Horror Month: Strangler

For an author, few things—except, perhaps, that first story or novel acceptance, or the first time you pluck your bright shiny first-published book from the box—can compare to having one’s words, one’s imagination, translated into pictures or onto film. A bit back, I was lucky enough to experience both with one of my short stories, Strangler.

Strangler was originally written as kind of a throw-away piece, designed to entertain with an O. Henryish type twist ending with a side of Poe. It appears in my horror short story anthology, Dark Harbors, one amongst 29, and had seen previous publication in a supernatural literally magazine back in the ‘80s before revision for its present inclusion. I thought that was the end of it until one Wednesday when I made my weekly trek to the comic book store to pick up my latest pulls.

While there, the owner approached me about the possibility of collaborating with a local artist looking to work with a writer on a project for an independent comic book company, Three Boys Productions, who published, among other books, Students of the Unusual, a horror anthology comic book. I arranged to meet with the artist, Joel Rivers, a couple weeks later and we batted around a few ideas, originally considering an entire graphic novel, for which I translated my novella, Nino del Mar (also in Dark Harbors), into script form.

Joel found the story a bit too graphic and, at 72 pages, too large a commitment in time and work with his myriad other projects. So we set about looking for something that would fit neatly into Students’ six-page-per-story format. Since Strangler was one of my shorter stories, it turned out to be a perfect match. I came up with a script, which we then reworked at a meeting, and Joel rendered the story in full-color comic book panels. It was quite a thrill seeing the finished product, let me tell you.

Again, I thought that was the end of it. But Students had other ideas. Their promotional methods are extremely innovative, slick and creatively without boundaries. Before I knew it, Strangler became a rap song by singer Ty Bru and a direct to DVD movie included with the comic book.

I was thrilled seeing the actual comic art visualization of my story, but even more blown away by viewing the live-action version. My story was picked, along with couple others in the issue and few from pervious issues, to promote the magazine and different tales were assigned to different producers. The woman who filmed Strangler—as well as starred in it—did a superb job of catching the mood and characters, while blending pieces of the comic book into the live-action.

Without further ado, here’s the blog premiere of the mini-movie. I hope Dark Bits readers will enjoy it as much as I do.

Horror Month: Mea Culpa Tulpa

What if your thoughts could be made real? What if all reality were nothing more than notion given substance? Remember the adage: If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it? Is that nothing more than pseudo psychology clap-trap, or might our thoughts possess considerably more power than we, well, think?

In many Eastern philosophies and faiths, the ability of thought to create substance is a given. Tibetan Buddhists (as well as western occultists) consider thought much more than an intellectual function. The Tulpa, a phantom figure constructed solely from the imagination, is an adept’s absolute certainly, a powerful representation of the mind’s capacity to alter the very fabric of reality. Conversely, Tibetan Buddhists also don’t consider Tulpas real—because in their belief neither is the world around us; it’s all mind-stuff, an illusion.

These so-called Tulpas, however, are not the sole providence of mystics and Eastern faith. Claims of Tulpas materialized by individuals abound. Usually their appearance coincides with great emotional turmoil, fear or some other powerful feeling. Possibly, if one accepts the manifestation of Tulpas, they account for the appearances of ghosts, perhaps even UFOs, or cryptozoological sightings. Reports of site hauntings, such as places where murders have occurred or on battlefields may be attributed to Tulpas, psychic impressions left behind like a mental fingerprint by minds suffering under extreme emotional strain.

In some cases, certain gifted individuals, as well as mystics, lay claim to Tulpa creation. Take for example the case of one Dion Fortune, an occultist writer. In her book Psychic Self Defense, she describes how she, while lying on her bed one night, “formulated a were-wolf accidentally.” In deep brooding and resentment, her thoughts turned to a frightening Norse were-creature called Fenrir. Within seconds, she felt a large grey wolf materialize beside her (we assume this was not her husband). Her knowledge of the occult in this case saved her from harm. She realized she needed to gain control of the creature, so she jammed an elbow into its furry ribs and said, “If you can’t behave yourself, you will have to go on the floor,” then pushed the beastie off the bed. Ms. Fortune was not one to mess around, obviously, and one presumes this technique worked on her husband as well whenever he got a bit wolfish.

The werewolf vanished through a wall. Yet after another family member spotted the creature’s glowing eyes in a corner of the room, Ms. Fortune decided to destroy the monster. She summoned it back, noting the thin “mind-thread” that joined it to her. She imagined herself sucking the life from the beast through that thread and poof! Fruit Brute was gone.

While Ms. Fortune’s mind-wolf and other Tulpa manifestations sound a bit far-fetched, there’s little doubt of the mind’s remarkable capability. Self-help “experts,” positive-thinking proponents and cognitive therapists likely can find common ground with mystics and occultists on one thing—the mind is a powerful organ with amazing untapped potential. Who knows what it can do, its limits? It is still little understood by scientists and doctors, a frontier of exploration whose surface as of yet has been barely scratched.

Can it produce Tulpas, ghosts, hauntings, even miracles? It can certainly manufacture despair or happiness (though the latter seems painfully more elusive than the former). Without doubt, everything begins with a thought—from great literature and music to war and hate. Thought can be a weapon or an olive branch, the expression of God or the Devil.

Tulpas aside...perhaps we should be much more careful with our thoughts…

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
In Paperback…

Terror Tuesday: Universal Screams

This week for Terror Tuesday I hand the reins over to C. Courtney Joyner, who gives us a peek behind the monster making machine at Universal Studios. Courtney is a Hollywood scriptwriter and prose writer and a hell of a nice guy. Look for his short story in the upcoming Express Westerns anthology, A Fistful of Legends.

INT. WRITER'S OFFICE - UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, 1943

A grubby, tiny space. A beleaguered SCREENWRITER is hunched over a Royal typewriter. The phone RINGS. The Writer lights his hundredth Camel of the day as he lifts up the receiver to hear a PRODUCER barking:

PRODUCER: Okay genius, here's the set-up: We got Lon Chaney and Evie Ankers. He's a scientist and she's his secretary. She loves him but he's got the hots for Aquanetta, who keeps turnin' into a gorilla at night. Rondo Hatton's the assistant, but don't give him any lines! We start shooting in three weeks, so get crackin'!

It's an easy scene to imagine: pulp writer George Bricker rolling his eyes and then a blank sheet into the typewriter or horror specialist Griffin Jay sending out for sandwiches for another long night in the writer's pit. As a rule, the studio contract writer was still finishing up another assignment - a western or gangster yarn - when they were handed their new horror job. Working on more than one project at a time wasn't just second nature, it was survival.

