Tuesday, February 18, 2020

A Wind of Knives, by Ed Kurtz, reviewed by Rusty Barnes

Ed Kurtz
A Wind of Knives
7.99/2.99
74 pages
independently published



Ed Kurtz's A Wind of Knives, in many ways, a traditional revenge story,. Daniel Hays awakens one day to the horrifying sight of his hired man, Steven, body bloody and mutilated, hanged by the neck and dead. He vows revenge, but not only for the reasons you might think. Steven had been his hired man, yes, but also his lover. The novella that follows is Daniel's long journey to vengeance and a muted, odd sort of peace.

Kurtz is a fine and sensitive writer, first. His words, even as a horror writer primarily, and perhaps more accustomed to showing all the gore that comes with death and dismemberment, never seem to outstrip what they're saying. "Steven's left eye stared glassily; Daniel pushed the eyelid down with his thumb, but it popped back open." The language is always in service to the story, almost invisible, guiding us along through the grim events with a firm hand and steady influence, even as his strict attention to rich and specific detail reveals horrifying sights, from the dead man's eyes refusing to close to a man rising from his gravedirt with a burst of ghoulish energy and a worm in his pocket.

The plot of the book is pretty straightforward. Daniel follows what clues he has--not many--to a group of men who are responsible for something evil. Daniel's unsure if that something includes Steven's death, though, and he follows some leads and gets off-track. He meets an array of characters, along the way, men and women who love him. They help him and thwart him to varying degrees, their actions always reflecting Daniel and Steven's relationship, giving us more insight into why Steven's death is so traumatic. That death never leaves Daniel's mind, and when finally confronted with the most monstrous of evils, Steven's killer, finds resolution only in a muted way. the ending resonating in true noir fashion: there's a way for the losers in the world. They rarely see victory in the ways they'd like.

What drives me to read is discovering writers like Kurtz, in whose hands we're capably guided through places we'd rather not go to ends we don't expect. I imagine this was even rarer when the novella first came out. I can't think of many--any?--bisexual characters in the western genre, or very often in genres beyond, and the re-release of this book proves even more fully that we need writers like Kurtz to show us the way. Writers like him are in short supply, good,indelible writers especially and this book is a trailbreaker in all the best ways.


I took this review and cashed in on an opportunity to ask Kurtz a few questions which shed some late on the genesis of A Wind of Knives, which I trust will be as interesting to you as they were to me.

What were your influences in writing A Wind of Knives?

I’m a tremendous fan of Western fiction from Louis L’Amour to Larry McMurtry, and I read scads of Western novels every year, but with extremely few exceptions one doesn’t see much in the way of marginalized and underrepresented protagonists. It’s a straight, white, cis-male world for the large part, with a handful of token Native and African-American characters along the way, but LGBTQ? Forget it! So in that sense, I didn’t really have an influence, apart from wanting to write a sort of anti-heroic, anti-revenge, anti-Western that is, at its core and heart, a love story.

What attracted you to the western to tell this particular story? Were you put off at all by the limited readership?

I wasn’t at all put off by the limited readership because the moment I conceptualized the story, I knew that would be the case. Readers interested in Westerns overwhelmingly aren’t going to be interested in queer content, and vice versa. It’s an uninspiring Venn diagram for a writer like me! But I’m a bisexual Western fan hailing from Arkansas with a particular kind of experience and particular stories I wanted to tell, so it had to be this one, whether it got read or not.

I'm trying to imagine the writing and original publication arc for this book and it seems as if it would have been a daunting process. Can you talk a little about the writing process for it and then how you managed to find a publisher for something seemingly so niche-oriented?

Originally, I wanted to write a full-length novel that charts the course of the two men’s relationship over multiple lifetimes, but as I closed in on the end of A Wind of Knives, I decided this was the story, full stop. What I ended up with was almost impossible to sell – a 20,000 word queer Western. No one wanted it, under a very small publisher, Snubnose Press, took it on. It was well-reviewed, but barely sold. Then the press went out of business and the book remained out of print for years. I tried again and again to interest agents, publishers, etc. in what I deem my very best work, but it was just too hard a sell for all of them. Ultimately, I reissued it myself. It still barely sells, and I’m still unsurprised. But it’s still my very favorite thing I have ever written, and certainly the closest to my heart. I no longer write or publish (though there’s at least one more novel yet to release on the horizon), so in retrospect, A Wind of Knives is what I’m most proud of.

