My latest novel, written under my Western pen-name is a departure from my normal style. This is a steampunk-weird western.
My latest novel, written under my Western pen-name is a departure from my normal style. This is a steampunk-weird western.
The US edition of THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF THE ADVENTURES OF PROFESSOR MORIARTY is out now.
Featuring 37 stories about Sherlock Holmes’ old nemesis. My story, THE FULHAM STRANGLER is written by my alter ego Keith Moray.
Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars are in it.
Also available in paperback or audio.
David Binder interviews writers and he kindly interviewed me on his website.
I am pleased to say that there are a couple of Western bundles with Clay More stories in them. Clay More is the western pen-name of Keith Souter, who is also sometimes known as Keith Moray.
The first is WESTERN ROUNDUP, a bundle from High Noon Press, which includes the short story DEAD IN THE SADDLE, the first Doc Marcus Quigley story.
Doctor Marcus Quigley, qualified dental surgeon, gambler and sometime bounty hunter has gradually been working his way west. His reasons for choosing such a lifestyle are personal and pressing, as well as expedient, for there is someone he means to track down and hold to account for a murder committed some years previously.
In DEAD IN THE SADDLE Doc Marcus Quigley has set up a temporary consulting room in Hagsville. He has just pulled the tooth of one of the town’s loafers when Jordan Parker, the town banker falls dead from his horse in the middle of the main street. When Sheriff Dan Morgan asks him to examine the body Marcus discovers some strange things that to a trail of death and duplicity and which put him right into the jaws of danger.
And just look at the other writers!
Goodness, where does the time go? I have been so busy with various books and writing projects that this poor old blog has been rather neglected.
So in the next few posts I’ll focus on some of my upcoming work. First up, a cat-based mystery story in a great new anthology. My story is written under my western pen-name of Clay More.
MISSING LYNX
As you may know I write the character of Doctor Logan Munro of Wolf Creek. He is the town doctor in the Wolf Creek series of novels, written under the house name of Ford Fargo, published by Western Fictioneers.
I am interested in everything to do with medicine as it was practiced back in the Old West. I was particularly keen to get hold of a DVD of FRONTIER DOCTOR, about the adventures of a small town doctor in Arizona set in the 1880s. It is the collection of 39 half-hour episodes of a TV show featuring Rex Allen, originally broadcast in 1956-57.
It is good fun and typical of the Westerns of the day. It certainly took me back to those glorious times when Westerns were supreme.
The Frontier Doctor is a combination of medicine and adventure, about Dr Bill Baxter. And with each episode only a half-hour long they are a good stimulus for a writer of westerns. The stories all have pretty decent plots, too.
Rex Allen (1920-199) was a an American actor, singer and songwriter. He gained fame as the Arizona Cowboy and as The Voice of the West. One of his biggest hits was “Don’t Go Near the Indians.’ In his later career he narrated over 8 Disney movies.
In 1975 he gained his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
My novel about Dr George Goodfellow, the Tombstone doctor known as the surgeon to the gunfighters, published by Westrn Fictioneers Library in the West of the big River series.
And if you like dipping into shorter works, rather like the Frontier Doctor series with Rex Allen, my linked collection of short stories Adventures from the Casebook of Dr Marcus Quigley is available, published by High Noon Press.
Both books are available in print or ebook.
It has been a while since my last post. In part it has been because I was over in the USA driving route 66, and in part because I have been busy on the keyboard. As a result there are a few works coming out now.
ADVENTURES FROM THE CASEBOOK OF DR MARCUS QUIGLEY
The collected short stories is out now published by High Noon Press.
Doctor Marcus Quigley, qualified dental surgeon, gambler and sometime bounty hunter has gradually been working his way west. His reasons for choosing such a lifestyle are personal and pressing, as well as expedient, for there is someone he means to track down and hold to account for a murder committed some years previously.
It is actually the featured paperback on Helping Hands Press this week. Check the link:
THE HEAT OF BATTLE
A while back Jeremy Jones came up with the idea of getting a bunch of writers together to pen some boxing tales for an anthology, the profits of which were to go to help a writer-in-need. He was so successful in getting authors to write stories that he was able to produce two anthologies.
My story, The Heat of Battle starts during the Korean War and ends up in the old boxing booths of England.
