Bad Day in Dirtwood now available on Kindle

As nobody has stopped me yet, and as my sales figures for the last one have now rocketed into double figures, I've moved on with my self-publishing schedule. My early western Bad Day in Dirtwood is now available on Kindle for 99p, or its equivalent elsewhere.

 

I couldn't remember much about this one's story, so it was fun typing it out again. The story is a straightforward tale where bad guys take over the town and the hero tries to stop them, but I can see now that this story introduces several themes I'll use again later. There are three main characters: a good, a bad, and an ugly. The bad guy Josh Carter isn't all that important as defeating him isn't the main problem to be resolved, while Ethan Craig is the first character to use my personal heroic archetype. He's not quick to use a gun because he's not proficient with weaponry, and he wins through purely by being stubborn and resourceful.

The ugly character has the capacity to either go to the dark or the light side and in this case Luke McCoy is something I'm sure I've never done elsewhere, being the lightning fast draw who unerringly hits everything he aims at before anyone can even blink. I'm glad I did that type of character once, but I won't go there again, although I'm pleased for this one excursion into indestructible gunslingers, Luke is melancholic and insecure.

The other thing I stopped doing after this book was putting in Star Trek references. The Outlawed Deputy had Cassidy Yates, The Last Rider from Hell had a gratuitous use of the number 47, and Death or Bounty had a Kirk. This one has a McCoy and even worse I called two characters Rock and Big Dawson just so they could walk into a room together and I could write Rock and Big Dawson, which sounds a bit like Roxann Biggs-Dawson, who played a character in Voyager. I wisely decided to stop doing that sort of thing.

Anyhow, the book is now available from Amazon.

When Luke McCoy killed his first man, the townsfolk of Dirtwood formed a posse, arrested him and threw him into Beaver Ridge jail to rot. For seven long years Luke plotted his revenge and then he finally managed to escape. Now he could act out his vengeance!

But when he rides into Dirtwood, the town is already in the grip of fear. Josh Carter and his ruthless outlaw gang have taken over the town and only Luke’s childhood friend, Ethan Craig, has the courage to stand up to them.

Luke readily adds to Dirtwood’s woes, but as the lead flies and the bodies mount, can an old friendship offer a man as murderous as Luke one last chance of redemption?