From the drought-plagued plains of Mars, to a post-apocalyptic Canada, to the familiar American West and Mexico, to other dimensions and other worlds weird and wonderful, an international cast of bestselling, award-winning, established, and emerging authors brings you 25 strange western tales: Robert Lee Beers - A hardboiled P.I. and his partner must find their way back to the present from 1906 San Francisco before the Big One hits, dodging gunslingers and the risk of changing history, with only a drunken misanthropic wizard to help them... James Blakey - A sheriff must question a colourful cast of characters to discover who has stolen a unicorn rancher's herd... Zach Chapman - A card-cheating Spellslinger must duel a mysterious Green Gunslinger to his damnation or salvation... Sara Codair - Two Martian sheriffs must stop a gang of outlaws from stealing a settlement's precious water, if they can keep their marriage together long enough to do it... Eric S. Fomley - A marshal comes to town seeking an outlaw, but neither he nor the outlaw are the ordinary kind... Milo James Fowler – Heroic Coyote Cal, the witch Donna Jamieson, and his faithful sidekick Big Yap, must stop a monster from ravaging the livestock and people of a town in the western desert... Ron S. Friedman - A WWI pilot shot down over the Amazon must survive Germans, crazy scientists, the jungle and dinosaurs... Carrie Gessner - An elven veteran is called back to face her demons when a little girl is snatched to serve the army that destroyed her... Paul Alex Gray - The heir to the Bourbon Throne must earn coin in America to overthrow the French Republic and reclaim his birthright, so he builds a fantastic contraption to aid him... Jude-Marie Green - Sorceress Jane Smith knows her partner Donna Quick is quite mad, but she follows her anyway... Brent A. Harris - Marshal Bass Reeves has been asked for help by a desperate frontier settlement beleaguered by a dragon... Ethan Hedman - A wandering gunfighter inherits an enchanted weapon, but it's broken... Joachim Heijndermans - Two outlaws hole up in a quiet town full of terrified townsfolk, but all is not as it seems... Russell Hemmell - Two investigators must discover why an entire colony in the Kuiper Belt has disappeared, leaving nothing but an anachronistic western frontier town in its place... Liam Hogan - A young outlaw is hunted by an implacable mechanical foe... G. Scott Huggins - A blacksmith with ghostly allies receives an unusual, and dangerous, client... Sean Jones - The last Norse descendant in North America, who swears vengeance on the Comanche for killing his wife and village, is given supernatural aid by the Navajo... Mackenzie Kincaid - Junior died helping Pa maintain the fence against the Somethings, so now 12-year-old Jane must take his place... R. Daniel Lester - An old tap-dancing celebrity defaults on the payments for his magical shoes, and a repo agent has come to collect... Diane Morrison - Two young elven Gunslingers must stop a cannibal spirit before it, or the blizzard it brings, kills everyone they know... Diana L. Paxson - A painter journeys to the Rockies to paint landscapes, and stumbles upon an ancient mystery... Claire Ryan - Rollo is going to get her giant slug herd in to market, come hell or high water, monster or no monster... Ricardo Victoria - An ex-spellslinger has taken up a career as a travelling salesbeing of a newfangled weapon called a "rifle"... Stanley B. Webb - A U.S. Marshal must stop a notorious outlaw who may or may not be a dragon... We invite you to explore these stories in the grand pulp fiction tradition: from weird westerns, to sci-fi and space westerns, to post-apocalyptic westerns, alternate history, time travel, and cattlepunk. Featuring a classic Solomon Kane story by Robert E. Howard. Cover art by Aaron Siddall. Cover design by Claire Ryan.
Authors
I write into the void. Sometimes the void wins. Other times the words win. Over the years, my work has appeared in print and online in such places as Adbusters, Geist, Shotgun Honey, 365 Tomorrows, Pulp Literature, Switchblade and the clown noir anthology, Greasepaint & 45s. I've also won the Mash Stories flash fiction contest and twice made it to the semi-finals of the Broken Pencil Indie Writers Deathmatch. In 2018, my novella, Dead Clown Blues, was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novella by the Crime Writers of Canada. The follow-up, the second book in the Carnegie Fitch Mystery Fiasco series, 40 Nickels, is scheduled for release mid-August 2019 from Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books. Previously a longtime Vancouver resident, I currently live in Toronto with my spouse and daughter. The battle with the void continues daily.
