It’s not very often I talk about a book I am going to write before I write it. This one is unusual in that it was once an idea for a shared world anthology. I have no desire to publish anthologies with multiple authors these days. The only way to do it justice is to do what good folks like Oliver Brackenbury or Jason M. Waltz do. You have to collect donations until you can pay the authors a reasonable amount of money. You end up spending all your time doing the Socials and not nearly enough time editing. (If I was even twenty years younger, maybe…) I’ll stick to writing.
So I guess Devil’s Gulch, a Weird Western collection will have to come from my pen alone. It’s too fun an idea to not run with it. I came up with an old gold mining town (based largely on Barkerville in British Columbia, not Arizona) with a number of creepy folks and built in concepts to create any number of tales. I was even going to have my Weird West character, former deputy sheriff, Brett Hope appear.
What brought this back to me was something I noticed while cruising through some old issues of Texas Rangers and other Western Pulps. In the 1940s especially, the editors became fond of titles that used supernatural words to fancy up non-supernatural stories. (There are true Weird Westerns like the Lee Winters tales of Lon Williams, but I’m not talking about those.) For example, a man with a fast gun was called a “Heller”. I used that one for a Brett Hope story already. But words like “Black”, “Devil”, “Hell”, “Wolf”, “Jinx”, “Ghost”, etc. (These are pretty mild compared to the Shudder Pulp titles like “Black Pool For Hell Maidens” by Hal K. Wells).
To come up with stories for Devil’ Gulch is pretty easy. I simply use the suggestion from titles. Now to be clear, I haven’t read these stories so I don’t know what they are really about but it doesn’t matter. My ideas are always going to be way more Weird Tales than Wild West Weekly. And I’m not worried about anyone stealing my ideas because they are so obvious. What I would write and another author would produce are going to be quite different. Ideas really are a dime-a-dozen.
Using “Guns of the Haunted Hills” by Jackson Cole (A. Leslie Scott) or “The Skeleton Riders” by Jackson Cole (Tom Curry) or even “Guns of the Death Raiders” by Johanas L. Bouma, I come up with the same idea: a squad of ghost riders from the Civil War who rise up on certain nights to attack and kill.
“The Stranger From Nowhere” by Jay Murphy or “The Haunted Range” by Jackson Cole (Tom Curry) suggests a ghostly gunman who takes on a town bully in a gun fight. Is he a ghost? A figure created by the town’s hatred? We never know. He came from nowhere. He goes back to….
“The Devil’s Mill” by Jackson Cole (A. Leslie Scott) seems like a obvious one, using “devil” again. I might change it to “Satan’s Mill” for variety sake. Either way, what is the mill producing? I see it pouring green poison into the local water supply. Those who have avoided the water will soon be faced with those who have not!
“Owlhoot Breed” by Hapsburg Liebe uses an old expression for an outlaw. The “Owlhoot Trail” was the secret trails used by men who fled the law. In this case, it gets me running down the line of a shaman from the local tribe who can transform into an owl monster. Much more fun.
“Wolf Litter” by A. B. MacKenzie or “Moon Valley Trail” by Jackson Cole (A. Leslie Scott) or “Wolf-Man of the Pecos” by Bradford Scott are perfect titles for a werewolf story. “Wolf Litter” gets me thinking of a bunch of werewolf children while “Moon Valley” tells me where they live. Either way my gunman hero is going to be surrounded by a large pack of lycanthropes. How does he get out of it? A Gattling gun full of silver bullets?
“Voice From Boothill” by Gunnison Steele is a ghost story that starts with a funeral, then leads to a voice whispering in a lawman’s ear. You can go traditional and have it lead to justice or perhaps more fun, lead to injustice.
“The Tombstone Trail” by Jackson Cole (Walter A. Tompkins) gets me thinking of a cowboy who actually has to ride through the Valley of Death. What lies on the other side? Does he really “fear no evil”?
“The Phantom Bullet” by Sam Brant (unknown author) or “Drawing For Death” by Ben Frank suggest the original idea of an unseen gunman but I’d up-the-ante with some bullets blessed by a priests but not the usual kind. You can’t miss but each bullet comes at a cost.
“Cabin of No Return” by Willis Train seems pretty easy. You go but you never come out. Not because someone is killing you (which is probably the original story) but because it is a gateway to a terror dimension. A good one for some Mythos elements. The old trapper who built the cabin was a stranger fled from Europe who came with strange books…
“Hang One, Bury Two” by Lee Bond or “Trouble Is My Shadow” by Lionel Day is a riff on dopplegangers and Edgar Alan Poe’s “William Wilson”. A gunman kills his double over and over but can never be free of it. What has he done to warrant such a fate? The answer lies in a place like Wounded Knee.
Conclusion
I think you get the idea. Titles are great for suggesting stories. In the old days, I would have used these to write micro-fiction stories but 100 words is far too few for me now. I like a good 10,000 word novella nowadays, but the practice I got from writing Flashshots stays with me.
How soon will I be publishing this book? Well, I haven’t written one story yet so…. Here’s some other ones that might satisfy your Western and Mythos itch until then.
A few years ago I picked up _Weird Trails_, by the pseudonymous “Abner Gibber.” The intention was more parody than true horror, but it was amusing. It was presented as a reprint of a 1933 magazine, which, of course, was simply part of the joke.
Awesome way to get story inspirations!
Boom, yummy.