There's a classic joke about writing for the movies, where a screenwriter asks, "Do you want it good or by Tuesday?" Tuesday is usually the answer, and when you've accepted an assignment then that deadline is the goal. And yet, during the 30's, 40's and 50's journeymen screenwriters created memorable work over and over with damn little money and always by Tuesday. They were an invisible army who wrote the scripts for "B" horror, westerns and noir films that have endured fifty years since they were made, and yet these creators remain largely unknown.

The pay scale, as well as the freedom, enjoyed by "A" contract writers during the studio years was much greater than the writers toiling in the "B" units; the talent pools weren't much different. Writers came to the movies by the same roads: newspapers, short stories, the pulps, the stage and radio. WOLFMAN creator and novelist Curt Siodmak, achieved celebrity later in his life, but the most of the writers who worked at the studio with him did not.

George Bricker, who in the 40's wrote Rondo Hatton movies (HOUSE OF HORRORS), THE SHE-WOLF OF LONDON, and several of the Lon Chaney Inner Sanctums had been making a real name for himself in the pulps, and could have continued as a novelist, except for the lure of Hollywood.

Although Bricker put in his time in the Universal horror factory, his roots were firmly in the hard-boiled tradition and he wrote scores of crime movies, including MR. MOTO IN DANGER ISLAND and the great CRY VENGEANCE! Whether he was working on a horror flick, western (AL JENNINGS OF OKLAHOMA) or a gangster yarn, Bricker excelled at tough dialog and whip-fast pacing.

Eric Taylor was known around Universal as the man to turn to for tough crime yarns. Taylor had written musical shorts before penning murder mysteries like LADY IN THE MORGUE. Universal assigned him to the Karloff/Lugosi gangster/horror BLACK FRIDAY and the die was cast. Taylor did well outside of Universal working on The Ellery Queen series at Paramount, as well as radio, but he returned to write THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN and then take over the chores on SON OF DRACULA. Director Robert Siodmak fired his own brother Curt from the project, and brought in Taylor. Taylor gave the film its modern pacing, mixed with Siodmak's wonderful European atmosphere. SON's status has rightly grown in recent years, and it's easy to see why Universal tapped this diverse pro to fashion the color re-make of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, starring Claude Rains.

Taylor was a work-horse at Universal, but his scripts were always well-structured and his films were in the "B+" category. Taylor's most prestigious credit is probably BIG JIM MCCLAIN starring John Wayne. After working with the Duke, Taylor went back to the typewriter and wrote scores of television westerns before his death.

Griffin Jay was a serial expert who worked for Monogram, Columbia and Universal. When Universal needed a quick sequel to the original THE MUMMY, it was Jay who wrote THE MUMMY'S HAND and spawned a new series for the studio. Jay guided Kharis through two more sequels (THE MUMMY'S TOMB, THE MUMMY'S GHOST) as well as creating Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman, in CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN. Jay worked with miserly producer Ben Pivar, whose indifference to his work drove directors like Reginald LeBorg crazy. Although he was always under-the-gun, Jay managed to fashion scripts with good parts for Universal's grand stable of character actors.

For Columbia, Jay wrote Bela Lugosi's last, great solo vehicle THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE. Also at Columbia, Jay wrote the "psychological werewolf" film, CRY OF THE WEREWOLF and then he moved to PRC for the bizarre MASK OF DIJON starring Eric Von Stroheim and THE DEVIL'S BAT DAUGHTER. A true horror specialist, Jay died at the age of 49.

Brenda Weisberg was the lady of the bunch, writing stories for The East Side Kids and toiling on serials before writing the wonderfully gruesome MAD GHOUL for Universal. She was the first writer to adapt Fritz Leiber's classic novel "Conjure Wife" as the Inner Sanctum, WEIRD WOMAN.

She also ran THE MUMMY'S GHOST through her typewriter before it started production. Later, Ms. Weisberg settled in as the writer of MY DOG RUSTY at Columbia, and all of its sequels.

The credits of these pros over-lap simply because the nature of contract screenwriting is to write until you're "written out," and then the producers move on to the next writer. Very often they would work for a week or more on project, licking tough scenes or doing a dialog polish for no credit. It also meant working on every kind of film that was on the studio slate. One of the great strengths of the contract writer was the ability to jump from western to musical to horror without breaking stride. Sometimes it also meant jumping from studio to studio.

Not every writer was so versatile. Some were hired because they knew structure (Siodmak), others because they were good with dialog (Bertram Millhauser) or comedy (John Grant), and still others were handed a gig because they could get something shootable written in record time. The idea for studios during the war years was to get the product out, and that's exactly what they did. Ace Republic director Joe Kane said, "We were turning out movies like Chevrolets." The remarkable thing is that these "Chevrolets" became a part of our collective consciousness.

The lauded, original films of James Whale or Tod Browning belonged to the 1930's and most were not rushed productions. The 1940's sequels weren't so fortunate. Val Lewton's unit at RKO worked under the same financial strain, but the literate producer emphasized atmosphere and character over make-ups. The Lewton films reached artistic heights long-forgotten by the factory men in charge of the horror units at Universal, Columbia or Monogram. These movies were simply a few weeks on a studio backlot, with Karloff, Chaney, or Lugosi going through their paces in journeymen scripts, and being guided by contract directors. They were made to play a week or two at the Bijou, and then on to the next.

And yet, this work survives. Why? Is it the iconic stars, the wonderful monsters, or the kiddie matinee thrills? Actually it's all three. There is something about these scrappy movies that, as kids, made them ours. Forget that our folks saw these movies when they were new, Frankenstein and The Wolfman belonged to us, not our parents or babysitters. As we watched these movies at midnight on "Chiller Theater," we never thought of the writers who worked past midnight all those years ago, and their amazing contribution. Fueled by gallons of coffee and millions of cigarettes, they gave us Kharis, The Creeper, the Inner Sanctums, the Houses of Frankenstein and Dracula, and even Sherlock Holmes. And they did it all by Tuesday.

Horror Month: Welsh Lights

Few people today have heard of the Welsh Lights—or the mysterious Egryn lights, as they were called—but back in the early 1900s when visionary preacher Mary Jones, a 35-year-old wife, inspired them they caused quite a stir.

Myriad revivals occurred in Wales during the period, intense and emotional experiences causing drastic and usually temporary changes in the individuals who underwent them’s lifestyles. These were mostly “born again” type experiences, resulting in packed services that ran for hours at churches. The revival or 1904, however, showed peculiar qualities.

