Up for preorder from Chaosium Books and editors Brian Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass is Steampunk Cthulhu, featuring stories from Jeffrey Thomas, Adam Bolivar, Carrie Cuinn, William Meikle, John Goodrich, Lee Clark Zumpe, D.J. Tyrer, Christine Morgan, Christopher M. Geeson, Thana Niveau, Leigh Kimmel, Josh Reynolds, Robert Neilson, Pete Rawlik, and including my story The Reverend Mister Goodworks and The Yeggs of Yig.
The book is due out June 16th and features a killer cover from Daniele Serra, who also did the cover for my novel Coyote’s Trail.
Also known as The Reverend Shadrach Mischach Abednego Carter, a former train engineer who, after a horrific crash, is partially reconstructed with steam engine parts and becomes a battling preacher dedicated to the destruction of evil, the Reverend Mr. Goodworks plays a sizable part in the events of Once Upon A Time In The Weird West.
This story can be considered a prequel spinoff which directly ties into the the last MR novel, and provides some insight into the character.
I actually wrote this some time before I published Once Upon A Time In The Weird West, so I’m excited to see it in print at last. It involves the servants of the Lovecraftian deity Yig (obviously), and ties into the Old Testament story of the Nehushtan.
In this story, the Reverend encounters a distraught pregnant Mexican woman fleeing across the desert at night. Although she begs him to kill her before they are born, the Reverend delivers her children, only to be attacked by them as they slither from her womb; a pair of vicious serpent-human hybrids. He sets out to find those responsible for this abomination….
Here’s an excerpt.
_______________________________________
The Reverend lurched into New Valusia sometime before noon, the sand grinding in his knee joints. It was little more than a few communal frame houses, some gardens, and a couple outbuildings, all arranged around a two story farmhouse with a veranda.
On the porch stood a strikingly tall, lean, yellow haired woman in a white and purple robe. She folded her sun freckled arms at his approach.
Several of the New Valusians in white cassocks rose from their various tasks to interpose themselves, bearing only shovels and hoes as weapons. The Reverend was forced to halt or else plough through them.
He stood quietly, a head taller than their tallest, and surveyed the small crowd.
“Which of you is Susannah?” he bellowed at last.
“I’m Sister Susannah Coyle,” said the woman on the porch. “What brings you here?”
“The Lord brang me here,” drawled the Reverend, unfastening his coat.
“Well, the Lord welcome you.”
“Not your lord, bitch,” growled the Reverend.
He threw open his greatcoat like a knightly tabard.
Beneath, his body was flat black with steel accents, like the shell of a richly ornamented locomotive engine. Indeed, his chest resembled the face of a locomotive, with the dim lamp set in the center. His torso was further festooned with dancing pressure gauges and valve wheels, like a harness of little metal daisies. His heavy, ironclad legs bristled with pistons and driveshafts that plunged and hissed as he moved.
There was a thick bandolier belted around his blocky waist. Hanging from the belt was an old LeMat pistol. He brought his left arm up sharply, accompanied by a series of mechanical whirs and clicks. The sleeve was split down the middle from elbow to cuff, allowing the arm to emerge from the fabric unencumbered. His right hand went to his elbow and jacked a brass lever there. A strange amalgamation of octagonal rifle barrels, three in number, and situated in a kind of pyramid one atop the other, appeared at the end of the metal arm.
The Reverend rightly assumed any of these New Valusians walking around of their own volition were acquiescent in the hell the young woman he’d buried had been put through. He had no compunctions about firing into their midst, but he directed his aim at the statuesque Susannah Coyle, furiously levering his tri-repeater arm and cutting loose with a rapid barrage.
The New Valusians weren’t used to facing gunfire and scattered, dropping their makeshift weapons in their mad flight.
Susannah Coyle didn’t budge. To his amazement, the fifteen bullets he had flung in her direction all stopped and hung suspended in mid-air a few feet from the porch, spinning in a tight group.
When he lowered his smoking arm, frowning, he became aware of a deep thrumming in the air.
The door to the house opened and two muscular white-clad men armed with primitive, two-handed stone headed mallets appeared.
“The Pacifier Field,” Susannah explained, flicking the spinning bullets one by one with her finger until they bounced down the porch steps and rolled harmlessly in the dust at the Reverend’s feet. “An electromagnetic generator. It protects our Nesting House from those who do violence. It’s on its most agreeable setting now, but when I order it directed against your person, it will repel all your metal components, even from each other. That suit of yours will come apart and fly to the compass points.”
“It’s not a suit,” said the Reverend.