Monday, February 10, 2020

Slow Bear by Anthony Neil Smith, reviewed by J.B. Stevens

Slow Bear
Anthony Neil Smith
Fahrenheit 13
140 pages
Price $12.99/3.99
January 2020
reviewed by J.B. Stevens


Novellas do not receive enough attention. The shorter-form, if well-done, is immensely satisfying. A novella’s limited time commitment allows a reader to sample authors, genres, and publishers they might otherwise avoid. Anthony Neil Smith also does not receive enough attention.

As a crime-fiction fan I’d heard of Smith, but never read any of his work. I’m glad I finally made the time. Smith’s writing style is tight and unpretentious. He has the delightful ability to fade into the background. Slow Bear becomes an experience you feel--more than words on a page.

Micah “Slow Bear” Cross, is a former reservation Police Officer in North Dakota, and was medically retired from the force. This is Smith’s description: “Slow Bear used to be a rez cop. He wasn’t good at it, not really, but he was good at being bad at it. The one time he tried to be good at it, he got his whole fucking left arm shot off by an ex-soldier over something that happened in a war Slow Bear didn’t know much about. That was a year ago.”

Smith doesn’t cover the referenced war’s specific conflict or theater. Slow Bear is detached from the rest of the world. Smith consistently presents characters in a way that is concrete, but allows the reader to fill in the blanks. Here is the portrayal of the casino’s bartender, Lady: “She was cute. She dyed her hair red then blue and sometimes it was just dark brown, like now, and one side of her head was shaved. Her glasses were thick and she tried to distract from them with too many earrings and a nose ring. Chubby cheeks, baby fat all over. Why not, Slow Bear? Why not?”

In the present Slow Bear hangs around the bar and works as a fixer for whomever is willing to pay. In reality, he spends most of his time chatting up Lady and sipping beer. However, Slow Bear isn’t a boozehound, he prefers heroin, but does his best to avoid chasing the dragon.

This passage is a good example of the tight writing style and Slow Bear’s heroin avoidance:
“I thought you didn’t drink coffee,” Lady said. She’d already gotten her pie. Slow Bear hadn’t noticed the guy bring it.
“I tried to give it up. But I need the caffeine.”
“Then why did you try—”
“Heroin. I gave it up because of heroin.”
Her eyes widened, her lips got tight. “You do heroin?”
A deep breath and sigh and fuck fuck fuck. “I used to. Once I lost my arm, they put me on some pretty lame pain pills, but I didn’t like them. I got OxyContin instead. I liked those. And next, someone offered heroin, and I tried it, and I really liked that. But shit, heroin, girl, that’s a lifestyle choice. That’s a commitment. So I kicked it cold-turkey twice. Three times. And that got me onto coffee, which was a much better replacement than I expected. So I was making six, seven pots of coffee a day. But then I ran out of money. Coffee is expensive.”
“So is heroin.”
“So is orange juice. But I like orange juice. I like coffee. I’ll just drink cheaper coffee.”
“It’s free at the casino.”
He grinned. “I’ll remember that. Is that pie good?”
“Shit yeah,” with her mouth full. She cut off a bite with the fork and handed it over.
He ate the bite and agreed, that was some good fucking pie.”
As the story progresses, Slow Bear becomes involved in a marital disagreement between a cheating wife, a boyfriend, and the husband. Soon three people are dead--one by Slow Bear’s hand. These deaths lead to a violent chain of events in which Slow Bear deals with reservation police, tribal leadership, oil-industry executives, government agents, and mafia power players. Eventually, Lady is kidnapped by sex-traffickers. A hefty dose of violence follows. Slow Bear fights hard, but doesn’t always win.

In a few places Smith’s academic background pokes through, most notably with a Don Quixote parallel. This did not come across as abrasive or pretentious, but it is fun for the aware reader.

Regarding less enjoyable aspects of the book, they were limited. I didn’t like that all cops were willing to break the law, even the “good” ones. Here is Smith discussing Trevor, the chief of police:

"Slow Bear smiled. Yeah, a downright honest smile for once. “Why the fuck would he believe something like that?” “Because that’s the truth.” Trevor grabbed Slow Bear’s beer bottle and slammed it onto Slow Beer’s forehead once, twice, three times before it shattered, and Slow Bear felt pulverized, then there was ringing in his ears and blood leaking into his eyes. He fell off the stool onto his bad shoulder and got his feet tangled in the stool legs, twisted his ankle and the damned stool fell on top of him. He shoved it out of the way. He’d bruised himself all over and was still blinking blood and glass away. That’s when Trevor kicked him in the gut.”



