B.L. Blankenship's Blog: Dead in Dixie: Western Horror Blog

Hey Readers,

I will be off of Social Media (Facebook/Twitter/Slasher) until FEB/10th/2024. Before stepping away for a while, I posed a question that I will mention here. I am considering offering the opportunity to let people PayPal me $100 to go towards "Chronicles of The Velveteen Preacher: The Black River of Death & Bridge To Hell and other woeful tales." In return, they'd be thanked by name inside of the book and have a ghoul illustrated in their likeness within it's pages & a hand signed copy.

To me that seems like it might be more ideal than doing a normal crowdfunding campaign. Howbeit, I will be looking to see if enough people expressed interest for me to bother with. If you'd be interested in this – comment saying so.

Also, "Chronicles of The Velveteen Preacher: The Dark City & World of Sin and other woeful tales" is available in paperback, ebook, & Kindle Unlimited. I highly suggest that you check it out, if you are even half way considering this. That would give you an idea how the 2nd book would be structured.

B. L. Blankenship

So many people have personally written and related to me how they love the deeply intricate ultra-violent Western Horror series "GOD WALKS THE DARK HILLS." Sincerely, it's all very meaningful to me to hear. As I've afore stated, the six-total-novel-series (whether published in singular or dual novel form) makes up the central canon of my Western Horror world. Duly, the majority of my current & upcoming anthologies, collections, novellas, and such easter eggs have and will continue to be dropped.

Overthinking most everything, in my mind, I aspire to write/publish 2 stand-alone & thus far only subtly hinted novellas in 2023. Moreover, I hope to begin and finish writing both: "The Hills of Home: God Walks The Dark Hills Book V" & "Wrath of The Lamb: God Walks The Dark Hills Book VI." It is my current contention that I'll end the series as it began - with a dual novel (i.e. both novels - Book V&VI inside one physical book). Ergo my presumed/known bibliography by the end of 2023 will be:

NOVELS: (2020-2023)
• God Walks The Dark Hills Book I
• Here Among The Shadows in a Weary Land: God Walks The Dark Hills Book II
• Ain't No Grave: God Walks The Dark Hills Book III
• The Brightness of His Coming: God Walks The Dark Hills Book IV
• The Hills of Home: God Walks The Dark Hills Book V
• Wrath of the Lamb: God Walks The Dark Hills Book VI

COLLECTIONS: (2020-2023)
• Look Away Dixieland

ANTHOLOGIES: (2020-2023)
• A Book Without a Name
• TBD

NOVELETTES: (2020-2023)
Abraham Lincoln Burns in Hell Issue #1
Abraham Lincoln Burns in Hell Issue #2
Abraham Lincoln Burns in Hell Issue #3

NOVELLAS: (2020-2023)
• The Confederado: A Western Horror Tale of MesoAmerican Gore
• TBA
• TBA

Beyond these things, any further literary works would likely be heavily influenced by both sales & written reviews. My readers matter to me; thusly I'd leave it to all of them to guide me in the direction that they wanted. If my collection of short stories blow up, then there'll be more. The same math works with novels, novellas, anthologies, and so forth. Additionally, the same could be said of stories featuring certain characters and/or properties that specifically belong to me. I've considered writing expansive books about:

FOLLOWING NOTABLE HEROES:
• The Rape of Glenda Smith
• The Breaking of Conner Smith
• The secret life of Rial Stuart

FOLLOWING NOTABLE VILLAINS:
• A story with Peter Grimm as the protagonist
• The Early Life & Corrupting Seth Nettles
• The Early Life & Corrupting of Clay Corpse

FOLLOWING OTHERS:
• The Early Life of Julian Smith
• "The Devil & Mister Lincoln"
• The People On The Other Side of The Mirror
• The Lowlights
• The Great god Pan
• Lithuanian Werebears
• Men As Trees

