We need more fiction.
We need more beguiling villains worthy of the conflicted hero’s pursuit.
Their smokey rooms have to be soaked in familiar imagery, while swift subversions of any genre’s expectations make their entrances and turn over their tables. The roads they’re on have to twist and turn their mission so they lose sight of the incitement far behind them.
We need Hollow Grim, noir sleuth manhunter rifleman, and Eric Verrity, misunderstood superhuman crime fighter, among a small series of revolving main characters.
Welcome to the Potboiler. Pulpy paperback genre fiction with some fresh paint.
Good, fun reading for your ears.
Find out more at on my website: https://patrickhughes.ca/
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We need more fiction.
We need more beguiling villains worthy of the conflicted hero’s pursuit.
Their smokey rooms have to be soaked in familiar imagery, while swift subversions of any genre’s expectations make their entrances and turn over their tables. The roads they’re on have to twist and turn their mission so they lose sight of the incitement far behind them.
We need Hollow Grim, noir sleuth manhunter rifleman, and Eric Verrity, misunderstood superhuman crime fighter, among a small series of revolving main characters.
Welcome to the Potboiler. Pulpy paperback genre fiction with some fresh paint.
Good, fun reading for your ears.
Find out more at on my website: https://patrickhughes.ca/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Potboiler is an old term for pulpy paperback genre writing that I think deserves to shine.
Let’s do the intro.
Hollow Grim knows a confrontation with Sterling Stern is inevitable and necessary, to end the exploitation of his father’s legacy in law enforcement. As he prepares to leave for Chicago, the new telephone in the Progress Hotel begins to chime.
The former Tribune reporter and chronicler of his father’s exploits has the same thoughts about inevitability and tells him over the line that he intends to write the right ending for the story he believes is shared between the three of them.
Riders have him surrounded. Their mission is clear. The downfall is upon them.
The 3 episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit https://patrickhughes.ca/ for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
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Welcome to The Potboiler, I’m Patrick Hughes and this is Hollow Grim and The Downfall, part two.
Potboiler is an old term for pulpy paperback genre writing that I think deserves some sunlight.
Let’s do the intro.
Hollow Grim is known across the western United States as a marksman man hunter for the US Marshal, a good killer hunting down the fugitives eluding the deputies and private agents. His celebrity is a burden for every day it’s a benefit.
Any notoriety he’s found lives under the massive shadow of his legendary father, Marshal Charlie Grim. His father’s name was built in ink, in the pages of the Chicago Tribune, reported by a writer named Sterling Stern. They were the hero and his troubadour.
Years after Charlie’s death, Hollow encounters the role that his father’s biographer played in crafting his legend, and how he continues to profit from it. He resolves that ending is going to have to be written not worthy of print.
The 3 episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit https://patrickhughes.ca/ for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
Enjoy
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Let’s do the intro.
Hollow Grim is known across the western United States as a marksman man hunter for the US Marshal, a good killer hunting down the fugitives eluding the deputies and private agents. His celebrity is a burden for every day it’s a benefit.
Any notoriety he’s found lives under the massive shadow of his legendary father, Marshal Charlie Grim. His father’s name was built in ink, in the pages of the Chicago Tribune, reported by a writer named Sterling Stern. They were the hero and his troubadour.
As time passes and the story grows, tension grows between them as Charlie questions the value and veracity of celebrity. A young Hollow questions: is it the hero who makes the story or the story that makes the hero?
The 3 episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit https://patrickhughes.ca/ for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
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Potboiler is an old term for pulpy paperback genre writing that’s ready to face the bad guy.
Let’s do the intro.
Todd needs Eric’s help. A disgruntled worker at an office building downtown has taken his coworkers hostage, and has a bomb set explode. Todd doesn’t have time to negotiate or space to rush the scene. He knows that Eric is his best and only chance.
The encounter Eric enters will reset the trajectory of Eric’s public life. A door is going to be open for him that is awfully difficult to close.
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Eric has spent a life not being injured and aware he was being hurt. He didn’t have the awareness to understand the pain he’d endured could have an affect on the people that care for him. As he shares more of his story with Molly he has to contend with the hurt she feels for him.
As Todd discovers that the motel fire was likely arson, Eric is also forced to confront that his actions draw attention and attention brings consequences.
