This Monday

Please don't forget to support Wild West Monday - this Monday, March 2nd.

Go into your local bookstore or library, ask about the westerns they stock, if they are not in a display of their own ask why not. Ask why they don't stock more and a greater selection of authors. If you can't get to these places then please make an effort to telephone one and ask similar questions. It is hoped westerns fans will be doing this worldwide.

Much more information can be found on:
The_Tainted_Archive

And while on the subject of the Tainted Archive, this Monday also sees the first post to serialize the long out of print Chap O'Keefe western The Sheriff and the Widow. Chap's westerns sell out within days and this is your chance to read one for free!

The Storm Family Saga #1

STAMPEDE

as by Matt Chisholm

Panther, 1970

The Civil War was over. The South, and Texas, had lost. The losers were destitute and without hope.

Then Will Storm got word of a possible deal at Abilene railhead a thousand miles north in Kansas. On a shoestring, he gathered himself a bare handful of greenhorn riders, whipped his all-wild mustangs into the semblance of cow ponies, his half-wild steers into the semblance of a herd, and headed north for Kansas.

A few days out, the mother of all thunderstorms dispersed the maddened cattle. They rounded them up. Then a band of amateur rustlers tried their hand – and badly burnt their fingers. Three dead and the rest of them on the run. The Red River was in furious spate. They got across without losing a steer. Indian country of sinister reputation lay ahead. They paid the old chief a toll of ten cows and went through like a dream.

At last the Kansas line and Abilene is only a few days ahead. Then…trouble came; very quietly, and terribly…

Matt Chisholm is really English author Peter Watts, a writer who I enjoy very much. Having already read four books from this nine book series I looked forward to reading ‘the beginning’.

Stampede is pretty much your usual cattle-drive tale but well written with plenty of pace and thrills filled with courage and grim tenacity that builds up to a twist ending, which leads to the family members heading off in different directions thus setting up the storylines for the following books.

Definitely worth picking up if you can find a copy.

The Trailsman #133

SAGE RIVER CONSPIRACY

as by Jon Sharpe

Signet, January 1993

Skye Fargo thought he had seen everything in the West – but he had never seen anything like the town of New Dublin in the wilds of Montana. Everyone in this isolated enclave was Irish, including the beautiful widow who called Skye by an Irish name as she gave him a warm welcome. The Trailsman couldn’t believe this place was real – until the bullets started flying, the corpses started piling up, and Skye had to fight terror with terror if he didn’t want to wind up pushing up shamrocks…

The first chapter throws up many questions, such as why won’t the men Fargo guides to New Dublin tell him anything about themselves? Why does the town have a wall around it like a fort? Why do the Blackfoot attack such a large body of men when normally they’d only attack if the numbers favoured them? Why, when Fargo arrives in town, does everybody call him by a different name and not believe that he is really Skye Fargo? And what should he do about the marriage that is set for him in two days time?

As is true for the majority of the books in this series this one is well written and all the early questions help to pull you into the story, making it hard to put down until you know the answers - trouble is some answers lead to more questions!

There is one bit (about a cliff near the end) that I found hard to believe would happen so effectively but this didn’t dampen my enjoyment of the tale that charges along at a fast pace and is filled with plenty of action.

Wild West Monday

Don't forget next Monday is the second WILD WEST MONDAY, please do try and take part. For more information follow this link:
we-need-your-help

And for those who enjoy the interviews I place on this blog then the tables have been turned and the results can be read here:
BrokenTrails

Interview: James Reasoner

My next interview is with James Reasoner, author of over 200 published books, a writer most western fans will have read at some point, if not a book carrying his own name, then one of those written under one of many pseudonyms.

First I want to thank you for agreeing to answer my questions James.

You’re welcome. I’m always glad to talk about writing.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

I’ve been interested in telling stories for as far back as I can remember. When I was growing up, playing cowboys with the kids who lived on my street, I wasn’t content for us to just run around pretending to shoot at each other. I had to come up with a story to go along with it. I’ve always loved to read as well, so I guess it was a natural progression that someday I would start to write down my stories. That day came when I was ten years old and started scribbling stories on notebook paper, a practice I continued all the way through school.

What was the first novel you had published and if this wasn’t a western what was your first western?

My first novel was a mystery, a private eye yarn (despite its Western-sounding title) called TEXAS WIND. I’d always loved private eye fiction and by that time had been writing the Mike Shayne stories in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE under the house-name Brett Halliday, so when I decided the time had come to try my hand at something bigger, my goal was to write the first private eye novel ever set in Fort Worth, the city closest to the little town where I grew up.

