A4 Issue three, the Wyrd Wyld Wyst Issue.

Download PDF here.

Stories this issue

Body Count, The Badge, Contract Killer, Snake Oil, The Cathouse, Ghost Plains, Six Shooter.

And some thoughts (contain spoilers!)

Let me first say, I've wanted to do a spooky western issue since I first came up with the format, in fact, I wanted to smartly print bullet holes on the paper that could be punched out with a pencil, cus I thought that would be fun. 

This issue was the hardest to write though as I had a bunch of thoughts on the stories and had a bunch more that actually would've required proper research and work (and I mean, yes this all takes time, but the prospects of reading a book to come up with a four line story was a bit nutso even for me) which is why you're not getting stories about Loki coming to the new world and revelling at the opportunities for disinformation using the telegraph, or the Conquistadors as alien invaders to american soil, killing a people who then curse it to the long suffering of the gun that killed them, the ancient dragon and the chinese american's laying the iron for the railroad. 

Instead you got these, hopefully you'll enjoy them just as much!

Body Count

I had named the protagonist in this "Black" Jack Tarr. Still think it's a good name, but I literally had to change the font size to get this to even fit in the space provided. I liked the idea of the unseen dead holding back his gun. It was neat. 

The Badge

Oh the revisions, the revisions I could tell you about! I had the twist early, but getting to it with the limited word count was gonna be a job. I had a posse being whittled down, but really it was all extra words. I also explicitly talk about the wolf, but reader, if I can't trust you to infer that then who can I trust? My one line note for this read: Sherif hunting werewolf. Dies after eating his silver badge. 

Contract Killer 

Contract killer came about after I posted an early version of Six Shooter to twitter, Six Shooter lacked any sort of genre feel but at the same time I love the idea of listing each bullet and who was killed by it. On twitter (or, rather, 'X') someone suggested the last bullet could be a human sacrafice, and while I didn't use that suggestion, it did rather spur me on to think of a man making a deal with the devil. And maybe... that man kills the devil? Anyway, these two stories are linked!

Snake Oil

Sometimes when I write these things, it's really as simple as WHAT IF THIS BUT INSTEAD THAT? my note for this read:

Snake Oil salesman whose cure actually works.

But again, hard to make that sentence into a story, I have to misdirect (I mean if it works, why on earth isn't he making a fortune selling it?) and then I thought, what if no-one believed him and then he just sort of gave up trying to convince them. I think the modern world is now filled with that kind of snake oil salesman, they don't believe what they're telling you at all, but it doesn't matter they're just doing a song and dance to empty your pockets.

The Cathouse

You pays your money and you come out happy. Does it matter if they're blood sucking succubi? Probably not.

Ghost Plains

This one I did some research on. I had a vague notion I wanted to do something with the number of Bison killed - ghosts wandering the plains, so I did some research and honestly, it's chilling. A population of 30 million reduced to 325 (there's more now, but THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE) specifically to reduce the animal that the Native American's relied on. I didn't feel right turning it in to a throw away ghost story so instead, you get some facts.

Six Shooter

There's a better version of this story to be had. But it may be beyond me currently to do it. But the idea of each bullet telling a segment of the life of the person who fired it is an interesting one.

Anyway hope you enjoyed it!