I post a different cover scan every week or so on the home page of the WesternPulps group. This is the current week's picture, from the April 9, 1938 issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. There are several hundred Western pulp cover scans in the group files available to members. 

Western Lists

Graham asks below about mailing lists devoted to Western fiction. There are actually quite a few.

The largest (he said modestly) is WesternPulps, which is moderated by yours truly. The focus, as the name implies, is on Western pulp magazines, but topics tend to drift to other things Western-related, such as the ongoing discussion of why there's no evidence in Western movies of horses going to the bathroom.

Also devoted to Western fiction in general is Frontier Times, which does a better job of staying on topic. There's a lot of overlap between the membership of this group and WesternPulps, and we all get along fine.

The Black Horse Westerns list concentrates on the Western novels published by Robert Hale Ltd., although it occasionally touches on other Western-related topics as well. Many of the members of this list are Black Horse authors, so the posts tend to deal with writing most of the time, but membership is open to Western readers as well. I don't write for Hale, but I'm a member of this group and enjoy the discussions.

There are also some specialized groups, such as Longarm and Lone Star, devoted to those two series, and The Spanish Bit Saga Club, which discusses the series of historical novels by Don Coldsmith. Morgan Kane, the hero of a series of Western novels first published in Norway, has a list devoted to him. Louis L'Amour has at least five different lists. Other authors who write Westerns such as David Robbins, William W. Johnstone, and James B. Hendryx have lists devoted to their work. Search "Westerns" on the Yahoo Groups main page and there are a surprising number of hits. Anyone who's interested in Westerns ought to be able to find several lists that would be a good fit for them.

Black Horse Express 

Black Horse Express

The latest issue of the Black Horse Express, the excellent on-line newsletter devoted to the Black Horse Western line of books published by Robert Hale Ltd. in England, is now available at www.blackhorsewesterns.com . The BHE also includes other items of Western interest. Hale publishes more Westerns than any other publisher in the world, and the quality level of them is uniformly high. If you haven't visited this site, check it out.

The Hardcase Crime edition of HOME IS THE SAILOR 

Home is the Sailor/Day Keene

Ed Gorman has written eloquently about this novel, most recently here. I can’t add much to what Ed has to say except that HOME IS THE SAILOR is perhaps the quintessential Gold Medal novel. It has all the elements: the tough, somewhat dim hero who stays drunk for much of the story; the beautiful girl who may or may not be what she seems; the dead body that has to be disposed of; and finally the hero on the lam from the cops, charged with something that he didn’t do. Just when poor Swede Nelson thinks his situation can’t get worse, Things Get Really Bad. It all adds up to a fast-paced, maybe not entirely believable novel that’s a heck of a lot of fun to read. If anybody was ever to ask you, “What were those old Gold Medals like, anyway?”, you could do a lot worse than handing them a copy of HOME IS THE SAILOR.

The good thing is that now you don’t have to have the first Gold Medal printing from 1952, like I do (not bragging too much; my copy is BTH). Since HOME IS THE SAILOR has just been reprinted by the fine folks at Hardcase Crime, you can hie yourself down to your local bookstore and buy a brand-new copy that’s not water-stained and falling apart. I recommend that you do so posthaste.

Jungle Adventures

No, that’s not the name of an old pulp magazine, as far as I know. I’m talking about the fact that today, for the first time this year, I had to break out the lawn mower and cut the grass – and weeds – in the front yard. Now, I know that in some locations south of here – Alvin, Texas, say – people have been mowing their lawns all winter, but this is the first time I’ve mowed since last October or early November.

One thing I quickly discovered was that fire ants have taken over our front yard. Ever seen those giant termite mounds in Africa? The fire ant mounds in our yard are only slightly smaller, and I exaggerate only a little for dramatic effect. When I was a kid we didn’t have fire ants. We had the dreaded red ants, which every adult in Texas in the Fifties and Sixties pronounced “red aints”, as in “Watch out for that red aint bed! They’ll bite ya!” Well, as bad as red ants were, fire ants are worse. I managed not to get stung while I was mowing, but I don’t know how I did it. It must have been a sight to see, me pushing the lawn mower and hopping over ant beds with the grace of a wounded walrus.

My father fought a lifelong battle with ants. Red ants, black ants, fire ants, he didn’t care, he just enjoyed the combat. At first he employed a scorched earth strategy – he poured gasoline on the beds and set them on fire. I’m sure the theory was that the gasoline would flow down into the ground and burn up the ones under the surface, too, but I don’t think it ever did. As time went on my dad’s efforts advanced to a higher level of technology. He began to use poison. Seemingly once a week he would announce, “I think I’m gonna go dope them aint beds,” and he would spend the rest of the afternoon happily dumping poison on them. As anyone who has tried to get rid of ants knows, the little monsters laugh in the face of such efforts. The so-called poison granules are the McDonald’s French fries of the ant world. They gobble ’em down and go right on about their business. But I guess it makes us feel better to know that we’ve at least tried to win the battle. So next week I’m sure we’ll break out the Amdro and dope them aints. It’s a tradition, after all.

