Author Archives: Keith West

June Writing Update

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I was behind on my 2024 words per day in June for all but three days. Those days would be June 1, 29, and 30. Those last two days were marathon days, both over five thousand words. I finished a novella and two shourt stories last weekend. It was exhilarating but exhausting.

So I managed to end the month with an average of 2185 words per day.

I’m still behind on the year, but that will help me catch up. I need to add a apge in the spreadsheet where I’m tracking all of this that will calculate the average for the year in addition to the individual pages for each month.

I also finished three ot her short stories.  All of the stories have been submitted to an anthology project I mentioned in a previous post. The anthology themes ahve been ghosts and taverns, cozy mystery, military science fiction, and Regency fantasy. I’ve got a mystery science fiction storyo to write this week. Next week will be a Halloween themed anthology.

The two challenging stories were the cozy mystery because I don’t read  any of them. It had to be set at a beach of some sort, which made it a little more challenging.

The big challenge, though, was the Regency fantasy. Regency is a huge subgenre of romance, although the editor’s video said rmonace didn’t have to be present as long as the focus was on relationships. I did my best, but I cheated a little. I had my protagonist being taken from our world to a Regency that never existed.

We’ll see what the editor said.

I did enjoy writing outside my comfort zone. It was fun. Stressful, but fun. If nothing else, if forced me to stretch myself as a writer, and to do it under deadline.

What Do You Mean, This is a Commercial Site?

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So all of a sudden, I can’t see traffic stats unless I upgrade to a paid subscription. Jetpack has decided this is a commercial site for some reason.

Also, Akismet, the spam blocker, thinks the same thing. At least with them, I have a way to appeal. I’m in the process of doing so.

Sounds like an extortion racket to me.

I have been planning something that will probably involve migrating to another platform later this year or early next year. Certain other ducks have to be in a row first. I may have to accelerate my plans.

Stay tuned.

The House is on the Market

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Some of you may know that last year I left academia to move back to the house I lived in when I graduated high school. My wife and I are buying the property from my parents in order to keep the land in the family.

In order to do this, we needed to sell our house. That is how we will pay my parents and brothers for the property.  There was still some stuff in the house, such as my son’s roll-top desk, shelves and books, junk in the garage. That kind of stuff when I resigned.

Then I got the job at the post office last fall, which slowed down my packing and moving. (Some income is better than no income.) Since that job is six mornings a week, it made getting back to Lubbock to pack and do other things I needed to do there a bit of a challenge. It’s a little over three hours in a car one way.

Well, yesterday, I dropped the paperwork off with the realtor, finished some work on the yard that needed to be done (in 104 degree heat), and came back home. (I still managed to get over 2500 words written, which is good because I am behind on the challenge for the month). That was the second trip I made this week. I apologize to some of you who have sent emails that have gone unanswered. I’ll get to those, just probably not tonight.

Hopefully, the house will sell soon and at or close to what we are asking.

The good thing is that I don’t have to spend as much time on the road and devote more time to writing and other work around here.

“And There Was Bob Lee and the Peacocks” – A Guest Post by John Bullard

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“And there was Bob Lee and the Peacocks”:
One of Robert E. Howard’s Favorite Texas Feuds

Robert E. Howard loved the history of Texas and the Southwest. He used it in writing many of
his stories. Famously, he wrote the last Conan tale, “Red Nails”, after his 1935 trip to New
Mexico, where he got the chance to see the sleepy town of Lincoln and walk its streets reveling
in the history of the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid, an incident from history that he loved.

His story tells of the long-running feud between the inhabitants of the fabled city of Xuchotl,
where red and black nails were pounded into a post to keep score of which side’s followers had
been killed by the other. Howard was inspired by his knowledge of the Lincoln County War and
recent trip, as well as some other bloody feuds that had occurred in Texas to write this bloody
tale. Some of the Texas feuds Howard talks about in his letters are the Mason County Hoodoo
War between the German Unionist settlers and the Texan Confederate sympathizers, and the
Taylor-Sutton feud, which took place between two families over control of DeWitt county.