The episodes of this story will be offered with no embedded commercial interruption. Visit https://patrickhughes.ca/ for links to me and to my other projects.
The Hero Business features excerpts from my novel The Valiant Unheroic - available for order on my website.
Eric Verrity Rocks
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Eric’s heroic deeds have reintroduced his long estranged foster brother into his life, and while his relationship with Molly deepens, his life of solitude and habit is becoming an increasingly distant memory. At the same time his new doctor is seeking a deeper understanding of his strength and his weaknesses.
After leaving a session with his doctor, Eric encounters a young woman on the bus that appears to need his help. He embarks on a rescue that ends tragically but commands popular media attention in the aftermath focused more on his notoriety than his desire to help.
Heroism invites conflicted scrutiny. Good deeds often come with a consequence.
The episodes of this story will be offered with no embedded commercial interruption. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
The Hero Business features excerpts from my novel The Valiant Unheroic - available for order on my website.
Eric Verrity Rocks
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Eric’s memories of his therapy as a teenager with Doctor Harmon and the parallel lines stringing to his current discussions with Doctor Maynard diverge as young Eric learns Doctor Harmon has terminal cancer and is getting his affairs in order. Arrangements have been made to see Eric securely into financial adulthood. Meanwhile, Dr. Maynard clinical interest in his patient grows into fascination as he continues to probe his heroics pursuits.
On a regular night in his neighborhood, Eric stumbles across a fire at a motel and women trapped in her room. After a harrowing rescue, people crowd around him, converging with a threat he’s never experienced, admiration.
As his relationship with Molly grows, and he eagerly awaits another spaghetti dinner, Eric is dumbfounded to find a face from his past, investigating the headlines featuring his name, standing at his door.
The episodes of this story will be offered with no embedded commercial interruption. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
The Hero Business features excerpts from my novel The Valiant Unheroic - available for order on my website.
Eric Verrity Rocks
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As his court mandated therapy continues, Eric’s memory counters his new doctor’s interest in his pursuits with that of the child psychiatrist. Shortly after his foster brother Todd’s harrowing football injury, Dr. Harmon begins visits with Eric who has matched his brother in a descent into depression.
Doctor Harmon quickly sees something special in Eric, encouraging him to accept the things that make him different to help him find a purpose.
Reflecting the growing relationship with Dr Maynard, Eric is encouraged to discuss his motives to identify the purpose that makes him so different.
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Following Eric’s brave intervention during an attempted robbery at her corner store, Molly insists on cooking Eric a home cooked meal. Watching her work in his kitchen, Eric recalls his the period of his childhood in the foster home of the Danvers, lead with images of the kind and maternal Mrs. Danvers, and his impressive foster brother Todd.
His memories carry him through the formative period, and the rise and fall of his brotherly bond with Todd, who guided him, protected him and ultimately rejected him.
The episodes of this story will be offered with no embedded commercial interruption. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
The Hero Business features excerpts from my novel The Valiant Unheroic - available for order on my website. https://patrickhughes.ca/
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Eric is an exceptional young man that has spent his life being told that the things that make him special are flaws and limitations. He just wants to help. Helping a stranger at a moment of vulnerability is a complex thing. It’s a intrusion, even if it’s the right thing to do.
As Eric begins his court mandated therapy, his friendship with Molly, the proprietress of his neighborhood’s grocery store, takes on a new dimension when he intervenes during an attempted robbery.
The episodes of this story will be offered with no embedded commercial interruption. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
The Hero Business features excerpts from my novel The Valiant Unheroic - available for order on my website.
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Hollow’s strategy has turned to desperation. Uncertain in the dropping temperature exactly how much of his life has left him, he knows his choice now to act or let the cold take him, but without knowing which of the judge’s enemies has taken this action his disadvantage is practically a death sentence.
The three episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
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Every year ends with winter. It comes to an end like everything else, with lifeless unforgiving cold. As Hollow Grim monitors his wounds, as the temperature drops, and as the day grows increasingly dire, the search through his memory of Judge Jameson’s past for a suspect continues to occupy his mind.
He needs to know the rifle that has him cornered on the frozen ridge so he can determine how to retaliate, escape or survive.
Find more at my website: https://patrickhughes.ca/
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On a desolate day in January, Hollow Grim is hunting deer on a familiar trail, where Doc Shillington’s land backs on to Judge Irving Jameson’s expansive family property. Hiking the migration path Hollow has hunted on since his father used to take him every Sunday, a rifle shot from across the valley suddenly makes him the hunted, taking shelter on the frigid cliffside.
