When Harvey Met Houston

I have the happy ending.


That is the fact you must know before you go any further. For all the details I relate in this post, there are thousands of folks like me who did not have the happy ending. It is for them my heart breaks and my eyes fill with tears.


SATURDAY, 26 August


When I woke a week ago today, my thoughts were on the folks down in Rockport. They withstood 140 MPH winds as Harvey ran ashore. For us in Houston, it was a gray day. We had prepared our house the previous day, so Saturday was a day of waiting. The rains started overnight (6 inches by 9am Saturday) and no one knew if the hurricane proper would meander up Highway 59 to Houston. Many stores closed around noon. We stayed home, satisfied our craving for a hamburger by grilling under the over hang of my house (it was raining of course), and just waited. The rain started.

By 9:00pm, I measured the bucket I was using as a rain gauge. It read 12 inches. So that was 12 inches in approximately 24 hours. I had made a few sandbags I used to divert some of the water away from our patio. That probably saved water from getting into our house.

We went to bed with the constant sound of rain. Overnight, my wife and I took alternating shifts. We woke up every two hours and checked outside. Still raining. Hard. Even when your shift was over and it was time to return to sleep, sleep was hard to come by, especially when every cell phone in the house would buzz with tornado warnings.


SUNDAY, 27 August


We woke to rain. It hadn’t stopped at all. I checked my rain bucket at 7:45 am. It read 12 inches. That was 12 inches since the previous night at 9pm. Total so far: 24 inches.

The rain slackened sometime through the day but never stopped completely. My son and I trekked out of our house for some scouting around, specifically at the bridge to our north.

I live south of Buffalo Bayou about half a mile. The two reservoirs y’all heard about are to my west (Barker) and northwest (Addicks). We are downstream. The bridge over Dairy Ashford has a depth meter, but I wanted to see the water in person. I wasn’t alone. Lots of folks were seeing what Harvey had brung to our neck of the woods. In west Houston, the Buffalo Bayou is a hiking/biking park with paved walkways and wide open stretches on the north side. The distance fluctuates but I’d say there is about 30-50 yards in many places from the north bank to the first line of homes. On the south, much less.

The rain had lessened, but never quit. The height of the water had reached the bottom of the bridge and the cement arch that ran across it. My favorite do-nut store, Shipley’s, had taken on about 8-12 inches of water. Dairy Ashford was blocked by water just north of the bridge.

 Even the roaches sought protection.

We were mainlining local TV coverage, KPRC, our local NBC affiliate, was our resource. In addition, there is an excellent local weather site, SpaceCityWeather, which features a couple of guys, one of which used to work for the Houston Chronicle. They were invaluable not only for their clear-headed forecasts but also because they were caught in the middle of it, too. They weren’t holed up in some bunker somewhere. When they were pessimistic, you knew to be worried. It was the worry and uncertainty that knifes through you. I carry stress in the back of my neck and upper back. By Sunday, those places hurt.

The rains started again and went for the rest of the day. By midnight, blessedly, the rain had completely stopped. The only sounds were the drips of water. It was blessedly silent. I checked my rain gauge. A new 10 inches, for a total of 34 inches. Maybe it was over. Still, the wife and I took shifts through the night. I had the 3am shift.


MONDAY, 28 August


Surprisingly, I woke at 6am to mostly silence. It didn’t last long. The rain started up again. I checked the perimeter of my house, picking up branches and shoveling mud to make it easier for water to flow. I even dug a couple of small trenches to get the water away from the house. But the rain was unrelenting. In seeing the radar images on the TV, you get the point of thinking: If the rain would just stop, the water would have a chance to do its natural thing and drain away. But the rain never stopped. That knife in the back of my neck twisted a little, but it was nothing like the evening announcement.

The Harris County Flood Control District, in communication with the Army Corps of Engineers, held a press conference. In it, they said the two reservoirs to the west of Houston, the Addicks and the Barker, were full. The fact was mind boggling. You can see in images just how big those things are. And they were full? And the Addicks was starting to overspill. They made the gut wrenching decision to open the dams and start draining the reservoirs. If they didn’t, there could possibly be a need for an emergency release. Or worse. I think you know what ‘worse’ is. The water flows into Buffalo Bayou. Yes, the bayou would rise. When a reporter asked a particular question, the answer was unambiguous: yes, houses that were dry up to that point [and had survived the hurricane’s rains] would be flooded.

Yeah, really.

I’m geek enough to admit that the famous line from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan drifted into my mind: The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few. When you see it in a movie, it’s a cool line. When the possibility that you might be in the few, that’s something else entirely.

That knife in my neck grew white hot. I literally felt it turn. My stomach dropped. My wife and I looked at each other, and it was a look only spouses know. Now what? At the time, they had no way to know exactly where the water would go, but it had to go somewhere. Like many around me, I frantically searched for information on the internet about elevation and distance from the bayou. The distance from my house to the lowest bend of the bayou was half a mile, about 3700 feet. My elevation—another fact I didn’t know before Monday—was 12 feet higher than the southern bank of the bayou that was already overflowing. It was now we had to make the call: stay or go? If we went, what do we take?

By this time, my neighborhood Facebook group—which, up until this past weekend was devoted primarily to play days and pool gatherings—was in high gear. One of the dads posted the neighborhood directly to our north, across an east/west road called Briar Forest, was flooding. Now, I’m a fiction writer so when I hear the word “flooding,” I start with Noah and work my way backward.

I drove north and assessed the situation. The back (northern) part of the other subdivision was underwater. Someone had put a brick to mark the water line. I could still see the brick. I checked two other north/south roads and marked their water lines. I came back home. With other information gleaned from the internet and other sources, we prepped the house just in case. I looked at the map and the topography of the area and began to think of just how much water needed to fill a sizable area in order for it to reach our garage door. It was a vast amount of space. And the water I’d seen was flowing north and east, away from our house. We decided to stay and took shifts again.


TUESDAY, 29 August


People ask me all the time why I’m so happy in the mornings. It’s because I woke up, something not guaranteed when you go to sleep. I woke on Tuesday morning, still to the sound of rain, but in my house. I smiled and immediately said a thank you prayer. I rode my bike and checked the water lines. Slight increase, but more or less holding steady. But they hadn’t opened the dams to full capacity yet. I rode to the nearest intersection to the Dairy Ashford bridge and couldn’t believe what I saw: Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel. Aw, crap! He never goes anywhere good.

