Regan MacArthur Writes

  "Gara scuffs apart the horse dung with the toe of her boot. The seeds from a plant spill out of the dung and they tell her what part of the world the horses came from. She's familiar with the tribe in that area and the knowledge makes her frown. She has always hated those pricks." -excerpt from a fantasy novel I'll be writing later this year (God willing)

Words of wisdom courtesy of Bok the Dragonman. (Excerpted from the current Flash Gordon comic strip by Dan Schkade, which has my highest recommendation, by the way.)

  "Now, in stories I'd read...when a man passed out he would always come to hisself with a pretty girl a-pattin' his brow... When I come to it was dark, and wet and muddy." -excerpt from TUCKER That's Louis L'Amour poking fun at himself in 1971 because the cliche he's describing occurs in almost every book he wrote in the '50s. Made me chuckle.

  ON THE WANDERING PATHS (2023) Plot? No. Story? Yes. I liked it a lot. I didn't move once during the 88-minute runtime. Jean Dujardin plays a writer who, once he learns to walk again after suffering a bad accident, sets himself the task of crossing the length of France - all 1300 km - on foot. Based on the real-life experiences of author Sylvain Tesson, France's answer to Henry David Thoreau.

Every time I happen across this movie synopsis, I fall in love with it all over again. 

An Enduring Thought About John Hughes He wasn't Ferris Bueller in real life. He was more like Ferris's gloomy best friend, the one played by Alan Ruck. Hughes was trying to tell himself something with that story. He wasn't the funny one played by Anthony Michael Hall in 𝑊𝑒𝑖𝑟𝑑 𝑆𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒. He was the shy one. He wasn't John Candy in 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑒𝑠, 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑢𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑏𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑠. He was Steve Martin. In film after film after film, Hughes kept trying to tell himself something. I wonder if he ever listened.

SHALAKO by Louis L'Amour It's a rewrite of LAST STAND AT PAPAGO WELLS, which was a rewrite of HELLER WITH A GUN, but I'm not complaining. I think L'Amour liked the story and wanted to see if he could improve upon it. SHALAKO makes a good case for itself. The writing is above-average quality for L'Amour and he gives us some great action scenes. The love interest, Irina, isn't too shabby a characterization. (If I had been L'Amour's editor, I would have encouraged him to write an argument that Irina wins or at least ties with Shalako.) Like LAST STAND, there is a sandstorm at the climax of the story, but it's nowhere near as good. Page breaks whenever the POV changes would have helped the reading experience, too.   

  Medusa's name, translated into English, means "guardian." That's interesting, thought the writer in the middle of figuring out how to do his take on the epic fantasy genre.

  THE EMPTY LAND by Louis L'Amour Listen, don't tell anyone but my heart swelled in my chest a little bit when the hero found out who his friends really were during the big climax. P.S. Many L'Amour heroes have a bad habit of lecturing the other characters. In this one, the lectures are actually quite good. 

  "She gave a little pout, a little shrug, a little wink, and and then just stood there, smiling... I smiled back and with that I was on the hook. A smile is nature's freeway: it has lanes, and you can go any speed you like, except you can't go back." -from "Cigarette Girl" by James M. Cain

TOP FIVE Inspired by a Max Allan Collins post (http://maxallancollins.com/blog/2026/03/10/top-five-noir-films-and-more/), I'll list off a few favorites of my own: FIVE FAVORITE PRIVATE EYE NOVELS 1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett 2. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler 3. The Wrong Case by James Crumley 4. Small Vices by Robert B. Parker 5. L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais FIVE FAVORITE PRIVATE EYE MOVIES 1. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) 2. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) 3. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) 4. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) 5. Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975) FIVE FAVORITE CRIME NOVELS 1. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain 2. The Name of the Game is Death by Dan J. Marlowe 3. Hit Man by Lawrence Block 4. Breakout by Richard Stark 5. Killshot by Elmore Leonard FIVE FAVORITE LITERARY NOVELS 1. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway 2. Rabbit Redux by John Updike 3. A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter 4. Blood Meridian by Cor...

  SILVER CANYON by Louis L'Amour A range-war western. A murder mystery. A preposterous love story (the hero proposes marriage to the girl at first sight in Chapter One). There were many fun moments in the book but it's not a Top Ten for me.

  UTAH BLAINE by Louis L'Amour An early, uncharacteristically plot-driven work, this book boils over with action. L'Amour crafted the literary equivalent of the Patrick Swayze movie ROAD HOUSE. That's not a complaint, though. I thought UTAH BLAINE was a hoot and a half.

  THE FIRST FAST DRAW by Louis L'Amour A cut above. L'Amour put an extra effort into the writing and the characterization with this one. He's trying to deliver both the thrills of a western and the thoughtfulness of historical fiction and he makes it all work. Highly recommended. P.S. This book upsets some readers because the protagonist Cullen Baker is based on a real-life historical figure who, it appears, was a little less than heroic. I didn't have any feelings about the real Cullen Baker before I read L'Amour's novel so the liberties he took didn't matter to me, but I guess I can sympathize a little when I recall how enraged I felt about George Custer's depiction in THEY DIES WITH THEIR BOOTS ON.

  KILLOE by Louis L'Amour It's hard to say which is the better cattle-drive novel by L'Amour - KILLOE or LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN - but KILLOE is certainly the smoother reading experience. Recommended.

HONDO by Louis L'Amour It's okay. L'Amour would go on to rewrite HONDO years later and call it CONAGHER. I liked that one better.

  BRIONNE by Louis L'Amour It's a father-son treasure hunt adventure, but the relationship never really comes to life. The son's name might as well be Plot Device. L'Amour wrote better books than this one, but the finale is something special. L'Amour was usually happier writing fistfights than gunfights but he makes a real effort to do a shoot-'em-up here and the result is golden.