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Steampunk Cthulhu is up for preorder now on Amazon.com.
In honor of Yom Kippur, The Day Of The Atonement, the holiest twenty six hours in the Judaic calendar (and as loyal readers of the Rider will know, the day in 1882 that the Hour Of Incursion comes upon us), from now until sundown tomorrow (or 6:30 Pacific Time) every reader who comments on this post, I’ll send a free copy of either:
Merkabah Rider: Tales Of A High Planes Drifter
Merkabah Rider 2: The Mensch With No Name
or Merkabah Rider 3: Have Glyphs Will Travel
– your choice of title, your choice of format (pdf, epub or mobi). Just tell me below in the comments section (one per comment/visitor).
And if you’re a Luddite like me, send an email to emerdelacATgmailDOTcom with Yom Kippur as the subject line.
Then at 6:30pm on Wednesday night (the 26th), I’ll draw a random recipient’s name from the old ten gallon yarmulke. The winner gets a signed copy of Merkabah Rider: Tales Of A High Planes Drifter AND Merkabah Rider 2: The Mensch With No Name.
Without further to-do, here’s the first pages of MR IV:OUATITWW – AND a first gander at the cover by (dare I say it? I do) the magnificent Pat Carbajal, who will also be providing eight (count ’em) eight bee-you-tiful interior black and white illustrations.
Prologo
The diggers, drunks and saddle tramps all, nominally paw the earth with spades, knowing not why, only that they are paid well and in gold to do very little.
The tracklayers pause as the swing gang reaches the shade of the Huachuca Mountains, and in the seventh hekhalot the dread angel Metatron, once Enoch, dips its bright pen in the inkwell of eternity. Three descend upon the earth, perhaps for the final time.
In the Dreamlands, the Thunder of God seeks the Other to no avail.
In the lowest region of hell, in the marble city of Pandæmonium, Lucifer fidgets on his throne and sets aside the Damnatus Damnateum as Temelechus strokes the hide of Nehema with a glowing iron flail. She shrieks her gratitude.
Simultaneously, a man of God and a man of science each realize that the stars will soon be right and snap their respective books closed.
At midnight, just outside Kearney, Missouri, the squeaking wheels of a bone laden wagon cease their revolution and a dozen black garbed figures bearing shovels and prybars slink toward a grave, where grass has not yet sprouted over the body of Jesse James.
In the bleak fields of the Jornada Del Muerto, a preacher of wavering faith, strung with canteens and waterskins, bows his head and bends his iron legs, his frightened, murmuring prayers lost in a hiss of venting steam.
A master engraver pauses, surveying his final, terrible work. He wipes the sweat and tears from his eyes, and wishes he had listened to his wife. Then he puts his chisel to a gilded smokebox door.
A blue skinned killer passes a cracked leather map case across a polished desk to the delight of a pair of madmen.
A girl notices a stranger’s smile spread across her father’s face.
The thing that calls itself Adam Belial in this universe howls in wild triumph and the whole of Creation shudders.
In the dense void beyond, gibbering things ripple with excitement and colossal shapes turn in their precarious fluid slumber.
An engorged, tame beast stirs to the trill of distant piping, remembers what it once was, and strains against its chain.
An old, old gentleman in a blue suit and top hat places a pressed lilac on a smoldering mountain pyre of one of the thirty six hidden saints and heads west, where a dreadful infant and a one armed soldier wait within a carved vardo, and a pale, scar-eared onnager vies with a team of ornery camels for a space to graze.
A burned woman counts the hours.
And somewhere the Rider meets The Chief Angel of Death…
-Hasta pronto!
UPDATE: Thanks to all who participated in the giveaway. If you enjoy Merkabah Rider, please tell a friend or a stranger via Amazon/Goodreads or what have you. Congratulations to Frank Schildiner, who won a signed copy of Merkabah Rider: Tales Of A High Planes Drifter and Merkabah Rider 2: The Mensch With No Name. – Ed
Before I jump into this post, Chag Urim Sameach/Happy Hanukkah.
My gift to you is, first three readers to send an email to emerdelac (AT) gmail.com get a free e-copy of Merkabah Rider 3: Have Glyphs Will Travel in .epub, .mobi, or .pdf. Just state which you prefer. I’ll post on here when I get enough responses. (GIVEAWAY’S OVER, FOLKS. Thanks for looking – hope it was a happy holiday.)
Now on with the rest of the shew….
