Friday, May 27, 2011

On Dangerous Ground

I could tell that the wound in the youngster’s arm was several hours old and knew that he suffered it during the initial encounter earlier that morning. To ride for hours at a furious gallop while in what must have been great pain speaks volumes about the strength and determination of these people. I have long regretted that fate cast us as enemies, as there was much to admire about the Comanches.
-- "The Conversion of Carne Muerto" by James Reasoner from On Dangerous Ground: Stories of Western Noir.

James Reasoner's gifted storytelling is on display with several others in this impressive line-up that includes Dave Zeltserman, Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, Harry Shannon, Jon L. Breen, Gary Lovisi, and Robert J. Randisi to name a few.

5 comments:

Randy Johnson said...

Looking forward to this. Amazon has a link to let you know when it will be available.

David Cranmer said...

You're going to enjoy it, Randy.

Charles Gramlich said...

Definitely gonna be picking this one up.

Anonymous said...

Curious why you turned off your comments below?

David Cranmer said...

Charles, I've read several stories since yesterday and it is a solid collection.

Anonymous, I have a day job that, on occasion, requires me to be face to face with hard cases. Sometimes I have to physically remove such persons from where I work. I do it and then it’s over. I don’t believe in lingering and listening to bs. Nothing good ever comes from such conversations.

On May 26th I awoke to snide remarks directed at a friend of mine and I handled it the best way I could. I posted my thoughts here at 8:08 am and I was pleased to see that many people stood up and voiced support for James. But by the next morning on the 27th I deleted several comments from the tail end of the Angered post because I don’t believe in being snide or snarky or whatever you want to call it back. Why wallow in mud to make your point?

A good current example is MSNBC's Ed Schultz calling conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut." At some point those lingering back and forth clever exchanges lead to name calling and lack of reasoning.

But by then—to wrap it back to my first paragraph—I am outta there.

Make sense? I was long-winded.