In talking with my Facebook group and other neighbors and newly minted friends, most folks didn’t think the water would get as far south as my house. The government officials, too, issued an image of the extent they expected the flooding to get. My house still stood to the south of that line. It didn’t make Tuesday any better.

But by Tuesday afternoon, the winds had shifted, the rain had stopped, and blue sky peeked out from behind the clouds. As I wrote on Facebook, it wasn’t a rainbow, but it was darn close. Then the sun broke through. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one whose eyes filled with tears.

I hadn’t heard from all my friends and family, but I heard from some who had fled, some who had stayed, and some who got flooded. All the while, we stayed dry.

 Michael Ciaglo‏ on Twitter on Tuesday said it all: Maybe the best sunset Houston has ever seen, or needed #Harvey

After midnight on Tuesday, I sat in my reading chair, a wing back, stiff alcoholic drink on the bookshelf next to me. I sipped maybe twice and fell asleep in the chair.


WEDNESDAY, 30 Aug to FRIDAY, 1 Sept


Time has a way of scraping by when there is nothing but dread in your mind. The water appeared to be staying away, but more reports of friends started coming in. My Sunday School teacher’s house was flooded although he had safely evacuated. A trumpet player in the church jazz band/orchestra had three feet of water in his house. A member of my book club had to evacuate by boat, but his second story apartment was fine. Others were fine, like us. Now, my section of west Houston had no way of going north, but the southern paths were open. To give you an idea: if I wanted to get to Interstate 10, just a couple miles north of me, I would have to go 9 miles to the east or 16 to the west.

Each morning, the first thing I did was check the water lines. Both mornings had less water, but not very much. Everyone’s new best friend, Jeff Lindner of the Harris County Flood Control District, was a steady rock of unambiguous information.  He was typically up past midnight answering Twitter questions and dispelling rumors, specifically on whether or not the dams would fail. He knew his words would affect people's lives, and he delivered the news in a clear, straight-forward manner. By his own admission, he had been at the office a week and slept maybe 7 hours the entire time.

He had the bad luck to tell people that their homes would flood. By Friday, he had the unenviable

position of having to tell folks whose homes flooded as a result of the dam release that the flood waters would not recede for 10-15 days. Ten to fifteen days out of your house. Get your mind around that. Oh, and it would take three months (!) to drain the reservoirs provided it didn’t rain. We are in the heart of hurricane season and about to start autumn, a wet time here in Houston. You can do the math. Just imagine: it’ll take until Thanksgiving for the reservoirs to drain.




As I write this, around 8pm on Friday, the situation is still dicey. There’s a voluntary evacuation notice for folks living in a large rectangle with Briar Forest as the southern border. The reason is the officials don’t want folks to hunker down in a second floor of a house for two weeks with no way to get out.  The two Kroger grocery stores near me are open but with certain staples like bread, milk, eggs, and produce down. In one of the moments that made me chuckle, when I went to stock up on things I missed last week, many heads of cabbage still remained. I guess some folks don’t know what to do with cabbage.

Oh, and the internet is out at my house. At least it didn’t go out during the storm.


I have many things that’ll be hard to forget:

The sound of Coast Guard helicopters flying overhead.

The idea that there were children who were excited about starting school on 28 August having purchased all their needed school supplies and new clothes…and it’s all gone. And maybe their school is, too.

The idea that the parents of those children could do nothing to stop the rain or the flood waters from rising and taking away all they owned.

So many other stories you’ve likely already read or heard.

The emotions that overflowed me and my wife when we watched Lester Holt on Monday as he came to my hometown to report on this catastrophe. There’s something about a national presence that brings a different perspective.


But there are also all the stories of true heroism.

The heroism of our first responders was remarkable. The first truly memorable photo is this one showing Houston Police SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck as he carries Catherine Pham and her 13-month-old child.

Then there was Brandi Smith, the KHOU reporter, who helped save a man’s life. [LINK]

The heroism of the citizens with boats was also remarkable and not surprising. It’s just what people do. The idea that the Cajun Navy saw the need, hitched the trailers and boats to trucks, and hauled ass to Houston to help complete strangers. It’s just what people do.

The heroism (although he doesn’t like that term) of local furniture salesman Jim McIngvale who opened his showroom for survivors, not caring about the cost. Because it was the right decision.

The heroism of Mayor Sylvester Turner and Judge Ed Emmitt. They led us in a dire situation with steady calm.The same goes for Police Chief Art Acevedo who would also speak in Spanish so those folks could understand the issues.

The heroism of Officer Steve Perez who tried to drive to his station to help but got caught in the floods and drowned.

The heroism of our local media who stayed at their posts the entire time. Without them, we’d be in the dark and even more scared than we were.

The devotion of local officials like Jeff Lindner who stayed at their jobs when their own homes were being threatened or flooded because it was the right thing to do.

The heroism of the volunteers who came to the rescue of their fellow people.

The sight of the police cruisers from San Antonio and Fort Worth who came to town, sirens blaring and lights flashing, to take over and allow our local police officers a respite. It swelled the heart and made the eyes well up.



The hashtag #HoustonStrong has already made the rounds. Yes, it’s a hashtag, but it’s also the truth. We are a strong folk down here. We will rebuild, but Harvey has likely changed us. It brought to the fore what most of us already knew: Houston is a great place to live, with fantastic people, fantastic food, and fantastic culture. It is a melting pot of peoples from around the world. Out here in the Energy Corridor, you can go to parks and hear five or six languages spoken. We all came together this week for this unprecedented event. I want HoustonStrong to be emblazoned on everything and seared into our memories. When Harvey unleashed its worse, Houston stood up and showed its best.

They say that 1 trillion (here, let me show you the number: 1,000,000,000,000) gallons of water fell in four days here. You can look up the statistics of what that equals. The one that clicked home is that is the amount of water gushing over Niagara Falls in two weeks. We got it in 96 hours. Staggering.

 I heard a man on the local news who was then driving a boat to help people say something that pretty much sums it all up: There’s more love here in Houston than water.