...If nothing else, I'm quite approachable. When I look at media outlets who are leaving others in the dust, I tend to look at them carefully and determine what exactly it is that I think they're doing right. To me as a reader/viewer/fan interactivity matters. When you watch a movie like Jaws or Jurassic Park, you come back hoping to experience the same thing as when you saw the first one. Sadly, producing pure garbage cash-grabs tends to mess it all up. I'm not a big-name author or studio. Thereby, I can't afford to put out substandard garbage that my readership doesn't want. Moreover, I do value my readers & want to give you more creative content that makes sense.
My determination is to be consistent. It's also to have things as advertised. I'll tell you what you're getting upfront so you'll know before you sink your teeth into it. It's likely that neither one of us likes surprises. Beyond the God Walks The Dark Hills series, "Abraham Lincoln Burns in Hell", future Anthologies, and Collections are all a matter of demand. All of these principles bleed over into other forms of media, merchandising, and so forth.

Hey, Western Horror Readers, SplatterPunks, Fellow Authors, and so forth. In this blog post, I hope to answer questions & give insights into my thinking as an author, specifically in regard to my published collections of short stories. I've published an array of them - all of which are to be found within my books: "Look Away Dixieland: A Collection of Western Horror Stories" (i.e. 13 in all) & "A Book Without A Name: Western Horror, Splatter Western, Southern Gothic Anthology" (5, plus one narrative poem, plus 1 sonnet). ***Be advised, my books are so profusely violent and disparaging that they are not suitable for all audiences. They'd easily be placed within the realm of Extreme Horror. Also, due to the nature of this blog post it has spoilers/i.e. an overview of each of my short stories. May God have mercy on your souls.***

SHORT STORIES in "LOOK AWAY DIXIE LAND"

• Beneath The Dark Puddle (Supernatural Horror)
This is the first short story that adds depth to a race of characters who're referred to as chthonic idiot gods. It also introduces a proxy called the sodden man and alludes to the villain being Peter Grimm. Additionally, some inspiration for this tale of terror was inspired from the movie "Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight." Its protagonist is a clergyman targeted by this insidious foe.

• Beyond The Veil (True Crime Horror)
This story is about the real-life serial murderers known as "The Bloody Benders." An enormous amount of details are accurate in this fictitious horror story. Its protagonists are two young boys, one of which is intrigued by the salacious Bender Daughter - Kate.

• A Light In The Darkness (Home Invasion Horror)
A wife and mother stationed at a Southern Lighthouse during the American Civil War face off against several sex-crazed, diabolical Union Naval officers who've made their way there by boat. She'll have to do what she can to protect her ailing husband and young daughter from the monstrous men.

•Blood Runs Cold (Super Natural Horror)
Following alongside actual demonology and cryptozoological records, this work of fiction is about the Wendigo; a demon spirit that the indigenous people of Ruperts Land would report possessed and drove its victims to mass-murder and cannibalism

• Vessel of Dishonor (True Crime Horror)
An escaped deranged negro slave who's gone out of his mind with hate, wanders upon a household where a mother and her two young children reside alongside a few slaves of their own. The whole household is at risk of the most hellish of crimes.

• Amaranthine Rhapsody (Existential Horror)
Somewhere on the edge of life and death a protagonist journeys through the abyss to find her lost love.


• The Axe of Perun (Slavic/Russian Horror)
While it is a spoiler, this is the earliest appearance recorded of Peter Grimm. The story also deals with serfdom, Russian lore, and history.


• A Bullet for Johnny Dove (Western Horror)
About as Western as anything I've ever written (geographically), this is a really gritty dark story that takes place after the American Civil War.

• People of God (True Crime)
The Pentecostal Awakening happened in the very late 1800s. People. While I by no means aim to break-down the whole history of the revivalistic movement, I would point out that more than any other church the Pentecostal Movement was initially more receptive to women and negro, thereby causing bigots to rise up against them in violent sacrosanct aggression. Therein lies this tale.

• The Thin Man (Cryptid Horror)
This is an Easter-egg horror story about a ghoulish character who plays a large part in the God Walks The Dark Hills series, and is primarily known as The Lincoln Man. He's somewhat inspired by The Slenderman, Spring-Heeled Jack, etc.


