Spanish Eye published!

My collection of crime short stories, Spanish Eye, was published as an e-book on 29 June by Solstice Publishing.

Its first review can be found on amazon.com: ‘First, I have to confess, I am totally biased. I had the opportunity to work with Nik Morton in an editorial capacity on this collection of private eye stories. The manuscript was a pleasure to read. His voice is so unique, and his stories are as thought provoking as they are entertaining. There are beautiful moments in the prose that never get purple or fluffy. He masters the art of taking an adventure and condensing it into short shots.

’If you enjoy short stories, you'll love this collection featuring the same character and exotic settings. I am a total Morton fan now and waiting anxiously for his next release!’ – D Thorne.

Thanks, Danielle. You might like to check out her website too:
http://daniellethorne.jimdo.com/

Spanish Eye is available on Kindle for $6.89 at:
http://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Eye-ebook/dp/B003UNKYW8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A317O7WZ1CN6AQ&s=books&qid=1278601323&sr=1-1

And available as a pdf file for €2.96/$3.99/£2.01 to read on your computer at:
http://solsticepublishing.com/spanish-eye-p-111.html

Blurb:

Leon Cazador holds back the encroaching night of unreason

Private Investigator Leon Cazador is half-English, half-Spanish and wholly against the ungodly. His connections run wide and deep, which is to be expected of a man who served in the Spanish Foreign Legion, liaised with Japanese police, and was a spy. Dive into his fascinating stories, based on real events. Glean insight into his past and the people with whom he rubbed shoulders. Cazador translated into English means hunter. He is indeed a man driven to hunt down felons of all kinds, to redress the balance of good against evil.

Sometimes, Cazador operates in disguise under several aliases, among them Carlos Ortiz Santos, a modern day Simon Templar. Join him as he combats drug-traffickers, grave robbers, al-Qaeda infiltrators and conmen. Be witness to the dodgy Spanish developers and shady expat Englishmen who face his wrath. Traders in human beings, stolen vehicles and endangered species meet their match. Kidnappers, crooked mayors and conniving Lotharios will come within his orbit of ire. Even the vengeful Chinese and indebted Japanese are his friends—and enemies.

In his adventurous life, he's witnessed many travesties of justice, so as a private investigator, he will use his considerable skills to right wrongs in the most clever and unexpected of ways. Leon Cazador fights injustice in all its forms and often metes out his own rough justice. It’s what he does.

Missives to Mina - homage story

Here is a homage to a particular writer who was influential in creating a sub-genre of horror. It urges readers of the story to go find the book.

Also there's a plug for A Fistful of Legends. Sadly, the editor of the magazine - Costa TV Times - is moving on, so I'll have to wait and see what the new editor likes...

Review of A Fistful of Legends

The weekly English newspaper here on the Costas runs a book review. This time around it's the turn of A Fistful of Legends. Verdict: the review liked the stories and reckons they'd appeal to a wider audience than just fans of the western. I reckon that many Black Horse Western books would do the same too, if only people would cast aside their reluctance to pick up a 'western'.

Short story appraisal - 02

The first tale in Modern Short Stories is by Jack Schaefer: ‘Jeremy Rodock’, which is taken from the collection The Big Range. The story's narrator isn’t named. He’s looking back at the time of which he writes, when he was ‘young then with a stretch in my legs, about topping twenty, and Jeremy Rodock was already an old man.’ Whenever Rodock talks to the narrator, he calls him ‘son’. This is a good ploy by the writer: being unnamed, the narrator almost becomes invisible, because what he reveals is not about him but his subject, Rodock.

The narrator works for Rodock, who supplies quality horses to stage lines. When about forty mares and their foals go missing, Rodock and the narrator set out to find them. During their tracking, horse know-how is neatly divulged until finally they come upon the herd. Their discovery is two-edged, however. The rustlers played a mean and cruel trick that meant Rodock couldn’t herd the animals back to the ranch. It then became a battle of wits between him and the rustlers. An eventual showdown was inevitable, but that too didn’t quite boil down to a shootout. The nature of Rodock the man meant that the battle of wills continued with the rustlers. It would be churlish to divulge more, save that in his own words Schaefer strives to ‘depict the raw material of human individuality through action and plot’. He viewed the Old West as a place ‘in which energies and capabilities of men and women, for good or for evil, were unleashed on an individual basis as they had rarely been before or elsewhere in human history’. He tended to pit a strongly individualised character ‘against a specific human problem and show how he rose to meet it’. Schaefer’s stories are about individuals – an overused word above – but valid nevertheless.

This isn’t the only eponymous story Schaefer has written. Not surprising, really, since Schaefer was profoundly interested in characters and how they fit into the world.

The next tale is ‘To build a fire’ by Jack London and he also uses an unnamed character, though this story is written in the third person. 'The man' is stranded alone in the Yukon, with only a half-wild dog with no name for company. And the sun wasn’t due to fill the sky for many days yet; instead, there was ‘an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark…’ We don’t know why the man was here, though he was intent on meeting up with ‘the boys’ in camp before long. Unfortunately, he underestimated the intensity of the cold. The dog probably only stayed with him because he had matches and lit fires to create warmth. But there are only so many matches in a box. And the numbness that swamps the body’s extremities cannot be imagined until it happens: it is devastating. Throughout this tale, London gives us insights into the land and the climate and the basic lore of survival, based on his own experience.

