2018 AND ALL THAT

As the year grinds inevitably towards its end we come, with equal inevitability, to the annual round-up and hopeful glances towards the future. Not a very long post, you’ll be glad to hear since 2018 has been fairly quiet with regard to publications.

In June I achieved a lifelong ambition, and had a Jerry Cornelius story published on the Further Adventures of Jerry Cornelius website. Titled "Pierrot in Bombazine" I had fun playing with steampunk tropes, among other things.

July saw a story of mine appear in PICKMAN’S GALLERY from Ulthar Press: an anthology of Lovecraftian fiction that took its cue from the original HPL story, “Pickman’s Model”. My own contribution, “Eigenspace X”, was an askance look at the modern art world, and what happens when sculpture meets multi-dimensional mathematics.

The Western I’d always wanted to have a go at was published by Pro Se Publications in August: REVENGE IS A COLD PISTOL. I was surprised (and delighted) to discover that not only were there paperback and Kindle editions, but also a hardback. To my mind, the publishers should have scrapped the paperback and just gone with hardback (while maybe reducing the price a little): the whole product looks so much sharper, the cover art more vibrant.

WEIRDBOOK #40 included my “And the Living Is Easy”: a short story which started life as a one-act play, believe it or not. Concerning two sun gods hiding away from a poisoned or dying sun, it probably works best as short fiction (a good man always knows his limitations).

And my final appearance of the year was in THE ALCHEMY PRESS BOOK OF HORRORS. Unable to resist diving back below the deep blue briny and mixing up a Kate Bush track with a Japanese monster, I came up with “Her Favourite Place”. 

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And for 2019? It’s often difficult to be precise, because publishing is rarely an exact science, but I can say that Graeme Hurry’s KZINE #23 is out in January and includes a short SF story of mine: “A World in Aspic” (which you might describe as valvepunk, if we’re throwing labels around).

Damian Paladin will be returning in “Cradle of the Deep” in the first issue of the relaunched STARTLING STORIES (you guessed it: more underwater frolics), and a revised and expanded edition of THE PALADIN MANDATES (includes two previously unpublished adventures for Leigh Oswin and Paladin) should be heading your way. And elsewhere, if the stars are right, another team-up with Adrian Cole’s Nick Nightmare. Those two do get around.

Finally, there is another short novel ready to be unleashed on the unsuspecting world: involving an updated masked avenger which, no one will be surprised to hear, involves quite a lot of flying. And hand to hand fighting. And gunplay. Details as and when. 

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And that’s it. Just remains for me to wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous 2019. Be good to each other.

HAVE PEN WILL SCRIBBLE

I’m of that generation where Westerns were everywhere: films, TV, books. I just about remember watching Richard Boone as Paladin (now where’ve I heard that name before?) in Have Gun, Will Travel, along with Sugarfoot, Rawhide, Wagon Train, and in later years Alias Smith & Jones and The High Chaparral.

But I did lose interest in the movies sometime in the mid-1960s. Back then the BBC would show a Saturday Western every week and, to be honest, most were poor quality, assembly-line films lacking in originality, budget, or decent actors. I reached a point where I just couldn’t bring myself to watch another Western movie. That is, until I was at polytechnic.

I was far too young to see A Fistful of Dollars when it first came out; though I do remember the fuss caused by its amorality and perceived sadism. Several years later, though, I was a student at Lanchester Polytechnic. On Wednesday afternoons a film club ran in a lecture theatre; one film I watched was For a Few Dollars More. It was like a slap around the face. That same year High Plains Drifter was released and I watched it at a Coventry flea-pit on a double bill with Two Mules for Sister Sara. In no time I was a fan of both Clint Eastwood and Italian Westerns.

I never read many Western novels – although paperbacks by British authors such as Terry Harknett (under a variety of pseudonyms) and JT Edson were everywhere throughout the 1970s. I did peruse the odd novelisation (such as the first two “Dollar” films and A Fistful of Dynamite) and Glendon Swarthout’s The Shootist (the film adaptation of which is still my favourite John Wayne film). I was – and still am – mainly into Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and writing same.