My second published novel, a historical romance written in collaboration with my wife, was partially set in Kansas before the Civil War, so it’s almost a Western, but not quite. My first actual Western was one of the books in the Stagecoach Station series, PECOS, published under the house-name Hank Mitchum. I’d always been a reader and fan of Westerns and had written some proposals for Western novels that didn’t sell. Then I went to work for a book packaging company called Book Creations Inc. BCI produced quite a few Western series and my first assignment for them was the Stagecoach Station book.

How many books did you write before the first was accepted for publication?

TEXAS WIND was the first novel I finished, and the first novel I sold.

Which writers influence you?

My wife Livia (who has written Westerns herself under the name L.J. Washburn), first and foremost, because she’s had a hand in almost everything I’ve written in the past 30-plus years. She’s helped plot many of my books and has edited every one of them before they were ever submitted.

Another huge influence has been Robert E. Howard, not so much his writing itself (although anyone who writes adventure-oriented fiction would be well advised to study Howard’s work closely, because he’s probably the best ever at pacing and action), but more because of the way he conducted his career and became a successful writer even though he lived in a small town in Texas and faced numerous obstacles in what he set out to do.

The list beyond those two would be long indeed, because I’ve read so much over the years. I’ve read most of the Western writers who were published in the pulps and in paperback originals, and I suppose they’ve all had an influence on me, because I tend to write the same sort of stuff I like to read.

Which western writers would you recommend?

I enjoy most of the pulp Western writers, but some stand-outs for me are T.T. Flynn, H.A. De Rosso, Luke Short and Peter Dawson (who were actually brothers, Fred and Jon Glidden), Walt Coburn, Tom Curry, Leslie Scott, and Walker A. Tompkins. I have to be in the right mood for Max Brand and Zane Grey, but I’ve read many of their novels and liked them. Lewis B. Patten and Gordon Shirreffs started in the pulps but are best known for their later novels, and they’re favorites of mine as well. I know most of the current crop of Western writers, so I hate to start naming names because I’ll probably forget someone. I will say, though, that the level of the writing in the Western field today is as good as it’s ever been, if not better. You can pick up any current Western novel and see what I mean.

Do you work on more than one book at a time?

Not really. I might start a book and have to set it aside for a while to work on another project, then come back and finish it later. I might stop for a day on the current manuscript and write an outline for another one, or something like that. But that’s the extent of it.

You wrote most of the Cody’s Law series but four of them are attributed to both yourself and Bill Crider. How did you go about writing these books with another author?

Working with Bill was very easy. I came up with the outlines for those books, Bill fleshed them out and wrote the first drafts, and then I went back over them and did second drafts, although I didn’t really do much rewriting on any of them. I guess I’ve known Bill longer than anybody else in the business except for Livia, so it was great fun to work with him.

For what it’s worth, there have been other instances in my career where I’ve done a first draft from another author’s outline and then turned it over to them, so I’ve been on both sides of that equation. As long as you’re working with a fellow pro, it’s never a problem.

You’ve also written a few books alongside your wife, Livia, is this a good idea for peace and harmony leading to martial bliss or do you end up arguing over plot direction or who should live and die?

As I said above, when you’re working with a pro, it’s not a problem. I can honestly say that in more than thirty years of working together, I can’t recall a major disagreement we’ve had about writing. When we don’t see things exactly the same way in a book, we’re able to work it out and come up with a solution that pleases both of us. I think we’re on the same page most of the time.

Your recent Longarm giants have all included long gone characters from other series – something I’ve enjoyed very much – but what made you decide to do this and how did you decide which past heroes to bring back?

I was a fan of the Longarm series long before I started writing for it, and I always enjoyed the Giant Editions that crossed over with Jessie and Ki from the Lone Star series. I wrote the final Lone Star novel, and that was the only chance I got to work with those characters. So when I was asked to write one of the Longarm Giants, I thought that would be the perfect opportunity to revive the crossover tradition. I also like coming up with story arcs that span several books, so I decided to bring back the villainous Cartel that played such an important part in the early Lone Star books, figuring that if I wrote more Giant Editions, I could use the ongoing battle against them as a backdrop for those novels.

Once I had brought back Jessie and Ki, I seized the chance to revive some other long-gone but well-remembered (at least by me) characters in Raider and Doc, the Pinkerton operatives who starred in more than a hundred novels under the J.D. Hardin name. I never wrote any of the J.D. Hardin’s. I was strictly a fan of that series, although several of my friends wrote for it at one time or another. So it was another case of doing something that was fun for me and hoping that the readers would enjoy it as well. That was true the next year, too, when I used characters from the Easy Company series. I’m sure some of the current Longarm readers never read these old series, and I tried to write the books so that those readers would be entertained, too, with the nostalgia value added in there for long-time fans. I also put in a cameo appearance by John Fury in the third Longarm Giant I wrote, since he was the star of the first series I wrote for Berkley and I thought some of the readers might enjoy seeing him again.