Overall this story is fast and engaging. This scene, where Lady and Slow Bear discuss spying, shows the pace well:
“Pretty stupid,” Lady said with her mouth full. “I dream of jobs like that.”
“He wasn’t offering dental.”
“Who cares? You could buy your own insurance with that kind of money. Can you imagine? It would be like, like, like writing for TV. You make it up. You tell the Hat about it once a week, and you’re done. Cha-ching.”
Cute. He grinned. “Let’s go home. If I’m quiet, if I behave, maybe Trevor will leave me alone. I really want to be left alone.”
“What did you do in the first place?”
“Let’s not go there.”
The book is non-commercial noir in the best way. The main characters are unlikeable (with the exception of Lady). The whole production is violent. The locations are hardscrabble and rural, but not the lush Southern rural that is popular. The drug use is unglamorous and redemption never comes. The story wraps up in a satisfying, but open-ended, manner. In the new decade let us all resolve to pay more attention to both novellas and Anthony Neil Smith.


J.B. Stevens lives in the Southeastern United States with his wife and daughter. His writing has been featured in Mystery Tribune, Out of the Gutter, Close To The Bone, Thriller Magazine, Punk Noir Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Criminal Element, and other publications.


He can be found online at twitter.com/IamJBStevens and jb-stevens.com.

Monday, February 3, 2020

King of the Blue Rose, fiction by William R. Soldan

Elvis McCullers aimed his stick and struck the cue, scattering balls across the felt. It was a Wednesday night at The Blue Rose, slow, the half dozen cars and trucks in the gravel lot belonging to Ray the bartender and a small group of men and women posted up at the hightops along the back wall. The men all dressed in work wear, the women in high heels, jeans, and low-cut tops. Cigarette smoke hazed the low neon glow and gathered in a swirling cloud above the pool table.

One of the men crossed the room and stacked his quarters on the rail. “We got next game,” he said.

Elvis was playing alone, just shooting around, but took his time. Pool had never been his game, but he enjoyed the meditative quality of it. It placed him in the present moment, with nothing else on his mind except the balls in front of him. And tonight he was on his way to starting over, wanted to forget what was behind him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working. He was still a little hung up about his old man.

As he worked his way around the table, the men grew irritated waiting for him to finish. They’d already been talking loudly, but increased their volume even more, competing with the jukebox, which currently played some indistinct pop-country garbage one of the women had put on.

“Hey, Slick,” he said, “how’s about you wrap it up, huh?”

Elvis was bent over, lining up a shot. He didn’t move but raised his eyes to the man. A single curl of Elvis’s greased back hair hung like an apostrophe down his forehead, and he blew it from his eyes with a puff of his lower lip. He didn’t respond to the man.

Elvis hadn’t come to the tavern with the mind to socialize. He’d come to make a delivery to Ray, who was now at the far end of the long bar wiping out an ashtray with a wet rag.

Ray dealt pills and the occasional teener of crank between schlepping drinks. Though the place was dead tonight, Fridays and Saturdays drew every kind of degenerate one could imagine from around the county to see the live bands that played out back when the weather was nice, and crowded the bar like a feed lot when it wasn’t. Ray was their solitary supplier at The Blue Rose, but he got his goods from Elvis, who’d not long ago expanded his inventory. The supply of meth had begun to exceed the demand in his little pocket of Ohio. Everyone seemed to be on pain pills now, and Elvis could accommodate. Oxy. Vicodin. Fentanyl patches. Morphine lollipops. It all sold like water to a man dying of thirst. Elvis was a businessman and prided himself in his entrepreneurial initiative. He knew only fools were rigid and tried to control the market. A wise man remained flexible, bent whichever way the market moved.

He’d had a damn good thing going with a doctor across the state line in West Virginia, who ran a pill mill outside of Wheeling. The man was a back specialist, and he had some rather hefty debts he wouldn’t disclose when he and Elvis had set up their first deal. He only said he needed a lot of money fast. And again, Elvis could accommodate. But after only a few lucrative months working with the man, he and a dozen other doctors on either side of the Ohio River had gone down in a DEA sting and now resided in the federal pen in Morgantown. This left Elvis in the lurch, between the proverbial rock and the wall.

