BEAT TO A PULP #48!ONE NIGHT NEAR HANGTOWN BY JAMES REASONER
HERE'S THE WORD FROM BTAP EDITOR DAVIN CRANMER . . .
Labor Day 2009, I’m checking my inbox and sitting there is an email from James Reasoner... with a story. Now, it wasn’t completely unexpected because we had talked about it before but still... it’s a story from James Reasoner! I’ve been a fan for years, so I let the moment soak in and then wondered: Is it a western or a crime story or maybe another sea yarn like he wrote for Dave Zeltserman’s superb final issue of Hardluck Stories.
The title, One Night Near Hangtown, might suggest a western, right? And while James had mentioned to me that it involves early western movie star, Buck Jones, it’s not what you’re thinking when he pairs up Buck with an unlikely friend, just in time for more Halloween thrills. He called the story "whimsical"—I call it truly unique.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Reasoner has been a professional writer for more than thirty years and in that time has produced everything from cult classic mystery novels such as TEXAS WIND to popular historical sagas of the Civil War and World War II. His most recent novels include the critically acclaimed hardboiled crime story DUST DEVILS and the first book in the Gabriel Hunt adventure series, HUNT AT THE WELL OF ETERNITY. Under various pseudonyms, he is also one of the most prolific and best-selling Western authors writing today. He lives in a small town in Texas with his wife, fellow author Livia J. Washburn.
It’s a great honor to have James Reasoner at BEAT to a PULP with One Night Near Hangtown.
TO READ ONE NIGHT NEAR HANGTOWN CLICK HERE
NEXT WEEK: "MORTIFICATION" BY SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD
Brewer spent three years at high school before dropping out to work. He was wounded in action whilst serving with the army in Belgium and France, which meant he received a VA disability pension. His family had moved to Florida and Brewer went through the usual variety of jobs—warehouseman, cannery worker, bookseller, gas-station attendant—associated with those learning their trade as a writer. With money an issue, Brewer's mother insisted he get a proper job. When he refused she ordered him to leave.
Brewer found a boarding house where the other residents would help feed him; he was already a heavy drinker but was also young, handsome and dynamic. He was involved in an affair with a married woman, Verlaine Morris Lee, who subsequently divorced her husband. The two married in South Carolina, telling no-one.
Back in St. Petersburg, Florida, he sold tales to Detective Tales and Detective Fiction before trying his hand with a novel, written in a white heat and completed in five days. He wrote a second almost as quickly and this was placed with Gold Medal (Fawcett Publications) who had then recently launched a line of original paperbacks and were seeking the best writers from the pulps, both established writers and new. Satan Is A Woman was published in 1951, followed quickly by So Rich, So Dead—Brewer's five-day novel—and 13 French Street, which was his first million seller.
0SS 117: LOST IN RIO