Jessie and Ki are back again in the Longarm Giant that will be published this fall. I haven’t made any plans for the Giants beyond that, assuming that I continue to write them.

Which past western would you like to see back in print and why is this?

A lot of the pulp authors I like have enjoyed a comeback in recent years with novels and collections of shorter work reprinted by Five Star and Leisure. One who hasn’t is Harry F. Olmsted, whose work was prominently featured in many Western pulps. Unfortunately, Olmsted never wrote any novels, but he authored more than 1200 novelettes and novellas, and I’d love to see some of them in print again since everything of his that I’ve read has been of uniformly high quality. Another, more recent Western writer who’s largely forgotten today is Ben Haas, who wrote many Westerns under the names John Benteen, Richard Meade, and Thorne Douglas. He was an excellent writer and deserves to be back in print as well.

What is your opinion on keeping dead authors alive by having someone write new books under their name, such as is happening with Ralph Compton and William Johnstone?

That practice doesn’t bother me at all, as long as the books are good. And all the new ones I’ve read under those by-lines have been excellent. When you have David Robbins or Dusty Richards or Peter Brandvold writing a Ralph Compton book, why wouldn’t it be as good as anything those writers would produce solely under their names? They’re top-notch professionals and can be counted upon to do fine work.

When writing books such as your Civil War Battles series did you ever find it restricting having to follow the events of history or did you find it easy to weave fiction and reality together?

I really enjoy the process of writing historical fiction. I like having the framework of history and finding a way to bring in my fictional characters without violating what really happened. If the story dictates a little dramatic license, I don’t hesitate to employ it, but I try to stick as close to the facts as I can.

That’s a little easier than it sounds, because for any major event in history, you can find a dozen or more different interpretations of what really happened. So if I need to fudge a little bit . . . I can.

Is it easier to write a series about a hero who drifts from place to place than a series such as Abilene with multiple characters that are tied to one town?

They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Town books with large casts give you lots of characters to work with, and you can develop those characters over a longer period of time, so that there’s some actual change and growth in them. But a drifting hero gives you much more variety in the settings and in the types of stories you can use. I’ve written plenty of both types and enjoyed them all.

Of all the characters you’ve written about under your own name or a pseudonym, which have you enjoyed writing about the most?

I’m closing in on having written fifty Longarms over the past seventeen years, so I’ve written more about ol’ Custis than any other character. And I still find writing about him to be thoroughly enjoyable. I love his sense of humor, his integrity, his intelligence, and his determination. The fact that most of the books are mysteries as well as Westerns helps me enjoy writing about him, too, since I started out as a mystery writer.

When starting to write for a long established series such as The Trailsman or Wagons West how do you go about ensuring you get the hero’s characteristics and plot style correct as some writers seem to just jump straight in without having given this any consideration and the books might as well as been about somebody else and this, to me, is insulting to long time fans?

Every long-running series I’ve worked on, I was a fan first. I had read the books and knew the characters, at least to a certain extent. With both Longarm and The Trailsman, once I was asked to write for those series, I read as many of the current entries as I could. My Trailsman novels, at least starting out, were very much influenced by the books David Robbins was writing for that series. Even though he didn’t create the character, his version of Skye Fargo was the definitive one as far as I was concerned. Still is, for that matter. My Longarms were heavily influenced by the ones written by Lou Cameron (who created the series) and Will C. Knott. In fact, my first two Longarms were based on outlines written by Lou Cameron, who used to provide outlines for the other authors on the series as well as writing many of the books himself. I picked up on the little tricks they used and tried to incorporate those in my books, as well as developing my own voice on the series. To me, that’s all part of the fun of it.

Which of your westerns would you recommend to someone who hasn’t read any of your work yet and why?

I’m very fond of the Wind River books, six books published by Harper during the Nineties. They demonstrate that long-term storytelling and characterization I was talking about above. For that reason, they definitely need to be read in order. As a stand-alone, I’d recommend DEATH HEAD CROSSING, published a couple of years ago by Pinnacle, which I think does a good job of combining Western and mystery elements. LONGARM AND THE VOODOO QUEEN, LONGARM AND THE PINE BOX PAYOFF, and THE TRAILSMAN: HIGH COUNTRY HORROR are all good solid series Westerns. And my favorite of all my books is UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS, which is part Western and part World War I novel, with what I think is a very effective narrative voice.

What do you think of the western genre today and what do you think the future holds for the western?