I like reading the thought processes and inspirations behind stuff I read by other authors. Joe R. Lansdale did this for his High Cotton collection, prefacing each story with a short bit about how it came to be. When I wrote for Star Wars I did something like this on the official blog, a sort of key to the easter eggs and references I put in the story for fans, something guys like Dan Wallace and Jason Fry still do on there.
Anyway, I’ve done one for each of the Merkabah Rider books, and it being Hankukah, felt like time to sit down and whip up one for the latest installment, Have Glyphs Will Travel, which came out at the beginning of December.
These might be partly spoiler-ific, so if you haven’t read the book yet, you might hold off and come back later.
Still here?
OK.
In Episode 9, The Long Sabbath –
Really not too much homaging in this one. The critters the turncoat riders put in the hapless adjutant and his scout are meant to be Mythos spawned of course, but they’re my own creation, sprung from me reading about the phenomenon of kamikaze ants and their last ditch method of defending their colony from invaders.
Exploding ant traps an enemy worker
Cattle stampedes are the most harrowing, violent danger I can think of for an old-time cattleman, from what I’ve read and seen. The stampede scenes in Lonesome Dove and Red River have always stuck with me. The only thing I could think of worse than being in one was being immobilized in the middle of one.
There is one extra-Rider allusion. Abe Lillard, the Rider’s best friend from San Francisco, is meant to be the half-Jewish son of Tommy Lillard, a character portrayed by Harrison Ford in a western that was a huge inspiration for The Merkabah Rider series. I would assume Abe was named for Tommy’s best friend.
Avram Belinski (L) and Tommy Lillard (R)
In Episode 10, The War Shaman –
Lots of history easter eggs in this one. It’s actually my favorite of the book as it was clearest in my head from start to finish and includes a cameo by some of the greatest of the Chiricahua Apache warriors, a people whom I have an unadulterated admiration for.
Goyaala is Geronimo of course, and stuttering Juh (pronounced ‘whoa’ if you were wondering), Vittorio and the warrior woman Lozen are all real individuals. Lozen’s purported seeing Power and the chant she uses to activate it was documented as well. As a matter of fact, all the named Apache are taken from historical record, even the outlaw Bedonkohe, Inya.
Of the various stories he mentions as being real, of course the whaler with the Indian figurehead is the Pequod of Moby Dick, the boy with the sword from the stone is intended to be Arthur, and the thirteen heroes with two hearts between them, well, you don’t need a ‘doctorate’ to know ‘who’ that is.
Thirteen heroes (eleven pictured) with two hearts between them.
The company of cavalry Faustus, the Rider, Belden and Kabede meet on the road are commanded by Adna Chaffee, who was an actual Civil War veteran and later became a General, seeing action in the Chinese Boxer Rebellion and the Phillipine Insurrection.
Tom Horn
Riding along with him is the famous German scout Al Seiber, who was General George Crook’s chief civilian scout during the Geronimo campaign. Tom, the boy accompanying him, is Tom Horn, the infamous range detective later hung for murder in Cheyenne,Wyoming (perhaps unjustly) and portrayed by Steve McQueen in the titular movie. Togo-de-chuz and his ‘kid’, the Apache scouts Seiber mentions as his preferred companions, were real Apache scouts, the ‘kid’ being Has-kay-bay-nay-ntayl, later known as ‘The Apache Kid.’
The Apache Kid was an interesting character who was a longtime friend (and very nearly a surrogate son) of Seiber. When a drunken scout killed his father, the Kid retaliated and became an outlaw. He surrendered to the Army and was sentenced to a year in Alcatraz and later Yuma Territorial Prison, the latter of which he is one of the only known escapees from. He and three others overpowered some guards and fled into a snowstorm, never to be seen again. One of his pursuers was future author Edgar Rice Burroughs, then a member of the seventh cavalry!
The Apache Kid
Nacozari and the Moctezume Mining Company are both real, but the existence of the Apache stronghold of Pa Gotzin Kay is debatable. It’s tangled up with the story of the Lost Adams Diggings, a legendary gold vein, also the inspiration for MacKenna’s Gold. I’ve moved it from the traditional location of New Mexico.
Oh there’s lots of Lovecraftian stuff in this one as well. Misquamicus of course, also the subject of Graham Masterton’s great Manitou series of novels. I’ve made him a sort of endless being, on par with his brother, and tied him into most of the major Native American doings from the dawn of recorded history and on that I could find, from the early treacheries of Cortes to the Maroon rebellion in Jamaica, where I had read some of the captive Indians involved in the burning of Providence, Rhode Island had been shipped off as slaves, and I imagined Misquamacus would have found work to his liking. The Sand Creek Massacre was one of the worst acts of genocide enacted by the United States against the native populace. It was actually the basis for the original weird western stories I wrote in high school, some of which evolved into Merkabah Rider.
