My story “Santuario” has been published in Starlite Pulp Review Issue 8.
Santuario has an interesting origin. Around ten years ago, when I was still wet behind the ears and trying to find my voice as an author, I spent most of my writing time working on stuff for the old DPW website. Back then, I promoted my work heavily on Twitter (this was before we had a podcast and the website was our only focus), and I’d garnered enough of a following that other writers began to take notice of my work.
I’m not sure exactly how it all went down, but at some point I was invited to join a writing group and write a story for an upcoming anthology. It was to be the first volume of a series, with each issue focusing on an element. The first issue’s theme was fire.
It’s difficult to say why I chose to write a western. As far as I know, I hadn’t written a western previously, nor was I familiar with the genre beyond western movies. Regardless, I utilized some tropes I liked about the old Spaghetti Westerns I watched growing up: an unnamed protagonist, grotesque gang members, and an innocent person thrown into the chaos. That stuff was easy to write, but I still had to incorporate fire in some capacity.
On a whim, I came up with the idea of an Eternal Flame set in the ruins of an ancient holy site. Without any plotting, I worked a story around that. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, what I was writing was a post-revenge story. So basically, a story set after a man gets revenge on those who had wronged him.
In The Princess Bride, after Mandy Patinkin’s Inigo Montoya gets his revenge on Count Rugen, he says, “I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life.” That line always stuck with me. What happens to a character after the story is over when they still have to live out the rest of their life? That’s the story I’m interested in.
Due to a bunch of nonsense I still don’t understand, the writing group fizzled out even though everyone had their stories completed and ready to publish. That left me with a way-too-long story written in a genre most places don’t want. Without much consideration, I moved on and chalked it up to another wastebasket tale.
A few years later, we decided to put out a DPW short story collection. Of course, this never came to fruition either, but that’s a whole other bout of nonsense. When I was going through possible stories to include in the collection, I came across Santuario, or as it was originally titled until about 6 months ago, La Llama Eterna (The Eternal Flame). Yeah, that title didn’t hit English readers well. Those I showed it to thought the story was about an immortal llama.
Undying camelids aside, I reread the story, and though it was pretty rough, I realized the story had enough promise for the collection. So I painstakingly edited it until I was sure it was ready for the world.
As I said, that collection didn’t end up coming out, so the story was once again shelved for many years. This time, though, I always kept it in the back of my mind whenever I saw open calls for fiction. Unfortunately, I could never find a place that would accept the genre AND high word count. That was until I read a few issues of Starlite Pulp Review.
If you follow me, you know I had a boxing story featured in Starlite Pulp Review 6. I didn’t submit anything to 7, and honestly, I hadn’t planned on submitting anything to them again. At least not for a couple of years. But then I remembered my western. Something told me that it deserved to see the light of day.
Going through it again leading up to the winter of 2025/2026, I once more realized it needed a ton of work. It’s crazy to think I’ve improved so much as a writer in the last ten years, but I have, and so I had to practically rewrite the story to get it into the shape I wanted it. That also includes changing the title to something that wouldn’t make readers think of farm animals.
Once I finished the story, for good! I knew it would get accepted. It was one of the few times in my writing career that I was damn near positive of the story’s quality. And you know what, I’m damn proud of Santuario. I had a lot of fun experimenting with the language and the genre. It’s one of the few genre stories I’ve written that I would actually consider proper literature. Of course, It’s not up to me to judge that. It’s up to you fine folks! So give it a read and let me know what you think.
Cheers!
Caleb James K. 