A Hat Full of Stories: Three Weird West Tales
By Steve Vernon
()
About this ebook
This isn't John Wayne.
Lone Star is just a beer.
Forget about the Alamo.
Here then are a trio of Texas tales of terror spun from the fevered brain of a nightmare-riding cowboy.
Have you wondered just what sort of a cargo is in those big eighteen-wheeler rigs that prowl the midnight highways? In "North of Bigfoot, Bound for Memphis" Steve Vernon will answer that wonder with a what-if that will leave you wishing you hadn't asked.
Have you ever stepped in bubblegum? Ever stuck your fingers together with Krazy Glue? Ever stepped in sheep dip and tried to shake the stink off? Stick your nose in the pages of "Jumping Chollo Will Not Die" and find out what funk really is.
And if you have any brain cells left after subjecting yourself to those first two yarns then try and wrap your brain around the Frankenstein-influenced tale "Two Good Hands and a Hold-out".
The eyes of Texas have never looked so bloodshot.
WHAT FOLKS ARE SAYING ABOUT STEVE VERNON'S WRITING!
"If Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch had a three-way sex romp in a hot tub, and then a team of scientists came in and filtered out the water and mixed the leftover DNA into a test tube, the resulting genetic experiment would most likely grow up into Steve Vernon." – Bookgasm
"Steve Vernon is something of an anomaly in the world of horror literature. He's one of the freshest new voices in the genre although his career has spanned twenty years. Writing with a rare swagger and confidence, Steve Vernon can lead his readers through an entire gamut of emotions from outright fear and repulsion to pity and laughter." - Cemetery Dance
"Armed with a bizarre sense of humor, a huge amount of originality, a flair for taking risks and a strong grasp of characterization - Steve's got the chops for sure." - Dark Discoveries
"Steve Vernon is a hard writer to pin down. And that's a good thing." – Dark Scribe Magazine
"This genre needs new blood and Steve Vernon is quite a transfusion." –Edward Lee, author of FLESH GOTHIC and CITY INFERNAL
"Steve Vernon is one of the finest new talents of horror and dark fiction" - Owl Goingback, author of CROTA
"Steve Vernon was born to write. He's the real deal and we're lucky to have him." - Richard Chizmar
"Steve Vernon is one of those inexhaustible storytellers who would, on account of it, almost certainly be eaten last in a Donner Party situation." - Warren Layberry
My Mom thinks that I am pretty cool, too.
Steve Vernon
Everybody always wants a peek at the man behind the curtain. They all want to see just exactly what makes an author tick.Which ticks me off just a little bit - but what good is a lifetime if you can't ride out the peeve and ill-feeling and grin through it all. Hi! I am Steve Vernon and I'd love to scare you. Along the way I'll try to entertain you and I guarantee a giggle as well.If you want to picture me just think of that old dude at the campfire spinning out ghost stories and weird adventures and the grand epic saga of how Thud the Second stepped out of his cave with nothing more than a rock in his fist and slew the mighty saber-toothed tiger.If I listed all of the books I've written I'd most likely bore you - and I am allergic to boring so I will not bore you any further. Go and read some of my books. I promise I sound a whole lot better in print than in real life. Heck, I'll even brush my teeth and comb my hair if you think that will help any.For more up-to-date info please follow my blog at:http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/And follow me at Twitter:@StephenVernonyours in storytelling,Steve Vernon
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A Hat Full of Stories - Steve Vernon
What Readers Have To Say About Steve Vernon
IF HARLAN ELLISON, Richard Matheson and Robert Bloch had a three-way sex romp in a hot tub, and then a team of scientists came in and filtered out the water and mixed the leftover DNA into a test tube, the resulting genetic experiment would most likely grow up into Steve Vernon." – Bookgasm
Steve Vernon is something of an anomaly in the world of horror literature. He's one of the freshest new voices in the genre although his career has spanned twenty years. Writing with a rare swagger and confidence, Steve Vernon can lead his readers through an entire gamut of emotions from outright fear and repulsion to pity and laughter.
- Cemetery Dance
Armed with a bizarre sense of humor, a huge amount of originality, a flair for taking risks and a strong grasp of characterization - Steve's got the chops for sure.
- Dark Discoveries
Steve Vernon is a hard writer to pin down. And that’s a good thing.
– Dark Scribe Magazine
This genre needs new blood and Steve Vernon is quite a transfusion.
–Edward Lee, author of FLESH GOTHIC and CITY INFERNAL
Steve Vernon is one of the finest new talents of horror and dark fiction
- Owl Goingback, author of CROTA
Steve Vernon was born to write. He's the real deal and we're lucky to have him.
- Richard Chizmar
Introduction
I WAS BORN IN NORTHERN Ontario and I migrated to Nova Scotia at the age of seventeen, but for some reason a chunk of my heart and imagination has always hunkered down in Texas. Maybe I just saw too many John Wayne movies. Maybe I read Lonesome Dove one too many times. I’m not sure just how I got into this obsession with all things dusty and gun-smoked, but I have been playing at cowboy since I was knee-high to a burro. I’ve been known to wear a Stetson and an oilskin duster.
I like the flavour.
I like the way that folks in westerns can talk around a subject the whole day long without ever coming close to a point. I like the way that arguments are settled at high noon in the centre of Main Street – and odds are that’s the only street in town.
We deal in lead, friend.
And yet, I constantly find myself in love with the booga-booga. So here I am, married to horror and fooling around with dusters. I tried this trick once before with a novella, now out-of-print, entitled Long Horn, Big Shaggy – A Tale of Wild West Terror and Reanimated Buffalo. Long on imagination and short on ambition, I reckon.
That went fairly well for a dirty little POD product. Perhaps someday I’ll revisit that novella, rewrite it a bit, and put it into an actual print-run collection, somewhere up the road.
But we were talking about westerns.
The western, as we know it, is built on the bedrock of fantasy and tall tales. Roy Rogers would have had his ass handed to him in a hat – had he ever dared step into an honest-to-god saloon fight in the old west – which was usually nothing more than a tent pitched up around a whiskey barrel. When the whiskey was gone, the saloon was closed.
So I’m going to keep this introduction fairly short, before the whiskey runs dry.
I’m offering up three short stories that combine my love of Texas – a state that I haven’t ever been to – with my love of horror.
The first story is a kind of Bradbury meets Zane Gray fantasy - a revision of a tale that appeared in my short-lived collection of fiction – Nightmare Dreams. This collection was printed by a low-down dirty skunk of a POD publisher who left me wishing I’d never heard those three dreaded initials. It’s a tale that came to me back when I was loading and unloading semi trailers. I call it North of Bigfoot, Bound for Memphis
.
The second story appeared originally in the seventh issue of HORROR GARAGE, along side the likes of Norman Partridge, Harry Shannon, Jack Fisher and Joe Konrath. I call this story Jumping Chollo Will Not Die
, and it lets me take my raconteur out for a spin.
They’ll arrest for you that anywhere else but in Texas.
The third story, Two Good Hands and a Hold-out
is a no-holds barred tall tale that has never appeared anywhere else before. Which probably means it stinks, but there you go. You’re stuck with it because I’ve tacked it onto the end of this manuscript.
Now saddle up and let’s vamoose.
North of Bigfoot, Bound for Memphis
THERE I WAS, JUST A spit and a handshake north of Bigfoot, about a hundred miles beyond Corpus Christi and bound for Memphis, marooned on the humpbacked shoulder of a hayfield dirt road where a drunken plow hand on a flamingo pink John Deere tractor had booted me off after I