Mrs. Jones hailed from Egryn, a hamlet between Dartmouth and Harlech in Gwynedd (then called Merionethshire). She went beyond the usual self-conversion claims by inspiring phenomena others could actually see. She claimed to experience visions that produced lights surrounding her body, and to receive messages from Christ in bodily form. She also believed herself chosen and conducted nightly missions in the local church. Since others could view these lights swirling about her, she had a fairly high conversion rate.

The lights were light little stars that seemed to possess an intelligence and responsiveness to the situation and individual. Claims were that these lights traveled; some stars hung above specific houses. Over quite a period, the lights assumed different forms and baffled explanation.

So what were these lights? Manifestations of a Savior? UFOs? A hoax? Investigations were conducted but how did one capture a light? Were witnesses to these occurrences trustworthy or merely zealous followers?

Since this event (and even before) as many unusual phenomena have been associated with religious conversions as with psychical claims.

It comes down to three possible explanations: 1) They were a true manifestation of religious power, 2) They were caused by some natural event, or 3) they were a hoax, either deliberate or believed.

We’ll likely never know the explanation. It’s left to the realm of believers and skeptics to decide for themselves, as there was no video recording then or other scientific detection advances such as are available nowadays.

Mrs. Mary’s own life having been laced with tragedy early on continued to be so. Her husband and children, a daughter and son, all died shortly thereafter. She lived alone near the church until her own death in 1939. But her name and the Welsh Lights will assure her a small piece of posterity. May her lights shine on.

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
In Paperback…

Horror Month: Werewolves

It seems vampires are all the rage right now with Twilight, Vampire Diaries and True Blood, but my favorite monster has always been the werewolf. More accurately, the Wolfman type werewolf, not the kind where men turn into actual, long-snouted, snarly animals.

Probably one of the very first horror movies I ever saw was Universal’s The Wolfman with Lon Chaney playing the gypsy-cursed Larry Talbot. Then, of course, came Dark Shadows and Quentin Collins who not only turned into a werewolf with the full moon, but dropped about half a foot in height when he did (note to TV show producers, when you hire a stunt double to take on the werewolf role of your lead actor, find one around the same height and build.)

Of course, it was a werewolf on the cover of Brand of the Werewolf that started me on a life-long reading journey with the Doc Savage series. To this day, that werewolf painting it still one of my favorites.

A number of my favorite TV episodes featured the werewolf as well. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea carried at least three werewolf episodes, one where David Hedison, the co-lead, turned into a poorly made-up lycanthrope. But it was pretty thrilling when I was six. Same goes for the Werewolf episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, where a nasty beastie with a bad fuzz mask terrorizes a singles cruise.

There was a pretty good series on the new Fox network in 1987-88 called Werewolf. It starred John J. York as college student Eric Cord, who undergoes the transformation every full moon after a pentagram in blood appears on his palm. Shows were a half-hour but nicely written and followed Cord’s quest to rid himself of the curse. The wolf hunter in the show, played by Chuck Conners in his last TV role, was, incidentally, named after the vampire in the first Night Stalker telefilm, Janos Skorzeny. The series is available on DVD.

Perhaps it’s time again for the werewolf to reemerge. The Wolfman remake is scheduled to hit theaters soon. I am both looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. Since the film is a classic monster movie, it’s one of those things that probably shouldn’t be remade, like The Wizard of OZ or Gone with the Wind. Yet, at the same time, it will be nice to see a Wolfman featured on the screen again.

What are your favorite werewolf movies, books or TV shows?

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
In Paperback…

Horror Month: 70s Horror TV

One of the nice things about growing up in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was the plethora of horror television shows and made for TV movies. Some of these series were short-lived, while others hung around for a few years.

Of course, the biggest of them all at that time was the gothic soap Dark Shadows, which I have covered in other blogs. A number of other shows contained horror elements, such as the ‘60s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (werewolves, mummies, etc.), but right around 1970 through ’74 there were a spate of TV series and movies. The Saturday night movies on ABC often ran to horror, with entries such as The Screaming Woman and even an adaptation of Hound of the Baskervilles starring Bill Shatner (A bit later they also ran the second and third Six Million Dollar Man telefims).

Anyone remember the TV movie The Cat Creature? It involved the mummy of an Egyptian priestess who could turn into a demon cat. I can’t recall whether it was any good or not, but I liked it at the time. I keep hoping it will make it to DVD so I can watch it again.

Then there was a pretty scary tale with Kim Darby called Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, whose primarily lesson was probably hire a better house inspector before you move into a place with scurrying creatures that come out of the air vents as soon as the lights go off. I have heard it’s being remade, but the original was fairly creepy.

Then came the original Kolchak: The Night Stalker movie(s) and The Norliss Tapes, a Night Stalker clone that intended as a series pilot. Unfortunately it was not picked up, but worth grabbing on DVD.

Of course, we also had Night Gallery with Rod Serling, a very weird show at times. In one episode a woman’s brooch comes alive and grows, consuming her. Scared the hell out of me as a kid. Rod Serling was sinister enough all by himself. He had that embalmed look and walked around all those disturbing paintings. Season 1 and 2 are available on DVD at present.

A couple other shows ran only a season or so, but left a big impression on me. One was The Sixth Sense starring Gary Collins as a professor named Michael Rhodes who investigated unusual cases involving ESP and ghosts. One particular episode entailed a house where a woman was threatened with visions from Edgar Allan Poe stories such as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Tell-Tale Heart. The show was later chopped down to a half hour and run in syndication under the Night Gallery banner, but the original one-hour shows are far better.

Ghost Story/Circle of Fear was another that had some pretty eerie moments. It ran, if I recall right, on Fridays at 9pm and as Ghost Story starred Family Affair’s Sebastian Cabot as its congenial but mildly creepy host. Halfway through the season it changed its name to Circle of Fear and Cabot was out, which was a big mistake, in my opinion. Storylines included a woman forced to relive her husband’s murder (and subsequent disposal of his body in a well in the cellar) over and over, the ghost of a sea captain sealed in a concrete block on the beach, a man who murdered his TV-addicted wife and her lover being haunted by her ghost on the television, ghostly twins and a voodoo-practicing granddad with a creepy dollhouse.

I am sure there are others I am forgetting. Anybody remember any they thought were particularly spine-chilling? Let me know your favorites.

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
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Horror Month: Phantasm

Not very many movies, and even fewer books, scare the hell out of me. Most shock-value flicks just gross me out and turn me off, and movies like Saw just sicken me because they are the exact type of horror I do not like, stuff that could happen in reality. Perhaps when I was a kid some movies scared me more, or at least incidents from them gave me a fright. Nowadays, I literally have not seen a movie that has creeped me out in the least (and schlock like Raimi’s recent Drag Me to Hell are the type of poorly written, badly acted movie messes that bomb and can ruin the prospect of getting truly creepy and/or intelligent horror films for years to come. Unless, of course, butchering kittens is your idea of comical or parody horror. No offense to Sam Raimi, whose work in other films I respect greatly and love—i.e. Spider-man, Darkman, etc. Plus he does, last I was informed, have the rights to The Shadow, Doc Savage and Avenger, so I am expecting great things from him). Most leave me with a ho-hum, that-could-have-been-better attitude when I leave the theater or pull the DVD out of the machine.

