Clark Hays's Blog - Posts Tagged "west"
Welcome to LonePine, Wyoming, population 438
It’s like any other small, slowly dying town in the modern American west, only with vampires.
Note: This is a post Kathleen McFall and I wrote for the awesome Book Chick City blog. It's British, which makes us international celebrity wannabes.
Cut off from the rest of the world by miles of open range and rugged snow-capped mountains, LonePine is the quintessential American western town: the county fair and rodeo is still the biggest social event of the year, crusty old ranchers drive to town at sun-up for breakfast — waving at every pickup truck they pass because there are no strangers — and it’s not unusual to see a horse or two tethered outside the Watering Hole, the town’s favorite saloon. Not much has changed there in a hundred years … until then the undead ride into town.
The first vampire to visit LonePine (at least in THIS century: Red Winter) is Lizzie Vaughn, a beautiful, ambitious reporter from New York who falls hard for Tucker, a down-on-his-luck cowboy born and raised in LonePine. From opposite worlds to begin with, their relationship takes a turn for the paranormal when they learn Lizzie is a latent vampire.
Worse, a special power courses through her veins and the entire undead world wants to either control it, or eliminate her entirely. The ensuing clash of urban and rural cultures — between star-crossed lovers and between good and evil forces — is at the heart of The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series.
Fittingly, we came up with the concept for The Cowboy and the Vampire , the first book in the series, in 1999 at a rural western truckstop in the high desert town of Madras, Oregon. We were trying to rekindle our own relationship and the worlds-collide storyline (Kathleen is from Washington, D.C., and Clark was raised in Montana), along with the macabre and gothic elements, fit the moment and our personalities. And the decision to anchor the series in the modern American west tapped into our shared love of the region and the myths that sustain it.
People are fundamentally shaped by their environment, and that is especially evident for those hailing from the western U.S. Cowboy country covers thousands of square miles, from northern Montana down through southern Arizona, from eastern Oregon to western Nebraska, and everything in between. People who live in the west tend to value silence and space because their nearest neighbor may be ten miles away, their daytime view is uninterrupted by buildings all the way out to the craggy mountain peaks along the horizon and at night, most westerners can hear coyotes or wolves (if they are lucky) beneath clear, starry skies.
The west we love is a place where people can be alone with nature and their thoughts, which is why our books feature a distinctive element — a wide open spirituality that’s as big as the west and linked to vampires: the Meta. Along with the expected characteristics of the undead — insatiable blood lust, solar mortality — our vampires die every dawn, completely. That means they have a never-ending series of near death experiences as their souls, their consciousnesses, go racing of into the Meta. The Meta is an external shared consciousness, like a giant energy field, where humans and vampires alike exist before and after death. Experiencing the Meta, just like humans who “come back” after death, gives one a profound sense of calmness, certainty and belonging.
That uncluttered confidence is common in the west, which gets to the heart of the region as an ideal, tangling up history with the golden myths of movie screen cowboys and pulp fiction heroes. Those who settled the frontier were tough, resilient and independent, characteristics which earned them a permanent place in the national, and even international, psyche. Hollywood added a sheen that mostly canceled out any of the negatives associated with life in a hard time — the brutality and cruelty and greed; they were human, after all — until the historic cowboy became an icon and a symbol of all that’s good and right in the world. And the perfect foil for the time-tested symbols of evil, corruption and decadence — vampires.
Of course, nothing is ever exactly what it seems in LonePine — cowboys are not always heroes and vampires are not always villains. The only thing that’s certain is that romance is always hard. We hope you’ll take the time to visit LonePine and meet some of the cowboys, cowgirls, survivalists, ranchers, barmaids, vampires and overly sensitive cowdogs that make it a funny, sexy and scary destination.
Check out Blood and Whiskey to learn more about the Meta and the wide open, wild and undead West.
Note: This is a post Kathleen McFall and I wrote for the awesome Book Chick City blog. It's British, which makes us international celebrity wannabes.
Cut off from the rest of the world by miles of open range and rugged snow-capped mountains, LonePine is the quintessential American western town: the county fair and rodeo is still the biggest social event of the year, crusty old ranchers drive to town at sun-up for breakfast — waving at every pickup truck they pass because there are no strangers — and it’s not unusual to see a horse or two tethered outside the Watering Hole, the town’s favorite saloon. Not much has changed there in a hundred years … until then the undead ride into town.
The first vampire to visit LonePine (at least in THIS century: Red Winter) is Lizzie Vaughn, a beautiful, ambitious reporter from New York who falls hard for Tucker, a down-on-his-luck cowboy born and raised in LonePine. From opposite worlds to begin with, their relationship takes a turn for the paranormal when they learn Lizzie is a latent vampire.
Worse, a special power courses through her veins and the entire undead world wants to either control it, or eliminate her entirely. The ensuing clash of urban and rural cultures — between star-crossed lovers and between good and evil forces — is at the heart of The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series.
