Series: Memoirs of Watt O’Hugh the Third (Book 3)
Paperback: 284 pages
Publisher: Chickadee Prince Books LLC (September 1, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1732913935
ISBN-13: 978-1732913936
Praise for WATT O’HUGH AND THE INNOCENT DEAD
“Touching tragedy, dead-pan comedy and a time-roaming cowboy? Part three of Drachman’s epic fantasy series is indeed fantastic!” ―David David Katzman, award-winning author of A Greater Monster (Bedhead Books)
“[An] engaging tale of Western science fiction and amazing fantasy … Fast-paced, energetic and fun; a dime novel for modern intellectuals.” ―Kirkus Reviews“The third entry in Drachman’sseries (after Watt O’Hugh Underground) dives right into a complex world of time travel, lost love, faith, war, and the afterlife. The titularRoamer — a time traveler with cowboy flavor — is hoodwinked into getting good and dead. He wakes up in the Hell of the Innocent Dead, a place of Chinese myth devoted to those unjustly dead whose murderers still walk free…. VERDICT: Genre mashup devotees should get some good laughs and thrills from this Western/adventure/sf/fantasy blend.” ―Nicole Steeves, Library Journal
On the morning of Wednesday, September 24, 1879, I awoke in a prison in Montana.
I did not imagine that evening might find me sprawled beneath a great and ferocious sand crab on a rancid beach, deep in the Hell of the Innocent Dead.
But that is indeed where I wound up.
The moral, if there is one: never plan your day too inflexibly.
THE WAIT IS OVER: THE CLASSIC ADVENTURE CONCLUDES….
In this, the final book of the trilogy, Watt O’Hugh, the dead/not-dead, time Roaming Western gunman, travels the length and breadth of the sixth level of Hell, recruiting a shadowy army that might storm the borders of the Underworld, free humanity and the inscapes from the clutches of the Falsturm and his Sidonian hordes, and stave off the Coming Storm.
He’ll need a little luck.
Steven S. Drachman is a writer and critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, The Boston Phoenix, The Chicago Sun-Times, and Entertainment Weekly. He has also written on the Middle East for the IsraelPalestinePeace e-zine and in the Kindle single, Enough Already: A Framework for Permanent Peace, which was the the basis for a Ted Talk in 2014.
His first novel, a Western sci-fi historical fantasy entitled The Ghosts of Watt O’Hugh, was named one of the Best of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, and Winner, Best Fantasy Novel by Indie Excellence Book Awards 2012. Book 2 of the Watt O’Hugh trilogy, Watt O’Hugh Underground, was published by Chickadee Prince Books in 2014, to equivalent acclaim. The final book of the trilogy is Watt O’Hugh and the Innocent Dead.
What is on your nightstand?
The Glass of Time by Michael Cox, which is a really intriguing story set in a country estate in Victorian England. Cox really knew how to bait the hook.
Kamiyadori by Kei Sanbe, who wrote Erased, which was one of the best TV shows I ever saw. I have not started reading it, but it’s on my nightstand.
Time Travelers Handbook by Wyllie, Acton and Goldblatt. Imagine you could open a time-traveling tourist agency. This book is really entertaining and educational. I read it over and over.
What author would you totally fan?
I saw a reading by this really well-known literary author who is still alive today, and even though the weather was perfectly pleasant, he sat there and just got really sweaty, he seemed really overheated. I won’t mention his name, because I don’t want him to google himself and come across this description. So it could have been helpful for him to have two helpers stand next to him and fan him with those big fans you see in old movies, just to keep his temperature normal. I would hope not to be one of the people fanning him, but he is a pretty well-known and prestigious author, so I guess it would be an honor.
What makes you cringe?
When someone over-flatters me, undeservedly. In my family, my dad’s generation has a name for this kind of embarrassing, cringey flattery, which is basically pronounced “bolquers” or “bulkas,” though I do not know why we call it that, and no one knows how to spell it. Luckily, it doesn’t happen very often.
Do you obsessively plot out each point or just go with the flow?
– I write what is going to happen in each chapter, and then I write the book out of order, a sentence in chapter 3, a sentence in chapter 25. It’s a weird way of writing, but my attention span has gotten shorter as I’ve gotten older.
Is there a word you love to use?
“Absquatulate.” It is a 19th century term that just means “run away.” Watt O’Hugh likes to use it a lot. It’s makes the act of being a coward sound fancy.
Also, if you have any pictures of your pet you would like to share, please attach them. My readers love animals!
– This is a picture of my guinea pig in the 1980s. He’s the only pet I ever had.
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