The way it was now, wholesale acquisition of pharmaceuticals had become near impossible. When suburban white kids started dying, the government put the kibosh on willy-nilly dispensing of pretty much anything stronger than Tylenol. And certain doctors got hot. The best Elvis could hope for now would be buying scripts from folks who hadn’t yet been cut off by their physicians or their insurance companies. And that felt a little too much like moving backward. No, he figured it was time to take his stash of cash—in the neighborhood of a hundred grand after tonight’s last delivery—and hit the road. He’d always planned to go places, and though he’d never given much thought to where, he knew the time had come.

He really had nothing keeping him in Shale Run anymore. His mama had spent the better part of the last decade strapped to a bed up in Locust Grove with what was left of her mind blowing around her skull like autumn leaves. His baby brother, Seth, had ended an eight day meth bender by eating a bullet. That had only left his old man, all rods and pins from the waist down after a mine collapsed on him. Now he spent his days idling away in front of the television and berating Elvis at every turn, even though Henry McCullers relied on his son for the dope that kept him comfortable. Nothing and no one else remained. So Elvis had decided only a few hours ago to start a new chapter—no, a new story altogether.

By now, the fire department would have found his father melted to the La-Z-Boy in what had been the living room. He’d been a lifelong smoker. The only time he didn’t have a coffin nail clamped between his wrinkled lips was when he was sucking off the oxygen tank beside his chair. It was only a matter of time before the poor old bastard burned the place to the ground, they’d say. But despite the ill will he’d harbored for his father most of his life, now that it was done, Elvis felt a nagging remorse that was hard to reconcile.

He’d parted with the last hundred Oxys he had to his name, with no more on the horizon, and tossed the bag of cash Ray had handed over into the trunk of his Caddy before returning to the bar to down a few drinks and shoot around for a while. He still didn’t know where to go from here, so he had nothing but time. But the whiskey hadn’t had the desired effect. Instead of brightening his outlook, it had left Elvis stuck in a brooding mood, reflecting on things he’d rather leave behind.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, Slick,” the man said.

Elvis sunk the 8 ball and stood up straight. He stared at the man.

“It’s all yours, partner,” he said, tossing the pool cue onto the mottled green.

The four men, gathered around the table to play doubles while the women remained where they were. One of them, a redhead with tight, high-waisted jeans and a sleeveless blouse, kept sending glances and grins in his direction as Elvis stood with his elbows on the bar. The men horsed around and grab-assed one another like high school kids, though Elvis suspected they were in their thirties like he was.

Ray shook his head and poured Elvis another shot of whiskey. “They been coming in a few times a week,” he said. Ever since the fracking started, seems like these dipshits been showing up by the busload. They’re working the fields over in Cedarville. Buncha loudmouths, but their money spends the same as the rest, so . . .” Ray shrugged.

Elvis went over to the internet juke and put on a trio of gospel tunes. He loved himself some gospel. He began singing along with “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and the redhead who’d been eyeing him off and on fixed her gaze and tilted her head, as if she were trying to decipher something. The other women snickered and whispered behind their hands.

“What the good goddamn is this shit?” one of the men said, looking around and then over at Ray, who just shrugged again and went back to wiping down the bar. The man turned toward Elvis, who was still singing along.

Elvis walked past him and back over to the bar. Already the gospel had done what the liquor had not, and he grinned at the redhead, staring right past the man, who just looked at Elvis with a disgusted expression.

“What are we in fucking Sunday school all the sudden?” the man said. He snapped his fingers in Elvis’s face to get his attention, but Ray spoke up.

“When it’s done, you can play whatever the hell you like, buddy, so calm yourself down.”

The man grunted and went back to the game. The four of them grumbled and glared at Elvis between shots.

When “Peace in the Valley” came on next, the man started up again. “Are you fucking serious?” he said. “Huh-uh, no goddamn way, not gonna happen. This shit is killing my fucking buzz.” He stomped over to the juke box with a hand thrust into his pocket. He came out with a handful of change, and plunked in some quarters. These types of jukes had a feature that allowed you to skip songs for a price, and Elvis knew that was what this man was aiming to do.

“My songs ain’t over, partner,” Elvis said without turning away from the bar.

The man acted as if he hadn’t heard and punched in some numbers. The gospel was cut short and replaced by the opening bars of Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps.”

“Now that’s more fucking like it,” the man said, doing a little shuffling dance back toward the pool table. They all laughed and began woo-hooing as they high-fived.