Fittingly, we came up with the concept for The Cowboy and the Vampire , the first book in the series, in 1999 at a rural western truckstop in the high desert town of Madras, Oregon. We were trying to rekindle our own relationship and the worlds-collide storyline (Kathleen is from Washington, D.C., and Clark was raised in Montana), along with the macabre and gothic elements, fit the moment and our personalities. And the decision to anchor the series in the modern American west tapped into our shared love of the region and the myths that sustain it.
People are fundamentally shaped by their environment, and that is especially evident for those hailing from the western U.S. Cowboy country covers thousands of square miles, from northern Montana down through southern Arizona, from eastern Oregon to western Nebraska, and everything in between. People who live in the west tend to value silence and space because their nearest neighbor may be ten miles away, their daytime view is uninterrupted by buildings all the way out to the craggy mountain peaks along the horizon and at night, most westerners can hear coyotes or wolves (if they are lucky) beneath clear, starry skies.
The west we love is a place where people can be alone with nature and their thoughts, which is why our books feature a distinctive element — a wide open spirituality that’s as big as the west and linked to vampires: the Meta. Along with the expected characteristics of the undead — insatiable blood lust, solar mortality — our vampires die every dawn, completely. That means they have a never-ending series of near death experiences as their souls, their consciousnesses, go racing of into the Meta. The Meta is an external shared consciousness, like a giant energy field, where humans and vampires alike exist before and after death. Experiencing the Meta, just like humans who “come back” after death, gives one a profound sense of calmness, certainty and belonging.
That uncluttered confidence is common in the west, which gets to the heart of the region as an ideal, tangling up history with the golden myths of movie screen cowboys and pulp fiction heroes. Those who settled the frontier were tough, resilient and independent, characteristics which earned them a permanent place in the national, and even international, psyche. Hollywood added a sheen that mostly canceled out any of the negatives associated with life in a hard time — the brutality and cruelty and greed; they were human, after all — until the historic cowboy became an icon and a symbol of all that’s good and right in the world. And the perfect foil for the time-tested symbols of evil, corruption and decadence — vampires.
Of course, nothing is ever exactly what it seems in LonePine — cowboys are not always heroes and vampires are not always villains. The only thing that’s certain is that romance is always hard. We hope you’ll take the time to visit LonePine and meet some of the cowboys, cowgirls, survivalists, ranchers, barmaids, vampires and overly sensitive cowdogs that make it a funny, sexy and scary destination.
Check out Blood and Whiskey to learn more about the Meta and the wide open, wild and undead West.
Bugging Out with the Cast of Blood and Whiskey
Any self-respecting prepper keeps a bug-out bag loaded with survival gear near the door, and the characters from The Cowboy and Vampire Thriller Series are definitely used to dealing with the worst.
The rationale behind a bug-out bag is simple — it’s a backpack or some other form of personal conveyance loaded with all the stuff necessary to survive the first few days after some kind of catastrophic event. Say a meteor hits — doesn’t seem so unlikely now, does it Russia? — or there’s a huge, city-leveling earthquake or solar flares disrupt earth communications and turn half the population into solar zombies. Whatever the cause, when (not if) disaster strikes, a bug-out bag provides careful planners with a head start that won’t be enjoyed by his or her neighbors who will be wandering around wringing their hands and wondering what to do. And probably becoming zombie food.A bug-out bag is basically the first step of survival 101. A typical starter bag might have some waterproof matches, a pocket knife, a couple of ponchos and a few granola bars. Moving up the scale of sophistication, start thinking about adding a first aid kid, some duct tape and a water purifier.
We have a modest bug out bag. And so do the characters from our books, The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. Here’s a rundown of what our characters keep close at hand for when the Juan de Fuca plate drops open and a tsunami wipes out half of the west.
Tucker: He’s a tough, resourceful, perpetually-broke cowboy living in LonePine, Wyoming who falls for a vampire (Lizzie). His bug-out bag, kept in a pair of saddlebags in his truck, is pretty simple:
* Duct tape
* A folding knife
* A pair of fencing pliers (sort of the cowboy multi-tool)
* A bottle of whiskey
* A bag of snack cakes with enough preservatives to withstand the end of times
Lizzie: She’s a newly turned vampire queen in love with a cowboy (Tucker). Her bug out bag, though she would be loathe to admit she has one, is focused more on intellectual rather than physical survival. Now that she’s a vampire, she could survive just about anything anyway, except for direct sunlight, which is why she only keeps a few things in her purse:
* A copy of Anna Karenina
* A notebook and three pens
* A juice box of blood
* A body bag (in case she gets caught out doors at dawn
* A corkscrew (hopefully there will be wine after the apocalypse)
Lenny: He’s Tucker’s best friend and a way-off-the-grid-survivalist who practically invented the concept of bug out bags. He lives in a hidden bunker with stockpiles of guns, ammo and freeze dried meals. But Lenny, who has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, knows all too well that a single bunker-buster dropped from a drone would leave him homeless. That’s why he has a bug-out bag by the exit of the escape tunnel from his bunker. Actually, it’s more like a bug-out trunk, with a bug out bag in it, as well as:
* Shelf-stable food and water for five days
* A collapsible assault rifle with 500 round of ammo
* A Geiger counter
* A first aid kit and mobile surgical operating suite
* Bio waste bags
* A hand crank power generator
* Solar chargers
* An emergency radio
* Lanterns
* Flares
* A kindle loaded with every how-to book ever printed
* A tool kit, U.S. and metric
* Fire starter tablets and matches
* A wire saw
* A tent
* Sleeping pads
* Night vision goggles
* A collapsible commuter bike
* A water filtration system
* Much more
Elita: She’s a sexy, powerful vampire who has lived through all manner of catastrophes. No matter the challenge, from feuding vampire species to angry villagers with torches, she always lands on her feet. It doesn’t hurt that she’s painfully beautiful and sexually insatiable. Her bug out bag fits neatly in one pocket:
* Lipstick
* A matching bra and panty set
* A fresh pack of clove cigarettes, but no matches— she can always find someone else to light them
With all the bad stuff going on in the world, a focus on self-reliance is on the upswing and blissful ignorance is waning. People are taking survival preparation more seriously — there’s even a show about it — and after a few killer storms, it doesn’t seem quite so crazy these days to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Some people choose to assemble their own bug-out bags, others buy them fully assembled online to save the time. No matter the source, one thing is clear, no bug-out bag is complete without a copy of The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. It can get mighty boring in a nuclear winter, so bring some good books. Actually bring a couple copies. They can be bartered for supplies.