London’s story is a fitting companion piece for Schaefer’s. Both take place in primitive wild and lonely lands. Man is surrounded by nature that is beautiful and threatening. Schaefer relates about the struggle between men of strong will, while London’s tale is about man’s conflict with awesome nature. London employs many good phrases, notably, ‘The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled before it.’ Great stuff and memorable.

It's about victims, not statistics

I'm pleased to reveal that my modern vigilante novel, A Sudden Vengeance Waits, set in the fictitious town of Alverbank on the south coast of Hampshire has been accepted by Solstice Publishing. The title comes from a poem by Alexander Pope.

The blurb may be something like this: What conditions create a vigilante? Is it a personal tragedy, the loss of a loved one, or the frustration over the inadequacies of current law enforcement? In the broken Britain of today, the Knight family attends the funeral of Gran, killed by a burglar. But the Knights aren’t the only victims of unpunished criminals. There are plenty of others hurt and grieving in the south coast town of Alverbank. It’s about victims, not statistics. The vigilante breaks bones and cracks heads of those guilty individuals who cause pain without remorse.Who is the vigilante? He – or she – is called the Black Knight. Will the Black Knight eventually cross the line and kill? Somehow, the Knight family seems involved and is going to suffer.

The excellent atmospheric cover shown here was produced by Solstice in a matter of two days. The editing and publication process will however take a little longer...!

Short story appraisal - 01

I have a rather large home library of unread books. They’re unread because I tend to keep buying new books before I’ve read the earlier purchases. My excuse is that books have a short shelf life in bookstores…

My curse is that I’m interested in many subjects so I collect non-fiction and fiction books within a great variety of disciplines and genres. From time to time, I’ll pull off my shelves a book or two I haven’t got round to reading; many of these are short story anthologies. As a writer of short stories, I like to immerse myself in this particular art-form, in an attempt at avoiding any staleness of approach in my own writing. As they say, writers should read.

A long time ago, in the early 1970s, I picked up a paperback entitled Modern Short Stories (1965), primarily because it contained ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ by James Thurber and stories by Ray Bradbury, Jack London and Jack Schaefer. It’s designed as an educational tome with an interesting Introduction and Notes at the end. The editor is S H Burton, MA. If you write short stories, then it stands to reason that you should read them.

Encapsulated, the introduction explains what a short story should contain. When the story ends, something that matters has happened; there has been movement. Plot in the story imposes a pattern. In addition, the writer is concerned with his characters and with his setting. And, finally and most significantly, ‘the short story involves values of one kind or another’.

Burton sums up very well, that ‘values embodied in the story will usually be expressed through the plot, the characters, the setting – and by the way in which the story is written.’ The style will be the guide as to the writer’s sincerity. ‘The best writers try to work unobtrusively, presenting their view of life through characters involved…’ It’s interesting that the editor labels the first two tales in this collection, ‘Jeremy Rodock’ by Jack Schaefer and ‘To Build a Fire by Jack London’ as ‘adventure stories’, not westerns.

In conclusion, Burton spells out what should be obvious to the writer. Short stories are of limited length, originally aimed at periodicals that have only so much space on offer. This imposed economy of words means that words must not be wasted. Every word must count in creating the world of the characters involved. Each word must ‘purposefully contribute to the overall effect’. A novelist can apply equal weight to plot, character and setting; a short story writer doesn’t have that luxury so must choose which to lay emphasis upon, the other two simply supplying just enough to maintain the illusion of reality. So a short story can be about character, or plot or the setting itself; yet in the final analysis it should illuminate an aspect of the human condition. That aim requires craftsmanship and dedication.

Next post, I’ll take a look at the first two stories in this book.

Book Award surprise

I was surprised and pleased to win the April bookaward for my thriller The Prague Manuscript. See: http://www.thebookawards.com/News.html

It seems I'm in good (though much richer) company with The Time Traveler's Wife winning in March. The nominations (which stand for the May voting are many, but among them) are: The Lovely Bones (reading this at present, remarkable first novel), Eclipse, The House at Riverton (no relation), The Vampire Diaries, Atonement, The Shipping News, The Lost Symbol, 44 Scotland Street and The Tarnished Star.

Pop along and vote, if you see one of your favourites nominated - or nominate your own favourite.

TRIPWIRE by Brian Garfield

I was loaned this book by my Swedish friend Iwan. It’s one of his favorite books. This edition is a US hardback, 2nd printing in 1973 and signed with a personal note from the author dated 1975. The cover picture is poor and though relevant the title isn’t particularly good, either; yes, much later, Lee Child used it too. The cover calls it a novel, yet it is a western; maybe this is because Garfield has a very good track record with best-selling books in a variety of genres and the publishers feel the book transcends the genre. These are minor quibbles, however.

