The Gallows Gang now available on Kindle

I'm pleased to announce that my Black Horse Western The Gallows Gang (published 2008) is now available on Kindle. The book has been republished by Hale as part of their plan to make Black Horse Westerns available for download.

I reckon this book is a decent one to read if you fancy plenty of fast-paced action. I seem to remember that my previous book had gathered the editorial comment that it had been light on action and so I decided to rectify matters with this one by cramming in as many action set-pieces as I could while still telling a story and having some surprises and twists along the way.

With this one, there were three things I enjoyed writing. Firstly, the main character Nathaniel McBain had appeared in my first novel and I'd intended him to be a recurring hero, but to my surprise after being a good guy in several books, he turned to the dark side. He finally got what he deserved in Wanted: McBain and he was sent to jail for a seven-year stretch, but I'd always thought that one day I'd find out what he did next. I had several false starts with a prison hardship novel, a dirty dozen type tale and the inevitable prison breakout story, but my heart wasn't in any of those tales and they fizzled out. But then I had an idea for a story that starts with his last day in jail...

I also like doing literal cliff-hangers; that being scenes ending with the hero dangling by his fingertips from a cliff. Riders of the Barren Plains had one and the forthcoming Beyond Redemption has another, but I think this one has the best of the three. Nathaniel is manacled to the bars of a cage that's teetering on the edge of a cliff. The only person who can help him is a raving psychopath, who is also manacled to the bars, and for good measure a stick of fizzing dynamite is rocking back and forth in the swaying cage just out of his reach... I loved writing that one!

The other thing I enjoyed writing was the character of the Preacher. My characters usually have valid motivations for doing either good or bad, but I hadn't done a completely enigmatic character before. The Preacher was that man, someone who is a raving, serial-killing religious fanatic who either knows the answer to everything, or who then again might know nothing. Nathaniel spends a chunk of the story chained to him and I loved writing their dialogue as the Preacher speaks only using Biblical quotations. Finding appropriate lines for him to say was a lot of fun.

Anyhow the book is now available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

After escaping en route to their appointment with the gallows, eight condemned men led by Javier Rodriguez blazed a trail of destruction. Wherever they went, the Gallows Gang left behind swinging bodies as a reminder of the fate they had avoided.

Four men set out to bring them to justice, but the prison guard Shackleton Frost and Marshal Kurt McLynn both blamed the other for the prisoners having escaped. All they could agree on is that they didn't trust Nathaniel McBain. Wrongly condemned himself, the Gallows Gang held the key to proving Nathaniel's innocence. None of them knew what demons drove the enigmatic man known only as The Preacher.

Can this mismatched group put aside their personal feuds for long enough to end the Gallows Gang's reign of terror?