He had the bad luck to tell people that their homes would flood. By Friday, he had the unenviable position of having to tell folks whose homes flooded as a result of the dam release that the flood waters would not recede for 10-15 days. Ten to fifteen days out of your house. Get your mind around that. Oh, and it would take three months (!) to drain the reservoirs provided it didn’t rain. We are in the heart of hurricane season and about to start autumn, a wet time here in Houston. You can do the math. Just imagine: it’ll take until Thanksgiving for the reservoirs to drain.

The Haunted Legion: A Walt Slade Pulp Story by Bradford Scott

A little under a month ago, I discovered Walt Slade, El Halcon, the Texas Ranger extraordinaire as chronicled by prolific author Bradford Scott (aka A. Leslie Scott). It was a chance meeting, Slade and I, in an antique store in Jefferson, Texas. The book was FOUR MUST DIE, which, as it turned out—thanks to some excellent background from James Reasoner—was the one book in the paperback series not written by Scott. But I loved the character so I immediately followed-up by reading KILLER’S DOOM, another novel in the paperback series, this time actually written by Scott himself.

But Walt Slade got his start in the pulps. He was an honest-to-God pulp hero, his adventures gracing most covers of Thrilling Western. If you read James Reasoner’s short history of this character, you’ll learn Scott took Slade out of the pulps and reformulated him for the emerging paperback book audience. Having read two novels—with dozens more to go—I was quite curious about one of his pulp stories.

Last week, I stopped into one of the local Bedrock City comic stores here in Houston because I knew the owner sold pulps. I hoped he would have any issue of Thrilling Western and I was in luck. He had a handful and I bought the May 1947 issue. The Walt Slade story in question was “The Haunted Legion”—and the cover font was that old scary font from the 1940s! What was the pulp version of Slade like?

Well, what immediately jumped out at me were the illustrations. As usual with the pulps, pencil illustrations accompanied nearly every story. With “The Haunted Legion” being the cover story, it had more than a few. I’m not sure who the illustrator was, but his take on Slade was pretty much as described by Scott and how I pictured him. So far, so good.

As the story being, Slade is down at Matagorda Bay, Texas, and before you know it, we get ourselves a story. It’s told by an old Mexican who relates the tale of Black Mora. And when I say he tells the story, I’m talking almost a full first chapter in which the POV actually switching to Mora himself and the legend of this pirate captain and the ghosts that walk the region. Twas a tad odd, but it certainly captured the mood, especially considering Bradford Scott’s penchant for flowery descriptions.

No sooner does Slade hear this story than his eyes catch sight of a group of men on horseback. It’s stormy and he only sees them when the lightening flashes once. The next time electricity illuminates the sky, they are gone. But there is also a major bonfire. A nearby house and barn are engulfed in flames. How? And might the two things be related?

Well, of course they are.

A key difference in this pulp story versus the paperback stories literally jumped off the page: language. In “The Haunted Legion,” Slade talks just like most other characters, and Bradford Scott writes the dialogue using phonically spelled words: Figger, mebbe, yuh, etc. I don’t remember Slade’s dialogue being that way in the two books I’ve read so far. It made Slade seem dumber and, frankly, it irritated me a little. I got used to it, but I guess I just like my heroes to sound smart.

There’s a good dose of gunfights and action, but there was a surprising level of mere investigation. Like a good traditional mystery, Bradford Scott laid out the clues for the reader and the clever one might have been able to deduce the culprit. I didn’t, but then I wasn’t trying to. But Slade gets to tell the local sheriff—another dumb lawman, but one who is loyal to Slade—all the clues that led him to discover the owlhoot. Were it not for his clothes, Slade could easily have come across as a detective from England. It was clever and wrapped up the story neatly.

All the traits that readers enjoy about Slade is on display here, including his fast guns, clever brain, and singing voice. He is a very enjoyable character and I’ll happily be reading more of his adventures. I liked the short form of this story pretty well. It’s an eight-chapter story, and, in true pulp form, each chapter has three sub-sections. They are easily identified by a large first letter and small caps in the first couple of words. It’s pure formula, but when you like something, you can simply consume it and be satisfied. I was satisfied with “The Haunted Legion,” and I may have to make a return trip back to Bedrock City and buy the rest of the magazines.

The Magnificent Seven (2016) Review

When I hear the words “The Magnificent Seven,” one thing immediately jumps to mind: the theme song by Elmer Bernstein. It might be they most recognizable western theme out there. Plus, I marched in the University of Texas Longhorn Band and we played “Mag Seven” frequently. And, since I'm such a band geek, he's a video of the Longhorn Band marching in 1988. "Mag Seven" is the first tune. Boy, that moving square was difficult. Yeah, I'm in there!

Other than the music, I knew about Yup Brenner and Steve McQueen. I'm sure I've seen the 1960 film, but I honestly can't recall a single detail of it.

So when I watched the 2016 version, I was basically coming in with little preconceived notions. I just wanted to hear the theme!

Even though I haven't seen the 1960 film, I'm pretty everyone knows about the plot.  Denzil Washington plays San Chisholm, a duly appointed lawman from Kansas. In the first of a series of vignettes, we see all the skills Chisholm brings as alarm in: patience and fast and quick gun work. From there, we are introduced to the other six members of Chisholm's team, starting off with Chris Pratt's Faraday, a drinker / lazy bones gunslinger who possess a great deal of charm. From there, we are introduced to the characters played by Ethan Hawke (a former Confederate sharpshooter), Vincent D'Onofrio (almost unrecognizable as a mountain man tracker), Byung-hun Lee (as an expert with knives and Hawke’s partner, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (as a wanted killer), and Martin Sensmeier (an exiled Comanche warrior).

Chisholm is persuaded to help the town of Rose Creek from the vile clutches of robber baron Bartholomew Bogue, played deliciously by Peter Sarsgaard. The persuader is Haley Bennett, a widow who witnessed her husband gunned down by Bogue. There's gold in Rise Creek’s valley, and its Bogue’s intention to take all the gold and the townsfolk be damned or killed.

You know how the story goes even if you've never watched the 1960 version or The Seven Samurai, the 1954 Akira Kurosawa film that inspired the original Mag Seven. Our band of brothers arrives in town and dispatches Bogue’s goons in probably the best sequence in the whole movie. It's the Seven in action, and it's fantastic and modern. 

Well, Bogue doesn't take kindly to having his men wiped out, so he fights back. But the town has time to plan, and so we get a pseudo “Saving Private Ryan” training / preparation sequence. And then the final battle. You know how it ends, but I'll leave it up to you to watch and see the details.

