Friday, July 27, 2012

A Piney Woods Chiller!!

At night in the Georgia woods, when the rednecks are partying, no one can hear you scream...

Coming soon from Mean Pete Press.  Oh, too very soon!


[Publisher's Note: Most likely, after this one hits Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the offices here at Mean Pete Press will be raided, the presses shut down, this gnarly yarn taken off the air. Mean Pete's hard drives will probably be erased and secured deep underground in a stout concrete bunker.]


So get it before it becomes a collector's item!


Gidyup.


Mean Pete His Own Mean An' Nasty Self


Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Gladys and Her Wee Little Ones

I usually write out on the deck in the early mornings and late afternoons, and this is the deer family I've gotten acquainted with this summer.  That's Gladys and her three wee little ones.  They look cute as hell, but they're actually quite bratty.  When Gladys gets tired of them, she hunkers down under the ponderosa pine off the corner of the deck and gives me a sly look as if to say, "Shhh!  Please don't tell my brush rats where I am.  My teats are sore and I really need some ME time!"

Not long later, though, here they come, peeping up a storm as they dash around looking for dear old mum.  When they find her they get all happy and prance around and peep up another storm.

Poor Gladys.  All in all, she's a good mother.  Only two of those fawns are hers.  I think she adopted--or was adopted by--the third one born to a deadbeat mom.

Meanwhile, I'm hammering away on my next Frank Leslie tome--BAD JUSTICE, a Colter Farrow yarn!

Mean Pete His Own Mean An' Nasty Self


Thursday, July 19, 2012

Old Gun Wolf


Up and running at Amazon for a penny less than a buck!

Soon to be at Barnes & Noble.  (They're really SLOW to get stuff up on their site!)

AN ALL-NEW, ORIGINAL WESTERN SHORT-STORY FROM FRANK LESLIE, AUTHOR OF THE YAKIMA HENRY AND COLTER FARROW NOVELS!

FOR EX-GUNMAN WILBUR CALHOUN, THE PAST BECOMES HIS FIERCEST ENEMY...

Ex-Confederate soldier, ex-Indian fighter, ex-train robber, ex-gunslinger...ex-father... Wilbur Calhoun just wants to run his little ranch in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, a quiet place even at the turn-of-the-century.  He wants to be left alone, just him and his collie dog, Shep.  He wants to weather his last days in peace. 

But then a rider comes after him at the head of a mountain snowstorm.  That rider turns out to be Wilbur’s son, Devlin, whom Wilbur hasn’t seen since the boy was two years old. 

Devlin is a deputy U.S. marshal now, and he’s come to arrest his father for murder.  But not just any murder.  The murder of Devlin’s mother over twenty-five years ago in Tennessee...

Wilbur Calhoun might be old and just want to live quietly and anonymously, but does that mean he’ll go to the hangman peacefully, even when escorted by his long-lost son?

Remember, this is a Frank Leslie yarn!

Nowhere will you find more vivid characters and compelling Western action for 99 cents!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

"Old Gun Wolf" Coming Soon!


I was out strolling around the ravine the other night with my old dogs, and the idea for this story dropped right out of the sky, burrowed through my noggin, and drilled into my brain.  I couldn't let go of it.  I just got to thinking that wouldn't it be something if some gun-slinger made it into his old age and merely wanted to be left alone with his old dog on his shotgun ranch in the middle of nowhere only to be hunted down by his very own son, now a lawman, for killing his mother nigh on twenty-five years ago?

Believe me, it ain't gonna be what you'd expect so put away your hankies!  You should know by now that Mean Pete don't write "Little House on the Prairie!"

OLD GUN WOLF starring a brand-new old hero Wilbur Calhoun will be up at Amazon and Barnes & Noble soon for a whopping .99 cents!  Dig deep!

Now, back to being mean...  (Where's my pellet gun?  I think I see a neighbor kid acomin' over the horizon....)

Gidyup!

Mean Pete His Own Mean An' Nasty Self

I

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Bullet For A Virgin Now Available!


Now Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords

ALL THE PULP WESTERN ROMANCE AND VIOLENCE OF YESTERYEAR MADE NEW AGAIN BY MEAN PETE PRESS!