It’s no secret that Westerns have declined in readership over the past twenty years. The sales numbers look a little better today than they did a few years ago, which may reflect several things: an increased Western presence on the Internet, as evidenced by this site and others; an embracing of more traditional values in uncertain times, something that has always worked to the Western’s advantage in the past; and the realization of the extremely high quality of work being produced by today’s writers. I doubt that Westerns will ever regain the prominence they once had, but they’re not going away any time soon, either.

Do you think paper produced books will ever be replaced with electronic books?

Probably to a certain extent, but not completely, and certainly not in my lifetime. I still have to have a book I can hold in my hands and hear the rustle of the pages and smell the ink and the glue and the paper.

What is your favourite western movie and why?

At one time I probably would have said either THE SEARCHERS or THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE or ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, all fine films that I admire and love dearly. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that my favorite Western movie is THE COMANCHEROS, because my dad took me to see it at the Eagle Drive-in Theater when I was six years old and I still remember it like it was yesterday. When I’m writing and I get to a really good scene, that’s the music I hear in my head, the theme from THE COMANCHEROS. And I don’t care if it’s historically inaccurate. I love it anyway.

Finally what do you read for pleasure?

All kinds of fiction. I’m not a big reader of non-fiction unless it’s for research. But mostly mysteries, science fiction, horror, and of course, Westerns, and more old stuff than new. I also read a lot of graphic novels, primarily superhero stuff but some oddball titles as well. Just tell me a good story. That’s all I ask.

The Shadow Riders

as by Owen G. Irons
A Black Horse Western from Hale

February 2009

It wasn’t asking too much of a man. The Arizona Rangers only wanted Tyrone Cannfield to let himself be thrown into an army punishment camp sentenced to hard labour, escape from the chain gang, track down the Shadow Riders, a gang of plundering, murderous thugs, bring in Mingo, the savage leader of the badmen, and halt a train robbery. All this to be done on his own with fifty badmen ready to shoot him down at the first misstep.

It wasn’t asking too much of him because Mingo was the man who murdered Cannfield’s wife back in Texas, and he would do everything possible to eliminate him and the Shadow Riders. But would he survive?

The first thing you notice about this book is it’s a much longer read than the majority of Black Horse Westerns, not in page length but by the size of the print and the much narrower margins.

Owen G. Irons (who I believe is really Paul Lederer) starts the book with the savage treatment of the army punishment camp and once Canfield is sprung from there and taken to be a member of the Shadow Riders the many questions begin to build up, which give Canfield many mysteries to ponder and many challenges to overcome: such as who is the mystery sniper, who is the Man with no Name, who is his contact Bert, what are the two sisters roles in all this, and how will he get out alive?

The descriptions of landscape, buildings, people, and the action scenes are all first rate and all the threads to the tale are tied up neatly by the end, after the dramatic final battle between the outlaws, Arizona Rangers, and US Army.

This tough story will certainly have me on the lookout for more books by Owen G. Irons.

The Shadow Riders is due for publication on February 27th so to avoid disappointment I suggest you get your order in as soon as possible as Black Horse Westerns tend to sell out fast.

Lanigan and the Silent Mourner

By Ronald Martin Wade
A Black Horse Western from Hale

February 2009

Shawnee Lanigan, half-breed man-hunter, accepts a commission from a grieving grandfather to track down and bring to justice Marsh Kennebec, the murderer of his daughter and her husband. The old man’s grandson, traumatized by the loss of his parents, has been unable to weep or mourn the loss.

Lanigan sets out to track down Kennebec but must repeatedly fight for his life against both outlaws and corrupt lawmen who try to bar his path. After tracking the killer to his hiding place, he finds himself outnumbered, outgunned and standing trial for his life before a jury of killers, fugitives and thieves. If convicted, he will hang. If found innocent, he must fight a duel to the death.

Ronald Martin Wade presents his readers with a very easy to read book filled with incident and well created characters. The book begins with a prologue, which tells the back-story of Lanigan and includes a well-described and horrific death, which painted a very gruesome picture in my minds eye.

During the prologue the author draws attention to the fact that Lanigan is a half-breed and his reaction to derogatory comments about his bloodline. This seemed to be setting us up for more of the same during the story yet, other than in one confrontation, this wasn’t really mentioned again.

Settings and characters are beautifully portrayed as are the numerous action scenes, be they fistfights, knife fights or gunfights.

What seems to be a fairly straightforward, traditional, western tale takes a turn towards a darker theme during the trial making for a memorable ending.

It seems Lanigan is set to be a series character as a second book, Lanigan and the She-Wolf, is scheduled for a July 09 release.

Lanigan and the Silent Mourner is due to be published on February 27th 2009, and noting that many Black Horse Westerns are selling out in a matter of days, it maybe wise to get your order in early.