I enjoyed the film quite a bit. What I appreciate is depicting the Old West as dirty and sweaty, not all clean and prescribe as the old fashioned movies. The chemistry was quite nice, and I liked all the actors. Washing and Pratt are the two primary stars and they get more screen time than the others. Pratt is his charming self, and  Lee was a nice addition to the typical western rogues gallery.

And composer James Horner—in one of his last pieces—incorporates the theme! Heck I even heard a little snipped from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Did y'all hear it, too?

I was happy all around, and it makes me want to watch the 1960 version.

Revising an Older Story

How do you know when you are learning how to write better? When you read something you wrote in the past and know with no doubt you can do better today.

My August novel is a revision of an old western I wrote last year, maybe two years ago. I honestly cannot remember when I first drafted the story. I like the story and always had it pegged for publication this year.

In my mind’s eye, the story was pretty decent coming in around 16,000 words long. I thought it a tad too short to call it a novel, so I knew I wanted to revise it, expand it in places, and thicken up the prose.

I read through the draft as it was, making notes along the way, but did little in the way of refining the prose. I wanted to get a good pass through it, see how the story played, and remind myself of how my past self wrote the story. I saw the holes in the story quite clearly, and, most importantly, I knew how to shore them up.

My technique for re-reading an old story might be unique. I have a paper copy in front of me. I have a notepad and a pencil. I mark up the draft along the way and make notes of things to do. But I also am hooked up to my dictation software. Every time I finished a chapter, I would dictate the action of the chapter. By the end of the draft, I not only have a marked-up hardcopy but I also have a new outline of the tale complete with extra notes. All with little effort on my part (because talking is much easier than writing it all out).

Finally, it came time to start to go through the draft and add in the things the story needed. And here is the crucial lesson I learned in this process: I ended up rewriting each chapter from scratch.

I had two screens up: one was my current Scrivener file and the other was the original chapter in a separate window. Instead of reading and adding words here or there, I ended up typing the content over again. In this manner, if my 2017 brain started going off on a tangent, adding more detail or different bits of dialogue, I would just go with the flow.

I found it incredibly liberating. I had my original, but I was creating something almost completely new, albeit with some words I had previously written. All chapters were edited and revised, some more than others. I’ve already written three brand-new chapter. The story was only seventeen chapters to begin with. I’m halfway done and and I’m already up to twenty-one.

But what made me feel good as a growing and learning writer was to recognize how my old prose didn’t cut it in 2017. I frowned at a few passages and winced at others. Why? Because I am a more seasoned writer.

Now, I fully expect Future Scott, in 2027, to read this book as it will be published this year and find a few passages in which he will wince. But he’ll be a more seasoned writer than I am right now.

Because writing is an ever evolving profession.


When y’all revise an old story, do y’all rewrite from scratch, rewrite using the old words, or merely hunt and peck certain passages, adding words here and there?

Killer's Doom: A Walt Slade Western by Bradford Scott

I first made the acquaintance with Walt Slade a couple of weeks ago on my vacation up to East Texas. Then, it was a novel I picked out at random from a wonderful antique store in Jefferson, Texas, and read most of on the vacation itself. I enjoyed FOUR MUST DIE so much that I sought out more Walt Slade westerns. Turns out I already owned one in my large collection of old paperbacks I inherited from my grandfather.

KILLER’S DOOM was that book and man what a title. And it’s a pretty nifty cover, too. The back description leads off with a banner headline: “Catch Covelo!” That is the underlying plot of this novel.

Slide is out west in El Paso and he’s received a threatening letter:

“El Halcon, you will not catch Juan Covelo, but some day Juan Covelo will catch you, and then for you it will be muy malo! Muy malo!”

For those that don’t know, El Halcon is Slade nickname. It means the Hawk, likely because he has such good eyesight. Anyway, Covelo is a legend in the area for he rides around with a great black hood over his face, committing all sorts of horrible crimes and violence upon his victims. Slade correctly reckons it is to hide the bad guy’s true identity so he takes up the case.

Covelo has a gang of owlhoots riding with him, eight if I remember correctly. What makes this novel so grand is watching over Slade’s shoulder as he investigates, gathers evidence, fights, shoots, and whittles down the gang number until there is only Covelo left. That's not a spoiler. That's a western trope, one with which I have zero problem.

When I mentioned to my dad that I had read that first Slade book, he immediately started rattling off all the traits Slade was known for: his horse, Shadow, his singing, his rapid fire shooting, his eyes. I was taken aback with the mention of singing. A singing cowboy? In a book? In FOUR MUST DIE, not all of those were apparent. They were all there in KILLER’S DOOM, including the singing.

Shadow, the horse, was also on full display. I got a sense of his character the first time I met him, but in KILLER’S DOOM, he actually talks! Well, not really, but he and Slade have such a good camaraderie that author Bradford Scott (really A. Leslie Scott; click here for some background) actually wrote dialogue for Shadow, then followed it up with something like “…his snort seemed to say.” Charming.

KILLER’S DOOM also introduces the reader to a past villain, one that Slade already brought to justice. It was nice to see that the author understood weaving ongoing threads throughout this long series even back in the day when each book seemed to stand on its own.

I enjoyed KILLER’S DOOM about as much as FOUR MUST DIE--maybe a tad more--and I really love the character of Walt Slade. I have already started my third Slade western in a row!

When it comes to westerns and western writing, there are still things, techniques, and terminology I need to learn. As part of my education, I read with a pencil in my hand and circle various words and phrases I see over and over again. From there, I extract them into my own files and read them over before and during the writing of my own westerns. Here’s a sample two page spread.

I highly recommend the Walt Slade westerns. Now that I know what to look for (hat tip to James Reasoner), I have spotted them in just about every used bookstore I’ve entered in the past few weeks. I love discovering a new-to-me series in which I get to scour bookstores in the coming months and years hoping to find yet another Walt Slade adventure.

The Killing: Seasons 3 and 4

By
Scott D. Parker

I recently finished watching the Seasons 3 and 4 of The Killing and I got to wondering something: Why do sequels typically go darker than the first?

