Beat to a Pulp - Round 1

The best anthology of pulp short stories you'll read this year is published today and is now available to buy. Most of the stories are original and written exclusively for the anthology with a few having seen print on the Beat to a Pulp e-zine. There's sci-fi, horror, fantasy, westerns... well, there's something there for everyone. I'll report on it later when I've actually read the stories (including my own, which as usual I haven't been able to bring myself to even glance at since I wrote End.).

Anyhow, for now roll on over to David Cranmer for the details of where you can buy, and a big well done to everyone involved for all their hard work.

Goodbye, Mr Pitkin

The veteran British comic actor Norman Wisdom died yesterday at the age of 95. He had a long and memorable career starting back in the 1940s and continuing up until a few years ago, and that longevity means that in an odd way another bit of my childhood now feels gone forever.

Norman was one of the comic film actors I loved when I was young along with Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, WC Fields, The Marx Brothers, Will Hay. And I'm happy that I can still enjoy their superb comic timing and their innocent, inoffensive humour. But most of those actors were long dead before I was even born and yet Norman kept on going, still somehow running around and doing comic pratfalls well into his 80s.

The two facts that are always quoted about him are that Charlie Chaplin thought he was a better clown than himself (he was, but then again that wasn't hard) and that he was Albania's national hero. I've always hoped the latter was an urban myth, but bizarrely it was probably true. Albania didn't allow any foreign films to be shown except for Norman's films as his Mr Pitkin character represented something deep and political about the downtrodden proletariat ridiculing the ruling classes. I suppose this only goes to prove you can read anything into anything. Who knows, maybe one day the French will hail Jerry Lewis as a film auteur.

What was more obvious was that his films belonged to a bygone age that didn’t rely on gross-out humour or that feeling of smug, emperor's new clothes that I get with most of what claims to be comedy these days. The films usually involved Mr Pitkin in an ill-fitting suit falling over a lot, gurning, laughing, singing for no good reason, throwing buckets of paint around and shouting 'Mr Grimsdale' at his comic foil Eric Chapman. I can still sit down whenever one is on and I have no trouble in raising a smile, even if the films are very dated. In fact his films were deemed dated by the mid 60s. People didn’t want simple humour, apparently, even back then and so Norman made a couple of efforts at more grown-up comedy staring in The Night they raided Minsky's and an odd adult British comedy before he went into semi-retirement.

In later years he occasionally turned up in serious roles and he was always very good. Only last weekend I watched an episode of the cop show Dalziel and Pascoe where a 90 year old Norman turned up playing an old bloke in a sanatorium. Effectively playing against type he turned out to be the killer, and yet he still found time to do his trademark infectious laugh and comic fast turn away from the camera. Anyhow, RIP, Norman and one last time for old time's sake:

Mr Grimsdale! Mr Grimsdale!

Sheriff Without a Star

I was pleased to receive a contract today for my Cassidy Yates western Sheriff without a Star. This'll be the 8th novel in which Cassidy has featured and my 23rd Black Horse Western. My suggested draft blurb is below:

After four years of distinguished service an error of judgement that led to the death of Leland Matlock's son shattered the confidence of Monotony's townsfolk in Sheriff Cassidy Yates. But when the star Cassidy had worn with pride was removed from his chest Leland claimed he knew something that would shed new light on his downfall.

Before Leland could reveal what he knew he was shot, but Cassidy still had the instincts of a lawman. He believed Leland's shooting was connected to the death of his son and that if he could uncover the link it would restore the townsfolk's confidence in him. So Cassidy embarked on his greatest ever challenge: to get the star pinned back on his chest where it belonged.

E. C. Tubb - RIP

I learnt today that the veteran British writer EC Tubb died last week.


He was born in 1919 and he had a writing career that spanned some 60 years and which produced well over a 100 novels. He was best known for his science fiction in which he wrote short, action-packed novels that were always entertaining no matter how quickly he must have written them. He penned my favourite science fiction series The Dumarest Saga, an adventure yarn concerning all-action hero Dumarest's quest to find the forgotten world of Earth. The series packed a lot of quick-paced set pieces and story into the short novels, which ultimately ran to 31 books with another 2 later limited edition self-published works.

