Frontier Partisans is all about those pulp sensibilities.

My formative years saw me tearing off and consuming great chunks of pulpy goodness from Robert E. Howard (Conan, Solomon Kane, Francis X. Gordon), John Benteen (the Sundance & Fargo novels) Allan W. Eckert (The Frontiersmen) and Win Blevins (Give Your Heart to the Hawks) all at the same time. I was indiscriminate in assessing supposed quality. I read A.B. Guthrie’s The Big Sky and Vardis Fisher’s Mountain Man not for literary merit, but for the juice of buffalo hump and the whiff of black powder. At the same time, I recognized that some of those books were as beautifully crafted as anything I had been handed as “literature.”

To this day, I would rather read a cracking frontier yarn than anything the likes of Philip Roth ever wrote.

So, I take great satisfaction in seeing a key text underpinning one of the great novels of the 20th Century released by a small press that is devoted to the glory of pulp. Starlite Pulp is offering a reprint of Samuel Chamberlain’s weird and wild memoir of his time in the borderlands:

My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue is the memoir that inspired Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy, one of the classic westerns of our time. Written by soldier and explorer Samuel Chamberlain, My Confession chronicles his experiences in the Mexican War of 1846-8, and introduces the reader to some of the source material and iconic characters found in McCarthy’s novel, such as Tobin, Webster, Glanton, and The Judge, as well as figures both renowned and infamous in American history. It includes commentary and essays by Daniel Pyne, Stephanie Reents and Manny Torres, with an Introduction and Afterword by Brian Townsley.

The book does not include Chamberlain’s watercolors — volumes that do are very expensive. But you can find most of those online these days, so that is no drawback. And I very much look forward to the essays.

Townsley, bless him, emphasizes that Starlite Pulp uses no AI and never will. He is one of a family of artists, and he has no time for the Great Plagiarism Machine. The outfit is clearly made up of the ardent-hearted, devotees of pulp and noir. Long may they ride.

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As I was composing this post, I ran across another bit of pulpy goodness — a forthcoming Western/Horror flick called The Wolf and the Lamb. It got my attention because Charles Vane Zach McGowan is in it.

McGowan’s Vane is the most Howardian character ever brought to the screen (much closer to the x-ring than Arnie’s Conan).

It’s appropriate to see McGowan crop up in a Weird Western — because REH pretty much invented the genre with the 1932 story The Horror From The Mound.

Dig the caper:

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Reader Padre scouted up a post from Peter Kelly of The Woodland Escape — a venture into the timbers of Fennario, where faith and superstition intersect:

Step back into the shadowy forests of early North America, where isolation, faith, and fear shaped everyday life. In this episode, we explore the deeply rooted superstitions that haunted settlers in both New France and the American colonies.

From covered mirrors trapping souls to clocks stopping at the moment of death, these beliefs weren’t just folklore—they were a way to make sense of a harsh and uncertain world.

Through vivid storytelling, Peter brings to life the eerie traditions and chilling warnings that guided colonial behavior and kept fear close to the hearth. Venture deeper into legends like the flying canoe, where voyageurs risked their souls for a fleeting return home, and the terrifying presence of the loup-garou lurking just beyond the firelight. These stories weren’t entertainment—they were survival tools in a world where the unknown pressed in from every direction.

This episode also lays the groundwork for future explorations into the Wendigo and the Salem witch trials, where superstition and fear would reach even darker heights. Stay close to the fire… you may not be as alone as you think.

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It is best to bear in mind that no creature of folklore — not even the fearsome Wendigo — can match the real evil that men do. Season 2 of the excellent MeatEater: Blood Trails podcast has launched. True crime in the hunting field…

The S2/E1 caper:

Mike Crites wanted to live alone in the Montana mountains. He built a cabin, managed his land for wildlife, and spent his days hunting elk and mule deer. But isolation didn’t mean peace. After years of escalating disputes with neighbors over access roads and property lines, Mike vanished in September 2011. What investigators eventually found was far worse than a missing person case—it was a dismemberment, with remains scattered across both sides of a mountain pass. Two neighbors emerged as key figures. One had a long history of conflict with Mike. The other showed up the day before he disappeared—and later changed his story. More than a decade later, the case finally made it to trial. But even now, the most critical questions remain unanswered.