What makes The Killing interesting is that it started dark and went even darker. Seasons 1 and 2 focuses on a single story (and I flat-out loved it). Seasons 3 and 4 has a common overarching story arc but two cases-of-the-season. Season 3 goes almost full dark from the get-go. It involves the street kids of Seattle and someone who is hunting and killing them. Add to that two characters in Detectives Linden and Holder who already battle their own demons and you’ve not exactly got a joy-filled show. I’ll admit that a few times during the ten episodes I was like “Really? They’re going there?” Yeah, they went there.

Holder is the one character who can turn on and off the charm on a dime. One moment he was jabbing street talk with other characters in his most charming way and the next he’s staring out a window, pondering death. Linden starts season 1 sad and barely rises to a smile. It’s oppressive, to be honest, and it acted as a damper on all of Season 3.

Which is a shame because the most compelling character was Peter Sarsgaard, who plays a man on death row…and Linden helped put him there. He is fantastic, and he frankly steals just about every scene he’s in. As depressing as Season 3 gets, I’d still recommend it…

…Except the last minute. Ugh! Something happens in that last minute of the season 3 finale that aggravated me and propelled the story into Season 4. The case-of-the-season in Season 4 was the brutal murder of a rich family and the only survivor is the teen-aged son three months away from graduating from a military school. If you thought Season 3 had some dark moments, Season 4 went even darker. There are moments that are downright disturbing, enough to make you shift in your chair. Tyler Ross plays the surviving son and he does a phenomenal job with his role. Joan Allen is, however, the star of this season, playing the principal/superintendent of the school. She commands the screen whenever she’s on it with her steely gaze and firm jaw line. The more the aftereffects of Season 3 played on our two detectives, the more I enjoyed Allen’s scenes.

The denouement is one I partly saw coming, odd considering the conclusion of seasons 1 and 2 I didn’t see coming at all. It didn’t detract that much, but it is still surprising. One of the things I commented about to my wife was that The Killing is that particular show that turns the viewers against its lead characters. Not in a big way, but there were a few times when I just wanted to slap them around and make them straighten up.

Then there is the epilogue. I’m still trying to determine if I liked it or not. One the one hand, when I watched it, I had a smile on my face. On the other, it might have seemed too trite. But I certainly understand the point that show runner and creator Veena Sug was after: you find your home wherever you find it, sometimes in the most unlikely of places.

If you read my review of Seasons 1 and 2—especially the length of it—you might question why I’m summing up sixteen episodes in 500 words. Frankly it is because Seasons 1 and 2, all one story, was so utterly compelling and consuming that the writers had a tall order to even match how great that first story is. And it ended in such a way to suggest that the story was done and finished, but the network decided it had a hit on their hands and renewed the show for another season.

It brought to mind the TV show “Castle,” still one of my all-time favorites. When the show runners didn’t know if the series would be cancelled at the end of Season 7, they provided an ending which was tear-inducing, warm, and great. When Season 8 was announced, I was overjoyed. What could be better than more Castle? Well, the answer was mediocre Castle.

Same thing here. I’m almost tempted to tell people to watch Seasons 1 and 2 of The Killing and walk away. My wife, the one responsible for me watching the show in the first place, disagrees, saying the finale and epilogue allow the characters some closure. I see her point and I certainly agree with it considering I watched all four seasons…

…But there’s still a part of me that says the first 26 episodes of The Killing are some of the best television I have ever watched. The next 16…not so much. They are good and there are some incredible moments in Seasons 3 and 4, but none approaching the heartbreaking moments of episode 1. Heck, that one episode is better than any single episode in Seasons 3 and 4.

I’m glad I watched all the episodes and, as a whole, still consider The Killing among the best crime shows I’ve ever seen. But there’s still part of me that wants to caution folks about the dichotomy of seasons 1/2 and 3/4. Heck, the more distance from the series finale of Castle, the more I tell new viewers to stop at the Season 7 finale. I’m pretty sure the more time I get from The Killing, I’ll tell people something similar about Seasons 1 and 2. Stop when you're ahead.


Have you ever had a show like this?

A Sign of a Well-Read Book

Do you ever read your books this way?

My grandfather used to hold his books that way. I remember, even as a boy, cringing at bending the cover all the way around so that he would be able to read just a single page. (It is one of the primary reasons I enjoy reading on my Paperwhite so much.) After awhile, his books—mostly westerns—would end up this way.





A couple of weeks ago, I was in Galveston and I always visit the Galveston Book Shop. I checked the western section and ended up buying HIGH LONESOME by Louis L’amour (as a direct result of reading James Reasoner’s review). It was then I actually took notice of something. Many of the older westerns—i.e., the slim volumes from the 1960s and before—had the same slant to the spine. That meant my grandfather wasn’t the only one who held his westerns that way.

Nowadays, with our thick tomes, even in paperbacks, holding a book that way is almost impossible. And many of us don’t like to do that either. It ruins the shelf appeal I assume.

But there’s also something charming about seeing a stack of used paperbacks in this condition. It reminds me about the consumer quality of cheap paperbacks. They were just a few steps away from pulp magazines. They were one form of entertainment, likely meant to be read, then passed on to someone else or sold at a used bookstore. Not like today when most of us like to have that bookshelf lined with books.

When I open my “new” copy of HIGH LONESOME and noticed the spine had that slant, I actually curled the cover all the way around and read like my grandfather.

I loved it.

Do y’all read paperbacks this way? Did you grandparents or parents?

Four Must Die: A Walt Slade Western by Bradford Scott

On a recent trip to East Texas, I stopped in Jefferson, Texas, and scoured a few antique stores. I found a motherlode of old paperback westerns, maybe two hundred or more, all for a dollar each. The issue was which ones to buy? I didn’t need any L’amour or Gray or Short, so I started judging the books by the cover art and cover blurb. FOUR MUST DIE was branded a Walt Slade Western. Something tickled the back of my brain enough that I bought it and read it on my vacation.

And I’m glad I did. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

As I am wont to do—please tell me I’m not alone in what I’m about to tell y’all—I saw a book by an author I’ve read and know (James Reasoner’s Death Head Crossing) so I propped it up for the next buyer to see. So charmed with myself, I took a picture and sent it to James. He thanked me, and then promptly started telling me about the other books in the photo! I told him via email that I very nearly called him to discuss what I was seeing because he has forgotten more about westerns than I’ll probably ever know.

