WICKED WHEELS is a novel told in four interconnected tales. They are:
1. “Snakes and Spells Vs. The Silver Bullet"
2. “Cauldron Car”
3. “Brujas Behind Bars”
4. “American Dreamers”
The first three stories have each been previously published in professional venues. “American Dreamers” is a new novella that’s longer than the other three combined. The book is the start of a new series, THE WARLOCK WHEEL WARS, that’s crazy fun.
Full disclosure: “Cauldron Car” is only the second story I ever sold. It was written sometime around 1995, and I think you’ll see a lot of Tarantino, Joe Lansdale and Elmore Leonard, my three big influences at the time. The story appeared in the hardcover TERMINAL FRIGHTS collection edited by Ken Abner and received some pretty good reviews. (Veteran reviewer Don D'Ammassa thought it was one of the best three in the collection.) I still love the tale.
Pulpy noir influences. That’s what led to WICKED WHEELS. I wanted to get back to some of my fun old influences.
It was in that spirit that I wrote the trio of stories that now start WICKED WHEELS. And that's what I wanted to get back to with "American Dreamers."
Where did the first three stories come from?
I’ll probably write detailed“How I Came to Write…” essays about all four stories eventually, but I’ll give you a little nibble here.
“Snakes and Spells…” - I wish I could remember the exact show, but in the ‘90s and ‘00s quickly produced half-hour ultra-reality documentary footage shows like COPS were a dime a dozen. They were beyond cheap to make but they were exciting - and, in the case of COPS - often tons of fun to watch. Lots of these shows featured aerial footage of car chases, usually on the L.A. freeways. It was the age of OJ Simpson and his Bronco, after all. One night the footage was of someone who had stolen a freaking bus. I sat there fascinated, enthralled as the bus lumbered along, crashing into everything in sight, but impervious, an undeniable, undamageable leviathan, followed by a lengthy string of law enforcement vehicles, blue and red lights flashing away. And I thought, Damn! I wanna do that! On paper, at least! So I did. Except my chase takes place in Indianapolis and has magic.
"Cauldron Car" - I was really into B movies when I wrote this one. I don't want to give away too much of the story, but suffice it to say I was driving home alone from my in-laws one night while my wife was in France, studying, and I had a vision of the backseat filled with ghosties, ghoulies and freakish, Lovecraftian monsters. The car summoned them because we had passed some significant spot on the road. That was it. I played around with the idea from there...
Add to this a notion I had at the time that pulp fiction wasn’t “pulpy” enough. A few, like Lansdale, were pulling it off, but not many writers were going “over the top” enough for me. Even in a field like horror, where imagination was king, where literally anything could happen, a lot of what was going on out there was simply too safe, too familiar. No fun. That's one element I've always found in the three literary inspirations I mentioned above - even in their most serious work, you can feel the thrill they feel in every word and twist they've crafted.
“Brujas Behind Bars” - I probably don’t need to say much about this one, aside from the fact that, as a red-blooded American male, from CAGED HEAT to THE BIG BIRD CAGE to ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE SS, I’ve watched my share of “chicks in prison” movies. But I also like to think of myself as a fairly decent person, so I wanted to turn some of the uglier aspects of those movies upside-down. Shrug, maybe I managed to, maybe not. You be the judge. But I will say this: I hope you like all the women in this tale, for White or for Dark, because they’ll all be back in subsequent books in the series - boy, will they ever!
“American Dreamers” - Fast forward to 2018 or so. By then I’ve published many more stories. A couple novels. But the entire publishing landscape is so different. The story market, as I knew it, is basically gone - every publisher who took a chance on those over-the-top stories I wrote in the ‘90s has disappeared. I’ve put together a massive (very affordable!) collection of tales called UNTIL YOU CAN SCREAM NO MORE, but, you'll notice only Snakes is in there.
I keep looking at those three "over the top" tales (and a couple others - like "Black Cab" - which is also in SCREAM - and "The Trunk" which will probably be in WICKED WHEELS' sequel) and musing. There’s a bigger picture here.
I’ve never lost my taste for writing stuff with an over-the-top B movie mash-up feel - look at my Riders of the Weird West series - but I hadn’t really done it in a modern setting in a while.
So, simply this: As I suggested above, I wanted to write something that freewheeling and fun again in an urban setting. And I wanted it to be big this time. And maybe even incorporate those old characters.
Once upon a time, I had taken on a temporary job in a Wal-Mart to help cover some bills (don’t ask) and one day, as I was working in the maze-like corridors that line the outer edges of the store, seeing someone working high up above on the gigantic shafts and ventilators, things started falling into place.
Those spiderlike ventilator arms, how they were like Wal-Mart reaching into every corner of America and every corner of every American's life...
The way everyone flocks to Wal-Mart, zombielike…
The way the workers themselves are like zombies or aliens shipped in for the day...
The way there’s a store in every town…
And yet, once you get to know the customers and workers at Wal-Mart as individuals.
We all have such dreams, every one of us.
Wally World: It’s a microcosm and a macrocosm of, well, everything.
And surely it’s a hotbed of warped interdimensional magi-tech governmental conspiracy, right?
It’s the only logical conclusion! And that's how "American Dreamers" - and thus WICKED WHEELS -was born!
We’ll see the sequel, MEAN MOTORSCOOTERS, featuring biker werewolves, alien wizards, a supernatural secret police force and plenty more car chases and magically recrafted vehicles in 2021.