BLOOD AND LUST IN OLD MEXICO...

In this first of a new series of spicy pulp western stories (roughly 30 printed pages) written exclusively as ebooks by Peter Brandvold and published by his own Mean Pete Press, the Rio Concho Kid must save a young Mexican girl from the savage intentions of the lusty General Constantine San Gabriel, who forced her into marriage. 

On their wedding night, Tomasina De La Cruz sticks a stiletto in the General’s guts and flees his sprawling hacienda with the help of the half-Apache drifter, Johnny Navarro, a.k.a., “the Rio Concho Kid.” 

The Kid and Tomasina race toward a rendezvous with the young man to whom Tomasina’s heart really belongs.  In so doing, Tomasina and the Kid must avoid a deadly trap set by the man whom the dishonored General hired to bring his young bride back so he could have her tortured and gunned-down by firing squad. 

That man is the infamous, deadly bounty killer known only as El Leproso, the Leper!

Can the Kid prove victorious over his fiercest enemy and avoid falling in love with Tomasina, who is as beguiling as she is beautiful but who also harbors a bizarre, bone-chilling secret?          
      
    

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Bullet For A Virgin Coming Soon! (That'll Teach Her!)

Mean Pete has been scribbling madly away on BULLET FOR A VIRGIN, the first ebook exclusive original novella from Mean Pete Press.  Mean Pete's been having so much fun writing this that he's been forgetting to be mean.  Not only has he ceased shaking his fist at the neighbor children every chance he gets, he's even been going to bed grinning as opposed to snarling.

Imagine that!

What next--a plague?

Anyway, look for it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble--a 15 thousand word novella that will make your skull explode--within the next 7 days...


Gidyup,

Mean Pete His Own (Usually) Mean an' Nasty Se'f

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Another Ben Stillman Novel Now Available From Mean Pete!

Ben Stillman #5, unavailable since 2003, now available from Mean Pete Press!

Look for it at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Mean Pete is working on BULLET FOR A VIRGIN, an original novella from Mean Pete Press by Mean Pete His Own Mean An' Nasty Self--don't judge him!--and another Ben Stillman reprint...


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Uncle Vern and the Fourth of July


                     



