Chat thread

[John]

Working on a six-book biography series for young-adults called "Heroes and Villains of the Wild West." The set was trad-pubbed years ago and I recently got the ebook rights from the publisher, so now I'm adding material and prepping them for Kindle. They sold really well in the school library market, so I'm hoping they do as well as ebooks. I'm starting with the Wild Bill Hickok book, since he's one of the heroes in "Ghost Marshal," and a lot of my novel readers now want to know the "true" story of Wild Bill. Covers are done, now it's just a matter of a final edit and formatting.

[Ashe]

Sounds great, John.

[[deleted user]]

Hey, I just stumbled across this article on NPR. Thought I might be an interesting quick read.

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/22/4001788...

[John]

Intriguing! Thanks for the heads-up, Philip. The heroine reminds me of Jessie in "Ghost Marshal" I love a Western woman who can kick paranormal butt. :) I downloaded the book to my Kindle, hope to read it in June during my trip West.

[audrey]

Philip wrote: "Hey, I just stumbled across this article on NPR. Thought I might be an interesting quick read.

This looks AMAZING. Thanks for the heads up! Maybe an option for the May group read?

[Justin]

Nice, thanks for sharing Philip.

[Ashe]

Yeah, I've seen Vermillion around. Chuck Wendig hosted the author on his blog recently too. Love the cover.

And that reminds me, I should post a poll to vote on themes for the May/June group read.

[Andrew]

Especially gutted at the moment. Went on holiday last week, had a nice time, left my Kindle on the train on my way home--

I think my face was a picture when I realised, three hours later...

[Chris]

hi john. sounds like some great books. When do you think you'll have then ready for kindle? sold through amazon, id assume...

[Chris]

hi all. apologies for my leghnthy absence. id like to say that the duration of which is indicative of my progressing my own stories. but its not. .... mainly due to sorting my kids with school and day care and so on. ... In saying that, I'm about 9k words from revising a novella I wrote. Once finished, I'll give it another editing pass and then flick it out for per review. ie will be nice to have this one completed. I have 900 more stories in my head in dying to write.

[John]

Thanks Christopher. I hope to have the Wild Bill book out by mid-May, then maybe publish the others every month or so. That'll keep me on Amazon's new releases list for a while.

Good luck with your novella!

[Chris]

Thanks John. Long forward to your book too. I like those sorts of stories.

[Justin]

Thought I'd share this with everyone. For my latest novel I'm working on, Opium Warfare, I'm having characters use pistol swords. I think you may remember me bringing up the Final Fantasy gunblades a few weeks back, well I looked into actual type weapons and they are in fact called "pistol swords". They seem cook but history shows that they were not very effective.

Well...they may not have been realistically effective but I'll make sure my book does them the proper justice. #BringingBackThePistolSword

[Ashe]

I never really caught ahold of gunblades/pistol-swords but they're an interesting concept.

[James]

Justin wrote: "Well...they may not have been realistically effective but I'll make sure my book does them the proper justice."

I never really understood the pistol-sword.

If you're close enough for the blade, you don't need the gun, if they're far enough away for the gun to be necessary, you have time to holster/drop it and unsheath the sword.

You sacrifice range and accuracy and load, for an excessive bayonet; you sacrifice balance and flexibility, for shots that are useless in a close-fight.

Not that I'm saying they can't be useful or interesting... but what's the actual appeal?

[Justin]

I wondered that myself. I assume it's for the exact reason you pointed out. If your close enough you use the sword and if your far away you use the gun. Its sort of a two for one deal, I've been looking into it and I may use actual pistol swords or dramatize them to make them more fictional.

[[deleted user]]

In historical context, it was for when you ran out of shot but didn't have a full minute to reload. Guns like that come from the time when firearms were just starting to come into their own, but the rule of warfare was still mass battle melee combat: the enemy charged, you opened fire, whoever survived the volley long enough to get to you, you then stabbed. It's roughly the same principle as attaching a bayonet to a rifle. But in the case of those hybrid weapons they fell out of favor quickly once gun became more reliable and reload times shorter.

[Quentin]

Hey guys, I haven't read this yet but it's on sale for .99 and sounds right up our alley.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OYE96DU/?...

[Ashe]

Hm. I sincerely hope that the Navajo chief is given more than a vague, wizard status. Something to read though.