1. “Snakes and Spells Vs. The Silver Bullet"
2. “Cauldron Car”
3. “Brujas Behind Bars”
4. “American Dreamers”
The first three stories have each been previously published in professional venues. “American Dreamers” is a new novella that’s longer than the other three combined. The book is the start of a new series, THE WARLOCK WHEEL WARS, that’s crazy fun.
Full disclosure: “Cauldron Car” is only the second story I ever sold. It was written sometime around 1995, and I think you’ll see a lot of Tarantino, Joe Lansdale and Elmore Leonard, my three big influences at the time. The story appeared in the hardcover TERMINAL FRIGHTS collection edited by Ken Abner and received some pretty good reviews. (Veteran reviewer Don D'Ammassa thought it was one of the best three in the collection.) I still love the tale.
Pulpy noir influences. That’s what led to WICKED WHEELS. I wanted to get back to some of my fun old influences.
It was in that spirit that I wrote the trio of stories that now start WICKED WHEELS. And that's what I wanted to get back to with "American Dreamers."
Where did the first three stories come from?
I’ll probably write detailed“How I Came to Write…” essays about all four stories eventually, but I’ll give you a little nibble here.
“Snakes and Spells…” - I wish I could remember the exact show, but in the ‘90s and ‘00s quickly produced half-hour ultra-reality documentary footage shows like COPS were a dime a dozen. They were beyond cheap to make but they were exciting - and, in the case of COPS - often tons of fun to watch. Lots of these shows featured aerial footage of car chases, usually on the L.A. freeways. It was the age of OJ Simpson and his Bronco, after all. One night the footage was of someone who had stolen a freaking bus. I sat there fascinated, enthralled as the bus lumbered along, crashing into everything in sight, but impervious, an undeniable, undamageable leviathan, followed by a lengthy string of law enforcement vehicles, blue and red lights flashing away. And I thought, Damn! I wanna do that! On paper, at least! So I did. Except my chase takes place in Indianapolis and has magic.
"Cauldron Car" - I was really into B movies when I wrote this one. I don't want to give away too much of the story, but suffice it to say I was driving home alone from my in-laws one night while my wife was in France, studying, and I had a vision of the backseat filled with ghosties, ghoulies and freakish, Lovecraftian monsters. The car summoned them because we had passed some significant spot on the road. That was it. I played around with the idea from there...
Add to this a notion I had at the time that pulp fiction wasn’t “pulpy” enough. A few, like Lansdale, were pulling it off, but not many writers were going “over the top” enough for me. Even in a field like horror, where imagination was king, where literally anything could happen, a lot of what was going on out there was simply too safe, too familiar. No fun. That's one element I've always found in the three literary inspirations I mentioned above - even in their most serious work, you can feel the thrill they feel in every word and twist they've crafted.
“Brujas Behind Bars” - I probably don’t need to say much about this one, aside from the fact that, as a red-blooded American male, from CAGED HEAT to THE BIG BIRD CAGE to ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE SS, I’ve watched my share of “chicks in prison” movies. But I also like to think of myself as a fairly decent person, so I wanted to turn some of the uglier aspects of those movies upside-down. Shrug, maybe I managed to, maybe not. You be the judge. But I will say this: I hope you like all the women in this tale, for White or for Dark, because they’ll all be back in subsequent books in the series - boy, will they ever!
“American Dreamers” - Fast forward to 2018 or so. By then I’ve published many more stories. A couple novels. But the entire publishing landscape is so different. The story market, as I knew it, is basically gone - every publisher who took a chance on those over-the-top stories I wrote in the ‘90s has disappeared. I’ve put together a massive (very affordable!) collection of tales called UNTIL YOU CAN SCREAM NO MORE, but, you'll notice only Snakes is in there.
I keep looking at those three "over the top" tales (and a couple others - like "Black Cab" - which is also in SCREAM - and "The Trunk" which will probably be in WICKED WHEELS' sequel) and musing. There’s a bigger picture here.
I’ve never lost my taste for writing stuff with an over-the-top B movie mash-up feel - look at my Riders of the Weird West series - but I hadn’t really done it in a modern setting in a while.
So, simply this: As I suggested above, I wanted to write something that freewheeling and fun again in an urban setting. And I wanted it to be big this time. And maybe even incorporate those old characters.
Once upon a time, I had taken on a temporary job in a Wal-Mart to help cover some bills (don’t ask) and one day, as I was working in the maze-like corridors that line the outer edges of the store, seeing someone working high up above on the gigantic shafts and ventilators, things started falling into place.
Those spiderlike ventilator arms, how they were like Wal-Mart reaching into every corner of America and every corner of every American's life...
The way everyone flocks to Wal-Mart, zombielike…
The way the workers themselves are like zombies or aliens shipped in for the day...
The way there’s a store in every town…
And yet, once you get to know the customers and workers at Wal-Mart as individuals.
We all have such dreams, every one of us.
Wally World: It’s a microcosm and a macrocosm of, well, everything.
And surely it’s a hotbed of warped interdimensional magi-tech governmental conspiracy, right?
It’s the only logical conclusion! And that's how "American Dreamers" - and thus WICKED WHEELS -was born!
We’ll see the sequel, MEAN MOTORSCOOTERS, featuring biker werewolves, alien wizards, a supernatural secret police force and plenty more car chases and magically recrafted vehicles in 2021.