A deformed Misquamacus in the future, from 'The Manitou'
Misquamacus’ dealings with the Billington clan of New England are documented in Lovecraft’s The Lurker At The Threshold, where his devotion to Nyarlathotep and conjuring of Ossodagowah are both mentioned.
The supernatural aspects of the bad guys who side with Misquamacus are mostly my own invention of course, though the Pawnee did at one time practice a somewhat infamous human sacrifice ritual, and the Tonkawas did believe they were descended from wolves. Any misrepresentations are of course my own fault, but I make no apologies portraying skinwalkers in a negative light. I don’t think any Navajo would take issue with it.
The Rider’s likening his claustrophobia to the various mental afflictions of an old friend from his yeshiva in San Francisco named Aloysius Monkowitz is a shameless (or perhaps shameful) allusion to a probable ancestor of a certain neurotic modern day San Francisco detective with a similar name of whom I’m a fan.
Aloysius Monkowitz's famous descendant.
In Episode 11, The Mules of The Mazzikim
This is another one short on easter eggs, but there are a couple.
The scalp the Kwtsan Indian tries to sell the Rider on the bridge going into Yuma is the scalp of Joe (John Joel) Glanton, the leader of the band of vicious scalphunters hired by the Mexican government to collect bounties on Apache Indian scalps in the 1840’s and vividly portrayed in one my favorite novels, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or, An Evening’s Redness In The West. Glanton and his gang took over the ferry over the Gila River at Yuma and regularly robbed and extorted crossers. They were later slaughtered by the Kwtsans on that spot.
The Rabbi Belinski the Rider mentions as having overseen his bar mitzvah was the aforementioned Tommy Lillard’s best friend, a rabbi who once undertook an amazing journey across the west to deliver a Torah scroll to San Francisco.
The lawman, Marshal Books, who arrests the Rider is the same ailing Books (or perhaps the brother of) who years later has it out on his birthday in an El Paso(or perhaps Carson City) saloon with several of his nemeses.
Happy birthday, Books
In Episode 12, The Man Called Other
Every aspect of Yuma Prison I could realistically portray I did, from the color of the cots to the processing of prisoners, to the rings in the floor and The Dark Cell. I visited what’s left of the place last year and the museum that sits on the site. Judge Berry was real, and the warden of the time was the real guy, Captain C.V. Meder (though not the acting warden, obviously).
In Episode Thirteen, The Fire King Triumphant
The title of The Fire King Triumphant is paraphrased from the headline of the Tombstone Epitaph (‘The Fire King Reaps A Harvest’) about the May 1882 fire that actually swept through the town of Tombstone. It really did start in the outhouse behind Tivoli’s as depicted. If you get yourself a street map from the time, I’ve done my best to keep the layout of the story true to the town.
W.W. Spates appeared in the last book, and I talked about the inspiration for him. His colleague, the linguistic expert Warren Rice is intended to be a younger version of the silver haired linguist who accompanied Harry Armitage in The Dunwich Horror.
China Mary, the shrewd entrepreneur with ties to the Chinese Benevolence Society (or tong) in Tombstone, was a real lady, as was her Can Can Chop House. The word her man uses to describe the amorphous beasties in Lepsy’s barrels is hundun, which does mean dumpling, or wonton, but also refers to a legendary faceless, formless beast from Chinese folklore. The hundun is primordial chaos, a lump of flesh or thunder egg from which creatures of reality are born, or a featureless creature lacking the seven openings which mark humanity.
hundun
The villain of this story Lepsy himself is a reference to a ghost story from Dudleyville or Pinal, Arizona. Lepsy supposedly did hire Chinese workers and burn them as remuneration. When a sheriff and his posse went after them, Lepsy did the same for him. In the canyon where these crimes supposedly occurred, you can see scorch marks and smell burnt flesh.
Camillus Sydney and Mollie Fly did own the photography studio in Tombstone at 312 Fremont Street. On October 26 1881 the Gunfight at the OK Corral took place in the alley between his boarding house out back and the next house over, and it was inside his place that Ike Clanton and Sheriff Johnny Behan took cover.
Fly and Mollie both took photographs in their studio and abroad, Mollie being one of the most prominent female photographers of her time. Fly took the famous photos of the Billy Clanton and the McClaurys in their caskets. Fly also accompanied Crook to Canyon de Los Embudos in 1886 and took pictures of Geronimo in the field – the only photographs of Native Americans actively engaged in resisting the US government.