• The Old Stone Well (Cryptid Horror)
What do runaway slaves and monsters have in common? Well for one, this terrifying tale. This was somewhat inspired by an episode of Amazing Stories.


• A Life Wasted (Victorian Horror)
For the third and final time in this book, a Peter Grimm story comes alive with more violent twists. This time it is in Victorian England, prior to his appearance in "God Walks The Dark Hills Book I."


• A Bedtime Story (Cryptid Horror)
This is exactly what it sounds like, some children telling a story. However, sometimes stories are rooted in truth.

SHORT STORIES in "A BOOK WITHOUT A NAME"
Two of the works attributed to me within this book were originally published digitally only as an experiment to see how well that'd do. Amazon(dot)Com wouldn't use them because according to them they were too short. Howbeit, I knew of shorter eBooks that were published exclusively on Amazon, so there's that. The rest of these, excluding the sonnet, we all written for open submissions. As a writer, I talk to other writers, one of which told me that she doesn't do Open Submissions because they're over-saturated. One by one, I received the nicest rejection letters telling me how they received such massive amounts of submissions, it was hard to choose, but these weren't selected to be a part of those. Again, it's something I tried - only because I was coming out with an anthology of my own and would put anything they didn't use in it. Here goes.

• The Dead Are There (Narrative Poem)
Of the handful of my own contributions scattered throughout this book, I began with my narrative poem. It's dark and vile. Honestly, though I dub it Western Horror, it's more nebulous/true crime from the first-person perspective of a serial murderer.

• Beast of Burden (Western Horror)
While my protagonists tend to be Confederates, Copperheads, and such, who often express real-life views and historical facts as portrayed before revisionist history came along to diminish the conquered South, there is still the ugly factor of Slavery. Occasionally, I've had a runaway slave as my protagonist. "The Old Stone Well" in the afore mentioned book "Look Away Dixieland" did that. This story focuses on a kind suffering negro slave, a vicious slave-master, and a plantation owner's two sons. It looks through the boys' eyes and follows them. The anthology that this was written for had the theme of "Earth." My mind, therefore, looked to the rigorous labor that slaves endured in the hot fields. Like most of what I write, this is really cruel.

• Subnormal (Supernatural Horror)
Within horror, a lot of people have different thoughts as to what is scary. I feel that the feeling of helplessness is scary. Thereby, I write horror surrounding that. However, horror is also about being disarming. This story was written for a bizzaro-horror. Essentially, they asked for a monster story. If you've read my books, then you know that I tend to skew towards the demonic. Really, it is an inversion of what most people would think, and yet there have been records of possessions like this. I thought, "Wouldn't it be scary to have a little non-verbal, mentally-retarded boy to become possessed by a demon, and the initial signs of it to cause him to act and speak just like a regular child?" ...Basically, it keeps getting worse from there. That is what this story is though.

• She Devil (Supernatural Horror)
If you mixed the Western Horror movie "The Wind" with the demonic entity known as Lilith together this is exactly what you'd get. This is the first time I've utilized this female demon entity in any of my stories. It's really quite vile too.

• My Bed In Hell (True Crime)
If you've read "Ain't No Grave: God Walks The Dark Hills Book III" then you know I can write torture. If you were going to turn a short story of mine into an R-rated type snuff film - this might work. Of course, it is children being abused. With that said, it's not as harsh as a lot of things that I (or Jack Ketchum) write.

• Cruel As The Grave (True Crime)
My last entry (before my sonnet) is the afore (only digitally) published short story about a man who has two wives. One of them is awful to the other. It's during the American Civil War near Chattanooga, along a real-life place called Suck Creek. This story takes some really ugly turns.

Hey Western Horror Fans, SplatterPunks, Gorehounds, Fellow-Authors, and so forth,

First, I will begin with a general statement. We're living in an interesting time when a comparatively small number of mindlessly ignorant people are misappropriating hateful labels on anything and everything that doesn't line up with their ideologies or whatnot. While this hasn't really hit me all that hard, I will say that I'm intentionally one of those authors who believes in putting warning labels on my stuff in an effort to ward off anyone that might not enjoy my novels, novellas, short stories, anthologies, and so forth. Still, it's bound to happen. There were people who went to see the film "Green Inferno" and walked out offended. The real question is, "What did they think they were going to see in a cannibal film." By the way, it is a brilliant movie. I love it, praise it, and would suggest that if something like that is in any way offensive to you, then it'd be a good idea for you to avoid all of my books like the plague.

