Horror Q&A: J.B. Dane (Something Wicked This Way Rides)
“I exercise my degree in history by writing historical romantic mystery under a different pseudonym, and Weird West Steampunk under yet another...”
The short story collection Something Wicked This Way Rides from Dark Owl Publishing is an anthology featuring some two-dozen authors exploring the Old West with a twisted view, showcasing the 1800s through stories featuring the wicked, supernatural, demonic and just plain weird.
Author J.B. Dane contributes “The Tombstone Affair: A North Pole Security Historical Tale.”
More interviews in this series:
Q1 What’s your favorite thing about mashing up horror with the Old West?
Well, there was plenty about the Old West that was horrific to begin with. It was a harsh landscape just waiting to kill you, and if it didn't get you, then the people whose territory you were invading took their turn, and nearly everyone walked around with a loaded gun.
Stirring horror into a story of life out west is picking your choice of historical ways people either survived or didn't when they headed to the side of the Mississippi that the sun set on.
Q2 Did you approach your story as a western story with elements of horror—or vice versa?
"The Tombstone Affair" leans more on what things were like in Tombstone, Arizona Territory when the Earps and Ike Clanton's boys were drawin' lead, then stirs in a bit of North Pole business with the Claus family that I've already written three contemporary fantasy mystery comedies about.
In this case, I went back and invented an ancestor who Fate is about to lumber with Santa Claus duties. And, having visited Tombstone a number of times when I lived in Arizona in the past, I really wanted to revisit it.
The fact that the Birdcage Theatre opened the Christmas of 1881 seemed to tell me it was the right place and time to put my characters in action, although the story happens just before the holiday.
Besides, who can resist a town that got its name because miners were told that finding silver was less likely than an Apache warrior finding you, and leaving you in need of a tombstone.
Q3 What inspired this particular story of yours?
Really just Tombstone itself and the editor asking me for a new North Pole Security tale. I thought, ‘What if Santa had three sons, so the third thought he had lucked out in not needing to be involved with North Pole business and had become a gambler and sometime lawman around the time of the shoot out at the OK Corral?’
Q4 How does your story in this anthology compare/contrast with your usual fiction?
I exercise my degree in history by writing historical romantic mystery under a different pseudonym, and Weird West Steampunk under yet another. In many ways, I was already writing similar stories, just not under my J.B. Dane pseudonym, which is the hat I donned in spinning the previous contemporary North Pole Security tales.
Q5 What do you want to tell Monster Complex readers about your latest or upcoming work?
Probably that, depending on which authorial hat I pull on, that it's likely to have history, mystery and possibly fantasy involved, and heavy doses of comedy, which "The Tombstone Affair" really didn't call for.
FIND THE AUTHOR ONLINE
ABOUT THE BOOK
Something Wicked This Way Rides
(Dark Owl Publishing)
An anthology of weird westerns and genre fiction in the Wild West
Click here for the Goodreads page!
This book is appropriate for teenagers.
The anthology Something Wicked This Way Rides explores the Old West with a skewed view, showcasing the weird western genre through stories that explore the peculiar and fantastic, the wicked that was and could have been. Experience spiritual nightmares, mythical monsters, cosmic outlaws, discerning gods, and science run amok. Even the North Pole Security Division isn't immune to the supernatural strangeness that stalks the late 1800s. In the tradition of pulp and western stories of a bygone era, these are thirty tales to intrigue, amaze, and perhaps downright spook readers out of their boots.
Includes stories from:
Marilyn "Mattie" Brahen
Kenneth Bykerk
Dwain Campbell
Gregg Chamberlain
Vonnie Winslow Crist
Stuart Croskell
J.B. Dane
L.L. Hill
Adrian Ludens
Stefan Markos
Gregory L. Norris
Q Parker
Alistair Rey
Darrell Schweitzer
Bradley H. Sinor
Charles Wilkinson
Martin Zeigler
MORE HORROR AUTHORS
Horror Author Q&A: John S. McFarland (The Dark Walk Forward)
Horror Author Q&A: Laura J Campbell (No Lesser Angels, No Greater Devils)