Mollie Fly took this picture of the CS Fly studio as it burned for the second time in 1912.
Finally, Moon Fugate and his peculiar pigmentation condition are a reference to the famous Blue Fugates a hill clan from Hazard, Kentucky, born with methemoglobinemia or met-H, a genetic blood disorder which results in blue skin.
The Blue Fugates of Kentucky
That’s about all this time out, kiddies. Whew!
Soon, news about the final chapter in the Merkabah Rider saga. It’ll be something special.
Don’t forget the giveaway.
Happy holidays, whichever holiday it may be, and good new year on you.
Hey all, this time out I’m letting a fellow weird western author take a stroll down the main street of Delirium Tremens while I kick back on the porch. Specifically, author Lincoln Crisler, who’s zombie novella WILD is out now from Damnation Books, the fine folks who publish my Merkabah Rider series. This is what DB has to say about it…
‘When Colonel Albert Waters, a controversial Civil War veteran, and his thirteen-year-old son Henry disappear from their El Paso, Texas home, Deputy Sheriff Kurt Kearney calls upon Matthias Jacoby, a strange newcomer, to help with his investigation. Word is, Jacoby’s handled a few cases like this before. Kearney and Jacoby form an uneasy alliance with Black Tom Catch, an infamous New Mexico rancher, cattle rustler and outlaw, and take off after the bandits they suspect kidnapped Waters.
Could the gunfighters have bitten off more than they can chew, however, when their search for the colonel reveals strong ties to black magic and blood sacrifice?’
I spoke with Lincoln about writing and about WILD. Here’s what we talked about.
EME: Tell me first about yourself, Lincoln.
LC: I’m twenty-eight years old, married with two daughters and a son and I’ve been in the Army for ten years. I’ve been to Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and Qatar for a year each. I like beer and cigars. And I write scary stuff.
EME: Hope this doesn’t come off as too personal, but I’ve always been curious about your nom de plume. Is Lincoln Crisler your given name?
It is my given name. “Crisler” is actually pronounced as though it were spelled “Crissler” and my mother’s maiden name (no shit) is Ford.
EME: As a father of three and a half myself, I’m usually forced to just drop into writing mode minuteman style whenever my youngest crashes. Do you have difficulty making time to sit down and write? What’s your prescribed method of dealing with that?
LC: It’s pretty easy for me to just jump on and do website maintenance, book reviews and promotional activities, but the actual writing? It’s easier when I’m deployed, honestly. By the time all my other obligations are dealt with, I have no energy left to write. If I can’t get it in before work or on my lunch break, it isn’t getting done that day. When I’m out of the Army in ten years I’ll be able to get up early or stay up late, but right now it isn’t an option, since I’m already doing that!
EME: Now let’s talk about WILD a little bit. Give us the gyst.
LC: WILD is loosely based on a real unsolved missing persons case from Old West El Paso. A prominent citizen and war hero disappeared with his son and was never seen again. I changed a few things around for artistic reasons, borrowed the names of some peripheral characters and added some black magic and zombies, a mysterious stranger and a former Army medic. There’s a bit of sleuthing, a touch of the supernatural and plenty of gunplay…something for everyone!
EME: What induced (possessed might be a better word) you to write a weird western story?
LC: I wanted to write about zombies and magic without using a worn-out modern setting and familiar modern horror tropes. When I was looking for fodder from that period of time, Colonel Fountain’s disappearance popped out at me. Unsolved mysteries make great beginnings for horror stories!
EME: I’m always intrigued by the appearance of obscure folk practices in dark fiction. In WILD you feature a hechichero. Tell me how you came across them.
LC: Google. I’m familiar with Southwestern American mystical practices least of any in the world (Jewish mysticism would have beat it out, but I’ve been staying on top of the Merkabah Rider series!). It’s a fair assumption to make that any civilization that believes in magic has good wizards and bad wizards. In the case of Mexican mysticism, these are curanderos and hechiceros, respectively. It was important to me not to take the easy way out and just use the standard “Evil Medicine Man.” I put entirely too much work into the plot and settings to take a step back like that. A little research usually ends up saving your ass.
EME: Another thing I like is the name dropping of obscure deities. Not being too familiar with the Aztec pantheon (but having always been interested in learning more), Tetzacatlipoca jumped out at me. Talk a little about this guy without giving too much away.
