Michael Merriam - Terror at Tierra de Cobre - SSBA Finalist

Happy New Year - Hope you enjoyed your holidays! I had a hectic holiday season and am now back full swing at work, life, and writing! And as part of that writing, I'm kicking off with another SSBA featured finalist. This series will continue for the next five Sundays, after which, I'll start reviewing the winning books.  

More information on the SSBA can be found here, and links to all of my other SSBA posts can be found here.

Today, the author I am spotlighting is Michael Merriam, author of Terror at Tierra de Cobre, and previously included in my semi-finalist series.

 Michael Merriam - Author Biography

Michael Merriam is the award-winning author of the Weird West and Steampunk series Sixguns & Sorcery. Michael’s work has appeared with Carina Press, Queen of Swords Press, and Uncanny Magazine, among others. He has published fourteen novels, novellas, and collections, as well as over 100 short stories and poems. He is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, and his scripts have been produced for stage and radio. Like most artists, he has worked various odd jobs over the years, including short-order cook, late-night radio disc jockey, and manager of a puppet troupe. He lives in Minneapolis, MN, with his wife, housemate, a fluffy cat, and an elderly dog. 

Where you can find Michael Merriam: 

You can visit his website at www.michaelmerriam.com. Merriam can also be found all over the internet on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and other places.

Interview

1. How did your writing journey begin/come about?

I sold my first written piece, a haiku, at ten years old.  I’ve spent most of the rest of my life chasing that high of the acceptance letter. Of course, it was years before the next sale.  In my late twenties and early thirties, I mainly wrote poetry (and I still do!) and sold a few pieces to literary magazines here and there. I was also beginning to write short stories in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. I collected some lovely rejections from all the best magazines in the genre. Then life put me in a space where I needed to set the writing aside for a few years, returning to it in my early forties, shortly after my eye disease pushed me over into being legally blind. Eventually, I found my voice and style (though they are ever-evolving), and since then, while it's still not an easy road, I’ve found modest success as a writer. 

 

2. Who are your biggest influences/favourite authors/books?

My influences are all over the place, from mainstream to various genres. I would say for authors, Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, Robert Frost, Philip Larkin, Roger Zelazny, Jack Vance, Agatha Christie, Tony Hillerman, Willa Cather, Elmore Leonard, and Lois McMaster Bujold, among so many others. Each of these authors has books I go back to again and again. 

 

3. What are some recent books you’ve enjoyed and can recommend?

“Starling House” by Alix Harrow
“Townie” and “Ghost Dogs” by Andre Dubus III
The Penric and Desdemona series by Lois McMaster Bujold
“The Language of Roses” by Heather Rose Jones
Anything written by Stephen Graham Jones
“Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“Hot Singles in Your Area” by Jordan Shiveley
“Countess” by Suzan Palumbo 

 

4. Please tell us a bit about some of your other writing/work

I have a novel with the fantastic Queen of Swords Press, called “Last Car to Annwn Station.”  It is set in my hometown of Minneapolis, circa 2007, featuring Welsh mythology and phantom streetcars. They also published “Terror at Tierra de Cobre,” which is part of my Sixguns and Sorcery series, and you can find out more about the series on my website, including the omnibus edition of the previous four novellas titled “Charming Mayhem.” I also have a couple of poetry collections, “A Winter Night” and “A Spring Morning,” indie published through my own little imprint. I also work as a spoken-word artist, playwright, and have a YouTube channel with my wife called “The Merriams,” found here: https://www.youtube.com/@themerriams 

 

5. What’s next for you?

I am working on a new Sixguns and Sorcery piece about a transgender Pony Express rider who must retrieve a lost mail pouch in a nightmare parallel world. I am planning the release through my own imprint of a short fiction collection, tentatively titled “In Transit,” and that is the actual theme of the stories, characters in transit; be it planes, trains, ships (sea and star), automobiles, or other means of transportation. I’ve just completed a short screenplay, a little paranormal romance set in a coffee shop, that I am looking to get produced. I’m playing around with a retelling of “True Grit” in a space opera setting. 

Terror at Tierra de Cobre by Michael Merriam

An ancient evil has awakened…

Strong women, ancient magic and the walking dead make for a heady mix. In Michael Merriam’s tale, seven women are called to protect a small mining town in the New Mexico Territory, Tierra De Cobre, against an evil that has killed or stolen the town’s men and is twisting the souls of the townswomen. The Sihuanaba is part siren, part shapeshifter, possessed of the body of a beautiful woman, her face a horse’s skull with flaming eyes. Once she is freed from her copper prison in the mine, she feeds off the miners to regain her strength, then consumes or twists all the men who come to rescue them. Maria Garcia, recently widowed and quietly fierce, has the answer: hire women to fight the monster. And they do. Taking the classic Western “The Magnificent Seven” as a jumping off point, the town’s defenders are assembled, all women from wildly different backgrounds, united by one mission: to defend the town and defeat the Sihuanaba. All the odds are against them, the price of failure is death or worse and all they have is each other.

Buy the book here!

Semi-Finalist Interview 

1. What inspired you to write this book?

At some point, I got the idea to take seven women characters from various classic Country and Western songs and then write an homage to the "Magnificent Seven" and "Seven Samurai." Of course, then I had to answer the questions: Who are these seven women? Why only women? From those questions, the plot began to take hold, and the antagonist started to take shape. The characters, of course, grew and morphed, becoming more than the archetypes they were in the beginning. Characters who initially served as little more than background moved to the forefront as the publisher and editor discussed the piece's structure. But at the core, it all started because I really wanted to write an homage to those two films above while interrogating the myth of the American West. If you are curious about the songs that sparked the idea, a YouTube playlist features a few of them, as the concept evolved, so did the music. Playlist here.

2. What was your favourite part of writing it?

The discovery. I had my initial concept, my initial characters, and plotted out a beat sheet, but as I wrote and thought, and wrote more, I discovered more about the characters than I had in the initial thumbnail character sheets I'd started with. I also really enjoyed the challenge of looking clear-eyed at the sometimes ridiculous mythology of the American Old West, versus the reality, while trying to stay faithful to the material I am writing a homage and love letter to. Once I reached the editing stage with the publisher, they presented me with ideas and concepts that deepened the story, making it richer and more complex. While there is action, horror, and dread, as a writer, it is always the characters that really interest me and make a story sing. Trying to give such a large cast of characters nuance and agency in such a small space was a challenge I relished. 

 

 

Thanks for reading! 

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