However, one of Howard’s favorite Texas feuds that may also have helped in his creating “Red
Nails”, is the Lee-Peacock feud, which was the bloodiest feud in Texas history, and perhaps the
second bloodiest in the United States. Continue reading →

Cleve Cartmill

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June 21 is the birthday of Cleve Cartmill (1908-1964). Cartmill wrote science fiction in the nineteen forties. He cointinued to write into the middle fifties, although his output slowed significantly.

Robert Heinlein hosted an informal group of writers at his house in California in the early forties before the war. Cartmill attended. Heinlein introduced Cartmill to John Campbell, and most of Cartmill’s work appeared in with Astounding or Unknown.

Cartmill is best remembered today for the story “Deadline”. One could argue that he is only remembered today because of that story. Continue reading →

Writing Update

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I thought I had posted this earlier this month. I must have changed “I need to post this” to “I have posted this” in my mind.

As I’ve stated before, I’ve been doing a challenge to write an average of 2024 words per day in 2024. May started out good, with me being several days ahead by the middle of the month. Then I missed a few days due to travel. I managed to catch up and ended the month of May with an average of 2026 words per day.

That’s a win, and I’m taking it.

June has been a bit of a stumble. I’ve missed several days, although Howard Days had little effect until the last day, when I only hit half the word count.

Right now I’m taking some anthology workshops in which I’ll write a story for consideration in an anthology. There will be one story a week for six weeks. I wrote the first one last week. It was for the theme of ghosts and taverns. This week is a cozy mystery set at a beach. Futute themes will be msytery science fiction, military science fiction, Hallowee, and regency fantasy. Cozies and regencies are well outside my comfort zone, which is why I’m taking them. I may fall on my face, but I’ll learn something and stretch myself as a writer.

Remembering Kage Baker

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Kage Baker

I promise I will write up this year’s Robert E. Howard Days, but it will be later in the week. Tonight, I want to pay tribute to one of my favorite writers, a lady who is no longer with us and whose work should be remembered.

I’m talking about Kage Baker (1952-2010), who was born today, June 10. I had the pleasureof meeting her at Armadillcon 25, but I had been reading her work for several years prior to that.

And no, that’s not a typo, nor is this a post about another Carolynn Catherine O’Shea. Kage was a combination of the names Kate and Genevieve, which were her middle names

Kage broke into the science fiction and fantasy scene in the late nineties and early two thousands with a series of short stories and novellas, most of them published in Asimov’s.

These stories concerned an ensemble group of operatives of an organization referred to as simply The Company. The series ran to seven novels and three collections of short fiction. The operatives of the Company are immortal time traveling cyborgs.

It doesn’t get much better than  that. Continue reading →

Tom Godwin

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Forgot to hit Publish last night.

June 6 is the birthday of Tome Godwin (1915-1980). He published approximately two dozen short stories and three novels, most of them in the nineteeen fifties. If it weren’t for one particular story, he woudl probably be totally forgotten today.

But that one story was a doozy. It created controversy when it was published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It’s still controversial today.

Seventy years later.

That’s an impactful story.

The story I’m talking about is, of course, “The Coldl Equations”.

If you haven’t read it but think you might (and you should; it holds up well), then you need to be aware that pretty much the rest of this post is going to be one giant spoiler.

You’ve been warned. Continue reading →

RIP, John Maddox Roberts

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Fantasy and science fiction author John Maddos Roberts passed away on May 23.

I’ve not read any of his work, although I’ve seen his name on a number of spines as I’ve perused used bookstsores. I think I picked up some of his Stormlands series at the Freinds of the Library sale, but I’m not sure which ones. Most of the FoL books are still in boxes. He’s been one of those writers I’ve always intended to get to.

He wrote some Conan pastiches as well as at least one Dragonlance novel. He wrote the SPQR series of historical mysteries, which ran to thirteen volumes.

He collaborated with Eric Kotani on four sicence fiction novels.

My condolences to Mr. Roberts’s wife Beth and his family and friends.