     I’m about to pop a beer this Fourth of July in honor of my uncle, Vernon Meyer.
     Uncle Vern.
     I’m sure most folks, at least the lucky ones, have had an uncle Vern in their lives, and, if they’re even luckier, still do.  You probably know who I’m talking about.  “Uncle Vern” or "Ed" or "Mitch"--the uncle who stood out from all the other adults in your life when you were young because he still had a lot of the kid in him himself. 
     He was the uncle who, unlike so many other adults, we actually wanted to see and hang around with because he wasn’t one of the fussy brow-beaters.  Uncle Vern made us feel not only accepted but special.  He welcome us into his world which sort of straddled the line between childhood and adulthood.  
     He was the uncle who didn’t take life all that seriously.  He didn’t condescend to kids but treated us like equals.  He enjoyed the fun things in life as much as we did and wanted to share them with us “rascals.”
     That uncle for me was Uncle Vern.
     I’m thinking of my Uncle Vern this Fourth of July because he shared his Fourth of Julys with my wife and me right after Gena and I were married back in the early 90’s.  We spent a string of Fourths with him and Aunt Loueen and my cousins Wade, Mary, and Linda at their big, wonderfully cluttered and messy house teeming with beer, food, and friendly dogs in the beautiful, piney foothills of the mountains outside of Missoula, Montana.
     How I miss those rollicking Fourths.
     Homemade ice cream on the deck in prelude to Vern’s Fourth of July Fireworks show.  (He bought as many fireworks as 12-year-olds do in their wildest 4th of July dreams!)  Then, later that night, Vern saying, “Peter, grab a beer and let’s see what Mars is up to tonight.” 
     And we’d have another half-dozen beers though he’d switch to martinis sans that pesky vermouth and look through Vern’s telescope at the stars.
     Uncle Vern…
     Damn, I miss that rollicking old guy, Robert Taylor-handsome with his thick mop of wavy black hair that turned chrome silver in his later years and which he’d always kept combed, from as far back as I can remember, in an Elvis Presley bouffant.
     Vern with that big, hearty laugh.
     Vern pulling that Skoal tin out of his back pocket, tapping it once with his knuckle, then dipping in and tucking a pinch against his gum. 
     Vern and his bear hugs. 
     Vern and the little blue Ford tractor he was always puttering around his yard on.
     Vern and his retirement-years of truck-farming and hauling produce into the Missoula farmer’s market every Saturday morning in the summer.  He marveled at the green thumbs of the Hmong immigrants.  (If Vern had a racist bone in his body, I sure never saw it.  He treated everyone, strangers of every stripe, like they were family.) 
     Vern and his bees and his honey…  Got swarmed on once, bit bad, and almost died.  All the booze in his system probably saved him...
     Vern loved his dogs so much I thought of them more as cousins than pets, and I still remember most of their names--Taffy, Sandy, Roscoe.  Nourished by all that love, they lived damn near as long as horses.
     Vern passing out drunk under the dining room table with his dogs curled up taut again him.
     Sure, Uncle Vern had a drinking problem--it was one of those family scandals much whispered about in kitchens--and it eventually killed him…in his 70’s!  Drunk or sober, there’s not another person in the world I’ve more enjoyed being around, especially on the  Fourth of July.
     I saw Vern’s grave in the Bottineau, North Dakota cemetery a few years ago, where most of my family on both sides, including my mother, is buried.  There it was:  “Vernon Meyer” carved into that granite stone amongst so many others and all that green, green grass and the vaulting blue sky and silence. 
     I almost laughed out loud at the joke of seeing his name there.  But Vern really is there, not in his kitchen or on his deck--buried under that stone.
     A graveyard was the last place in the world I ever expected to see Vern Meyer’s name.  That’s how alive he was.
     But that’s where is now.
     Uncle Vern, I hope you’re having a grand time with your Skoal and your vermouth-free martinis and binoculars and your old wooden ice cream machine, talking and laughing with Cousin Linda, whom you’re with again, and all your beloved critters.  I tell you, my arm aches just thinking about that damn ice cream machine and you peeking under the lid and laughing that deep, rolling laugh of yours and saying, “Oh, you’ve got a long ways to go yet, Peter!”
     And then you’d laugh some more and sip your beer and stare at eagles through your ever-present binoculars.
     Pssshhhhhttttttt!
     This one’s for you, Uncle Vern.
     (The next one’s gonna be, too.)
[Here's Uncle Vern in his kitchen, my wife Gena listening raptly to another long-windy.]  

[Here's me following in my uncle's footsteps, on his dining room floor...]

     

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Mean Pete and the Rogue Lawman Ride Again!




The first book in the Rogue Lawman series, first published in 2003, is now available as an ebook for $2.99 from Mean Pete Press, at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. When the heat dwindles this evening and the shadows stretch long beneath the cottonwoods, stroll on down to your own virtual Rexall Drug and pick up your copy from the virtual spinner racks over by the magazines and Dohn's Pills and Geritol, and buy an Orange Crush for your favorite guy or gal. 

But don't just stand around readin' without payin' cause you're just gonna make Mean Pete mad and you kids won't like Pete when he's mad, I'll guarantee ye! This heat and these Colorady wildfires have made Mean Pete extra mean an' nasty!!

Speaking of nasty, that feller on the cover is Gene "Rock" Kurz.  He posed for one of my large-print Rogue Lawman covers and emailed me a couple of years ago, and we've sort of been pen pals since.  Interesting guy with a mug that was sculpted pure an' true for westerns.  A few years ago, he'd have been a western movie star! 

Mean Pete's working extra hard in his dingy offices, cranking out one book after another with his two assistants, Miss Stella and Thor...who mostly sleep despite the reek of virtual ink and the roar of the virtual presses...so look for Book 5 in the Ben Stillman series--ONCE HELL FREEZES OVER--in the coming hours...

Till then, gidyup, pards.  (And you kids stay off'n Mean Pete's lawn, hear, or you'll get an air pellet in your keester.  Ha!)

Mean Pete His Own Mean An' Nasty Self