old house and didn't have a mailbox, so I used my parents' address on my manuscripts. The morning of December 27, 1976, I swung by there on my way to work. Nobody was home, so I was by myself when I got the envelope out of the mailbox that had Ideal Publishing Company as the return address. I tore it open and took out a check in the amount of $167.50, payment for my short story "The Voice on the Other End", a confession yarn published about four months later, anonymously, in the magazine INTIMATE STORY.

I mentioned in the earlier post that a part of me wanted to write The Great American Novel. Well, "The Voice on the Other End" sure wasn't it. But I also wanted to see my work in print and to get paid for it, and there was the proof of my ability to do that, all $167.50 of it. It wasn't cold hard cash, but it was the next thing to it, and once that check was in the bank it paid our rent for a month and bought a week's worth of groceries, and that was a thrill I'd never experienced before. That was probably where my mercenary instincts began to win out over my artistic ones, although it took a while for the victory to be complete, but my main goal ever since has been to write for a living.

I've done that, mostly. Over the next ten years I had several regular jobs but managed to write full-time for three of those years. Then, since February 1987 I've done nothing but write and have made an often precarious but sometimes comfortable living at it. I am, to quote Lou Gehrig without the microphone reverb, the luckiest man on the face of the earth. Never wrote The Great American Novel, but I've written some decent stuff under my own name and a lot of solid novels under other names that have entertained millions of people. I've brought pleasure to them in the good times and I hope I've helped them get through some of the stressful times, the same way that books have gotten me through many dark nights of the soul.

If you want numbers, as of today we're talking about 344 novels, one non-fiction book, and upwards of 150 short stories, novelettes, novellas, essays, articles, and book introductions. The fiction output alone is somewhere between 25 and 30 million words. I've slowed down some in recent years, but if I stay healthy I think I've got at least another five million words in me, maybe more.

As always, special thanks to Livia, who really does make it all possible; to our daughters Shayna and Joanna, who have helped out in so many different ways; to the editors who have bought my work over the years, from Sam Merwin Jr. to Gary Goldstein and all the ones in between; to the writers who have inspired me with their work and their friendship—I'd list them but there are too many and I'd leave somebody out—and to the readers who have kept me in business. I'm thinking this may be the last lengthy December 27^th post I'll write, although I'll probably keep pointing out the anniversary here on the blog. If I make it to 50 years in this business, I may have a few other things to say.

Until then, thanks to all of you reading this as well, and now I have pages to do.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Genius

I guess I'm just the target audience for certain movies, which is the case with GENIUS, a film about the relationship between editor Max Perkins (an oddly cast but effective Colin Firth) and author Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law, chewing the scenery relentlessly, but the part sort of calls for that). Nicole Kidman is Wolfe's mistress Aline Bernstein, Guy Pearce is F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dominic West is Ernest Hemingway. (I find it cool that West has now played both Hemingway and Howard Stark.)

The reviews weren't kind to this movie, and I can see why. It's pretty stagebound, and a lot of scenes consist of Wolfe and Perkins arguing about the editing of Wolfe's huge autobiographical manuscript O LOST!, which eventually becomes his debut novel LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL. Once that's a success, they move on to the even more gargantuan OF TIME AND THE RIVER before the two men have an inevitable falling-out. Along the way there's some soap operatic stuff with Wolfe and his mistress and Perkins and his wife, as well as the travails of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, but really, the focus is on writing and editing for the most part, and you know me, I can't get enough of that stuff.

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but early in my career I, too, wanted to write The Great American Novel. I was torn between wanting to be Mike Avallone/Harry Whittington or Ernest Hemingway/F. Scott Fitzgerald. (I never wanted to be Thomas Wolfe.) Over time I realized my talent and personality were more suited to the Avallone/Whittington end of the spectrum. Not that I'm disparaging those writers at all. Avallone might not have been able to write THE GREAT GATSBY, but Fitzgerald damn sure couldn't have written THE THOUSAND COFFINS AFFAIR, and which one of those has had more of an influence on my career and stayed with me longer, huh? (Now I have to digress again and make clear that I'm not knocking GATSBY, which I love immensely, anachronisms and all. And Whittington, come to think of it, could well have written something like THE SUN ALSO RISES, which is one of my all-time favorite novels. And now I'm off the rails completely . . .)

To get back to the point of this post, I really enjoyed GENIUS. I've never read a word of Thomas Wolfe's work—the books were too long for me even back when I regularly read long books—but the quotes from them in this film sort of make me want to. I'll have to think about that. In the meantime, if you're a writer and/or editor, you might enjoy this movie, too. I think it's well worth checking out.

King Kong vs. Tarzan - Will Murray

Okay, picture this: Tarzan . . . riding an elephant . . . leading a herd of elephants . . . fighting King Kong.

If that doesn't get your blood racing, you're probably not the target audience for Will Murray's excellent new novel, KING KONG VS. TARZAN. This top-notch adventure yarn fills in a gap in the original King Kong movie and tells the story of how Carl Denham, Jack Driscoll, Ann Darrow, Captain Englehorn, and the crew of the Wanderer get the captured King Kong from Skull Island back to New York. Turns out they have to stop in Africa along the way to take on supplies, and Kong escapes, and Tarzan shows up to help corral the big ape.