“Elvis,” Ray said, “don’t go making a mess of the place, all right?” He poured Elvis another shooter. “Here, this one’s on the house.”

But Elvis no longer had the taste for whiskey.

He approached the men. “I said the song weren’t over.”

The man snickered, his patchy beard clinging to his face like a fungus. “What you plan to do about it, Slick?”

“Name’s Elvis.”

The man slapped his thigh and laughed. “Of course it is. Nice hair, by the way.” He turned toward his friends and gained approval for the slight with more laughs. The only one who wasn’t laughing was the redhead, who looked a little irritated but interested in what might happen.

Elvis returned to the jukebox and put in four more quarters.

“You better think twice there, Hound Dog,” the man said.

Elvis cut off the music with the same gospel tune that had been on before the man had hijacked it. He started singing along. “There will be / peace in the valley . . .

“You believe this asshole?” the guy said, turning to his buddies again. When he turned back, Elvis brought the pool cue he’d plucked from the wall rack beside the juke down across the man’s face, opening his cheek like a soft potato.

The man dropped to one knee, and Elvis whirled the toe of his cowboy boot in a roundhouse that caved in the man’s temple as it snapped his head to the side and laid him flat on the wooden planks of the floor.

The redhead just watched while the other three women gasped. Two of the other three men closed in on him from either side, and Elvis helicoptered the pool cue, missing one man as he ducked but catching the other across the jaw. The man stumbled back as his buddy came in low. Elvis grabbed the back of the man’s head and brought his face down into his knee with a dull crunch. The man he’d caught with the cue held a hand over his bleeding mouth. Now he and the last man moved in.

The gospel music came through the bar’s sound system like a choir of angels, and Elvis pulled the gold-plated Walther PPK with mother of pearl inlays from the small of his back. One man stopped short while his buddy was almost on Elvis, who aimed and took out the man’s left knee in a spray of blood and bone.

Now three of the women were screaming. The man who’d been shot let loose a high-pitched string of motherfuckers toward Elvis. The redhead looked surprised but cocked a half smile. Ray just shook his head with a hand over his eyes. The last man stood there with his hands raised looking unsure.

Elvis gestured the man to his knees and stuck the barrel of the pistol between his teeth. He began to sing again while the man emptied his bladder and tears cascaded down his cheeks.

When the song ended, Elvis removed the gun from the man’s mouth, slapped him across the face with it, and went to the bar. While he downed the shot Ray had poured him, the man scrambled to his feet and fled the bar, leaving the women and his buddies behind. A moment later, a truck engine roared to life and there was the sound of rubber biting gravel as he tore out of the parking lot.

Three of the women remained crouched and crying over the men’s bodies, one of them fumbling with her cell phone. It fell from her shaking hands before she could dial the police and skittered across the floor. Elvis eyed her and she made no move to retrieve it.

The redhead walked over. “Buy a lady a drink?” she said.

He grinned and nodded to Ray, who looked frustrated but resigned. He poured them each a shot. They clinked the glasses together and tossed them back.

“What’s say you and me take a drive?” he said.

She smiled and hooked her arm through his. The other three women stared in disbelief through teary red eyes.

Elvis laid two twenties on the bar. “Nice knowing you, Ray,” he said. “You take care now.”

Outside, Elvis opened the door of his restored, pink ’55 Fleetwood and helped her into the passenger seat. On his way around the car, he spotted a set of fuzzy white dice slung over a pickup truck’s rearview mirror. He reached through the open window and took them, then climbed behind the wheel of his Caddy and draped the dice over his own rearview.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Bobbie Anne,” she said.

“You sure it ain’t Priscilla? ‘Cause you sure look like a Priscilla.”

She only smiled.

He turned the key and the V8 awoke with a growl. He rolled to the edge of the lot to where it met the asphalt of Highway 52.

“Where we driving to?”

Elvis adjusted the radio dial. Another gospel song, “Lead Me, Guide Me,” filled the air and washed over them.

“Wherever we want in the whole wide world, darlin’.”

He winked at her, and the tires spit gravel as he cut the wheel onto the road, no past behind them, just dust.

William R. Soldan is the author of the story collection In Just the Right Light and the collection Houses Burning and Other Ruins,forthcoming from Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books in September 2020. He's got some degrees and a few nominations but knows that doesn't impress anyone. His work has appeared in Thuglit, EconoClash Review, Switchblade Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Tough, The Best American Mystery Stories 2017, and others. You can find him at williamrsoldan.com.