LC: Tezcatlipoca was a very important Aztec god, who is mentioned frequently alongside Quetzalcoatl in creation myths and such. He was associated with such things as magic, divination and temptation, which makes him a great choice for my hechicero’s patron. Again, I wanted to put in some extra effort instead of just having my bad guy “worship the Devil.”
EME: WILD came across like the beginning of something. Will we see more of Matthias Jacoby’s adventures? Will we learn more about his past?
LC: I left it open-ended as to whether there’ll be more Matthias. Early readers seem to like the book, so I’d be an idiot not to revisit him. I don’t know when or in what form I’ll come back to Matthias and Juan, though. I will say that Sherlock Holmes was an influence on WILD from the get-go, so there’ll probably be more mysteries. I also have a short story in mind featuring the origin of the zombie magic used in WILD; it won’t be set in the Wild West, however. And there might be some leftover zombies from Matthias’ adventure, so that might be good for a story, too!
EME: Where can folks pick up a copy of WILD?
LC: WILD is available in digital and paperback formats from Damnation Books, and there are still a few copies of the 26-copy lettered hardcover that I produced myself. More information on all of these, to include excerpts and reviews, can be found at http://lincolncrisler.info
That’s about all this time around. How about that cool cover from Ash Arcenaux too?
Hey all, in writing for Star Wars I noticed a tendency for authors to post unofficial endnotes to their blogs about recently published pieces – basically just some fun behind the scene facts about their stories, things reader might have missed. I did this for my own Star Wars writing (the main character, a shockboxer named Lobar Aybock, is a portmanteau of Rocky Balboa, for instance), and I thought it might be a nifty thing to do for my Merkabah Rider series. I’m a big fan of western history and genre fiction, and I always include nods to some of my own favorites.
So, here’s a rundown of some of the more obscure references in books one and two of the Merkabah Rider series, by book and story. Think of it as a kind of ‘DVD commentary.’
Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter –
The Blood Libel:
The town in which this story takes place, Delirium Tremens, is fictional (though I’m positive I read the name in a book on American ghost towns which I can’t seem to locate now). It appears in some of my other stories (The Blood Bay, appearing in The Midnight Diner, for instance, and my indie film, Meaner Than Hell).
The town sign the Rider enounters reads ‘Drucker and Dobbs Mining Company Welcomes You To Delirium Tremens.’
The name Dobbs is a reference to the avaricious gold prospecter played by Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of The Sierra Madre, one of my all time favorite movies.
The girl kidnapped by Hayim Cardin’s cult, the Reverend Shallbetter’s daughter, is Carrie Shallbetter, the same reverend’s daughter who shows some romantic interest in Jonas Famous, the protagonist of my short story The Blood Bay (Editor’s Choice for The Midnight Diner #3).
The Dust Devils:
Claudio Scarchili
Hector Scarchili, the leader of the bandits who take control of Polvo Arrido, is named after Claudio Scarchilli, a prolific spaghetti western actor (one of Tuco’s gang in Good The Bad and The Ugly). The hoodoo/Vodoun bokor Kelly Le Malfacteur is based on Kelly The Conjure-Man, the titular powerful hoodoo man from a story written by Robert E. Howard.
Hell’s Hired Gun: A little Biblical trivia in this one. The dybbukim (angry condemned souls) possessing Medgar Tooms identify themselves as Gestas, Lamech, Nahash, and Zuleika.
From L to R: Gestas, Jesus Christ, Dismas
Gestas was the unrepentant thief crucified beside Jesus, who called for him to prove his godhood by saving himself and them. Traditionally, Gestas was also supposedly one of a band of robbers who attacked the Holy Family during their flight to Egypt to escape Herod’s persecution. Dismas, the thief to the right of Christ, chided Gestas and asked Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom. Christ subsequently promised to reward Dismas. Presumably, Gestas did not fare so well.
Lamech is one of the descendants of Cain, invariously described in Jewish folklore as a culture hero of blacksmiths and as the accidental killer of Cain and Tubal-Cain, his own son. He was the first polygamist, and according to some sources, was partially responsible for the Flood of Noah’s time.
Nahash is intended to be the soul of Nahash of Ammon, a cruel king who opposed the first Hebrew king, Saul. Nahash famously besieged Jabesh-Gilead, and offered the populace a choice between death or having their right eyes gouged out. Magnanimous guy.
Zuleika was the name of the wayward wife of Potiphar, the captain of Pharoah’s palace guard, who tempted Joseph during his servitude in Egypt.
The Nightjar Women: There’s a good deal of western history in this novella, which I give a lot of credit to Jim Cornelius of The Cimmerian for actually picking up on.