It is also my perception that all books written by "B. L. Blankenship" are going to be similar enough that if you're into one of them, you'll likely be into the others. They will merely be different enough that the next book is worth picking up. Also, let's be real about another thing, as an author (who writes fiction to make money), I care what my readers (i.e. people who enjoy my stuff enough to keep paying me money) think. Their voices matter to me because we actually have something foundational to build on. We have a rapport.

A lot of what I have going on can be kept up with via my Facebook author page at "www.facebook.com/GodWalksTheDarkHills". I also have a personal page. The two are very different. If you're on my author page you're just going to hear about things that are relatable to Western Horror and the books I write. Anything on there will somehow jive with all of that. My feeling is that people follow authors like Stephen King or whoever because they enjoy their books, movies, graphic novels, and television series. I don't believe that readers follow them to hear their political opinions, how they should live their lives, and so forth. Really, it only ostracizes an audience. I don't call out other authors and play an "Us VS. Them" kind of game by demonizing others. We're all free to like what we like and have our own opinions, tastes, and values.

My fiction books (while they contain a vast array of history) are fiction, and to be regarded as such. If you somehow feel inspired by them to actually study the American Civil War based upon documentation from the 19th Century before and during it, that's great. However, my aim is to write an entertaining series and not to convince you of some sort of ideology. My fiction books aren't a bait-and-switch where you think it is about one thing and then it turns out to be about another. Furthermore, the books of "B. L. Blankenship" have no redemptive Christian value whatsoever. They're vile and abhorrent. My protagonists have and will tend to be individuals who I see as the underdogs, diminished, or counted out. Generally, these will be Confederate Soldiers, Copperheads, Doughheads, American Indians, and such as who were persecuted by the United States Federal Government during the 1800s. The martyred Abraham Lincoln who through revisionist history has been deified will tend to play the role of the villain. While that is mostly based on real-life sentiments, attributes, and much of his that genuinely cast him that way, with the liberties of fiction I reserve all rights to do anything with him that I deem to be possible within the confines of his character.

WHAT TO EXPECT MORE OF

The series "God Walks The Dark Hills" is central to everything that will go on within the literature of "B. L. Blankenship." It inter-links together my expansive world that has thus far mentioned the following creatures/beings: Chthonic Idiot gods, The Shadow Man, Shadow People, Wendigo, The People on the Otherside of The Mirror, Nephilim, The Great God Pan, The Wandering Jew, Spring-Heeled Jack, The Devil of Leeds, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Shadow-people, various demons, The King In Yellow, El Siblon, Men as Trees, Lithuanian Werebears, Lilith (demon), Succubi, the Sodden Man, The Tall/Thin/Slender Man - to name a few. Some of these are my creation, while others are public domain within Victorian Horror. Those things borrow only serve to add to the Victorian/Antebellum-era vibe.

...I'm just a very real person. This is me putting myself out there. If you read my books, this is what you're going to get, but then, my readers know that.

Hey Western Horror Fans, Splatter Punks, Gorehounds, Readers, Fellow Authors, and everyone else checking out my blog,

It is always great to hear from readers. Consistently, I warn people before they buy my books how monstrously graphically violent they are. Honestly, it's almost like I'm trying to talk them out of it. Subsequently, my sales continue to rise as people who can handle abject violence continue to find out about me from their friends. To be clear, it's visceral. When I first began writing fiction, I did it with the intention to write the most violent books ever penned. Often, I'm told that I have succeeded. It has been said that like Jack Ketchum, my stories make Stephen King's look like a Children's Disney Movie from days gone by. It's no surprise that some readers have often wondered what inspires me.

