The Drowned Horse Chronicle

1850s. Verde Valley, Arizona Territory.
Westward expansion was fraught with peril from the get-go:
Bad Weather. Wild Animals. Raiders.
What no one expected were the demons, monsters, and aliens!

History:

I never set out to write Weird Westerns. I wanted to be a mystery writer, but I wasn’t a decent writer yet, period. However, I decided to enter the Tony Hillerman’s Writer’s Conference Western Mystery Short Story Contest. I thought I’d be clever and write a story about an outlaw who wakes up dead and has to solve his own murder. The judges didn’t think me as clever as I did, and it didn’t win or make honorable mention. I was bemoaning this with my friend David Lee Summers, who at that time was publisher of a magazine Tales of the Talisman. He said he’d buy it, as he loved publishing “weird Westerns.”
“What’s that?” I asked in my ignorance.
“Anytime you add another genre to a Western, it makes it weird.”
I sold him the story for $10, and it was printed. (Look over in the author section to see the issue.) What I wasn’t expecting is what happened next. The late David B. Riley (Yes, these are some of the Daves I know) published a magazine back then named Science Fiction Trails. He read the story, titled “The Rag-Doll Kid” and loved it. He wanted me to submit a story to his mag. I sat down and wrote “Grismel Guffyfeld’s Quickdrawatorium,” about aliens looking for the fastest gun on Earth by using a virtual arcade. I decided to set it in the same town as the first, which I finally gave the name, “Drowned Horse, AZ.”
I lived in the Verde Valley, Arizona during a particularly low point of my life, so it seemed karmic to set my fictional town in the same area. Almost all the characters were different though, so I figured the first story must have happened some time before. After David bought the story, he immediately asked me for another that didn’t have to be sci-fi. Six-Guns Straight From Hell would be any genre. He co-edited it with Laura Givens (who also just recently passed). That story, “Bleeding the Bank Dry” involved a vampire being hired to help rob a bank. Also set in Drowned Horse, I understood that I’d be spending some time in this town, so I better learn it.
I dove into research mode over the next couple of decades, returning to the Verde Valley (where my folks lived) and studying the tribes, the forts, the laws, and the politics of Arizona when it was just a new Territory. As I got other invites from David Riley and others, I added new characters, created a villain who was responsible for the curse, and worked out three distinct timelines. As I mentioned, I didn’t start off writing weird westerns, but as long as editors bought them, I’d write them.
“The Rag-Doll Kid” was renamed to “The Murder of the Rag-Doll Kid” in reprints. To date, it’s been reprinted three times, including in the third volume of my weird Western anthology series, Straight Outta Dodge City. Before long, I’d sold about thirty Drowned Horse stories all the way to pro-rate. I kept an outline of where each story took place, along with the characters, monsters, genre, and word count. The first arc, The Forrest Years, showed signs on nearing completion, so I decided to shop it around. Jake Bray, at WolfPack Publishing, loved the concept and bought it. I wrote the rest of the stories for that first volume, and it was published in 2020, earning out in the first quarter.
Unfortunately, life got in the way when starting on Volume 2. I was in a car accident that same year that required back surgery two years later. Plus, I was diagnosed with a form of narcolepsy called Idiopathic Hypersomnia which causes me to not get any rest from my sleep. Years of therapy, extreme medications, and even other surgeries have finally gotten me to a place I can start writing longer hours again, and the quest to finish The Drowned Horse Chronicle Vol 2- The Lawless Years, was begun. Eight of the Twenty+ stories are done, most having been previously published. Five more stories have been written, but never published. Three more stories have been started. I’m still not 100% yet, and I have a lot of projects on my plate, but I will have this volume done. It will be released elsewhere as Wolfpack and I have parted ways, but there’s already several interested publishers.
For now, hold tight. There will be new Drowned Horse Material in 2026, as I’m finally releasing my Suma Cum Laude winning novella, Stretching the Mystic Cords, next year through my own imprint, Longshot Productions, unless someone makes me a better deal.

*footnote – people ask me sometimes why I named the chapters after operatic terms? The answer is simple. They used to call Westerns “horse operas.”

Characters in Vol 1:

Hiram and Adoniram “Ram” Craddick

Noqoìlpi (Noqi)

People of Historical Note who appear in Vol 1:

Motha, Yavapai Chief (also known as Mojave Charlie or Captain Charlie)
Aloysius Johns, Indian Agent
Sheriff John P. Bourke, Prescott
Kit Carson, Tracker
Bose Ikard, Cattleman
Diablo, Apache Chief
General George R. Crook

Also, assorted other travelers who visited Drowned Horse, not realizing it’d be their last stop.

Characters in Vol 2:

Carina Wilkerson & Brumby:

Robert Katt:

Uji the Griot:

The Three Doves of the Sagebrush (Peggy, Lydia, and Dotty):

More famous people

Plus, more travelers who thought stopping here was a good idea.

The Chronicle:

Each novel is a mosaic featuring a mix of previously published and brand new stories. As each chapter is stand-alone, you may witness tales of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and occasionally even a western noir. They are all bound together with the single thread that drives the era they’re set in.

The Fall of Drowned Horse (name not finalized)
A Full Novel
1899-1900
(coming 2030)

The Lost Tales of Drowned Horse
Shared World Anthology
1865-1899
(coming 2031)

Timeline:

(Italics refer to fictional events)

Research:

In my first Drowned Horse Chronicle stories, I didn’t even give my “generic” Indians names, tribes, descriptions, etc. The more I wrote, the more I realized I had a responsibility to present my stories with as much accuracy as possible. Having lived in the Verde Valley, I knew of the Yavapai. The name was hard to miss. The county was named after them. The community college was named after them. They even opened a casino in my time there. What I didn’t know, the name Yavapai doesn’t encompass the whole of who these people are. The more I researched, I discovered they are a varied race of multiple tribes: Kewevkepaya, Gwev G’paaya, Tolkepaya, Tolkepaye, Wipukepa, Wiipukpaa, Yavepé, and Yaavpe. Also included are the Tonto-Apache tribe, a merging of two tribes. They all have different territories, customs, and tragic histories I did my best to learn.
If that wasn’t enough, everyone knows about Camp Verde, but it wasn’t always named that, also being called Fort Verde and Fort Lincoln, at various points. Different men led the Army during the time of the Chronicle, including a General Cook and General Crook.
The writer’s adage is, “Sell them on the reality before you sell them on the fantasy.” When dealing with Western lore, many books and resources conflict with each other, making my job trying to keep all of this accurate has been tough at times, a nightmare in others. At one point, five mountains were named “the Black Mountain” in Arizona. So, I present you you, a list of some, not all, of the materials I’ve used to build the Chronicle, and I’m always acquiring more.