On a personal note I admire his writing style. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say he influences my own style as I'm nowhere near as good a writer, when writing I do often think of his no-nonsense, get on with the story and stop fannying about approach.


In addition to his sf Tubb also wrote 11 western novels and many of them were reprinted by Robert Hale, who have published my own westerns, with large print versions also being published as Linford Westerns. With his books still being reprinted quite frequently even in the last year, it was a proud moment for me when I went into a library a few months ago and saw one of my own books sitting right next to an E.C. Tubb novel.

Tubb was 90 and apparently he passed away on the day that he received an acceptance for his latest novel. Other than to be remembered fondly, is there a better way for a writer to go?

The Last Cover from Hell

One of my favourite covers is for my second Black Horse Western The Last Rider from Hell. So I was highly amused when a Dutch Western fan kindly got in touch to point out that my cover has some similarities to a reprinted 2008 western novel by the best-selling German author G.F. Unger, who apparently wrote 742 westerns. See what you think, hombres!

Review of Railroad to Redemption

There's a kind review of my most recent book at Western Fiction Review. Thanks!

It's Cassidy Yates month!

Writing is often like the proverbial bus. You wait hours for one then two come along at once. Yesterday I received complimentary copies of my latest Sheriff Cassidy Yates story Railroad to Redemption and then today I received the Large Print version of my previous Yates yarn Riders of the Barren Plains. The latter was a pleasant surprise as I wasn't sure when it'd get published, so in response to this welcome double here's a brief summary of the story so far.


Cassidy was my first western hero. I wanted him to be clean-cut, brave, resilient... essentially everything a white hat wearing good guy should be. Nearly all of my other western heroes are deeply flawed so the idea was that I could use him for tales that didn't need any moral ambiguity. He would face problems, but he would always do the right thing. He was named after Kasidy Yates, Sisko's girlfriend in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, purely because I liked the sound of that name.


His first adventure was in The Outlawed Deputy in which he finds himself as a good man on the wrong side of the law and he makes friends with the man I hoped would become his sidekick Nathaniel McBain. Nathaniel provided the ambiguity in that he was a young outlaw who could go bad but who chose to join Cassidy on the right side of the law.

I was happy that the first novel was published, but I was less happy that the story was a traditional one and that I used a verbose writing style I thought would get published rather than my usual tighter style.


Cassidy returned in The Last Rider from Hell, a tale that I was much happier with in which Cassidy tries to solve the mystery of a missing wagon train along with the identity of a mystery man with no name.

For my third western I gave Cassidy a rest and wrote a tale purely about Nathaniel and to my surprise Nathaniel became bored with working for Cassidy and turned to the dark side. This ruined my plans for the two to become a crime-fighting duo and so I left Cassidy alone for a while.


He returned in Yates's Dilemma with a tale of an old 'Wild Bunch' type gang getting back together for one last hurrah. This was a fairly routine action tale constructed around a mystery of whether or not the mysterious Wendell Moon is a good guy or a bad guy. It got one of my most action-packed covers.


Cassidy's fourth adventure was Wanted: McBain, the inevitable one I knew I had to write in which Cassidy sets off to find Nathaniel and bring him to justice. Since then the two men haven’t met up again, but Nathaniel faced up to his own demons in The Gallows Gang and will return again next year in The Secret of Devil's Canyon.


With Cassidy's major personal crisis resolved I struggled to think of what I could do with him next. So it was several years before he returned in Bad Moon over Devil's Ridge in which he again faces a personal crisis in the form of the activities of his wayward brother. Riders of the Barren Plains saw him pursuing a good man gone bad and this month Railroad to Redemption sees him pursuing a, well, good man gone bad with extra added nuns. I guess there might be a theme there somewhere with my Yates tales! But that's fair enough.


Yates provides assurance in difficult times that he's a man who will always make the right choices while the antagonists he faces are ordinary men who make the wrong choices. Cassidy forces them to face up to their failings, leaving them as better men than when the story started, which I find more interesting than the lawman leaving behind lots of dead bad guys.

As I enjoy the themes in my Yates tales I hope he'll ride some more. The current tale I'm writing is provisionally entitled Sheriff without a Star in which, for once, Cassidy doesn't get it right. I hope the variation will give him an interesting challenge.