[Quentin]

Here's a free book I haven't read but looks pretty cool:

http://www.amazon.com/name/dp/B00O8D1ZS6

BTW Ashe, if I should be posting these elsewhere let me know, maybe we need a free/bargain book thread if we don't have one?

[Ashe]

Yeah maybe we should start a daily deals thread. Not that it's bad in here.

[[deleted user]]

That sounds like a great idea.

[[deleted user]]

Welp, Friday night and I'm writing new material while watching spaghetti westerns. I call that a good evening.

I don't recall if we discussed this before, but which westerns, weird or otherwise, give you guys inspiration?

[Quentin]

Sergio Leone, if you are talking movies. Actually any of the Clint Eastwood older westerns. Remember High Plains Drifter? Very much a weird western.

My biggest inspiration, if you want to include things other than movies, are the Weird Western Tales and Jonah Hex comics.

As I type this I am actually reading the new Deadlands Graphic Novel, so I'll post a review when Im done. It just came out in March

[John]

Definitely Sergio Leone. The first movie I ever saw was "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly," with my dad. Good times.

[Ashe]

I have chunks of the Dollars trilogy's score in a Deadlands playlist. Definitely Eastwood's westerns. Only one i didn't really like was Joe Kidd. Hang 'Em High is fairly responsible fora story I haven't written yet cept in a few scenes. High Plains Drifter is totally badass.

And i've said it before but Skyrim was pretty inspiring. That includes the music. The Fallout series too. And Star Trek. I'd be lying if I said my orcs didn't have some Worf in them.

[Justin]

I was inspired to write A Bloody Bloody Mess in the Wild Wild West after watching one of the Dollar Trilogy movies. Seems we have all been inspired in one way or the other by similar films.

[Ashe]

Does Borderlands count? I know it's a game but the settings and music are just so good.

[[deleted user]]

I'd say Borderlands counts. It's got a lot of the western ideal mixed heavily with Mad Max, in my opinion. Same with Fallout, and that game series heavily influenced me as well. I was watching "For a Few Dollars More", definitely my favorite of the Dollars Trilogy, and my novels are based on that trilogy, if rather loosely.
However, if I'm adding humor, I try to keep "Blazing Saddles" (or any Mel Brooks films, really) in mind.

[John]

Blazing Saddles, you say?

https://twitter.com/johnchamilton/sta...

That's HEDLEY!

[Ashe]

Ah, Blazing Saddles. God I need to rewatch that soon.

[[deleted user]]

John wrote: "Blazing Saddles, you say?

https://twitter.com/johnchamilton/sta...

That's HEDLEY!"

Oh that is hilarious! I think I need one of those.

"It's alright, Taggert. It's just a man and a horse being hung out there."

[Justin]

So every Wednesday I have Daily Drabbles(100 word stories) on my website. I decided to make this weeks drabbles pertain to the Weird West and our group read theme.

Seeing as I did that I felt it was only fitting to share the drabbles with the group.


The Darndest Thing

I pushed open the saloon doors and that’s when I saw it. The darndest thing I ever saw in my entire life. A man laid dead on the ground and hovering above him was a flying metal cylinder. It was quite big in mass and it glowed brightly.

It cast a light onto the dead man and when I took a step the light went up and the thing flew away. I slowly walked over to the body to examine it. The man’s stomach had a triangle burn and his insides had been taken out. This was only the beginning.


Dreading the Inevitable

“I’ll be back” he said to me. No he wasn’t the terminator he was something far worse. He starred me down with piercing yellow eyes until finally vanishing into the night. I sat there on my porch shaking for dear life. I knew he would come back..and end my life.

I heard when the clock struck midnight and I gulped and let out a deep sigh. He said not to try anything and that he’d be back..it was only a matter of time. The door opened and....

Well, now I too am a howling beast

[Chris]

head em' off at the pass!

[[deleted user]]

So I'm going to indulge in a little movie speculation here. It's well know that director John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing, Escape From New York, etc.) is a fan of Westerns and got started because he wanted to make them, but by the time he began his career Hollywood wasn't interested in the genre anymore. But he added touches and tropes of the genre to his horror and sci-fi movies.
Now, given his character archetypes and themes he liked to work with, if Carpenter ever did get to make that Western, anyone care to speculate on what we as the viewing public would have gotten?
(I picture a gunslinger Snake Plissken, a Lo Pan character that heads up the local Chinese community being involved, and either ghosts, demonic cultists, an unstoppable killer or body swapping alien being the villain.)