Fight Card Presents: Battling Mahoney & Other Stories is the second in a series of charity anthologies from the Fight Card authors’ cooperative – a writers’ community featuring many of today’s finest fictioneers, including James Reasoner, Loren D. Estleman, Len Levinson, James Hopwood, Mark Finn, Jeremy L. C. Jones, Michael Zimmer, Marc Cameron, Nik Morton, Marsha Ward, Clay More, Chuck Tyrell, Bowie V. Ibarra, Art Bowshire, and featuring an extensive essay, On Boxing, by Willis Gordon.
Compiled by Paul Bishop and Jeremy L. C. Jones, 100% of the proceeds from these anthologies go directly to an author-in-need or a literacy charity. Words on paper are the life blood of a writer. The writers in this volume were willing to bleed in order to give a transfusion to one of their own – and then continue to bleed to give a transfusion to literacy charities in support of that most precious of commodities…readers. They are true fighters, every one…
WELLS FARGO EXPRESS
Another collection of short stories written under the collective house name of Remington Colt.
Best-Selling authors Murray Pura, Jen Cudmore, Clay More, James J. Griffin and Clay Dolan bring to you the adventures of Wells Fargo agents Remington Holt and his assistant Amos Drewery.
Are they who and what they appear or are they that and much more?
Take the high octane ride with the Wells Fargo agents as they solve the big mystery that awaits them.
WESTERN TALES VOL 7
My story redemption Trail is one of five stories in this anthology from Western Trail Blazers.
Sam Gibson used to be a lawman, until the day he made a terrible mistake that could never be taken back. Since then, he has alternated between wishing there were a way he could redeem himself and believing he deserved punishment.
He’s about to get both…
THE DOCTOR
My novel about Dr George Goodfellow, the surgeon to the gunfighters, one of the most remarkable doctors of the 19th century.
West of the Big River, published by Western Fictioneers is a stand-alone series that can be read in any order. In Tombstone, Arizona Territory, the town too tough to die, Dr. George Goodfellow is known as the Surgeon to the Gunfighters. Friends with the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday, his services as a doctor are needed in the aftermath of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, but Goodfellow is handy with a gun and his fists, too, and he needs those skills to survive when he’s stalked by a crazed miner and has to untangle a deadly murder mystery!
And coming out at the end of August from Robert Hale….
DRY GULCH REVENGE
Fate handed Hank Hawkins the opportunity of achieving his ambition of buying a ranch, and all he has to do to make it happen is to make it easy for a gang to rob the stage in Devil’s Bones Canyon. Hank soon realizes, however, that the robbers never had any intention of leaving anyone alive and had planned a dry gulching. He survives but regains consciousness back in Hastings Fork, he vows to track down the murderers who betrayed him and have his revenge. But, when he sets off, he finds he has a companion – Helen Curtis, the fiancee of the messenger whose death lies on his conscience. Hank has many things to figure out, such as why there was one body missing and things are about to get even more complicated with the threat of death for both of them never far away.
There are also a couple of stories in upcoming anthologies, but more on that in a later post.
My alter ego Clay More has a new Western ebook novella out on Kindle, published by Western Trail Blazer.
In a nutshell:
Sam Gibson used to be a lawman, until the day he made a terrible mistake that could never be taken back. Since then, he has alternated between wishing there were a way he could redeem himself and believing he deserved punishment.
He’s about to get both…
It is 18k in length, about 61 pages, so one or two sittings worth of reading.
And here is an extract:
I was at the National Sculpture Park at West Bretton last week, walking along the trail above the upper lake. As you walk you have the opportunity to see a great piece of outside sculpture, which is functional and which is part of a global mission, to save the solitary bees.
The bee library comprises a collection of 24 bee-related books selected by artist and poet Alec Finlay. Once read, each book was made into a nest for solitary bees. The library of these books hang from branches of trees in the woodland walk around the lake. They have been there since 2012, surviving the ravages of the wind, rain and snow – and the bleaching effect of the sun.
Each nest consists of a cluster of bamboo canes, each with a roof made from a book.
The bluebells are out at the moment and it is a bit like walking in The Shire! You have the feeling that there may be hobbits watching you.
The bee library at the National Sculpture Park is part of a larger project to amass a hundred books over five locations, evolving into a global bee library.
For more about Alec Finlay and his bee-inspired poems, visit the-bee-bole.com
And at the heart of this is the solitary bee, whose numbers are in sharp decline.
Keith Souter