Paul Alex Gray enjoys writing linear and interactive fiction starring sentient black holes, wayward sea monsters, curious AIs and more. His work has been published in Nature Futures, Andromeda Spaceways, PodCastle, The Arcanist and others. Paul grew up by the beaches of Australia, then traveled the world and now lives in Canada with family. On his adventures, Paul has been a startup founder, game designer and mentor to technology entrepreneurs. Chat with him on Twitter @paulalexgray or visit www.paulalexgray.com
Robert Lee Beers (born 1951 is an author and an artist involved in graphic arts, illustration, and fine art. Originally from Eureka, California, Beers attended Arcata High School and Humboldt State College. He currently resides in Topeka, Kansas. From the author: I recently went through some changes with Amazon. In the process, every review I had, both good and the one bad went away. If it is not too much bother, and if you enjoyed my books, please take the small amount of time needed to post a review? They really do help. Regarding piracy. One of my Tony Mandolin books was pirated in Hong Kong. By the time I discovered it, it had garnered about 53,000 reviews, most of them 4 % 5 stars. Pity Amazon doesn't take those reviews.
Zoey Hedman is a speculative fiction writer from South Florida, the land of manatees, medianoches, and miscreants. She conjures up new stories from her home in Cutler Bay. More than anything else, Zoey adores getting lost in creative entertainment. The joy of being absorbed in awesome books, stories, movies, games, and shows inspired her to start creating fictional works of her own. Zoey started writing short speculative fiction in late 2016 and has been tapping away at her keyboard ever since. Writing aside, Zoey’s transgender, queer, an inclusive Norse Pagan, and a fledgling kitchen witch. She loves gaming, cooking, and cats, and spends far too much time procrastinating. She also spent a few years wreaking havoc on mechanized combatants across the state of Florida with ELK Robotics, a local robot combat team she co-founded in 2015.
RON S. FRIEDMAN is an Amazon.ca #1 Best Seller in Time Travel, a Calgary Herald #1 Best Seller and Best Short Fiction finalist in the 2016 Aurora Awards, Canada’s premier Science-Fiction and Fantasy awards. Ron's time travel thriller, TYPHOON TIME, have been released by WorkFire Press in March 2018. Ron’s short stories have appeared in Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, and in other magazines and anthologies. Ron co-edited three anthologies and he received ten Honorable Mentions in Writers of the Future Contest. Ron is a Quora most viewed author in Astronomy and Planetary Science, with over 3,400,000 views. Originally from Israel, Ron is living with his loving wife and two children in Calgary.
Claire Ryan is an Irish author, now living in Vancouver BC. She originally wanted to just write fantasy novels for a living, but was told from a very young age that she should do something 'practical'. That turned into a degree in Geology, a postgrad in computers, and eventually a large dose of experience and technical skills in everything from data analysis to graphic design to marketing. Her day job is web programming.
Brent A Harris is a Sidewise Award nominated author of alternate history. He also writes science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Previously published works can be found through Insomnia Publishing, Rivenstone Press, Rhetoric Askew, and Inklings Press, the latter having published his short story, Twilight of the Mesozoic Moon, which reaped the Sidewise Award nomination. He is the author of A Time of Need, an alternate history of the American Revolution, which sees a world where George Washington fights alongside the British against American forces marshaled under a power-hungry Benedict Arnold. His newest book is a steampunk take on classic Dickens' characters in A Twist in Time. Brent A Harris resides in Southern California, where he's become convinced that Joshua trees are in fact, real trees. When not writing, he focuses on his family, shuttling children around as a stay-at-home dad, and staying up late to write after they are nestled in their beds.
Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror." He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond. —Wikipedia Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