This is a great idea, and Murray tells the story in his usual fast-paced, exciting prose. There are some spectacular scenes in this one. Murray does a fine job of capturing the characters. I really hope there are more Tarzan novels to come from him. For me, a book like this really makes me feel like I'm back on my parents' front porch on a warm summer day with nothing to do but read. Well, maybe a break to play baseball later, but most of the day I'd spend happily lost in Africa with the Lord of the Jungle and the King of Skull Island. Highly recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, December 24, 1932

Ho, ho, ho! Yeah, life's tough for a jolly old elf in the big city. If you don't believe me, obviously you can ask Lieut. John Hopper, a forgotten pulpster who's featured in this issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY. Also in this issue are stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Donald Barr Chidsey, Fred MacIsaac, and Hulbert Footner. If Santa didn't make it to your house last night, now you know why!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, December 24, 1932

Many of the Street & Smith pulps had Christmas-themed issues. Here's one from the long-running WILD WEST WEEKLY. There are three Christmas stories in this issue: "A Holiday fer Dry Gulch", a Billy West/Circle J novelette by Lee Bond writing as Cleve Endicott, "The Whistlin' Kid Sees a Star in the East" by Emery Jackson (really J. Allan Dunn), and "Two Bags of Christmas Grub", a Lum Yates story by Galen C. Colin writing as Collins Hafford. I have to admit I don't know anything about the Lum Yates character, although I've read Circle J stories by Lee Bond and Whistlin' Kid stories by J. Allan Dunn (and of course many other stories by those authors, who are both top-notch). Other authors in this issue are Stephen Payne, William F. Bragg, Reginald C. Barker (writing as Lee Harrington), and Houston Irvine (writing as Philip H. Deere). I've never read an issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY that I didn't enjoy, and I'm sure I'd like this one, too.

Forgotten Books: Eve of Evil - George G. Gilman (Terry Harknett)

I always try to read something Christmas-themed for my Forgotten Books post closest to the holiday. This year's book comes from a bit of an unlikely source. The Edge series launched the British Western boom and also influenced American Westerns for several years with its graphic violence and dark humor. They were reprinted in the U.S. by the original Pinnacle Books with covers by the great Bruce Minney and were very successful. I read quite a few of them during the late Seventies and early Eighties, including this Christmas novel, and I just reread it in an e-book edition.

For those of you not familiar with the series, Edge is really Josiah Hedges, a farmer who went off to the Civil War (his adventures there are chronicled in several flashback volumes within the series) and fought beside several men who turned into brutal outlaws after the war. They show up at Hedges' farm before he returns from the war and proceed to torture and murder Hedges' younger brother because they think there's money hidden on the farm. When Hedges finds out about this, he tracks them down and kills them in bloody fashion, picking up the nickname Edge along the way. After that he becomes a drifter, riding into troublesome situations that always turn extremely violent. He tries to settle down a few times, but that always ends badly. The overall grimness of the series is broken up by Edge's penchant for puns and bad jokes, many of which are veiled references to modern-day popular culture. A lot of these come close to breaking the fourth wall but don't quite.

In EVE OF EVIL, Edge finds himself in a ghost town in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains on Christmas Eve, although he doesn't know what day it is when the book starts. A young couple named Joseph and Maria show up. She's pregnant, of course, and her rancher father has sent gunmen to kill Joseph. The rancher is also involved in a dispute with some sheepherders—or shepherds, if you will. There's a gunman named Starr who dies in the east. There's a whore named Angel. There are three strangers from Japan—three kings from the Orient? You get the idea. The story of the Nativity plays out all over again in Wyoming, although there are a lot more gunfights in this one. And there's a bit of a twist in the ending.

The Edge series is pretty much a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. I always enjoyed the books. Unlike all the house-name Western series, Edge was the brainchild of one man, British author Terry Harknett, who wrote all the books under the pseudonym George G. Gilman. Because of that, the voice remains consistent all the way through. There are stretches where the series gets a little too jokey and the pop culture references a little too blatant for my taste. That's not the case in EVE OF EVIL. Harknett plays things relatively straight, and as a result I enjoyed the book quite a bit and thought it held up well to rereading more than 35 years later. In fact, since I never finished the series before, I think I might go back and pick it up again, along with some of Harknett's other series that I never sampled.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The 12 Dogs of Christmas

(A rerun is the best I can do this year. This post originally appeared in somewhat different form on December 26, 2009.)

This Christmas movie is set in 1931 and is about a girl from Pittsburgh whose father has to send her to live with her “aunt” (really an old girlfriend) in a small town that has a local ordinance against dogs. Naturally the girl winds up with an adorable dog and makes friends with a family that provides a “dog orphanage” just outside the town limits. The mayor’s brother is the dogcatcher and rides around in a motorcycle sidecar while his assistant drives the motorcycle. There’s a lot of mild danger and adventure and plenty of cute little kids and dogs.

This is a family-friendly movie, very sweet and heart-warming and inspirational, but the Depression-era setting is portrayed in an appropriately dark and gritty manner. The cast, all of whom were unfamiliar to me except for character actors John Billingsley and Richard Riehle, does a good job, and the period detail is good with one exception: I don’t think the football term “Hail Mary pass” had been coined in 1931. That’s a pretty minor quibble, though. Overall, this is a mild but enjoyable film and worth watching if you're looking for a Christmas movie you might not have seen.