To be frank, I used to be highly interested in working in law enforcement and thereby have watched a ton of true crime documentaries. I've studied psychology to some end, theology, demonology, history, cults, the occult, and religion collectively to a degree that most would call heavy. Before writing books, I wrote songs, and before writing songs, I wrote poems. That speaks of any fluidity in my writing. That aside, I'm a graphic artist, and thereby a highly visual person. Also, I'm been active in ministerial and charity work for most of my life, so I also have a huge sense of empathy, which is a paramount attribution in writing well.

Largely, a lot of my concept of evil is derived from the Bible. Scripture says, "Such are the ways of an adulterous woman, she eats wipes her mouth, and says, I've done nothing wrong." That is what being the full-blown bad guy is; a lack of remorse. When you do wrong and feel conviction for it - you're not necessarily bad; you're conflicted. You're struggling. It's very human. Within Judeo-Christian theology, you're merely a sinner in need of a savior. Someone who has no remorse has grieved the Holy Spirit (like searing their conscience with a hot iron) until you're turned over to a reprobate mind. Within modern criminology, Ted Bundy claimed to be such. Within the Bible, the valley of Sodom & Gomorrah were damned to that fate specifically for the stated reason that their narcissistic, self-indulgent, uberwealthy society was extraordinarily cruel to the poor.

Evil doesn't back off when you close your eyes or turn away. Evil doesn't hold your hand. Often, true evil masquerades itself as something else. That is my mindset when I write. I think of films that get it right. Movies like "I Spit On Your Grave", "My Mother's Eyes", and so forth where the director doesn't hold your hand but instead twists the knife are the embodiment of what shock & horror should be. It should be traumatizing. Horror should make you check the backseat, leave you wondering what is standing in the shadows, hate spaces between stairs and cracked doorways.

Writing a series like "God Walks The Dark Hills" is challenging. The first dual novel was so outrageously violent that it created quite the challenge when I sat down to write the third book. Honestly, that is a struggle I'll contend with until Book VI is complete. Thank you again to all of my readers for all of your wonderful messages of how greatly you've enjoyed the books that I've toiled over for so long. Thank you for spreading the word to other like-minded horror fans.

It is not the intention for any books written under B. L. Blankenship to have any redemptive Christian value. They're all vile and abhorrent. Their sole purpose is purely for entertainment.

My new Victorian-Confederate Science Fiction series/serial "Abraham Lincoln Burns In Hell" is already drawing a lot of positive attention. Historically marked as the man who killed a higher percentage of Americans than were slain in any other war, he was & is widely regarded by many as a tyrannical monster who invaded the South in a war that was really (like most wars) about Money & Power. In these books, you'll journey along with Shakespeare quoting ladies' Man John Wilkes Booth as he travels inter-dimensionally to assassinate different tyrannical variants of Abraham Lincoln.

Being a noted historian, I am making a point to entwine real history into the books along with a good deal of fiction. Issue #1 will take John to a Steampunk North on Earth #2. It examines Abraham Lincoln's real-life relationship and corresponding beliefs with Karl Marx. Unlike most of my wide-sweeping third-person narrative stories, this series will be packed with journal entries, newspaper clippings, and so forth telling the stories of the characters and variant Earth where John must slay the monstrous politician Abraham Lincoln. It is my desire to make the first eBook FREE. I'm currently working to that end. This is far less violent than my Western Horror books and is overall YA Friendly. As is the case in quite literally every book I've written, Abraham Lincoln is viewed by the protagonist as the villain. You're welcome.

God Bless Dixie.

Hey Y'all,

With my readership and subsequent following ever-growing, people who newly meet me often ask what book of mine (B. L. Blankenship) they should start by reading. Typically, I tell them "Look Away Dixieland: A Collection of Western Horror Stories." The reason is that it consists of 13 short stories and bears the general style & tone of my longer Western Horror books. Being shorter in length it's far less intimidating than some of my larger books and series. Howbeit, with my bibliography growing that answer may change. "The Confederado: A Western Horror Tale of MesoAmerican Gore" is the embodiment of what I and many others feel that SplatterPunk/SplatterWesterns should be. Besides these, I'm adding an odd side to my world of Western Horror (i.e. Science Fiction).

