“The Pony Riders” was certainly a departure from my horror novels. It is also my lengthiest novel at 380 pages.

Why, then, did I write a western? Since boyhood I have been an ardent fan of westerns, and tales of the pony express captivated my imagination, especially those featuring the notorious gunman J.A. Slade. Slade, though, was romanticised in some of the stories about him in boys’ papers. In reality he was a drunken gunman and murderer which is perhaps why he was appointed Road Boss on a section of the route ridden by those brave carriers of the U.S. mail.

Mark Twain wrote of him “He was so friendly and gentle spoken that I warmed to him in spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realise that this person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-headed-and-bloody-bones the mothers of the mountains terrified their children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that his face was rather broad across and the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight. But that was enough to leave something of an effect upon me, for since then I seldom see a face like that without fancying that the owner of it is a dangerous man.”

All of the pictures which I have seen of Slade portrayed him dressed in black with a matching brimmed hat.

As a boy, armed with a toy cap-firing pistol, I used to pretend that I was J.A. Slade, gunning down outlaws and Indians.

Moving on many years, Jean and I went to New York to meet my Zebra editors. We were taken to lunch and clearly they were looking to commission my next two horror books. That was when I dropped my bombshell announcing that “I would like to write a western!”

There was a stunned silence, then “well, let us have a synopsis and some sample chapters and we will give it every consideration.”

I did just that on my return home and “The Pony Riders” saw publication in 1997. It was a factual history with a fictional plot interwoven. Of course, one of the leading characters was J.A. Slade.

It was published under the Pinnacle imprint and did tolerably well. In fact I recently noticed that a copy was offered on the internet at £30!

For myself, J.A. Slade lives on.

I have it in mind to write another western sometime. I wonder how it would be received by my current fan base.

By the mid-1990’s traditional genre publishing, including horror, had virtually disappeared. It was a trend which was not doing fans any favours.

At that time I was doing very well with Zebra/Kensington, USA, but out of the blue they informed me that they were discontinuing their horror list and concentrating on self-help books and romances. In view of my encouraging sales I was not pleased to put it mildly.

So I decided to try self-publishing. This was in the days before e-books and Print-on-Demand so I had to go down the traditional road and found a very reasonably priced printer in Ireland. There was much work involved in preparing a manuscript for the printers and I am indebted to Hal Astell for his help in this.

“The Busker” was published in 1998. It had already been short-listed for the Lichfield Prize and, following other short-listings in previous years, would have been published by Sphere who sponsored these awards. But, of course, Sphere were no longer interested in horror!

I had set this unusual horror novel in the City of Lichfield. A somewhat unusual dark fantasy theme, it was launched there at the James Redshaw bookshop with a very encouraging attendance on the evening.

The cover picture was provided by my good friend, Andrew Compton, a professional press photographer. As we decided upon a picture of the Busker, the central character, I decided to pose for this, clad in ragged garb, a hat pulled down over my face in order to hide my identity.

Then, one of the fans at the launch, raised a hand and asked “who’s the Busker then?”

I had my explanation ready, that there had been this tramp in the district for some time and I had paid him a quid to lie down in the grass and have his photo taken.

“Then why is he wearing your pullover?” the fan fired back at me!

Okay, I then had to admit to being the Busker on that photo shoot.

By 1975 I had achieved my ambition to become a professional author and that year I left my job in banking to go full time. It was a nail-biting move, though, and my main concern was for the future. Would it be sufficient to provide an income which would sustain a wife and three children? Angus, our fourth child, was born in 1976.

I had already submitted the manuscript for “Night of the Crabs” to New English Library but they had not advised me of their publishing plans except that it was due to be released in the summer of 1976.

In July that year we went on holiday to Barmouth where the book was set. So, one balmy evening we were meandering through the town where most of the shops were still open. Gavin, our eldest son, wandered into W.H. Smith’s and suddenly there was a loud shout from him that had heads turning. “Dad, they’ve got hundreds of your books in here!”

So it was. A major instore display on shelves and a central revolving rack labelled “The No.1 Beach read.”

The shop manager approached me, enquired if I was the author, and then asked if I could possibly do a signing session – there and then! The outcome was that I ended up sitting at a table inside the doorway signing copies for a seemingly endless queue of buyers.

That was just the start. “Night of the Crabs” was on sale just about everywhere, had already been reprinted before publication, and saw 9 subsequent reprints and a number of foreign translation rights sold. Four months later the movie rights were purchased by Amicus.

A year later I fulfilled another of my ambitions, selling our house in Tamworth and moving to Black Hill, a remote area of the Shropshire/Welsh border hills where I already had the shooting rights and had been travelling here for the past 14 years.

Jean and I still live here today as my fans are well aware, many of them having attended my annual Fan Club Convention here. This year is a special occasion with my convention celebrating its 25th anniversary on Sunday, September 4th.

As mentioned in last month’s Book of the Month, Mews Books, a newly formed small USA publisher in the 1970’s, commissioned me to write “The Truckers” series.  All their UK books were distributed by New English Library under the editorship of the late Peter Haining in 1977.  Hardly had I had time to change the ribbon in my manual typewriter before Peter phoned me to say that Mews wanted me to write a war series.  Peter told me to set it in Malaya, focusing on the inhumanities and cruelty inflicted on captured British servicemen and told me “go over the top, there are no boundaries in these books!”  So I did just that and both books were completed in about six weeks.

However, all was not well at Mews.  Series books were fast becoming unfashionable and they decided to close their project.  The outcome was that NEL took on the remaining books.

Soon after I received a phone call from a young editor at NEL.  She said that the violence and sex in Bamboo Guerillas was far too explicit and could I tone it down!  I said ‘no!’  I had been directed to write it as such and I was not prepared to spend time on a lengthy, unnecessary rewrite!

So in 1977 “Bamboo Guerillas” was published by NEL, with some editing (!), but no mention of it being no.1 of a series, no.2 never appeared.

It went to a reprint without mention of this in the latter.  The first edition has a red cover depicting an Allied Forces soldier gruesomely stabbing a Japanese soldier.  The front cover blurb is “Kill or be killed in a savage Jungle War.”  The reprint is in very slightly larger format showing a charging Japanese with extended bayonet.  The cover is predominantly white yet it is stated that this is a first edition!  Curious.

Some years ago I was introduced to the cover artist of the “reprint”, Tony Masero, who kindly signed my own copy for me.

I cannot find the copy manuscript of the books.  They probably got lost in our move from Tamworth to Black Hill and doubtless NEL destroyed the originals after publication of the first.  If I still had them then we would publish the second in the series.  The idea has crossed my mind to write a sequel.  “Bamboo Guerillas” is one of my most collectible titles, especially the “reprint.”  I guess the print run was small.  Copies do crop up from time to time, though, on the internet.