Except for Phantasm, thought technically it’s 30 years old. I first saw Phantasm on late-night TV and though it was a watered-down version (I didn’t even know there were naked ta-tas at the beginning, Heaven forbid!) it is the only movie that, beginning to end, I can honestly say scared the crap out of me. Maybe it was the mortuary and funeral aspects, something that has always bothered me, even as a horror writer. Maybe I just don’t like little crunched hooded people scurrying about. Or maybe it was the star of this moody, at times almost disjointed movie—the Tall Man. Ok, the Tall Man is just plain spine-chilling. He actually reminds me a bit of an uncle I had, but there is just something about him that elevates him into the classic horror icon category of the old movies from Universal and Hammer. First time he appeared and uttered the word, “Boooooyyyyy!” I came right out of chair. I had nightmares about him that night. This is one bad-ass dude I did not want coming after me.

Phantasm was made in 1977 and released in 1979. The film was directed, written, co-produced and edited by Don Coscarelli. The Tall Man was portrayed by Angus Scrimm (who later appeared on the TV show Alias for a time). The Tall Man is a supernatural, sadistic undertaker who turns the dead into dwarf zombies (I think he might just have been a misunderstood greenie who was into human recycling, but a little ahead of his time). The film, undeservedly, originally garnered an X rating for its silver sphere sequences (they attached themselves to folks’ heads and drilled), then was reduced to an R after complaints. The original theme music was quite haunting, reminiscent of Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” from the Exorcist.

The film spawned a number of half-hearted sequels, none of them anywhere near as good or as frightening as the first, though the last one did make an attempt at explaining some of what was going on and give us the Tall Man’s background (though I am not positive it helped, because he might have been more frightening without it. After all, Dracula is just Dracula; I don’t really need to know how he got that way to be terrified of him). The one constant in them, however, was Scrimm’s classically sinister portrayal. I can watch the movie now without the same level of fear that I experienced on that first viewing (watched it in the dark alone, incidentally), but to this day get a bit nervous looking in the back of ice cream trucks…


The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
In Paperback…

Western Wednesday: A Fistful of Legends

Today for Western Wednesday, Ian Parnham updates us on A Fistful of Legends, the sequel short story anthology to Where Legends Ride. Ian writes westerns for Robert Hale, Ltd.'s Black Horse line and Avalon under the name IJ Parnham and lives in the misty moors of the northeast of Scotland. He also oversees the Black Horse Western Yahoogroups online magazine Black Horse Express (http://www.blackhorsewesterns.org/) and runs the Black Horse Western blog (http://blackhorseexpress.blogspot.com ), as well as his own, The Culbin Trail (http://ijparnham.blogspot.com ). You can visit his webpage at www.ijparnham.co.uk


I've just finished my duties as one of the proof-readers for Express Westerns' forthcoming Western anthology A Fistful of Legends and I have to say I was impressed. Nik Morton and Charles Whipple have done an extraordinary job in editing the book and the authors have all excelled themselves. It is, I can say with my hand on my heart, the best Western short story collection I've ever read. Admittedly I've not read all that many but still, the last one I read claimed to contain the 20 greatest Western short stories ever written, starting with Mark Twain and ending with Elmore Leonard. I enjoyed this one more.

All the stories grabbed my attention and kept me enthralled to the end, and that's rare for me. With short story collections I usually dip in and out. If I'm not enjoying a story after a page or two, I move on to the next one. Even if I weren't proof-reading, I'd have felt no urge to do that. So I have no difficulty at all in encouraging people to read this book, whether they be Western veterans or people who have never read a Western before. Veterans will love the new spins on the traditional tales and newbies will find out how enthralling Western tales can be. The breadth of stories is considerable, providing a perfect answer to any deprecating opinions some may voice about the Western having limited scope or how they display crude story-telling techniques. I don't want to give away too much just yet, but here are a few hints of the delights on offer.

First, A Fistful of Legends is massive. It's half as long again as Express Westerns' first anthology Where Legends Ride, which was already fairly big, and contains 21 new stories written specially for the anthology. There's both traditional tales to enjoy and something a little different, but even with the traditional ones the themes differ greatly. For instance, Derek Rutherford and Ben Bridges both provide tales of jailed men seeking to escape to exact their revenge on those who put them there, except one is a rip-roaring yarn of action and adventure while the other is an emotional tale of redemption. There's Indian Wars tales by Ross Morton and Chuck Tyrell, but again they are vastly different being either elegiac or action-packed. The same goes for the bandit tales, lawman tales, bank robbery tales, manhunt tales, revenge tales… the range is considerable by the guys and gals, old and young, multi-published and first-timers, who are represented here at their best.

Then there are the stories you'd never expect to read in a Western anthology such as Lance Howard's moving tale of disability or Courtney Joyner's gripping tale that borders on the supernatural. This last story is by an author I was unfamiliar with, and that's the other thing I enjoyed. Many of the stories are by authors I know and like, and they deliver as I expected, but equally many are by people I know only because I've visited their blogs and websites. I'd never read their fiction before. But I'll change that now.

It's hard for me to pick my personal favourites as I liked every story, but if forced I'd choose two that demonstrate the range on offer not just within the genre, but also the way the genre can be expanded.

Edward A. Grainger's tale is a fun romp, part action western, part 'locked room' mystery, with a memorable main character who I'd love to read about again. Cash Laramie is such a great creation he can't be allowed to exist only in this story. He has to have more stories or even a novel all to himself.

Then there's Evan Lewis's comic tale, which takes a perfectly decent Western story as a starting point and then subverts your expectations with brilliant word-play and madcap surreal events. This one had me laughing out loud so much I forgot to proof-read it and so I had to read it again, which with a story this good I didn't mind doing. And it still made me laugh second-time round.

So, I can happily report that the Western is prospering and is about to gain another fine addition, and so here's a big thank you to all the authors and everyone involved in A Fistful of Legends, a Western anthology I'm proud to be in.

Meme's the Word...

The lovely Ms. Laurie Powers has memed me with some writerly questions, so here goes…

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Not very often. Usually it’s coffee…unless I can catch one of the noisy neighbor kids and warm up the oven…bwahahaha

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
Yeah, I make sure 666 appears on every page...Seriously, rarely, unless it is a book I am planning on using just for research, then I will take a highlighter to it.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?
I tear out the pages I have already read. Nah, usually bookmarks, though I will sometimes dog-ear pages in research books.