He was the one who told me that FOUR MUST DIE was the last of the paperback originals in this series and the only one not written by Walt Slade’s creator, Leslie Scott. The real author of FOUR MUST DIE was Tom Curry, a fellow author who penned some Jim Hatfield novels prior to this. I have come to the conclusion that if there’s an old-school pulp writer that I want to learn a bit about—especially if it’s a western—all I have to do is google the author’s name and James’s name and there will likely be a blog post. Here’s one for some background on Leslie Scott.

Back to today’s forgotten book. FOUR MUST DIE shows Texas Ranger Walt Slade skulking around El Paso searching for Barney Hale, an outlaw with a peculiar set of instructions: he needs to kill four seemingly random men in the region. Slade muscles his way into Hale’s good graces and convinces the owlhoot that, Slade, can get the job done in half the time. Hale agrees, and Slade sets his plan in motion.

He knows these four men—the editor of the newspaper, a cattleman with land north of town, a worker in the land office, and the owner of a smelting plant—and gets them to vanish for a time until Slade can get to the bottom of this whole shebang. There’s an oily attorney, the Honorable Alton Z. Carson, behind the scheme that even Slade can’t figure out until a single word is uttered: “Gold.”
What follows is a flat-out joyride of a western. Slade is a fun character, quick on the draw and even quicker with his wits. He is tough as nails, but isn’t above actual manual labor in order to root out the bad guys. And I love his horse, Shadow. There’s a unique beast with a special way he runs when the bullets start zinging past them.

You remember me mentioning that tickling I had in the back of my brain when I saw FOUR MUST DIE in the store? Well, that’s because I inherited a Walt Slade book from my grandfather. I’ll be getting to that book next.

As James wrote to me, this was the last of the Walt Slade westerns. Fittingly, the last paragraph reads thus: "With a wave of his slim hand, Walt Slade mounted Shadow, and they [the men left behind] him ride away, to where duty called and high adventure beckoned." That's a great way to end a series...and a perfect starting point for someone like me.

FOUR MUST DIE is a well-written western and if it’s any indication of the type of story of all the other Walt Slade oaters out there, I just found me a new series to collect.

BTW, if you're interested, here is the photo I sent to James.

Now Available: The Killing of Lars Fulton: A Junction City Western

An ambush leaves an innocent man dead and the sheriff behind bars, branded a murderer!

Now, the sheriff's only hope is a half-breed deputy, and he's being hunted.

IN AN EXCITING NEW JUNCTION CITY WESTERN FROM AUTHOR S. D. PARKER, Sheriff Walt Eason finds himself accused of murder, and only Deputy Diego Lange can save him.

Rustlers have stolen heads of cattle from all the biggest ranches in Junction City, Texas, including Bartholomew Conway, the nemesis of Sheriff Eason and his deputies. But when the lawmen open fire on a suspected owlhoot, the dead man is not a thief, but one of Conway's own ranch hands.

Now, Junction City's richest citizen has all the ammunition he needs to get rid of Eason...at the end of a hangman's noose. Eason's fate falls to his junior deputy, Diego Lange, a half-breed with few friends in town. Lange has only hours to uncover the truth about Lars Fulton and the strange thing discovered in the corpse's pocket or Junction City will have a new sheriff, one who doesn't look too kindly on Diego Lange.

If you like action-packed tales in the tradition of Robert Vaughn, Paul L. Thompson, or Frank Leslie, you'll enjoy THE KILLING OF LARS FULTON, the first novel-length tale in the Saga of Junction City.

Available at Amazon.


Excerpt:

“I’m not sure I can do it,” Deputy Diego Lange whispered. He crouched on a small rock outcropping overlooking the land outside of Junction City. The air was warm, even an hour toward midnight. The new moon cast no glow on the land below. Overhead, the stars sparkled in the night, the constellations mingling among themselves. The heat of the day was giving up its last fingers and succumbing to the cool night air. The smell of sage and hot rock still tickled Diego’s nose and those of his companions.

Sheriff Walt Eason grinned in the night. “It ain’t no big thing.”

“It’s no big thing for you, Sheriff,” Diego whispered back. “You do it all the time. Hell, you’ve already started doing it seeing as how the election’s coming up. I ain’t,” he searched for the right word, “as accomplished as you.”

Off to Diego’s right, he heard a soft snort from Jack Moore. “If I was standing up for my brother, I’d be so drunk by the wedding it didn’t matter what I said.” Moore was the senior deputy among Eason’s rank of three. Typically, he didn’t let anyone forget that he was second only to the sheriff. Even tonight, as the three of them hunkered down to catch some cattle rustlers, he made sure to get the catbird seat on the outcropping. He claimed he had eyes like an eagle’s and could see clearly in the night. Diego knew that Eason tolerated Moore and acquiesced. But Diego was still irritated that Moore decided to stick his nose into business that was his.

Eason inhaled deeply and let out the air slowly. “When it comes down to it, all you have to do is speak from the heart. It’s your brother’s wedding. He asked you to stand up for him. Sure, that usually means you gotta give a toast of some sort. Everyone will be looking at you, making you feel puny as an ant. Put all that stuff away. Just remember, this is your brother. Other than your parents, you know him best. All you have to do is…” He stopped and held up a hand. “Quiet.”

“I heard him, too,” Moore said.

All three men laid flat on the rock their eyes overlooking the grazing area. The dark husks of cattle gently stomping their feet could not dampen the sound of footfalls on the dirt.

Someone was coming.

Down a ways, just to the other side of the cattle, they all spied the distinctive silhouette of a man. He wore no spurs so the only sound he made was the gentle clomp of his boots. He wore a hat so the lawman couldn’t make out his face. But they all saw what he was doing: making his way toward the cattle.

In a low voice, Eason whispered, “Remember we have to catch him in the act. Before that, he’s just a man out on the midnight walk.”

Diego understood. He began to breathe more shallowly, his mind telling him even his breath would give away their position. Moore, on the other hand, fidgeted in his position.

“Don’t move,” Eason commanded.

The shadowy figure made his way along the perimeter of the group of cattle. Curiously, he reached out a hand and touched the romp of each cow.

Diego frowned. “What is he doing?”

Eason shushed him. “Wait and see.”

The man continued to walk around the perimeter. If he kept going that way, he would get perilously close to where the lawmen had stashed their horses. If he found the horses, all bets were off.