In the next few months the first issue of my series/serial "Abraham Lincoln Burns in Hell" will be released in eBook & Paperback formats. The #1 Issue's eBook will be FREE. The paperbacks are projected to be about $5 each (being around 50 pages in length). Far from my general wide-sweeping third-person style of writing, it'll mostly consist of a collection of letters, journal entries, newspaper articles, and such to tell a story (i.e. so Sherlock Holmes/Bram Stoker's Dracula style). Whereas everything else that I write is extremely violent and highly sexualized Adult-Fiction, this series will be YA friendly.
The general premise is Shakespeare quoting ladies man John Wilkes Booth travels inter-dimensionally to assassinate other tyrannical variants of Abraham Lincoln on different Earths. Ergo, in some regard, it has a Sliders/Dr. Who sort of feel. In one book he'll be on this Earth, in the next he'll be on another. I will add (SPOILER) that ISSUE #1 will take John Wilkes Booth to a Steampunk (slightly Dieselpunk) Boston, Massachusetts.

...Those are simple ways to get a taste of my writing. Furthermore, "A Book With No Name: Western Horror Anthology" (that I'm personally heading up) will be out before Summer 2022. The cut-off for my contributors is April 27th (my birthday, if you wonder), thus it's likely set to land in May. All of the contributors are great. I'll have plenty of original stories, poems, and such in it of mine that is found nowhere else. It'll not only open people up to more of my works but the other terrific authors who are involved with it.

Still, some folks just like to go for the throat and jump directly into my "God Walks The Dark Hills" series. Book IV is set to be out WINTER 2022. A stand-alone book will come out between each of them. I intend to have one out per year until finished (i.e. Book VI).

***Please follow my pages on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, etc to stay informed on my growing bibliography, itinerary, and such. Additionally, if you like what you read of any author, please let people know and leave favorable reviews. I'm far too approachable & play well with others. If you are an industry professional or at least can act professionally, feel free to hit me up.***

Hey Western Horror fans, SplatterPunks, Extreme Horror Fans, Gorehounds, Fellow Authors, Readers, Reviewers, and others who may be reading this. My intention in this article is to give a brief overview summarizing every book that I have and will have put out between the years 2020-2022 as B. L. Blankenship (without any major spoilers). For ease, anytime that I'm doing this I'll keep series together, novellas, and such together.

SERIES: (God Walks The Dark Hills):
"GOD WALKS THE DARK HILLS BOOK I&II"
This 500+ page dual novel was the first Fiction book I'd ever written. The entire canonical series will go unto Book VI. A new book within it is planned to come out once a year. Book I&II begins in 1835 and pretty well goes unto the end of The American Civil War. It is central to the total world construct of all of the Western Horror that I write. When I began writing it, I felt like it probably wouldn't be the best thing ever written nor the worst. Thus, I strove to make it amid the most violent. Within this dual novel, BOOK I is a "go for the throat" style of violence, while BOOK II is a stress-inducing suspenseful type of horror - leaving you wondering when the plate is going to drop.

Regarding the supernatural, this initial book introduces the world to an inhuman creature who is most often called "The Lincoln Man" due to his similar appearance to Abraham Lincoln in one of his forms (i.e. he has several). It also introduces Peter Grimm as well as two other inhuman characters who are later identified as chthonic idiot gods (idiot being defined in the old form; one who holds no office or estate). Both of these are of B. L. Blankenship's own creation, howbeit they adopt traits and tendencies from a few other creatures in lore. More is found of these characters throughout the body of his work.

"AIN'T NO GRAVE: GOD WALKS THE DARK HILLS BOOK III"
This follows directly after the events of Books I&II. It is entirely stressful following up on such a massive book as the first dual novel. Writing this felt a lot like I was writing a snuff film. There is extensive amounts of prolonged torture in it. Just know that I strove to make it as inhumanly as I could, much as I will all of the books within this series, giving each of them a different tone.

"THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS COMING: GOD WALKS THE DARK HILLS BOOK IV"
This is set to release in WINTER 2022. BOOK IV & BOOK V will both follow directly after BOOK III. However, they will each follow different characters in the series. Of course, the conclusion to this series directly will be BOOK VI. Lest you wonder, this will be more about hunting/stalking and holding onto past grudges. And yes, I'm intentionally being vague for your benefit.

NOVELLA(s):
THE CONFEDERADO: A WESTERN HORROR TALE OF MESOAMERICAN GORE
This book is the embodiment of a trashy, ultra-violent, splatter western, grindhouse, filthy, nasty, immoral, smutty, wildly offensive, disparaging, chauvinistic, blood-bath of a stand-alone novella. With that said, the overly descriptive and disparaging tone in which I'd written it was largely inspired by Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian or An Evening of Redness in the West."


SERIES/SERIAL:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN BURNS IN HELL (BOOK 1)
In this upcoming blood-soaked Science Fiction series, Shakespeare quoting ladies-man, and superstar John Wilkes Booth travels inter-dimensionally to assassinate other tyrannical variations of Abraham Lincoln. I've begun writing it and stylistically it's vastly different from anything else I have written. There are some huge Victorian gothic elements encapsulated in its style as it does have some letters within it that are written in the first person, like Bram Stoker "Dracula" or Sir Author Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes."
There is no real measure as to how long this series will run. I will say that in the first alternate Earth that John Wilkes Booth travels to - the Northern United States is a mix of Steampunk and DieselPunk. They have biplanes, airships, small WW1 tanks, several guns from the late 1880s, automobiles ranging from the 1880s to the Model T, and street trams. Essentially, traffic is a combination of that and horse-drawn means with the horses being more prevalent. Streets are damp, either cobblestone or brick, and so forth. Frankly, saying that only skims its surface.

COLLECTIONS/ANTHOLOGIES:
LOOK AWAY DIXIELAND: A COLLECTION OF WESTERN HORROR
Thirteen stand-alone short stories are in this book. A few of them include Easter Eggs in relation to the God Walks The Dark Hills series; others don't. It ranges from Home Invasion, Wendigo attacks, to the real-life serial murderer family "The Bloody Benders."

A BOOK WITHOUT A NAME: WESTERN HORROR ANTHOLOGY
Coming SUMMER 2022 - This book will feature Western Horror short stories, dark poetry, and such from an array of authors. Everyone working on this has been terrific. Several stories and poems of my own will be in there. It's been a good deal of fun making it and I'll begin working on the cover art in the short time to come before its release.

...Thank you ever so kindly to all of you who took the time to read this. Hopefully, you both found it insightful and amusing. If you'd like to, please free to follow me on Goodreads, Amazon, & Facebook to keep informed. Also, if you've read anything of mine (or for that matter any other author) that you can say anything favorable about, please leave a nice review. Additionally, if you know of anyone who you feel would be interested in my books, pitch them my way.

B. L. Blankenship
www.facebook.com/GodWalksTheDarkHills

https://www.amazon.com/B-L-Blankenshi...

Hello, Western Horror Fans, Splatterpunks, Gorehounds, Fellow Authors, Readers, and all others that might be reading this blog post. In this initial post, I thought I'd write thoughts concerning the overly analytical processes that go on inside of my head in regards to the form and fashion implemented in how I pen my extremely violent brand of Western Horror...

THE WAY I WRITE (Form):
Recently a book reviewer kindly told me in a private conversation how much fluidity my writing has to it. When I was a little boy, I withdrew myself to the shadows writing poetry and drawing while the other children played. In my late teenage years through my early thirties, I became notable in music as a songwriter, as well as an array of other things. When I write I feel that the fluidity of speech (i.e. how it sounds matters). I'd rather write something incorrectly to give the writing a desired tone than to sound like a dry textbook. It is my personal feeling that it's not always what you're saying, but how you say it that matters.

