New Haxan Story Published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies

"High Moon", my new Haxan story, is now up at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Please, click the banner to read the story. Hope you like it:

New Haxan Story Published on The Western Online

Hooray! The hits keep a'comin', haha. My NEW Haxan short-short "Three Wise Men" was accepted and is now up at The Western Online.

This was kind of experimental for me. I don't often write short-shorts. This one clocked in at 1300-words, but I enjoyed writing it. I hope you like it, too. Please, click on the banner below to see the story and let me know what you think, or let the editor of the magazine know.

Thanks, guys! :)

New Haxan Story Published

The Western Online has just published my brand new Haxan story "In the Image of Our Maker". Yay! So please click on the link below to check it out, and I hope you enjoy the story. Thanks, guys! :)

"High Moon" is Rising

Beneath Ceaseless Skies told me today my story "High Moon" will be published in December. It's a Haxan story (what isn't these days) and I hope you like it.

But until then, if you haven't had the chance, or if you are new to my LJ, please check out the original story "Haxan" and the podcast as well published at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

And don't forget the Haxan Page and Haxan Gallery for added content, character biographies and other neat stuff.

(Hey, you gotta get your Haxan fix someway, haha. Yes, I know I'm being silly, but it's that kind of night.)

Haxan Gear

I set up an account with CafePress and now have Haxan gear for anyone who might want mugs, tote bags, throw pillows, clocks or shirts. All kinds of cool stuff!

I've kept the price as low as possible. Not interested in making money, just having Haxan Gear out there for fans who have asked about it. I ordered a coffee mug first to make sure they look okay, and I have to admit they are great.

So if you're interested just click on the mug below and you can see all the Haxan Gear that is currently available. Hope you like it! :)

Haxan Gallery

For those who are interested, I've included a new page on my website, a HAXAN GALLERY. Check it out if you have time. I hope you like it.

I've also updated many other features of my website, including the News Page, with new writing links for those seeking to perfect their craft, and my essay titled "What I Learned in New Mexico", along with a brand new Sample Story called "The Perfect Quest" published by SDO Fantasy in 2004. It's another Sugawara story, for people who like his adventures. I've also updated my FAQ Page (with additional questions about Haxan I've been getting from people) and Links that you may like to follow.

Also included on the Haxan Gallery page is added content entitled "How I Tried to Find Haxan" for the fans. So there's lots for you to enjoy and browse around on if you are so inclined.

Have fun!

Haxan Podcast!

My story "Haxan" is now offered as a podcast by Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Click on the banner below and you'll be taken to the page where you can either listen or download the story in an MP3 file. Hope you enjoy it!

"Haxan" Podcast Poll

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is having a poll whether to podcast my story "Haxan" or some other story. If you have time could you please go over there, register as a member (it's free) and vote for "Haxan"? Thank you!


http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=285

New Haxan Banner!

wedschilde created an awesome Haxan banner for my website. I'd really like for you to take a look and tell me (and her) what you think. I believe she captured Haxan perfectly. And when you go to the website and click on the banner it brings you directly to the Haxan page. How cool is that? (George Jetson would be envious of the ease which surrounds our lives, although he does have that flying bubble car and automatic dog walker.)

Oh, other new stuff on the website, too, including a new sample story "Hour of the Tiger" which was my first Sugawara story ever published and some other little bits and pieces, links to other articles and stuff. But, imo, that Haxan banner rocks.

Man. If that's not reason enough to party right there then I dont know what is. Have a good Monday and a great Memorial Day! :)

CHECK OUT THE HAXAN BANNER!

"High Moon" Sold to Beneath Ceaseless Skies!

Beneath Ceaseless Skies bought my story "High Moon" yesterday. It's one of the Haxan series and actually gives a little peek into Marwood's distant past. (Assuming he's just not slap crazy and imagining all this which is always a possibility.)

And there's more! I have three new character biographies on my Haxan webpage. Yay! Free content! So check it out, please, and read about Black Sky, Dr. Rex Toland, and Hew and Alma Jean Clay, all citizens of Haxan. (Some more reputable than others, thank you very much, but that's Haxan for you.)

So far so good this week. Patrick had a good baseball game yesterday with a hit and assist to tag out a runner on first base. They lost the game but he was excited about how well he played. I placed a Sugawara story with Drops of Crimson, sold a new Haxan story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies and have new Haxan biographies posted for fans. Later today I'll have BBQ chicken, chili hot beans, potato salad and vodka gimlets to celebrate.