Laying the book flat open?
Text books yes, fiction books no. But there must be better things to lay?

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Both, but mostly fiction.

Hard copy or audiobooks?
I’ve never listened to an audio book, so hardcopy.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?
Almost always I read to the end of a chapter, unless the chapter is fifty pages long or something.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
Rarely look it up right away. I can usually infer the meaning.

What are you currently reading?
Conquest of the Golden Amazon for research on a comic series I will be doing, The Stackhouse series (on the third one), myriad comic books, A mystery by the Stackhouse author, Sherlock Holmes stories (no, I never read any before but since I will be writing one I am going through some of the original tales!) And various books on breast self-exams, because I like the pictures…

What is the last book you bought?
Witches, Inc. by K.E. Mills and the Amazon book.

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?
You’d think from what I just said above, I wouldn’t be, but I usually read only one book at a time.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?
Definitely at night, lying on my stomach on the floor, with a heater fan beside me for the white noise. (It’s actually not quite a heater fan, but I am not going to tell you what it is!)

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Either, I like both.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
Other than myself? ;) Lester Dent’s Doc Savage books and a few other series.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)
Oganize? What is this thing called organize? Most aren’t organized, except for my Doc Savage, Shadow and Avenger collections. The rest I tend to stack or cram onto shelves.

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
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Terror Tuesday: Ghost Flies

For the next two days I leave Dark Bits in the very capable hands of Ian Parnham as he relates his personal ghost story and updates us on A Fistful of Legends, the sequel short story anthology to Where Legends Ride. Ian writes westerns for Black Horse and Avalon under the name IJ Parnham and lives in the misty moors of the northeast of Scotland. He also oversees the online magazine Black Horse Express (http://www.blackhorsewesterns.org/) and runs the Black Horse Western blog (http://blackhorseexpress.blogspot.com/ ), as well as his own, The Culbin Trail (http://ijparnham.blogspot.com/ ). You can visit his webpage at www.ijparnham.co.uk


A True Story for Halloween

It was Halloween, about five years ago. In truth the date adds nothing to the story other than that I was a bit distracted by the possibility of pesky kids turning up at the door later Trick or Treating and I would end up having the usual 'But, you're British' argument. My task was simple enough; go round to a nearby house and feed the pets while the owner was away.

When I arrived it was sunset and deep red rays were shining through the windows, providing an appropriately hellish tone. I found the key in the secret place nobody would ever think of looking, then opened the front door. I was immediately struck with the feeling that something was wrong. I didn't know what. But something was wrong. I opened the door to the kitchen, letting more red light into the hall. The feeling of wrongness grew. Then I realized what was troubling me. There was an odd humming sound, one of those deep low hums that reverberate through your body without you ever actually hearing it. But what was causing it? I looked around. I saw nothing that looked like it wanted to hum. And then I looked up.

Looking up happens a lot in horror movies, that Alien moment when the person who is about to be mincemeat thinks something is wrong, and then they look up… I lived to tell the tale, but I thought of Alien at that moment. Something was living on the ceiling, some weird alien thing that slithered and pulsed, shiny black all over and humming. I stood in shock unable to move, until with a change of perspective my eyes told my brain what I was seeing. The ceiling was covered in flies. Not just an annoying few you can dispatch with a newspaper, but thousands upon thousands of them. They'd congregated to create a single living organism, flies on top of flies on top of flies, that hung down in pendulous masses, the final light of the day goading them into a disgusting writhing dance.

Then slowly the light died and they settled. They were still a disgusting sight, but not in an Alien, I'm-about-to-get-scooped-up-and-scoffed way. But when my heart stopped thudding, a new thought hit me. Why are all these flies here, especially this late in the year? Closely followed by the answer: dead things. In an instant I put two and two together, got a disturbing answer, added in a dash of observation, got a more troubling answer, mixed in some recent events… I sat down.

The owners' marriage had broken down recently. I hadn’t seen the husband for months. She had been distressed when she came round. She'd been in a hurry to leave and hadn’t stopped to chat after asking me to feed the animals. There was an overpowering smell from the aromatic candles, lots of candles, candles that might mask an unpleasant smell. I looked up again. The flies had massed around the loft door in the ceiling. So that's what had happened. She'd killed her husband, dumped his body in the loft, flies had enjoyed themselves, she'd masked the smell with candles, the strain of covering up had become too much and she'd run away in a hurry. Only a last thought for her animals' welfare had led to me being here.

Quiet Village Shocker, the headlines would scream, Headless Horror House. I'll never eat haggis again, distressed neighbour declares as his house halves in value. I had to go in that loft and find out the truth.

For the purposes of spooky story telling I should say I found a ladder and climbed up, but for the benefit of the truth I'll admit I then did the Laurel and Hardy act that I always do when a ladder is involved. The ladder was in a duck pen. I went in, slipped on some duck poo, tripped over the ladder, and knocked the door open. The ducks fled and I spent the next hour running around flapping my arms getting them back in. The result was it was dark when I climbed up the ladder and I wasn't in a good mood.

The flies had now spread out and were settling down for the night on the walls and in the windows, thankfully giving me space to push the loft door open. I peered in with a torch. The flies were even thicker in the loft space. The sloping roof was coated and the base was a blanket of dead flies. And there, over in the corner, was what I didn’t want to see. The thickest mass of flies was there and so was a huge bulge beneath the insulation, about six feet long and a foot high, the right size to be a body.

I had to find out what the body-shaped bulge was. I grabbed the nearest available tool for poking purposes, a child's hobby horse (a stick with a horse's head), and went up. On hands and knees I crawled through the crisp flies until I reached the bulge. By now the torch was giving up. It was one of those bright ones that can light up objects several miles away but lasts only about five minutes before it needs recharging. When they give up they dim very quickly. I had to investigate the suspicious bulge now while I could still see. I looped the end of the stick beneath the insulation and strained to raise it. It was heavy and wouldn’t move. With the light dimming fast and with the wife shouting up to me about something, I shoved hard. And then it started.

From the spreading darkness this evil laugh erupted. I'd never heard a proper evil laugh before but I heard it then, echoing through the roof space. Mwah-hah-hah, this deep voice intoned, Mwah-hah-hah. It dragged on and on. I screamed. I dropped the stick. The laughter stopped. I stumbled. I put out a hand to stop myself falling through the roof and landed on the bulge. The insulation rolled away, and just before the loft went dark I saw what was below: another roll of insulation.