The rationale behind a bug-out bag is simple — it’s a backpack or some other form of personal conveyance loaded with all the stuff necessary to survive the first few days after some kind of catastrophic event. Say a meteor hits — doesn’t seem so unlikely now, does it Russia? — or there’s a huge, city-leveling earthquake or solar flares disrupt earth communications and turn half the population into solar zombies. Whatever the cause, when (not if) disaster strikes, a bug-out bag provides careful planners with a head start that won’t be enjoyed by his or her neighbors who will be wandering around wringing their hands and wondering what to do. And probably becoming zombie food.A bug-out bag is basically the first step of survival 101. A typical starter bag might have some waterproof matches, a pocket knife, a couple of ponchos and a few granola bars. Moving up the scale of sophistication, start thinking about adding a first aid kid, some duct tape and a water purifier.
We have a modest bug out bag. And so do the characters from our books, The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. Here’s a rundown of what our characters keep close at hand for when the Juan de Fuca plate drops open and a tsunami wipes out half of the west.
Tucker: He’s a tough, resourceful, perpetually-broke cowboy living in LonePine, Wyoming who falls for a vampire (Lizzie). His bug-out bag, kept in a pair of saddlebags in his truck, is pretty simple:
* Duct tape
* A folding knife
* A pair of fencing pliers (sort of the cowboy multi-tool)
* A bottle of whiskey
* A bag of snack cakes with enough preservatives to withstand the end of times
Lizzie: She’s a newly turned vampire queen in love with a cowboy (Tucker). Her bug out bag, though she would be loathe to admit she has one, is focused more on intellectual rather than physical survival. Now that she’s a vampire, she could survive just about anything anyway, except for direct sunlight, which is why she only keeps a few things in her purse:
* A copy of Anna Karenina
* A notebook and three pens
* A juice box of blood
* A body bag (in case she gets caught out doors at dawn
* A corkscrew (hopefully there will be wine after the apocalypse)
Lenny: He’s Tucker’s best friend and a way-off-the-grid-survivalist who practically invented the concept of bug out bags. He lives in a hidden bunker with stockpiles of guns, ammo and freeze dried meals. But Lenny, who has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, knows all too well that a single bunker-buster dropped from a drone would leave him homeless. That’s why he has a bug-out bag by the exit of the escape tunnel from his bunker. Actually, it’s more like a bug-out trunk, with a bug out bag in it, as well as:
* Shelf-stable food and water for five days
* A collapsible assault rifle with 500 round of ammo
* A Geiger counter
* A first aid kit and mobile surgical operating suite
* Bio waste bags
* A hand crank power generator
* Solar chargers
* An emergency radio
* Lanterns
* Flares
* A kindle loaded with every how-to book ever printed
* A tool kit, U.S. and metric
* Fire starter tablets and matches
* A wire saw
* A tent
* Sleeping pads
* Night vision goggles
* A collapsible commuter bike
* A water filtration system
* Much more
Elita: She’s a sexy, powerful vampire who has lived through all manner of catastrophes. No matter the challenge, from feuding vampire species to angry villagers with torches, she always lands on her feet. It doesn’t hurt that she’s painfully beautiful and sexually insatiable. Her bug out bag fits neatly in one pocket:
* Lipstick
* A matching bra and panty set
* A fresh pack of clove cigarettes, but no matches— she can always find someone else to light them
With all the bad stuff going on in the world, a focus on self-reliance is on the upswing and blissful ignorance is waning. People are taking survival preparation more seriously — there’s even a show about it — and after a few killer storms, it doesn’t seem quite so crazy these days to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Some people choose to assemble their own bug-out bags, others buy them fully assembled online to save the time. No matter the source, one thing is clear, no bug-out bag is complete without a copy of The Cowboy and the Vampire and Blood and Whiskey. It can get mighty boring in a nuclear winter, so bring some good books. Actually bring a couple copies. They can be bartered for supplies.
