Welcome, Michael!

Michael Tichy is the author of Behind Every Tree, Beneath Every Rock, and the mini collection Wound of the West. He has contributed to a number of anthologies, and his debut novel, The Winnowing Draw, is forthcoming from Castaigne in February 2024. He lives in Ohio with his wife Amy and two greyhounds, Sabrina and Sunny, who keep him very busy in spite of his wandering mind on their many walks.

About Wound of the West

Wound of the West is a mini collection of four stories, an expansion of the world of the forthcoming novel, The Winnowing Draw. It’s the late 1800’s, the west is largely unsettled, populated by unseen horrors that live on the fringes of fledgling civilization, but the greater darkness is what people brought with them. A town’s prosperity hides a terrible secret. A girl who has lost everything finds comfort and strength in the deep recesses of the earth. An apparent oasis harbors secrets that threaten to destroy any who find it. A mountain man leads a stranger on a quest that could destroy them both. Framed like your favorite anthology horror movie, letters scattered throughout tell the story of a man slowly succumbing to the madness of this uncanny frontier.

Interview with Michael Tichy

Tell us about yourself – what is something readers would be surprised to find out? 

I don’t know how surprising it is, ha! But I’m a psychiatric nurse practitioner by day. I’ve been studying psychology and psychiatric medicine my entire adult life and been practicing Buddhism for much of that time. Most of my stories are populated with characters informed by these disciplines, who are wounded, and often aware of the shackles their wounds have placed on them but feel powerless to escape the patterns that imprison them. I feel like we can find a shred of empathy even for some people who on the surface seem irredeemable. 

What is it about the Weird West genre that draws you to it? What are your favorite aspects or examples of this often-underappreciated genre?

The American west has been endlessly mythologized, and it continues to be. I think there is an enduring appeal to the harsh beauty of the land, and it taps into the broader mythology of individualism that is responsible for so much awful shit in the world. I love to research the history and contrast it with the stories we tell ourselves, and honestly, I feel like adding supernatural elements to the mix provides the opportunity to dramatically vivisect some of our most enduring illusions.

What inspired you to write this story?

It’s going to sound silly. My muse. My daemon as Matt Cardin would put it. I was at AuthorCon in 2022 and this scene flashed into my head, which turned out to be the end of the novel. Everything in Wound of the West and The Winnowing Draw evolved from the few pages I scrawled then and there. 

If you were living in the Weird West, what kind of character would you be?

Probably the town drunk. Ha. But I would mean well. There’s a lot of me in the disgraced priest in my book who was scalped and wandered out of the desert, and lost himself in a bottle.

Are there any other writing projects you’re working on?

So many! The Winnowing Draw, my weird western literary horror novel will be out in February. I’ve been working on an experimental haunted house book called Void Haus with Sam Richard, Evan Shelton, Justin Lutz, Edwin Callahan, and Matthew Mitchell. It will probably be out by the time this is posted. I’m running an open call in November with Barbara Castro-Rojas for an anthology of monster stories inspired by John Steinbeck. Currently I’m working on a novel about a social worker for vampires.

What are you reading right now?

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. 

Favorite weird west movie/book/comic/etc. and why?

Can I do movie and book?

Movie – The Wind – it’s kind of a quiet/slow horror that plays with some similar themes to my work. Dread, the darkness that grows in quiet places. And some would argue otherwise, but I feel there is an ambiguity there as to what is real and what is not in the world of the movie.

Book – Dead Man’s Walk by Larry McMurtry – McMurtry was way ahead of the game on the weird western, before it had a label. There is some wild stuff in that book. The further along it goes the more ethereal. The sense of unreality fully takes it into weird territory by the last third.

Anything else you’d like to add about writing or the Weird West (tips, etc.)?

I can’t emphasize the importance of research enough. Even if you plan to play in the world of western mythology, understanding the meaning of it requires you to understand what that mythology is an exaggeration of or deviation from. Read native authors. An Indigenous People’s History of the United States is indispensable. 

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