That seemed to be the thinking of Deputy Moore as well. “He’s gonna find the horses,” he hissed.

“Let him,” Eason said. “It means we have the element of surprise.”

“Why don’t we surprise them right now,” Moore said. He moved. Small pebbles dislodged and tumbled down the outcropping.

The shadowed man heard and turned toward the sound. He drew his gun and aimed, the barrel swiveling back and forth, not sure from where the sound came..

The lawmen already had their guns in hand. Under earlier orders from Eason, they held their fire. Besides, even with starlight, they couldn’t get a direct bead on the shadowed man’s location. But when the man opened fire at them, the blossom of flame from his muzzle would give them all the pinpoint direction.

A lead slug pinged near Diego’s face. He reacted without thinking. He pulled the trigger of his gun. Moore did the same. Eason held back. Gouts of fire poured out from the barrels of their revolvers. The shadowed figure fell in a clump.

“Dammit!” Eason said. “I said hold fire until he did something.” He sighed, sending plumes of dust in the air. He holstered his weapon and got to his feet. “Come on.”

Diego felt chastened by his mistake. He had reacted without thinking. Typically that was a good trait for a lawman to possess. But he was still learning. Sheriff Eason, to his mind, was the best teacher in the world. Now Diego had disappointed him.

Eason, Diego, and Moore trundled down the outcropping and approached the shadowed figure. Not knowing if they had killed him or not, they approached from three different angles. The two deputies still held their guns.  Eason approached unarmed.

The downed man law sprawled on the ground. His gun hand was empty. Eason kicked the pistol out of reach just in case. The dark patch under the man was likley blood. The more Diego looked at the patch, the larger the patch got. It was blood alright, seeping out of the wounded man and being soaked up by the dry ground.

Eason reached into a pocket and flicked a lucifer match to life with his thumbnail. He crouched down and brought the light closer to the dead man’s face.

“Oh no.”

Available at Amazon.

The Killing: Seasons 1 and 2 Review

By the time the credits rolled for the second season finale of THE KILLING, my mouth open on account of the jaw-dropping revelations, I realized I had just experienced one of the best crime/mystery TV shows I've ever watched.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally relented to my wife’s urging that I watch Netflix’s (nee AMC) THE KILLING. She had watched seasons 1-3, but was willing to re-watch with me if I’d just give the show a chance. I did and wrote about Season 1, Episode 1 and how it hooked me.

Here’s a little tidbit about my wife: she rarely reads or watches things over and over. “I got it the first time,” she says. So what does it tell you that she’d be willing to re-watch a show again just so I could catch up? Let me put it to you this way: after I saw the season finale of Season 2 last night, I already want to watch both seasons again.

The first two seasons of THE KILLING, totaling 26 episodes, follow a single case. The show focuses on how the killing of a young, seventeen-year-old girl affects her family, the police detectives investigating the case, the mayoral race, and other characters in their periphery. Being based on a Danish TV show, THE KILLING is less like a typical American police procedural show than a character study, and it is in this aspect where the acting is stellar.

Mireille Enos plays Sarah Linden, detective for the Seattle Police Department. As the show starts, it’s her last day. She’s to catch a flight down to California with her thirteen-year-old son where she’ll get remarried. She is ordered to look into the new case and bring along Joel Kinnaman’s Stephen Holder, recently transferred from county, to show him how to work a case. Naturally you know how this is going to go, but Enos’s performance brings so much depth and pathos into the character that you get lost in just how good she is. Linden is a damaged person, and you get the backstory as the show moves forward. The physical way Enos plays Linden shows the damage, especially in her walk. It’s striking. So, too, her interpersonal relationships. You root for her, but it can sometimes be difficult. I can’t think of another character—especially a woman—who is quite like Detective Linden. It makes this show truly unique, and Enos was utterly compelling.

Kinnaman is an actor I only knew from House of Cards. Here, he’s the rookie homicide detective, formerly a narcotics cop who became an addict. With his street talk and attitude, he’s a bit irritating at the start, but that all changed at the end of episode 1, season 1 when Holder gets a look at the dead girl. His performance grows on you, episode by episode, as Holder grows and changes. Often I laughed out loud at some of his comments. Kinnaman owned this performance and became the character I truly enjoyed in every scene.

Other actors who also shined were Brent Sexton, as the father of the dead girl, and Billy Campbell, as Darren Richmond, the city councilman who is running against the incumbent mayor. I saw myself in Sexton’s character, his anger, his soul-crushing sorrow, his desperate attempts to hold his family together. So many times he could say so much without saying a word.

Campbell I’ve known since The Rocketeer, but haven’t seen much of his work other than sporadic episodes of Once and Again and The 4400. He was fantastic in his understated reading of Richmond. The more the show went on, the more I thoroughly enjoyed his character.

Acting is one thing. You can have great acting with a not-so-great story, but with THE KILLING, you get the marriage of all the excellent acting with a phenomenal story. With 26 episodes over two seasons focusing in the one case, the story is long, but utterly engrossing. There’s never a boring moment. As a writer who constantly throws in gun fights and chases, to see a show without much of that but with an equal amount of tension, was an eye-opening experience. I was completely consumed by the storytelling, how each new revelation plays on the various characters, and how well the nuts and bolts of the episodes were layered on each other. I’m a writer, so naturally I analyze story. True, there are moments when a character says something and you pretty much know they’re holding back, but it doesn’t detract. The complications that arise for our characters are legitimate and not some out-of-left-field shenanigans.

Then there is the mystery itself: who killed Rosie Larsen and why? Some shows you can figure out the bad guy a mile away. I developed my own theory of who and why and stuck to it until the end…when I was wrong! And then, just when you think you’ve reached the satisfactory conclusion of the show, there is a twist. And then another one! My mouth literally dropped open during the last episode. I may have even whispered an expletive.

I don’t like to binge. I’m still rooted in Appointment Television. THE KILLING is a show that you’ll want to binge, but I urge some restraint. On most nights, I watched a single episode. On weekends, maybe two. It gave me time to ponder the story, the characters, and the plot. I enjoyed that time, even laying out my theories on my wife before each new episode began. Going into this past weekend, we had eight episodes to go. We watched four on Saturday night. The pace had increased and I just wanted to get to the end.