I beat a hasty retreat. I fast-crawled across the loft, ran down the ladder, got an odd look from the wife who was talking with the husband on the phone about the history of the fly infestation, then went outside where I tried to be tough and manly about the whole thing. It seems, I then learnt, that a nearby farmer's pile of cow manure had drawn the flies and nobody knew how to get rid of them other to remove the manure and wait for winter. Nobody had died. Nobody had been dragged up to the loft to rot. As for the evil laugh: the hobby horse had a battery in it and when you pressed the horse's head it neighed, but the battery had run out and so it neighed at a very slow speed that sounded like Mwah-hah-hah.

So, nothing spooky in the end, except I went back every day for the next two weeks and fed the animals, and every time I pressed the horse's head hoping to hear that evil laugh again. But no matter how hard I pressed, it never made another sound.

Horror Month: Halloween Origins

I love the trick-or-treating, Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin special, roasted pumpkin seeds and all the spooky trappings of Halloween every year. I love the smell and color of autumn leaves and the way they crackle under your feet. The day and night of All Hallows’ Eve just feels somehow different, shivery, magical. It’s a time to believe in the unseen, release your inhibitions and create new traditions. But where did Halloween come from?

The ancient Celts believed that on October 31st the boundary between the living and the dead vanished. Halloween, in fact, began with the Celts, as a celebration of the end of harvest known as Samhain (pronounced “sow-wen” in the ancient Gaelic, but, according to Wiccan dictionaries, the pronunciations vary, such as “SAM-hayne”, meaning “End of Summer”). It was sometimes known as the Celtic New Year, and a time for Celtic pagans to take stock of supplies for the coming winter. Costumes and masks harkens back to a tradition of trying to copy or placate evil spirits. In Scotland, young men impersonated the dead by blackening their faces or wearing masks or veils, while dressing in white.

Halloween is a shortened form of All Hallows’ Even (Eve), or the night before the Christian-adopted All Saints Day (though originally these both occurred on the same day. Some have All Saints Day as November 7, as well) On All Hallows’ eve, the ancient Celts placed a lantern carved from a turnip on a window sill, believing the head to be the most powerful part of the body, containing the spirit and the knowledge. Welsh, Irish and English myth are full of legends of the brazen head, which is said by some scholars to go back to the widespread ancient Celtic practice of headhunting, and nailing the noggin to a door lintel or placing it by the fireside to speak their wisdom (I don’t know about you, but I don’t want any talking heads by my fireplace, wise or not). The name jack-o'-lantern can be possibly traced back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer who tricked the devil into climbing a tree, then trapped him by carving a cross into its trunk (though there is some debate over the story). Pissed off, the devil put a curse on Jack, condemning him to forever wander the earth at night, his only light a candle inside of a hollowed turnip. Pumpkin carving is associated with Halloween in North America, since pumpkins are plentiful and larger--I for one would not want to try carving a turnip! The US tradition of pumpkin carving did not become specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 1800s.

Much of the other symbolism of Halloween in America comes from horror movies and gothic literature. Some Fundamental and non-denominational churches along other religions actually ban Halloween in favor of harvest parties, or make, pardon the pun, no bones about it being evil. Wicca traditions for Samhain include: black cats, besoms, gourds, Jack-o-Lanterns, all black stones, and foods such as apples, turnips, nuts, mulled wine, beef, pork and poultry. It is also generally considered the witches’ New Year.

Pagan and religious origins and connotations aside, I think Halloween should be a night of fun, a time to let loose and enjoy being with your friends and family and to experience the stress release of a good healthy scare! Whether your own traditions involve the ancient origins or more modern spooky observances, I think, especially in hard economic times, it is doubly important to just enjoy the occasion. It is, of course, the horror writer’s New Year too--or maybe Christmas--in many ways, and we just love scaring the crap out of the kiddies! No, not really…well, maybe just a bit! Or maybe it’s the horror writer’s Mardi Gras—hmm, now maybe we could start new traditions with black and orange beads and the flashing of pumpkins…

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
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Horror Month: Horror Comics of the 70s

When I first started collecting comic books back in ’72 (I was 11 and addicted for about five years, then gave them up for 30, only to fall off the funny book wagon four or five years ago. A comic book addict is never truly cured…) it was primarily the superheroes—Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-man, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and a score of others. I was a voracious reader during that period—of course, they only cost 20 cents then, not the $2.99 and up as they do nowadays—and usually read through my weekly titles the day I got them. That left me with six other days to fill, and God knew I didn’t want to have to resort to reading school-assigned stuff, which didn’t have pretty pictures, anyway. So I was faced with reading them slower, rereading them (which I did) or expanding my title picks.

Since I was already into spooky things via the gothic soap Dark Shadows, Saturday morning’s Scooby Doo or prime time’s The Sixth Sense (the series starring Gary Collins as ESP investigator Michael Rhodes) and Night Gallery, I opted for the horror comics (and a couple of the funny character types, like Casper, Hot Stuff and Richie Rich.)

During the my reading prime (and perhaps the prime of Marvel Comics as well) Marvel started up a number of “monster” mags, both color and black & white. They adapted the classic creatures into comic book form with renewed “life”. Tomb of Dracula, with its moody artwork by legendary comic artist Gene Colan, was maturely written (perhaps a bit more than my parents might have allowed had they known) and ran about 50 issues. Dracula, in those stories, was as three-dimensional as he’d ever been in any other medium. The character was mean as hell, yet had moments that made him almost human. There was also a Frankenstein’s Monster title that got pretty good after the initial issues and Morbius, The Living Vampire, which I ended up lukewarm on, despite liking the concept. The character in that mag wasn’t undead like old Drac. He was a scientist with a “disease” of vampirism that made him suck blood and wear spandex. Come to think of it, spandex is pretty scary.

The Living Mummy was another title. This one I found a little tougher to get into, but appreciate much more today. It didn’t last very long, and that’s too bad, because they are worth collecting and rereading.

Marvel also had a zombie title, but due to restrictions by the Comics Code Authority it was relegated to the larger-sized black & white issues, which cost more and strained my allowance, so I generally skipped them. The covers, however, were spectacular.

Probably my favorite at the time though was Werewolf by Night. Being a huge Dark Shadows and Wolfman fan, this title was my first monster mag. Originally the mag was drawn by renowned artist Mike Ploog (who recently wrote and drew the last two issues of DC’s The Spirit.) Werewolf by Night was in reality a lycanthropy-stricken fellow named Jack Russell, who turned three nights a month into a terrier, er, wolfman with the full moon. He was closer to being a superhero than a monster at times and also lasted somewhere around 50 issues. The mag went somewhat downhill after Ploog left and Don Perlin took over the art chores (though I have a certain fondness for those, too). A number of modern attempts to revive the character have been abysmal. Those earlier issue still stand up and Marvel did an excellent job bringing new life to old concepts and characters.

