Gunsmoke & Dragonfire: A Fantasy Western Anthology

by Diane Morrison (Editor), Diana L Paxson (Other), Robert E. Howard (Other)

Overview

From the drought-plagued plains of Mars, to a post-apocalyptic Canada, to the familiar American West and Mexico, to other dimensions and other worlds weird and wonderful, an international cast of bestselling, award-winning, established, and emerging authors brings you 25 strange western tales:

Robert Lee Beers: A hardboiled PI and his partner must find their way back to the present from 1906 San Francisco before the Big One hits, dodging gunslingers and the risk of changing history, with only a drunken misanthropic wizard to help them.
James Blakey: A sheriff must question a colourful cast of characters to discover who has stolen a unicorn rancher's herd.
Zach Chapman: A card-cheating Spellslinger must duel a mysterious Green Gunslinger to his damnation or salvation.
Sara Codair: Two Martian sheriffs must stop a gang of outlaws from stealing a settlement's precious water, if they can keep their marriage together long enough to do it.
Eric S. Fomley: A marshal comes to town seeking an outlaw, but neitherare the ordinary kind...
Milo James Fowler: Heroic Coyote Cal, the witch Donna Jamieson, and faithful sidekick Big Yap must stop a monster from ravaging the livestock and people of a town in the western desert.
Ron S. Friedman: A WWI pilot shot down over the Amazon must survive Germans, crazy scientists, the jungle and dinosaurs.
Carrie Gessner: An elven veteran is called back to face her demons when a little girl is snatched to serve the army that destroyed her.
Paul Alex Gray: The heir to the Bourbon Throne must earn coin in America to overthrow the French Republic and reclaim his birthright, so he builds a fantastic contraption to aid him.
Jude-Marie Green: Sorceress Jane Smith knows her partner Donna Quick is quite mad, but she follows her anyway.
Brent A. Harris: Marshal Bass Reeves has been asked for help by a desperate frontier settlement beleaguered by a dragon.
Ethan Hedman: A wandering gunfighter inherits an enchanted weapon, but it's broken.
Joachim Heijndermans - Two outlaws hole up in a quiet town full of terrified townsfolk, but all is not as it seems.
Russell Hemmell: Two investigators must discover why an entire colony in the Kuiper Belt has disappeared, leaving an anachronistic western ghost town in its place.
Liam Hogan: A young outlaw is hunted by an implacable mechanical foe.
G. Scott Huggins: A blacksmith with ghostly allies receives an unusual and dangerous client.
Sean Jones: The last Norse descendant in North America, who swears vengeance on the Comanche for killing his wife and village, is given supernatural aid by the Navajo.
Mackenzie Kincaid: Junior died helping Pa maintain the fence against the Somethings, so now 12-year-old Jane must take his place.
R. Daniel Lester: An old tap-dancing celebrity defaults on payments for his magical shoes, and a repo agent has come to collect.
Diane Morrison: Two young elven Gunslingers must stop a cannibal spirit before it, or the blizzard it brings, kills everyone they know.
Diana L. Paxson: A painter journeys to the Rockies to paint landscapes and stumbles upon an ancient mystery.
Claire Ryan - Rollo is going to get her giant slug herd in to market, come hell or high water, monster or no monster.
Ricardo Victoria: An ex-spellslinger has taken up a career as a travelling salesbeing of a newfangled weapon called a "rifle."
Stanley B. Webb: A US Marshal must stop a notorious outlaw who may or may not be a dragon.

We invite you to explore these stories in the grand pulp fiction tradition!

Featuring a classic Solomon Kane story by Robert E. Howard.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781999575717
Publisher:	Aradia Publishing
Publication date:	03/31/2019
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Diane Morrison is a short and long-form fiction hybrid author and editor, Canada. She likes pickles and bluegrass, and hates talking about herself. An avid National Novel Writing Month participant and gaming geek, she is proudly Canadian and proudly LGBTQ. She manages the official SFWA YouTube channel, where she gets to interview some of her favourite authors and other interesting people in the SFF field. Under her pen name "Sable Aradia" she is a successful Pagan author, a musician, and a professional blogger. She lives with her partners and a three-legged rescue cat in Vernon, BC, where she was born and raised. Check her out at her website www.dianemorrisonfiction.com

I was brought up in southern California, but came north to attend Mills College and never left. I got my M.A. in (medieval) Comparative Literature from the University of California in 1966, the same year I put on the first tournament of what was to become the Society for Creative Anachronism. Since 1971 I've lived at Greyhaven, a hundred-year old house in Berkeley, with successive generations of family, friends, cats and dogs. It's a literary family, including my husband, Jon DeCles, and the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was my mentor as a writer as well as colleague in founding Darkmoon Circle. My first published novel was Mistress of the Jewels, which began the chronicles of Westria. After I had written several historical fantasies, Marion, whose health deteriorated after she wrote Mists of Avalon, asked me to help her with The Forest House, which is how I ended up writing the Avalon series. Much of the spiritual experience in my novels comes out of my work in the pagan community. I have now begun to publish that material in a series of non-fiction books, the most recent being Trance-Portation. My most recent novel is Sword of Avalon, set at the end of the Bronze Age, which gave me an opportunity to explore the end of the Homeric Age and the techniques of bronze- and iron-forging. For more about my work, see: www.westria.org www.avalonbooks.net www.seidh.org

(1906-1936) Robert Erwin Howard was born and rasied in rural Texas, where he lived all his life. The son of a pioneer physician, he began writing professionally at the age of fifteen. Howard killed himself in June 1936 when he learned that his beloved mother had fallen into a coma.

Table of Contents

5 Acknowledgements

6 Kickstarter Backer List

7 Copyright Acknowledgements

9 Foreword: The Many Faces ofWestern

11 A Note on Spelling and Grammar

13 Inheritance by Ethan Hedman

19 When the Bell Strikes Three by Joachim Heijndermans

33 The Case of the Vanishing Unicorns by James Blakey

53 A Different Kind of Law by Eric S. Fomley

57 Red Tide Rising by Sara Codair

69 Pinkerton by Liam Hogan

83 The Teeth ofWinter by Diane Morrison

121 Fallen Horseshoes by G. Scott Huggins

135 Raiders of the LostWorld by Ron S. Friedman

153 No-Sell by Ricardo Victoria

165 Rattle of Bones by Robert E. Howard

171 Blazing Beamard by Stanley B. Webb

181 Rick and the Green Gunslinger by Zach Chapman

193 One Hell of a Game by Robert Lee Beers

239 Orcus Express, Derailed by Russell Hemmell

249 Glorious Madness by Jude-Marie Green

261 El Diablo de Paseo Grande by Milo James Fowler

275 ByWay of Answer by Sean Jones

283 The Sound of One Shoe Tapping by R. Daniel Lester

289 Balthazar Beausoleil's BlinkWolf Basher by Paul Alex Gray

299 The Burning Plains by Brent A. Harris

315 A Prayer for the Reaping Season by Mackenzie Kincaid

329 Rollo's Herd by Claire Ryan

343 Riders of the Rainbow Ridge by Diana L. Paxson

359 Lonesome by Carrie Gessner

371 About the Editor