[James]

Philip wrote: "Now, given his character archetypes and themes he liked to work with, if Carpenter ever did get to make that Western, anyone care to speculate on what we as the viewing public would have gotten?"

You can probably see it, in Big Trouble in Little China.

That movie was written as a western. Updating it was almost certainly a decision by the money people. But that's the western he would have made.

[John]

Big Trouble in Little China, one of the best movies ever made. It's all in the reflexes.

[Ashe]

What they said. Though I would DEFINITELY watch a remake that's a western. Even if every line was the same. I love that movie so much.

[John]

I highly recommend watching it on a 60" plasma on Blue-ray, with 5.1 sound so loud it rattles the windows. :)

[[deleted user]]

Well... I see your point.

[Ashe]

John should come back to movies and do a proper horror western though.

[James]

I highly recommend watching it with the commentary track playing. Carpenter and Russell discuss the movie over whiskey and cigars.

And, as memory serves, that's where I first encountered reference to it's western origins.

And, as a side-note, if you like that commentary, then you should definitely get The Thing and Escape from New York, with commentaries with both of them. They give good talking head.

[Ashe]

I'm pretty sure my copies have commentary.

[James]

If you're a fan of those movies and those two people, you won't regret listening in. "The Thing" is probably my favourite of all commentaries, but "Big Trouble..." is probably second.


You could throw in the Halloween commentary, too. It's more piecemeal, though. The version I had had various people commenting on relevant scenes that they were in or had some hand in making. No one commented through the entire movie. Still packed with info, though.

[Quentin]

Hey guys

I thought I'd share this since I know a couple of you had submitted stories. I got this today:

Dear Quentin,

Thank you for the opportunity to read "Mannifest Destinee". We appreciate your submission, but your story was not chosen for this year’s anthology. With over a hundred submissions and only six available slots, competition was fierce, and many very good stories simply didn’t fit for one reason or another.

Thank you again. Good luck placing the story elsewhere, and we hope to see more from you in the future.

Sincerely,

Misty Massey
Emily Leverett
Margaret S. McGraw
Co-Editors, The Weird Wild West

This was the Kickstarter thing that some of you had talked about. I have a short story collection coming out this summer (I wanted to get it out by Spring by that ain't happening) so I'll put the story in there.

Let me know what you guys hear, and good luck!

[audrey]

Philip wrote: "So I'm going to indulge in a little movie speculation here. It's well know that director John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing, Escape From New York, etc.) is a fan of Westerns and got started becau..."

Carpenter did make a weird Western, though: John Carpenter's Vampires.

I liked it. It was dusty, gory and explodey.

[James]

Oddmonster wrote: "Philip wrote: "Carpenter did make a weird Western, though: John Carpenter's Vampires."

Well, if you go symbolic, then Escape From New York is more "western".

So is Big Trouble....

And They Live? Western.

John Carpenter has made a lot of westerns, if you really, really squint.

Probably his biggest western would be Ghosts of Mars. Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to make a literal western.

[audrey]

James wrote: "Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to make a literal western."

I thought Vampires was pretty close to being a literal Western, except with vampires. Lone gunslinger cross-slinger with a tragic past fights a gang of outlaws in a Western town. Plus Carpenter refers to it as having strong elements of a traditional Western. But I haven't seen Ghosts of Mars.

[James]

Oddmonster wrote: "I thought Vampires was pretty close to being a literal Western, except with vampires."

Yeah.

I just felt that Cross was the most "company man" of the lot.

All the rest only cooperated with an authority under duress. And briefly. He worked under them, for years.

But I guess a western can be about a soldier or railway man, too.

[James]

And his first film (USC Student Short won Oscar) was
The Resurrection of Broncho Billy

The Resurrection of Broncho Billy is the story of a young man (Johnny Crawford) who lives in a big city in present time, but his dreams are of the old west and western film heroes. Scenes of his everyday life take on the style of a western film as he visits with a western old timer Wild Bill Tucker; he crosses a busy boulevard packed with traffic and we hear the sound of a cattle drive; he's late for work at the hardware store; at an intersection crosswalk he has a western street showdown with a businessman as the light changes, etc.


You can watch it, in parts, on YouTube:

The Resurrection of Broncho Billy part1