There are still a few horror comics around for the kids, though they will cost you more now. DC puts out Scooby Doo monthly, along with Sabrina, the Teenaged Witched and in November even Casper, Wendy the Witch and Hot Stuff will return. But I don’t think anything will ever approach the heyday of Marvel’s monster mags, which combined excellent writing and artwork to create modern classic in their medium. They were an inspiration to a future horror writer and great escapist entertainment to a pre-adolescent.

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
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Horror Month: Halloweens Past

It’s a distressing fact of modern society that the old traditions of Halloween are slowly fading; namely, trick or treating. Each year we see fewer and fewer trick or treaters because it seems the world has become filled with more and more crazies tainting candy or grabbing kids. Of course, some of that has always existed—my parents, when I was a kid, checked my haul of goodies over very carefully and we were warned about razor blades in apples even in the mid ‘60s. But it’s more prevalent nowadays, so more people are taking their kids to town-sponsored parties and the like.

I find it sad in some ways, because my warmest memories of Halloween are of my father taking me around the neighborhood in one of those boxed costumes that dripped with the condensation of your breath after a few houses and had that interesting plastic scent and no peripheral vision so I was constantly stumbling over something. But that was part of the experience, part of the fun. The scent of autumn leaves sweetened the air and the moon glowed like a big bright pumpkin in a glittering skull-studded sky. There was the thrill of finding “the good candy”, meaning something that wasn’t a pack of Sweet Tarts or fireballs or, god forbid, fruit.

But when I was a kid, our (my sister and I) costumes weren’t always from a box. Oh, I had the regular Casper or Superman plastic mask kinds, but one special year when I was six or maybe seven, my parents made our costumes. My mother—who made dresses and such—created a bunny costume for my sister, while my father spent a few weeks after working 12-hour shifts making me a Tin Man costume from the Wizard of Oz. He used sturdy cardboard to make the body barrel, ax head and funnel, covered with tin foil. He spray-painted the pants, shirt and store-mask (which, if I recall, was Spider-man) silver. I can still remember watching him doing the painting in the cellar. I was never more excited and proud of a Halloween costume and even won a school costume award that night (despite the local politics that governed whose kids usually won, no matter what type of unoriginality they paraded around in). I think it’s the only award I ever won for anything, so I guess, though it actually should go to my father, it makes me look back at that particular Halloween even more fondly.

After trick or treating, it was home to sort out the candy, carve a pumpkin and roast the seeds. It was a different world then, maybe, and perhaps today’s kids grow up too fast and miss out on some of that. I get to vicariously relive those moments by taking my niece around the neighborhood, carving pumpkins with her beforehand and watching It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown together.

Sometimes, it’s just no fun growing up. Fortunately, Halloween is a time, for at least a few hours, we don’t have to. I think it’s something precious to hold onto--perhaps even embrace for the rest of the year leading to and coming after this spooky night.


The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
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Horror Month: Which Witch?

The title of today’s blog, of course, comes from an old 1970s game. Along with Ghost Castle, The Green Ghost and even a Dark Shadows game (yes, I did have one; it came with glow-in-the-dark skeletons, a cardboard coffin and fake plastic fangs I have to this day), it was one of the numerous supernaturally fun games around before the PC Police and well-meaning Fundamental groups started clamoring about their bad influences on children (though, of course, violent video games seem to be just fine). But if you can’t have fun with Evil, who can you have fun with?

Anyway, one of the reasons I really love October and Halloween is because it lets me be a kid again and have fun with the iconic versions of supernatural characters such as spooky headless horsemen, ghosts and, my favorite, witches.

Not Wiccan witches (which is a faith and completely different), but the traditional representations of them like you’d see on a sign in Salem. I have a number of Wiccan friends, and dammit, not a one has offered me a ride on her broomstick.

I am not sure whether it comes from watching Wendy and Casper as a child or episodes of Bewitched, but I have always found the presentation of the witch, whether the nasty old crone type or better yet the sexy witch, fascinating. Check out my favorite cover of the old pulp Startling stories to the left. I even have the cover on a T-shirt. I also love visiting Salem (though it is also a sobering experience when you see the markers for those innocents basically murdered by zealots in the late 1600s) and get a kick out of Hocus Pocus (which takes place there).

Witches are scary fun. The Witching Hour, an old radio show hosted by a cackling witch, made for some pretty spooky entertainment. Angelique, the witch on Dark Shadows, was one nasty gal, though most guys probably wouldn’t complain if she put a spell on them.

I have used the iconic witch in two of my own series, The Chloe Files and The Nightmare Club for children. In The Nightmare Club, the Willow Witch is looking to snatch seven kids so that she might live eternally. She appears as a crone to the girl in the group and as a beautiful woman to the boys in the group. Hey, no one said we authors couldn’t work out our latent fantasies in our writing, right? In The Chloe Files (actually the witch or sorceress Angelique Ficatier (her name being a nod to Dark Shadows, started in Grimm, which The Chloe Files sequels from), a particular island witch, presently amongst the land of the dead, is working on coming back to wreak havoc. She tormented Chloe in Grimm, and isn’t about to let a little thing like death stop her from continuing.

I think that is one of the things I find most fun about horror, other than scaring the crap out of people—I get to work with all those spooky things I grew up with. Being a horror writer is sort of like getting to play Halloween everyday of the year. It’s a release from the real horrors of the world.

So, one night this moon, when the moon is bloated and orange and wispy clouds look like filmy claws, look up and imagine a shadowy figure on a broomstick passing across its cratered face. Listen for its shivery cackle. And if you do see it…run like hell. Unless it’s a sexy witch in fishnets. I am still waiting to be whisked away by one of those. But, alas, just my luck, I’d be the one turned into a toad.

The Nightmare Club: Where everyday is Halloween...
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Horror Month: Spooky Radio

Following up on yesterday’s western radio piece, this time we’ll take a brief look at horror Old Time Radio. Perhaps there has never been a better medium for horror than radio. After all, while the things we may see in modern horror movies can scare or sicken us, the things we can conjure within our imagination based on only a few words and/or sounds can frighten us that much more. What better place to imagine the spooky, the ghostly, the unseen than over the invisible airwaves?