Then, towards the end of the 70s, I hit a period of enforced idleness. I don’t know how many of you remember the smallpox outbreak at Birmingham University’s Medical School, but my department was caught up in the tragedy. We were sent home for an open-ended period while part of the building was decontaminated. I grew bored rapidly and, for reasons I no longer remember, started writing a Western. It was pretty bad: the central character, Quarrel, was an obvious Man With No Name knock-off, everyone else an assembly of clichés. I abandoned it when I returned to work.

But the odd thing was, I’d enjoyed it – purple prose and stupid plot notwithstanding. And it had swiftly become clear that, unless you were writing a strictly historical one, Westerns were as much Fantasy as anything from the pen of Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber or Robert E Howard (who did write Westerns, of course). And Quarrel never went away: lurking in the depths of my head, biding his time. Eventually, his time came.

A couple of years back, Pro Se Publications accepted a Damian Paladin book, Walkers in Shadow,  for publication, and I found myself wondering if there was something else I could try out on them. A Western? I thought. Pro Se is a New Pulp publisher, and Westerns are one of the oldest forms of pulp fiction.

With a new look and a first name – Arieh – Quarrel came a-knockin’. Shamelessly borrowing the plot of Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (well, adapting Samurai movies hadn’t done Sergio Leone or John Sturges any harm) and going for a slightly more Italian Western vibe, I pitched the idea at Tommy Hancock at Pro Se. “Write it,” he said. And thus was Revenge is a Cold Pistol born. I am now a published Western author – words I never thought I’d write.

Will Arieh Quarrel return? Well, I’m working on a storyline at the moment, and I’ll pitch it once it’s complete. Then we’ll see.

Thoughts on 1968 movie HANG 'EM HIGH

Watched the Clint Eastwood Western Hang ’Em High (1968) last night – only the second time I’ve seen it. The first time, some decades back, I was sorely disappointed; I think I was expecting something more like the Dollar films, or High Plains Drifter, while this offering is more traditional (although I’ve seen it described as revisionist, which I’d dispute). I thought I’d be fair and give it another go.

It’s not as bad as I remember it – but it’s a long way from good. With an almost 2 hour (sometimes too leisurely) running time it could benefit with at least half an hour snipped off. The mass hanging scene, especially, feels interminable. I appreciate the director wanting to convey some of the inappropriate carnival atmosphere such an event would have generated, but it could have been conveyed just as well – or maybe better – with the judicious application of scissors. The story line meanders too, and feels unfocused.

There’s a parade of familiar and famous faces – such as Dennis Hopper, Alan Hale Jr., Bruce Dern, James MacArthur and Ben Johnson – but too often they’re little more than extended cameos or filler material; their characters flitting across the screen in the service of Eastwood’s, then discarded as though the writer/director had grown bored with them. All Hopper is given to do is escape from a holding cell and get shot down in the street for his trouble – not exactly stretching his talents. And Johnson’s Marshal Bliss – after cutting down Eastwood's hanged but still living Jed Cooper and delivering him to Pat Hingle’s Judge Fenton – is written off in a couple of lines of dialogue (killed in a gun down, off-screen). Alan Hale Jr. fares little better. And the inevitable love interest, in the shape of Inger Stevens, feels just as incidental, her own tragedy denied any type of closure.

The film was, of course, an attempt to cash in on Eastwood’s rising star and, since he’d come to fame in an Italian Western trilogy, what better than to cast him in an American Western. At the time, Variety described it as “a poor American-made imitation of a poor Italian-made imitation of an American-made Western.” Which is a bit harsh (many Americans felt the Italian cinema was trampling all over a beloved art form and only the US should be allowed to make Westerns), but close to the truth. For a while Hollywood, recognising the box office appeal of so-called Spaghetti Westerns, tried to copy their style, with little success. It occurred to me that the film has a slightly unfinished feel to it, as though rushed out to capitalise on Eastwood’s name (after all, they probably weren’t to know he’d still be a major earner almost half a century later: movies and their audiences are fickle things). Judicious editing and overall tightening would make a better film – although still not a great one. Those were still in the future.