Sin Camp

Having enjoyed that Nightstand Book by Robert Silverberg that I read a week or so ago, I pulled down another one from the shelves, not by Silverberg this time but by Tony Calvano instead. According to Earl Kemp, Calvano was the pseudonym of Thomas P. Ramirez, who also wrote a few sleaze paperbacks for Monarch Books as Tom Phillips but was most prolific under the Calvano name. There was also a Thomas P. Ramirez who wrote several of the Phoenix Force books (a spin-off from the Executioner series); I assume he was the same author, but I don't know that for sure.

Anyway, SIN CAMP is the first thing I've read by Calvano/Ramirez. It's an Army novel, set on and around the fictional Camp Coulter in Texas. The narrator, GI Tom Staton, falls in love with a young Mexican prostitute who works in a brothel in nearby Harden City. He discovers that she's being forced to stay there and decides to rescue her. Naturally, things do not work out well, as Staton also hooks up with a rich nymphomaniac (lots of those around in Fifties and Sixties sleaze novels). There are quite a few sex scenes, and they're slightly more graphic than the ones in the Silverberg novel I read. I'm sure some of that is due to the natural differences in authors, and also SIN CAMP was published two years later, so some of the editorial restrictions may have eased up. There's another main storyline in SIN CAMP that involves the conflict between the enlisted men in Staton's company and the brutal non-coms in charge of them, and these sections read more like a mainstream novel.

The writing is certainly not as good as in the Silverberg book, but there's a lot of raw vitality and fast-paced storytelling to keep the reader turning the pages. The Calvano books have a reputation for a certain amount of violence and sadism, and although it takes its time getting around to it, SIN CAMP has its share. There's also one plot development late in the book that comes out of left field. Despite its flaws, I enjoyed this one quite a bit and intend to continue sampling the various Nightstand Books that I have on my shelves.

Trouble Rides the Texas Pacific

TROUBLE RIDES THE TEXAS PACIFIC, James J. Griffin, iUniverse, 2005

This is the first published novel by my friend Jim Griffin, but I feel confident in predicting that it won’t be the last. It’s a fine piece of work.

Texas Ranger Jim Blawcyzk, the star of a series of on-line stories, gets his biggest case and his biggest challenge here. In a great opening sequence, the train on which Jim is riding is derailed and robbed by outlaws. Naturally, after rescuing some of the injured passengers, he pursues the owlhoots, but is no simple hold-up. Instead, the incident sets Jim on the trail of a conspiracy that threatens the expansion of the Texas Pacific Railroad across Texas.

There’s plenty of fast-paced action, and while the author’s fondness for the Jim Hatfield stories in the pulp TEXAS RANGERS is well-known, Jim Blawcyzk is no Hatfield clone. For one thing, unlike the Lone Wolf, Blawcyzk has a wife and son and comes across, at least to me, as being a bit older and more settled than Hatfield. The supporting characters, especially the group of Rangers that assists Hatfield in breaking up the conspiracy, are well-drawn and likable. There are echoes of pulp authors Tom Curry and Peter Germano in the prose, but Griffin’s style is his own and flows very well.

TROUBLE RIDES THE TEXAS PACIFIC is the sort of traditional, action-oriented Western that’s not published much anymore, and that’s a shame because it’s very entertaining and well-written. Highly recommended, and available from the usual on-line bookstores as well as directly from the publisher.

The Village

We got around to watching this movie on DVD tonight, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. But then, I always enjoy M. Night Shyamalan's movies even when I don't particularly like them, as was the case with THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE. His work just looks so interesting to me. He frames his shots in such a distinctive way, often aiming the camera through windows and doors and fences, etc., that the look of his films is unmistakable. I think his often-hyped plot twists are pretty predictable -- I guessed them without much trouble in THE SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE, and also tonight in THE VILLAGE -- but I like the way he writes anyway. And while his movies are definitely leisurely, they never seem slow to me.

Anyway, I liked the creepy feel that THE VILLAGE achieved without much gore and little in the way of action. No one makes better use of things unseen or half-seen. There are some great shots of the creatures blurred and in the background, or just out of the frame. And even though I knew the twist was coming, it was effective.

I haven't said anything yet about SIGNS, which I consider Shyamalan's best film and one of the best I've seen in recent years. It's a beautiful example of the sort of layered writing at which he excels. I love the way that things which don't make much sense early on in the movie come to make perfect sense and take on a deeper meaning by the end. I need to watch this one again, if I can ever find the time.