Like many writers, Howard Hopkins wears many hats. He is an expert in the glorious days of pulp fiction, the likes of Doc Savage, the Shadow, and the Avenger. He published Golden Perils, dubbed the "prettiest fanzine in pulpdom" during the mid 80s-early 90s. He then turned his attention to writing fiction, concentrating on horror short stories and later novels, but because the horror market was saturated, he tried his hand at Westerns, successfully. Under the name Lance Howard, he has written 15 hardback westerns, 11 of which have gone into Large Print editions. These are traditional westerns, with a bit more. His latest, The West Wolf, deals with spousal abuse and a werewolf. Under his own name, he currently has four published eBooks, all from Dancing Willow Publications. As many eBook authors have found, eBooks have given him the freedom to experiment.
- Pistolero, a western that goes beyond the traditional bounds of the Old West.
- Grimm, a modern day struggle between good and evil, in a world of witches and demons in the little town of New Salem, Maine. Grimm is an EPPIE award finalist in Horror for 2001.
- The Nightmare Club #1: The Headless Paperboy, the first in a series of children's horror stories.
- Dark Riders which combines a traditional Western with vampires.
Howard's Homepage http://members.aol.com/Hhopk15447/page1....
INTERVIEW
How did you come up with the idea of writing a vampire western?
Originally, I planned it as a straight western called the Black Riders, a revenge story wherein a band of desperadoes dress up in black robes and ride about bumping off folks under the guise of vigilante justice. Of course, their motives are not at all pure. I soon found, upon plotting the tale, the characters were not doing what I wanted them to do, and scenes were growing out of control and in some cases "supernatural." I started wondering what if these guys weren't quite human? What if...they were vampires? From there the book fell into place for the most part and grew to a much longer length than my print publishers accepted. A few bumps in the trail presented themselves after writing straight westerns for so long, but I was able to do pretty much what I set out to do in the end.