Unable to move without entering the rifleman’s crosshairs and uncertain of his position, Hollow has the threat of the quickly dropping temperature moving the urgency up as the day continues to pass.
He pours through his knowledge of Judge Jameson’s past, to keep his addled mind occupied in the cold, and to form a suspect so he can mount his defence.
Check my website: https://patrickhughes.ca/
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A compulsion to hunt, to untie a knotted riddle, and to answer an injustice he can’t tolerate has led Hollow Grim to an encounter with a suspected child killer, who was only moments from the end of his rifle’s deadly aim but has managed to turn the trap against him.
Hollow is captive by the killer he’s been hunting, a man of his own compulsions. Instead of dispatching his problem, this killer has decided he wants to play a game. Hollow is given no choice but to play along. His captor knows how to leverage a threat.
The episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
Enjoy
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Hollow Grim can find no peace. A letter in his pocket continues to remind him of a measure he’s left undone and a wrong done he can’t live with.
He has his predator in his sights, and certainty in his instincts, but knows his lack of evidence won’t allow him to act in his normal definitive manner.
The episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
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Nevada 1897
All Hollow Grim wants out of life is quiet. He’s happiest in the moments of peace he finds in his quiet postal office, sorting the mail for Progress Township. The quiet is stirred from time to time, when he’s called to his occasional role as a fugitive hunter for the US Marshal.
Hollow Grim is a killer. He is the killer this state needs. He is methodical, precise and emotionless in his approach to the predators he is tasked to hunt. His effectiveness is sharpened in his detachment. He is going to find himself becoming more dangerous, as he is going to become emotionally involved.
Hollow finds himself captivated by a letter sent to him by the mother of her missing daughter, a woman he once knew as a pleasure girl at Gertrude’s hotel. He is well accustomed to accounts of violence and tragedy, but the image of the lost innocent girl stays with him. When he crosses paths with the wrong detail, shared by someone in town with the right opportunity, he sees a thread tying through a series of abductions, thought until then to be a wild stirring string of gossip.
Captivation becomes a war path for Hollow and the predator at the end of his hunt.
The three episodes of this story will be offered with no commercial interruptions. Visit patrickhughes.ca for links to me and to my other projects. Please stick around after the story for some light business.
Enjoy
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Hollow Grim, part time marksman manhunter for the US Marshal, part time postal clerk in Progress Township in Northern Nevada, is on trial for murder. His killshot was fired across the townsquare in broad daylight in front of dozens of onlookers, neighbors and friends.
The prosecution has built an air tight case that seems to have all but convinced the old judge presiding. The verdict seems imminent and the gallery seems prepared to provide the noose.
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It’s the dying days of the Nineteenth Century, Northern Nevada. The Postal Clerk of Progress Township, Nevada, and sometimes agent fugitive hunter for the US Marshal Service, Hollow Grim, is on trial for murder.
The entire township was gathered at the steps of the chapel as Sunday funeral service parishioners started the second verse of Amazing Grace, when Hollow Grim’s rifle shot cut through the high noon sky and killed John Butler, in front of his friends and neighbors.
The prosecution’s case is bulletproof. The judge’s gavel hovers over a guilty verdict and a sentence of execution.
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Nevada, 1896.
Hollow Grim is a killer. He’s the kind of killer Nevada needs. Some predators will only be a threat to the civilized herd. They’ve proven themselves unworthy of a place above the desert dirt. Hollow hunts them as an occasional marksman contractor for the US Marshal.
When he’s not on a fugitive’s trail or setting aim with his notorious rifle, Hollow lives a quiet life as the Postal Clerk for Progress Township, sorting the correspondence from the changing country and hoping the Marshal won’t call on his violent services.
Today Hollow is on trial for murder. His kill shot rang out across the town square, in the closing moments of the Sunday chapel service. John Butler lies dead, an innocent man by all accounts, surrounded by his friends and neighbors.
The gallery that once saw Hollow as a hero wants to see his face framed in a noose
When Hollow Grim starts on the path of a fugitive, every step forward is precise and strategic, until he sets the line of his rifle. He doesn’t kill for a bounty, and never acts on rage or vengeance. Why did he kill John Butler?
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