We are delighted to welcome back authors Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall to Omnimystery News.
Earlier this week we had the opportunity to talk with the authors about the fourth and final book in their "Cowboy and Vampire" series, The Last Sunset (Pumpjack Press; June 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats), and yesterday we shared an excerpt from it.
Today we're featuring a guest post from the authors titled "Cold, Cold (Undead) Heart", a play list for The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall
It's just past midnight in the middle of nowhere. A battered old blue pickup truck is parked haphazardly, abandoned, by the side of a deserted highway. The engine is running and the driver's door is thrown open. The headlights are on but fading fast, barely able to light up the barbed wire fence and the sagebrush beyond. Just beyond that, where the night seems even darker, something moves in the shadows. Inside the empty truck, the radio is blaring. The song, crackling with static: Hank Williams, "Your Cheating Heart."
The soundtrack to true terror is classic country. Only classic country from the 1950s and 1960s has the raw, heartbroken emotion of bone-deep despair that makes the blood run cold.
The people of LonePine, Wyoming, like in most small towns in the slowly dying American West, know about heartbreak and economic despair. And ever since the undead showed up, they know about terror too. That's probably why every pickup truck radio, every jukebox in every saloon, and every portable radio is belting out classic country while the rest of the world has moved on.
Over the course of their torrid, doomed romance, Tucker — a broke cowboy with duct-taped boots whose best friend is an overly sensitive cowdog named Rex — introduces Lizzie, the unexpected love of his life and a tragically unwilling vampire, to the realities of rural life and to the royalty of country music.
Buck Owens — "Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache)" and "Play Together Again Again," are LonePine favorites. Cowboys always assume love will break a man, and Tucker is no exception. These songs might have been playing over the loudspeaker during the monthly jackpot roping at Cooper Ranch where Tucker and Lizzie first meet.
Jim Reeves — Smooth-crooning heartache on "Welcome to My World," Jim Reeves sounds like scotch on the rocks in a funeral parlor. The darkness of these songs filled the catacombs of Tucker's mind when he first comes to realize his new woman is occasionally dead … well, fully undead.
Patsy Cline — With her unforgettable voice, "Walkin' After Midnight" becomes the lovers' theme song after Lizzie can no longer face the daylight.
I go out walkin' after midnight
Out in the starlight, just hoping you may be
Somewhere a-walkin' after midnight
Searchin' for me
Hank Williams — "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and "There's a Tear in My Beer" along with pretty much anything by Hank Williams reflects the horse blanket of desperation knit with stubborn pinpricks of hope covering the cursed passion Tucker and Lizzie feel for each other.
Hank Williams was belting it out from the jukebox as guests gathered for Tucker and Lizzie's ill-fated midnight truckstop wedding, but it was a George Strait song — "Amarillo by Morning" playing just before the wedding ceremony was disrupted by mercenaries, foreshadowing the loss.
Country music serves as a cultural bridge for the out-of-place urban vampires who descend on LonePine, dressing up for the part in their finest dude ranch duds to act all cowboy, and listen to Shania Twain — "Whose Bed have Your Boots been Under" — endlessly at the Silver Dollar bar while they try to two-step.
The heartbreak comes to a head in the last book. When Tucker is alone and miserable, his radio keeps playing the classic George Jones anthem for the heartbrokenest of the heartbroken: "He Stopped Loving Her Today."
He said "I'll love you till I die"
She told him "you'll forget in time"
As the years went slowly by
She still preyed upon his mind
He kept her picture on his wall
Went half-crazy now and then
He still loved her through it all
Hoping she'd come back again
George doesn't stop loving her until his casket goes into the ground, of course. Tucker likely won't either.
And speaking of death as a source of comfort, when Tucker stages his own near death experience to track down a missing Lizzie, he experiences the Meta — an metaphysical energy field where undead consciousness collectively wait out the mortal dangers of the day. As he's bleeding out in the arms of his handsome Russian rival Rurik, Tucker is comforted by the angelic sounds of Kitty Wells singing "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels."
Of course, it's not ALL country music in LonePine. When the carnival comes to town in The Last Sunset (along with a death cult; the two are not connected), it's a song from the classic prog rock band Uriah Heep that's blaring as Lizzie returns to LonePine: "Lady in Black."
Brilliant prog rock aside, classic country is clearly the soundtrack to true terror. Although modern country is pretty terrifying too, but for much different reasons.
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About the books: First published in 1999, The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection is genre mash-up that helped blaze the trail leading to a re-imagining of the vampire metaphor for a modern audience and the resulting undead pop-cultural explosion. Witty, sexy and authentically western, the four books deftly navigate the darkest sides of human nature while celebrating the power of love; it's been called everything from a campy cult horror classic to a trailblazer in its own new genre: Western Gothic.
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Clark Hays was raised on a ranch in Montana and spent his formative years branding cows, riding horses and writing. His poetry, creative fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals, magazines and newspapers. Most recently, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for a short story appearing in Opium magazine.
Kathleen McFall was born and raised in the heart of Washington, D.C. She has worked as a journalist and has published hundreds of articles about natural resources, environmental issues, biomedical research, energy and health care. Previously, she was awarded a fellowship for fiction writing from Oregon Literary Arts.
The authors live in Portland, Oregon.
For more information about the author, please visit their website at CowboyAndVampire.com and their author pages on Goodreads (Clark Hays/Kathleen McFall), or find them on Facebook and Twitter.
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The Last Sunset by Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall
The Cowboy and the Vampire Series
Publisher: Pumpjack Press
Take one long, last look at LonePine, Wyoming, population 438. It's been two years since the vampires quit the quirky little town and things are mostly back to normal — broken dreams and never enough whiskey. But that's about to go to hell.
Hold on tight for a midnight showdown when a psychotic religious order takes the entire town hostage — including Tucker's long-lost brother — to lure Lizzie from her frozen exile in Russia. The mad monks know Lizzie's murder will strand the ruling vampire elite in a disembodied afterlife so the cult can impose their twisted beliefs on the living and undead alike. It's a rip-roarin' stampede as a cowboy and a vampire try to round up the shattered pieces of their unusual romance.
With the fate of the world on the line yet again, can Tucker and Lizzie put aside their broken hearts to face one last sunset together?
Slap leather or reach for the sky.
— The Last Sunset by Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