From the 1930s through the early ‘50s, radio drama was king. There was no television (except in labs), though there were serials and movies—Universal producing some of the best classic horror movies ever—and, of course, pulps as forms of inexpensive entertainment. But radio was free, and simply required you to use your imagination. Radio horror harkened back to spooky tales told ‘round the campfire, and added sound effects and eerie music to the mix. And a powerful mix it was. Who can forget how Orson Welles terrified a nation through the medium with the October 30, 1938 Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds? (Though technically science fiction, it certainly produced enough horror in the folks hearing the show who panicked thinking that men from Mars were about to incinerate their neighborhood!)

Perhaps the granddaddy of them all was The Inner Sanctum. Preceded by the eerie sound of creaking door, each episode delved into horror that ran the gamut from monsters to psychological terror. Many of the shows are as bone-chilling today as there were when first broadcast (And the show was certainly a huge inspiration to the 1970s CBS Radio Mystery Theater hosted by E.G. Marshall, which also began with the ominous creaking door and ran along the same storylines). Radio Spirits (http://www.radiospirits.com/) carries Inner Sanctum episodes on CD along with most of the other shows I will mention.

A number of other shows shivered across the airwaves, scaring the hell out of a nation of listeners in those days before the coming of the One-Eyed-God. Weird Circle, The Sealed Book, Horror in the Air, The Hermit’s Cave, The Witch’s Tale with Alonzo Dean Cole and Suspense (which number among its stars President Ronald Reagan in a number of memorable episodes). But perhaps the scariest and most gruesome of them all was Lights Out.

Lights Out was unabashedly horror. It ran from 1934 to 1947 (and made the transition eventually to television), delivering grisly stories mixed with dark, tongue-in-cheek humor. Unfortunates on the show were buried or skinned alive, eaten, absorbed by a giant amoebas, had various limbs ripped off by robots, tortured and decapitated--always with a heaping helping of blood-curdling sound effects. It was surprisingly—sometimes sickeningly—graphic for its time. Though the show is most closely associated with Arch Oboler it was begun by Wyllis Cooper, who wrote many of the scripts, and originally ran at midnight. The show was nothing to listen to with the kiddies, and I can only imagine how frightening it must have been, sitting around the radio in a dark room at the Witching Hour, listening to these macabre radio dramas. I doubt anything in today’s jaded blood-and-guts movie world can match the genuine scares these shows dredged up.

I like listening to them on Halloween, surrounded by a few glowing pumpkins and maybe a life-sized cutout of Rosanne Barr to lend the proper atmosphere. But you can leave the lights on if you wish.


The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
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Western Wednesday: Wild West Radio

We’re heading back out onto the open trail for another Western Wednesday, so gather up your jingle-jangles and ten-gallon hat and step into the saddle.

The Western has be undergoing a small renaissance over the past year or two (while many big publishers heralded the death of the oater), in no small part led by the efforts of online western readers and authors whose innovative use of the Internet and imaginative promotional initiatives have raised awareness and interest in the genre.

Much of this has come from a small but loyal band of writers on the Yahoogroups Black Horse Western discussion group (you can sign up on my western page at http://www.howardhopkins.com/western-books.htm) through their Black Horse Express Magazine (http://www.blackhorsewesterns.org/), Black Horse Author Days and Where Legends Ride anthologies, as well as individual authors’ various blogs, book giveaways and Actor/writer Gary Dobbs’ Western Mondays efforts on his fine Tainted Archive blog. The quality of the Black Horse line is at an all-time high, with westerns that appeal to a much larger range of readers and intriguing stories that push the genre beyond the boundaries of what folks might expect, including blending their tales with mystery, horror and romance. They deal with the human spirit not only in the Old West but the human spirit through the ages. Many includes issues relevant to today's world, as seen through the looking glass of the past. They are not just your daddy’s horse operas anymore.

Likely many of the younger people reading this do not know or have forgotten just how popular the Western genre was on television in the 1950s and ‘60s. And likely even fewer know how popular it was before that—in those cheap grainy magazines called the pulps and in the golden age of radio.

That’s right, I said radio. The young’uns might not realize just how many fine western dramas hit the airwaves in the 1930s and '40s. The biggie of course, was my favorite, The Lone Ranger, who ran well over a thousand episodes from 1937-54. But while many know Gunsmoke was a long-running popular TV western starring James Arness in the ‘60s, fewer recall it ran for years on radio, starring William Conrad, TV’s Detective Cannon. Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassiday, Frontier Gentleman, Have Gun, Will Travel, Red Ryder, Tales of the Texas Rangers and The Six Shooter, as well as a plethora of others, saddled up each week to tame the Wild West, to the delight of thousands of listeners.

Many of these shows hold up well today and are being restored and made available on CD. Radio Spirits (www.radiospirits.com), a company dedicated to the preservation of Old Time Radio, produces a number of Series and sampler sets in the western genre. Their products and service are excellent. I highly recommend you give a listen to some of these old shows, because like the man said, “There’s gold in them thar shows!” Or something like that. Try a sample or go right to The Lone Ranger or Gunsmoke. I think you’ll be glad you did. Introduce your young’uns to them, too. My father introduced me to The Shadow at age 7 or 8 and I have been a fan ever since.

Terror Tuesday: October is Horror Month

Welcome to another Terror Tuesday and the beginning of Horror Month here on Dark Bits. If you are a horror writer or have had ghostly experiences please contact me about guest blogging. I'll try to run as many spooky blogs as possible this month.

Ah, October…the scent of rotting leaves and burning witches fills the air. Skeletons start swinging from trees and nasty old neighborhood women fire up the coal stoves for all those naughty little trick-or-treaters who wander upon their doorstep.

There’s something magical and mysterious about October. For me it’s the last good month of the year because I dislike the dreariness and cold that comes after it. It’s a time when you can almost see how thin the veil is between real and unreal.

For me, it’s also time for the Charlie Brown Halloween episode, Hocus Pocus and the Catspaw episode of the original Star trek series, and some old monster movies. Salted roasted pumpkin seeds, picking Yellow Delicious apples and fresh cider. And big orange pumpkins. I saw a girl body paint her boobs to look like pumpkins once. They bounced a lot more than real pumpkins, and I have to say I was pretty impressed. But I digress…

Anyhow, October is horror month, so I hope everybody is gathering their Halloween reads, starting with The Chloe Files and The Nightmare Club for the kiddies, of course. It’s a great time for parents to sit down and read to their kids. One of my fondest memories is of my father reading "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" to me as a kid during October.

What about you? What traditions do you have for October and Halloween? Do you feel closer to the spooky things lurking in the night during this month? Does the scent of autumn leaves make you want to paint your boobs up like pumpkins…um, never mind that last one…

What does October and Halloween mean to you? Tell me your spooky stories, ghostly encounters or fun traditions.

The Chloe Files: Kicking Evil’s ass one demon at a time.
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