Weird Westerns!

While getting ready for the next Grind Pulp Podcast, I've been delving deep into the weird western genre and let me tell you there is a lot of great stuff out there. If you've never heard of weird westerns then let me fill you in. Weird westerns are pulp stories set in the old west that have a fantastic element to them. 

How can you not love this cover?

A recent example of a weird western is the movie Cowboys and Aliens (2011)  that came out a few years ago. Although I have not seen it, I have plans to watch it in the next day or two in preparation for episode #2 of the Grind Pulp podcast. We're gonna be checking out at least three movies and three stories in the weird western genre. 

In the past week, I've read four anthologies that I highly recommend: How the West was Weird, How the West was Weird Volume #2, How the West was Weird: Campfire Tales and Six Guns Straight From Hell. There are many stories  that stood out but the one that caught my eye was Of All Plagues a Lover Bears by Derrick Ferguson. You can find it in How the West was Weird. This story features the exploits of a mystical gun(and sword)slinger named Sebastian Red. He travels the old west in search of adventure and finds it in the form of sultry babes, zombies, vampires and many other creatures of the night. 

Sebastian Red playing poker with a demon

After I finished reading Of All Plagues a Lover Bears I flipped through those other anthologies and found The Tale of The Baron's Tribute and Storms of Blood and Snow. These are two more wild tales featuring Sebastian Red. This trio of tales epitomizes the concept of grind pulp, which is a bloody, fast paced, gritty stories that have a bit of the absurd that makes them a fun read. The author of these stories, Derrick Ferguson, is quickly becoming one o my favorite writers. I first came across his dynamite work in the newly released anthology Black Pulp. But I will talk about that in another post soon.  

Lone Crow, Courtesy Miskatonic University

Another newjack pulp writer I like is Joel Jenkins. He writes a character named Lone Crow whose exploits are as wide and varied as Sebastian Red's and can also be found in the anthologies I mentioned above. Lone Crow is another mystical cowpoke that fights against the forces of darkness and boredom. So check them out!

Both Derrick Ferguson and Joel Jenkins inspire me to write but I get distracted because I want to read stories like theirs. But when you get down to it I truly believe the more I read the better writer I become. I wrote just over a thousand words for my Black Sam story today after reading two weird western anthologies. Pretty soon I will be posting some excerpts on this blog. So stay tuned!

Jeronimo