Much excitement in the Hoover Clan! Woo HOO!

Colt Dragoon -- The Weapon

U.S. Marshall John Marwood primarily uses a .44-caliber Colt Dragoon. This is a single-action pistol. That means he has to cock the trigger back every time he shoots. He can't stand there pulling on the trigger and blasting willy nilly like the Lone Ranger or Roy Rogers or some other cartoonish character on television. He has to stand under the returning fire of his opponent, cock his gun and aim. And the guy across the plaza has to do the same thing. The type of six gun you see in Lone Ranger episodes and the like didn't exist until much later in the century.

Sometimes a man would "fan" the trigger, but this was rarely done because you couldn't really hit anything. Better to take your time, aim well, and fire. Though gunfights themselves were extremely rare in the West, the man who aimed the straightest often beat the man who drew the fastest. That was the reality of the world back then, even in the world of Haxan. Speed was helpful...but aim was better. And since Marwood uses a Colt Dragoon, a fairly heavy gun even for 1874, it's his aim and not his speed that wins the day. So far, anyway.

The Colt Dragoon was a popular gun during the Civil War and afterward. Wild Bill Hickock and other persons of that era also carried it. The gun wasn't loaded with cartridges you see on gun belts in movies. It was a ball and powder pistol fired with a percussion cap. Though the cylinder has six holes drilled into it, Marwood only loads his gun with five. The hammer is kept on an empty chamber for safety purposes. Only if he has time before he goes into action will he load that sixth chamber. (Most gunfighters did this. They figured if you can't kill someone with five rounds a sixth isn't going to help. You'll be dead by then anyway.)

As with most people who use a gun like this, Marwood reloads it every morning. Moisture in the night air can dampen the gunpowder and cause a misfire (Admittedly, this was less likely to happen in the desert where the humidity is low.) It was smart tactics to reload your gun every morning for the day. And as powder, conical slug and percussion cap cost about eight cents each, this added up to a lot of money, about $2.40 a month. That's not chicken feed, and when you add in the cost of practice then it really mounts up.

People often used rifles and shotguns to hunt and protect themselves back then, even in Haxan. But they were under NO illusion as to what a revolver was for. It was made to kill people. It had no other use and people of the West understood this. Guns -- revolvers -- were made to kill other human beings. That was their main function. Men, and not a few women, didn't purchase revolvers and plink away at cans and bottles just for laughs.

One last note. Often you see movies and old shows from the 1950s get the terms "gunman" and "gunfighter" mixed up. They aren't interchangeable. A "gunman" is a bad guy or someone who sells his gun for murder. A "gunfighter" is someone who is working on the side of the law. The men and women of the real West knew this difference and would never have confused the two terms.

Whether Marwood is a "gunman" or a "gunfighter" is left to the reader to decide.

Below is a pic of a Colt Dragoon. This is very similar to the one Marwood uses, except his sports a "yellow bone" handle. Once again, I'll leave it to the reader to imagine what kind of bone it might have been.

BCS Forum Post About "Haxan"

Some people have commented on the story in the Beneath Ceaseless Skies forum. They've been very nice. If you care to read their comments then CLICK ME HERE.

"Where do you get the names of your characters?"

"Haxan" Has Gone Live!

My dark fantasy story about a mythical Western town, "Haxan", has been published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine. Please, click on the link below the title and you'll be taken to the story. I really hope you like it.


HAXAN

Appearing NOW in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine

03. 26. 09.

And if that isn't enough. And don't you think it ought to be? There's a new biographical character sketch about Marwood on my webpage. Free content with the story. Now I ask you how can you beat that? Click here to read biographical material about U.S. Marshall John Marwood!



Blood.
Dust.
Wind.

Hell Is Invited To Supper

And Haxan thought it was a rough town. Find out how wrong they were TOMORROW!




HAXAN

Appearing tomorrow in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine

03. 26. 09.



Blood.
Dust.
Wind.

Marwood Rides Into Haxan

See what is waiting for him when he arrives. I'm sure everything will be okay. I mean, what could go wrong in Haxan, right? In TWO days!




HAXAN

Appearing in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine

03. 26. 09.



Blood.
Dust.
Wind.

What Happened to the Gold Double-Eagles?

Find out where the money is in THREE days!