This is a great story, tightly written in 185 pages.

Buffalo soldier Boag helps out with a gold heist only to be double-crossed, thrown overboard from a steamship and shot. Doggedly, he tracks the men who robbed and hurt him. Boag is a believable character and we take the hard long journey with him. There are setbacks. He meets a variety of individuals, helps some and others help him. He’s a likeable man, but you don’t want to cross him.

The denouement is riveting and exciting. Highly recommended.

SPANISH EYE

Tales from Leon Cazador, Private Investigator

I’ve just signed a contract with Solstice Publishing, USA for this book of 21 short stories featuring Leon Cazador. The stories were published between 2005-2009 but I have rewritten them for this collection.

The Solstice cover was designed within a day or so and I reckon it’s very eye-catching.

The book still has to go through the Solstice edit process so I don’t know yet when it will be available as an e-book and a print book. Watch this space.

Blurb:

Private Investigator Leon Cazador is half-English, half-Spanish and wholly against the ungodly. Sometimes he adopts an alias, Carlos Santos: he is a modern day Simon Templar, willing to hold back the encroaching night of unreason and help the gullible and downtrodden. He combats drug-traffickers, grave robbers, al-Qaeda infiltrators, misguided terrorists and conmen. Dodgy Spanish developers and shady expat English face his wrath. Traders in human beings, stolen vehicles and endangered species meet their match. Kidnappers, crooked mayors and conniving Lotharios come within his orbit of ire. Vengeful Chinese and indebted Japanese are his friends – and his enemies. Leon Cazador fights injustice in all its forms. It’s what he does.

100th Published Short Story

The COSTA TV TIMES weekly magazine out here in Spain has published my hundredth short story. Entitled ‘The Museum of Iniquity’, it’s a fun murder mystery, which also happens to use 36 titles from the plays, short stories and books of Jeffery Archer!

There’s also a plug for the anthology A Fistful of Legends.

Welsh Cowboys and Outlaws

We all know it's a small world, and getting smaller with the aid of the Internet. Not so long ago, I was browsing in a shop here in Spain when I picked up and bought one of those UK nostalgia books packed with old photographs: Monkseaton and Hillheads (Whitley Bay). Inside was a photo of the house where I lived for most of my first seventeen years of life!

Another shop nearby stocked a couple of It’s Wales books, short 92-pagers, and I was drawn to this one – Welsh Cowboys and Outlaws by Dafydd Meirion (2003).

While the prose is slightly repetitive – ‘decided’ and ‘many’ are two overused words – the information, gleaned from a number of intriguing references, is interesting and possibly a good source for a plot or two of a western or historical saga of the Old West.

Meirion tells us that perhaps 250,000 Welsh left Wales for America – compared to 4.5 million from Ireland. The largest proportion originally settled in Pennsylvania (17%), while the rest wended their way west as the expansion gained pace. Of the 10,000 whites who died during the treks westwards, apparently only 362 were killed by Indians. Most succumbed to disease or the weather or renegade whites and Mexicans.

He also points out that Hollywood rarely depicts the ethnic split of cowboys, for example: only 63% were white; 25% were black; 12% Mexican.

He touches briefly on a wide range of Welsh characters. Isaac Davis, the Mormon renegade who raided settlements; the James brothers, whose great-grandfather was a Baptist minister from Pembrokeshire and emigrated to Pennsylvania; Sheriff John T Morris, who gunned down Belle Starr’s husband; Frank Jones and John Reynolds Hughes of the Texas Rangers.

Edward Davies from Llanrwst entertained in saloons; as did John G Jones from Bethesda, north Wales. Morris Price left Powys and travelled to Illinois where he started a small ranch which grew into one of the biggest. John Rowlands who was raised in a workhouse in St Asaph near Denbigh emigrated to America and changed his name to Henry Morton Stanley and became a famous journalist and of course tracked down Dr Livingstone in darkest Africa. Then there’s Robert Owen Pugh of Dolgellau who married the granddaughter of Chief Blue Horse of the Oglala Sioux; quite a character, Pugh, and a staunch friend of the Indians in their hours of need. And there are plenty more in these few pages. Also mentioned briefly is Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show visit to Cardiff; the locals didn’t take kindly to local lasses walking arm in arm with Indians!

On the trail of 'last chance' Morton

This week’s Costa Blanca News has run a full-page article about my western writing.

Here is the page (Expertly joined by my old pal Neil from two scans ).


Inevitably, a few things got lost or altered in translation from interview to page. Needless to say, I don’t write ‘how is y’all’ dialogue, contrary to what is suggested… The article states that I have ten westerns under my belt, when in fact I’ve only got four – though my latest sale is my tenth book printed/accepted. (I’ll just have to get busy and write those other six pronto!) Also, when I studied ten BHWs and analysed them, I thought that I could write one too – I didn’t think I could ‘do better’. Such quirks make for a better article, I guess!

The Costa Blanca News is sold north and south along the Spanish costas. As to whether it will galvanise any readers into buying Black Horse Westerns, well that's another question without an answer...