Josephine 'Sadie' Earp, nee Marcus
First off the character of Josephine ‘Sadie’ Marcus is the Josie that lawman Wyatt Earp met in Tombstone and ultimately married. She later wrote a book about her husband.
Her shiftless paramour, Johnny Behan, later became the underhanded sheriff of Cochise County who issued an arrest warrant for the Earps and Doc Holiday following the famous gunfight at the OK Corral.
Both of them are documented as having been in Tip Top, Arizona around the time I describe.
Tip Top, the setting of this story, is an actual Arizona ghost town, and I did my best to describe it much as it originally stood and partially still stands today. Many of the names mentioned in the story, like Alph Gersten and Constable Wager, were actual residents.
Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name –
In volume two of the Merkabah Rider series, elements of the Lovecraftian mythos come to the forefront.
The Infernal Napoleon: This story is for the most part original, though the scenario of the desert tanks being blown up was inspired by the John Wayne movie 3 Godfathers, in which a lazy traveler dynamites a desert watering hole to hurry the seepage, killing himself and indirectly, a lot of other people in the process.
I always take the names of actual demons for the demons in the series, including the shedim (half-human-half-demons). These come from various sources, both Jewish and Western Estoteric (like the Lesser Key of Solomon, for instance).
Ketev Meriri, the cannon-demon comes from Jewish folklore, and is desribed as a scaly demon who rolls about and whose gaze is instant death. I just turned him into one of the original cannons created by Lucifer for the rebellion against heaven, as described in Milton’s Paradise Lost.
The villainous Dr. Amos Sheardown’s name comes from an individual briefly mentioned in a newspaper article about Minnesota’s Dakota War of 1862. Following the suppression of the Sioux Indians by the Army, 38 Indians were publicly hung in Mankato, Minnesota – the largest mass execution in US history. Prior to being slung into a mass grave, a ‘Dr. Sheardown’ is said to have removed pieces of the prisoners’ skin and later sold it. These ‘artifacts’ were only recently returned to the Dakota tribe by the Mayo Clinic.
Among Sheardown’s papers the Rider finds a rejection letter written by a Dr. Allen Halsey, turning down his application to teach anatomy at a new medical school opening up in Massachussetts. Halsey is the dean of medical department at the infamous Miskatonic University, as mentioned in Lovecraft’s Herbert West: Reanimator.
The Damned Dingus: The title and concept of this story come from Ambrose Bierce’s similarly titled short story ‘The Damned Thing.’
Lots of western personalities make an appearance in this one. The setting is Las Vegas, New Mexico, a town I’ve always wanted to set a story in. Billy The Kid purportedly dined with Jesse James here. Not long after the Santa Fe and the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroads hired a slew of famous gunfighters like Doc Holiday and Bat Masterson to fight a guerrilla war over the Royal Gorge route in Colorado, the railroad made its way to the east end of Las Vegas, New Mexico. A brand new settlement sprang up around the tracks, East Las Vegas. A lot of those hired gunmen found themselves deposited there.
The law in East Las Vegas became the Dodge City gang, a band of Kansas gun hands led by Hyman Neill, AKA Hoodoo Brown. Elected Justice of the Peace and Coroner, Hoodoo Brown saw to it that any killings performed in the line of duty by his questionable police force were always ruled as justified. His crew included such luminaries as Dirty Dave Rudabaugh (who later rode with Billy The Kid), and Mysterious Dave Mather (all of whom make an appearance here). Most of the named gangmembers in this story (Bullshit Jack, Slap Jack Bill, etc) are derived from public record.
That gunfighter Dave Mather and his brother Sy (descended from Cotton Mather) went to sea for a little less
Mysterious Dave Mather
than a year in 1868 is fact, but that they sailed on The Hetty is my own devising. The Hetty is of course Captain Obed Marsh’s brig mentioned in Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The drunk who tattooed the brothers’ arms with the Elder Sign was likely old Zadok Allen.
William Wallace Spates, the excitable professor working on a ‘catalog’ of supernatural entities, is a nod to Ghostbusters and Ray Stanz’s reference to ‘Spates’ Catalog.’
"Spates Catalog." "Tobin's Spirit Guide."
The Outlaw Gods – Shub-Niggurath and the Black Goat of The Woods are from the Mythos of course. Red House is an actual location in Arizona.
Art by Quinton Hoover
The extra-dimensional angelic beings Chaksusa refers to as Shar-rogs Pa and Mun Gsod are Tibetan approximations of the names ‘Darkness Slayer’ and ‘East-helper.’ Put their names together with the color blue (as Shar-rogs Pa is said to be the blue abbot of Shambahla) and some readers will have an ‘inkling’ of who they are and what world they came to the Rider’s from.