Personally speaking, I feel that the word "lept" (British English) sounds better than the word "leaped" (American English), thus I default to that because of the way it sounds & will generally refuse to write "leaped" unless I'm writing the dialogue of somebody from New Jersey or something like that. Another way of saying it is that I'm big on The King James Bible reading of Psalm 23:4, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." There is an artful sort of poetry to its wording, and there should be, as it's quite literally music.

THE WAY I WRITE (Fashion):
I'm a pretty loquacious guy and feel rather good about it. I'd rather go into intricate details describing the trajectory of a bullet than write something that appears like a script (i.e. excess dialogue) within a book. It's not that I have an aversion to writing scripts. I've done it. I've written commercials, over 100 songs, a church play, and so forth. It's just that within a book, it's not typically my style. Naturally, my style is in the 3rd person with sometimes wide-sweeping overviews. People have told me that I paint with words. That description of "Painting with Words" is the embodiment of the style of writing that I enjoy reading and is thereby also the style that I like to write. For example, I'd say that Stephen King paints with words. Knocking other authors really isn't my thing. We all enjoy what we feel is suited to us. I've read little bits of different authors' literary work that I just cannot get into. The most popular of them is very clearly Tom Clancy. He obviously has a following and is doing something right. What I'd read of him while standing in a grocery store one day, just came off to me personally as unto something like the foods shrimp or BBQ eel. Certainly, plenty of people have a taste for those things, it's just not my flavor (nor texture). Again, I'm big into the way things are being said.

THE MATERIAL THAT I WRITE (Genre boundaries):
It's my feeling that branding is fundamentally important. Undoubtedly, the restaurant "Chick-Fil-A", like many successful businesses is successful because of consistency and quality. While I love to subvert expectations within my writing, I also have a complete awareness that to some extent that people don't like surprises; which goes back to branding. When you see "B. L. Blankenship" on a book you need to know what you're going to get. For example, if I was writing a book about Christian Theology instead of 19th Century Horror (which I have), it'd be penned under a different name (which it is).

People don't pick up a Steven King book or watch one of the countless Television Shows/Movies because they're looking for a great Romantic Comedy. In the same way, I aspire to give the readers who enjoy what I'm giving them more of the same. Thus far the cover artist Wendy Saber Cover has been instrumental in capturing the extreme brutality within my books and plastering that all over the outside of them. Frankly, I've outsold a lot of local self-published authors because of my cover art, what is written on the back of the books, and the formatting within them. It is my humble opinion that all three of those things, just like the consistency in the branding matters tremendously, and thus my actions are led onward by my beliefs. Additionally, with regards to the boundaries or lack thereof within the genre of Horror I have a great many thoughts as well.

What Is Horror?:
Horror by all means is gritty and offensive. It's generally about someone or something encroaching on someone or something to violate it/him/her/them. Horror is about someone hurting, robbing, murdering, and manipulating. It's about injustice and evil. Ergo, Horror by nature is disturbing and offensive. It's disparaging. Recently, I read a trashy book review where a notable reviewer smeared a very gifted author's book for perfectly adhering to the genre it fits into. Personally, speaking it makes me:

#1 Want to shun that reviewer (who I will not name).
#2 Support that author who is having someone wrongfully dump on their book.

What Can You Expect From My Horror?
What I write is very much extreme horror. It may contain lengthy detailed rape scenes, dismemberment, murders, torture, the excessive use of slurs, bywords, foul language, and other disparagingly profane talk and actions. At one meet and greet/book signing a parent asked me if my books were okay to get for her teenager. My response was, "Does your teenager watch Rob Zombie movies & play Grand Theft Auto, because if so - then they'd be fine with this." It's my thought that many of the novels, novellas, and short stories that I write probably couldn't be made into movies, television series, or video games due to the extremely violent &/or sexual content within them.

...Thank you ever so kindly to all of you who took the time to read this. Hopefully, you both found it insightful and amusing. If you'd like to, please free to follow me on Goodreads, Amazon, & Facebook to keep informed. Also, if you've read anything of mine (or for that matter any other author) that you can say anything favorable about, please leave a nice review. Additionally, if you know of anyone who you feel would be interested in my books, pitch them my way.

B. L. Blankenship
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