But I’m glad I waited for the last two episodes and watched them on their own. It allowed the denouement to wash over me, complete with tears. Patty Jenkins, recently of Wonder Woman, directed the pilot and the season 2 finale. She and the writers did a thing in the finale that I can’t say has ever been done before. And it was excellent and so emotional. THE KILLING is very much like THE SIXTH SENSE: as soon as you watch it and know the ending, you really do want to re-watch.

I have seen many, many TV shows and films featuring crime, mystery, detectives, victims, and politicians. There are some truly great shows with great performances. THE KILLING, Seasons 1 and 2, is nothing less than one of my favorite crime/mystery shows I’ve ever seen.


Now, on to Season 3.

My Discovery of Jason Isbell in Houston

Have you ever had an experience when you discover something new to you, it blows you away, and you look around and see if anyone else knows about it? That was me last night when Jason Isbell stopped at Houston’s Revention Center and blew the roof off.

Jason Isbell landed on my radar because of my wife. She heard a song, “Children of Children,” on our favorite streaming service, Radio Paradise, and played it for me. It’s a slow, quiet meditative song about his mother having him when she was just seventeen. That alone would qualify it as a great song, but when drummer Chad Gamble plays this one powerful beat, everything changes. Isbell drops the acoustic guitar, picks up an electric, complete with slide, and transforms the song into something wholly different. It is a sublime song and transcendent performance. Here he is performing it on CBS Saturday Morning in 2015 (The song starts around 1:45 but watch the short interview first).

He is touring in support of his new album, The Nashville Sound, with his band, The 400 Unit. My wife and I snatched up a pair of tickets and joined the intimate crowd at the Revention Center, a 3,400-seat venue that is the perfect size. It’s small enough that you’re never far away from the stage, but large enough to turn up the speakers and shake the rafters, which was exactly what happened last night.

Amanda Shires, a member of the 400 Unit and Isbell’s wife, opened the show. She plays violin—er, fiddle—like a lead guitar player. Her four-piece band ran through her songs with aplomb. The set was great. I don’t know about y’all, but opening acts are often the time where you chit-chat in the hallways waiting for the headliner. Not so with Shires. She held the audience with the charm and wit of her great lyrics, her beautiful voice, and surprising fiddle playing. My wife and I liked it so much we bought her new CD, My Piece of Land, right then and there.

Shortly after nine, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit took the stage, opening with the powerful “Anxiety.” I don’t know the new album well, but if there was any question about the power Isbell brings to a live performance, the first few bars of this song dispelled all doubts. This song is a good example of how Isbell can take the listener from a quiet moment to a blasting cacophony in the span of a single beat. As a fan of loud music, I was enthralled and grinning ear to ear. Little did I know this was only a taste of what was in store.

On stage, Isbell knows he is the reason folks bought tickets, but he is an unpretentious performer. Other than Shires and Gamble, the 400 Unit contains Jimbo Hart on bass, Derry DeBorja on keyboards, and Sadler Vaden on electric guitar. They all sing backup vocals. This is a tight band, one of the tightest I’ve ever seen. Vaden is so talented he could front his own band. Some band leaders might balk at having someone of Vaden’s talent in the band, fearing the other guitar player would overshadow him. Not with Isbell. No matter if he’s playing electric or acoustic guitar, Isbell easily cedes the spotlight to Vaden. The pair make for a compelling set of dueling guitars, both frequently playing with a slide. With Shires singing backup harmony, she and Isbell often look at each other, bringing in that special something to the songs. Frankly it reminded me of Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa. Not to make much more of the comparison, but Isbell on stage brought to mind Sprinsteen’s onstage charisma as he wandered the stage, standing next to certain members while others soloed, perfectly content to be in the shadows.

Frankly, most of these songs I heard for the first time (but not the last!). All were good, but three (no four! Five!) stuck out for me. “The Last of My Kind,” with its lyrics about modern society, being lost amid that modernity and wondering where he fits, was moving. “Cover Me Up” is the song he wrote for his wife. Again, having Shires on stage with him gave this performance that extra bit of specialness. The Revention Center is small enough that when Isbell sang “But I sobered up and I swore off that stuff forever this time,” many in the audience cheered him on, whether because they, too, beat ‘that stuff” or that he got his act together to make such gorgeous music, I couldn’t tell. Probably both.

The music of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit is a miasma of influences: rock and roll, country, soul, the Memphis sound, folk, and, of course, southern rock. He pays tribute to that influence with a massive cover of the Allman Brothers Band’s “Whipping Post.” Actually, massive is too understated a word. The second of two songs in the encore, everyone was on their feet, arms waving, just letting the music blowing off the stage wash over them. Shires soloed, but it wasn’t just some simple fiddle thing. It was high energy, rock and roll fiddle. Vaden took over and brought the level higher. Isbell is a master at taking the listener up and down the musical roller coaster. When I thought it couldn’t get any more intense, Isbell showcases why he is likely one of the most gifted guitarist playing today. I’m not exaggerating when I say the final song left me breathless. Even my wife, who isn’t always a fan of loud music—she even commented on it earlier in the show—was smiling at the intensity of this performance.

For some unknown reason, Jason Isbell hasn’t been on my listening radar. That all changed last night. His lyrics have depth and weight. He is one of the best guitar players I’ve ever seen—and I’ve been watching live music for over thirty years. As I was leaving last night, I heard some folks behind me talk about how underrated he is. Damn right. Those that have seen him live know how good he is. I now count myself among the converted. His on stage performance and energy captivated the audience last night. Isbell is a powerful singer. He could easily fill up the Toyota Center with his voice and music. Heck, he could play at the Houston Rodeo and fill up NRG Stadium. At least there, they could open the roof.

I have a pretty broad musical palette but somehow, up until now, have missed Jason Isbell. He’s a two-time Grammy winner! How did I not know about him? That ended last night. And I’m the better for it.

He will undoubtedly and deservedly play for bigger and bigger audiences the more folks discover him. The jealous part of me kind of hopes he keeps playing in smaller, more intimate venues like the Revention, but those days are likely numbered.

I’m so glad my wife discovered him, thrilled that we got tickets to the show last night, and blown away at what a complete performer and lyricist Jason Isbell is. He is the best open secret in the music business.


Here is his 2017 performance on CBS which includes three songs from The Nashville Sound. This performance compelled the couple who sat next to us last night to drive an hour from Galveston, on a week night, to hear Isbell perform.