All the references the shade of Don de Arriagua makes to Tiguex and Estavanicio and the like are from history.
The Pandaemonium Ride – Most of my descriptions of Sheol or hell are intertwined with Milton and Dante. The description of Pandaemonium itself comes from John Martin’s 1825 painting of the subject.
John Martin - Pandaemonium (1825)
The number of gates of hell and their locations, as well as descriptions of the angel Pariel and the demons depicted in Pandaemonium’s hall of statuary are from Jewish folklore, most of them culled from Geoffrey Dennis’ ‘Jewish Myth Magic and Mysticsm,’ which has been an indispensible resource throughout my writing of the Merkabah Rider series.
One of the paintings on the wall of Lucifer’s den moves, much to the dismay of the Rider and Kabede. The scene depicted is of a trio of people walking around a garden, and Lucifer and Belphegor take credit for it, stating their intent to introduce the technology to the human race and speculating as to the less than savory future of moving pictures. This was all sparked by a conversation with a friend, about how Lucifer is said to be the light bearer, and would probably find it ironic to corrupt mankind using paintings of light.
This moving painting described is intended to be Roundhay Garden Scene, a two second short film running at twelve frames per second first recorded on paper film with a single lens camera by French inventor Louis LePrince in 1888 (making it the first real motion picture, predating Edison’s patent).
What attracted me to the use of this particular clip of film were the dark events which surrounded it and its creator, Louis LePrince.
Firstly, ten days after filming Roundhay Garden Scene, Sarah Robinson Whitley, one of the actresses, died. Being 72, this was perhaps not so interesting.
But two years after filming, director LePrince boarded a train bound for London to exhibit the film showcasing his technique….and never debarked, disappearing without a trace.
Later, when LePrince’s son Adolphe (the gentlman featured in the film) testified in a trial which challenged Edison’s claim of invention, he was shortly thereafter found dead of a gunshot wound.
The hand of Edison or Lucifer’s agents?
Hope this has been illuminating, and happy new year.
Look for the third book in The Merkabah Rider series, ‘Have Glyphs Will Travel’ sometime in the latter half of this year.
is the author of fourteen novels (including the acclaimed weird western series Merkabah Rider) and dozens of short stories. He is an independent filmmaker, award winning screenwriter, and sometime Star Wars contributor.
Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he resides in the Los Angeles area.
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I couldn’t make this up.
Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair (stuff I’ve written – click on each cover to read more)
Head Like a Jar, Appearing In Call of Poohthulhu from April Moon Books
Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against The Lovecraftian Mythos
Conquer
The Knight With Two Swords
Bond Unknown (featuring Mindbreaker)
Angler In Darkness
Monstrumfuhrer
Perennial
Andersonville
With Sword And Pistol
Coyote’s Trail
Terovolas
Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter
Merkabah Rider 2: The Mensch With No Name
Merkabah Rider 3: Have Glyphs Will Travel
Merkabah Rider 4: Once Upon A Time In The Weird West
Buff Tea
Star Wars Insider #147 (featuring Hammer)
Star Wars: Fists of Ion: Memoirs of A Champion Shockboxer (formerly a Hyperspace Exclusive at Starwars.com)
So Uncivilized: Great Gunfighters In Star Wars Part I
So Uncivilized: Great Gunfighters In Star Wars Part 2
Slugthrowers: Popular Music In The Star Wars Galaxy Part 1
Slugthrowers Part 2
‘The Colors Of A Rainbow To One Born Blind’ in Tales From Arkham Sanitarium
‘Express’ in Midnight In The Pentagram
The Adventure of The Three Rippers in Sherlock Holmes and The Occult Detectives
Brown Jenkins’ Reckoning in Tails Of Terror
Summer of Lovecraft
The Pulp Horror Book of Phobias (Featuring A Stroke of Lightning)
Transmissions From Punktown (featuring Blueshift Drive)
18 Wheels Of Science Fiction (featuring Hit/Run)
Occult Detective Quarterly Presents (featuring Conquer Comes Correct)
This story can be considered a prequel spinoff which directly ties into the the last MR novel, and provides some insight into the character.
In this story, the Reverend encounters a distraught pregnant Mexican woman fleeing across the desert at night. Although she begs him to kill her before they are born, the Reverend delivers her children, only to be attacked by them as they slither from her womb; a pair of vicious serpent-human hybrids. He sets out to find those responsible for this abomination….
Delirium Tremens 