This is a crazy one. I pulled out all the stops on this one. I wrote it during the Colorado heat and sunshine of last summer, so I put it in the heat and sunshine...of southwestern Arizona/northwestern Sonora. You ever been there in the summer? If so, you haven't forgotten it. I lived in a Tucson apartment one summer that had only a swamp cooler, so to cool off I'd jump in the apartment complex's pool. At midnight. Sometime 2 in the morning. Weeping. Because the water was so warm it was like trying to cool off in a hot springs.
And I've set this in even lower country. Rocky country. Cacti country. Country populated with the nasty Mojave Apache.
This is a somewhat classic setup with several different factions--Rurales, outlaws, Lou Prophet and Louisa Bonaventure--coming together at a waterhole, in a cursed desert mountain town north of the Sea of Cortez. In the hot, dry, dusty summer. They come together for water and to escape the Apaches. Only the town they've sought refuge in--a ghost town--has its own faction...and its own nasty, deadly secrets. Not to mention a pit filled with dead lawmen and which Lou Prophet finds himself at the bottom of.
(All this and the heat and he doesn't even weep!)
To make it even more interesting, I have my beautiful, blond, sarsparilla-swilling Vengeance Queen, Louisa Bonaventure, succumb to the wiles of a beautiful, blond, blind--yes, BLIND--pistolera named Sugar Delphi.
It should be out around May 1. Hey, pre-order a copy, will you? Or maybe two. I'd really love to upgrade my beer. And I'm sure the people who sell it to me by the Ranger-loads would like me to too, so you'd be doing the right thing and helping out the economy.
Thanks and gidyup fer now, fellow Hellbenders.
Apache Pete His own Mean an' Nasty Self
Pre-ordered, as promised. Does the eating the manuscript offer still stand?
ReplyDeleteCallin' me yaller? I'll even YouTube it for proof!
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed HELLDORADO a big bunch. This one sounds even better. Order the good suds!
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