HAXAN

Appearing in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine

03. 26. 09.



Blood.
Dust.
Wind.

Where is Magra Snowberry?

Find out what happened to her in FOUR days!




HAXAN

Appearing in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine

03. 26. 09.



Blood.
Dust.
Wind.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Teases Haxan!

Beneath Ceaseless Skies has posted a snippet from the story. Give it a peek. Here's the link!:

HAXAN Tease

Three Stories in Three Days

I like to be challenged. I like setting goals for myself and seeing if I'm up to meeting them.

I had the idea of Three Stories in Three Days for several weeks. I wanted to see if I could do it. No immediate reason, other than the alliteration sounded good and I thought it would be a decent test of my artistic skills and endurance.

I'm telling you, it almost killed me.

I got up early every morning, had a big breakfast and coffee, and was working by eight. I often finished around eight or nine (I can't really remember) that night, with an hour or two (or three) of downtime. But even though I wasn't writing those hours I was thinking of the story at hand. It was all very intense, more than I realized it would be, I guess. I should have known better.

The problem was even though I was working on the first story of three, ideas for the other two kept popping into my head. So I had to deal with that and compartmentalize. It was a mental juggle. It didn't help that my nights were for the most part sleepless. Ideas (and some angst) kept intruding on my rest. Initially, that first morning, I had some trepidation. Was I insane? This was a really big project. Who was I trying to impress? What did it mean, if anything, that I wanted to do this? Not to mention I'm of the school a story is as long as it needs to be. Oh, no, what if a story had to be 40 pages? That's a lot of work for one day. Was I setting myself up to fail?

Eh, quit your whining, you fuck, and get to work. Failure is not an option.

By the second day I was 2/3 through the second story when I was faced with a decision. I could write a quick and easy ending or go for the gold and write the ending the story had to have. Which meant it would be longer and I would have to keep working. But I was so tired! If you read my blog with any kind of regularity you know me well enough to know what side I came down on. Story comes first. But when I was into it I was psyched. I kept getting up every couple of pages or so to work off some of the kinetic energy that was flowing from the story into me. When I finished I thought I had written something pretty special.

By now I was damn near running on fumes. The whole mental aspect of this was more draining than I figured it would be. I've written three days in a row before. I've written an entire story in one day. I've written 10.000 words in a single day. But the whole dynamic of Three Stories in Three Days was like nothing I've ever attempted before. Because day by day I had to shift into another gear. Often I would think, "I"m not going to be able to do this." But then I realized I did not want to fail. So I kept going. I pushed myself. It was all mental. That surprised me.

On Day Three I was dragging. It was zombie time. I had no reason to be ashamed. I could quit. I already had completed Two Stories in Two Days. But that's not what I set out to accomplish. I started the third story. It didn't want to flow. By noon I only had about four pages. I was running out of time and starting to panic. I recognized I was being held up more from exhaustion than anything else. I knew these characters and the setting. (Which is the reason I chose them to be all Haxan stories, because I thought that would make it easier. Haha. Fool that I am.) I pressed on.

By six o'clock the ending began to reveal itself, like slices out of an orange. I had to put them together. I have three Writing Rules: Tell a good story, persevere, and trust your instinct. I depended heavily on the last two. I instinctively felt the story was good, but I had to keep going and most of all I had to trust myself. I wanted to quit. I couldn't quit. I had to finish what I had started.

I did it. I wrote the story.

When I was finished I sat looking at the screen. I was beyond the point of being able to concentrate. I had lost that ability long ago. The past three days were a wild blur. It had been incredibly intense. I don't know if anyone else would have felt that way. Maybe their experience would be entirely different. But I am still amazed how personally intense those three days were with story, Story, STORY. Man. I still can't believe I actually did it.

Bottom line, I wanted to prove something to myself and I guess I did. It doesn't mean anything in the long run. But I learned something about myself, what I can do, what I am capable of. That was instructive.

And to answer a question you might have, No, I am NOT going to do this again, haha. At least not on purpose! Once was more than enough, believe you me. You can give it a shot!

I want to thank everyone who was cheerleading from the sidelines. That was a big help, more than you can ever know.

I'm still kinda stunned. Three stories in three days. Doesn't mean anything to you, maybe, but I was able to accomplish it. I set a goal and tested myself and met the challenge. Best part? The stories don't suck.

But, boy, did it ever wear my butt out.