Publishing In the 21st Century » Westerns

A Texas Empire Forged Out of Grit, Gold and Gunpowder

Richard Curtis — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Matthew Braun, author of 56 books with some 40 million copies in print, is the greatest living practitioner of the western novel. Winner of the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement in western fiction, he writes with a passion for historical accuracy and detail that has earned him a reputation as the most authentic portrayer of the American West. Braun continues to travel the West, gathering materials for his novels. And if you cross him, better keep your hands where he can see them. He has a lifetime appointment as Oklahoma Territorial Marshal.

We are happy to be reissuing one of his most distinguished novels, Lords of the Land, in trade paperback format.

Hank Laird had never laid claim to sainthood. Truth is, his enemies would be quick to swear that the man was the devil himself-a reputation Laird earned as one of the most hardscrabble men ever to grace the soil of South Texas. With grit, gold and gunpowder, he forged an empire out of chaos in the wake of the Civil War. But now the vultures are coming home to roost and it’s up to Laird whether Santa Guerra ranchlands will be heaven or hell.

You can visit Braun’s website at http://www.mattbraun.com/home.htm

A Pair of Misfits in Charge of the Paywagon: Introducing Bruce Thorstad’s Gents

Richard Curtis — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:10:00 +0000

When Kentuckian Riley Stokes and Texan Cass McCasland team up and head for the frontier there’s plenty of wide open space to get into trouble, and this they do consistently in a series of frontier misadventures generically known as “The Gents“. When they end up guarding the Army’s paywagon, the odds are that things are not going to go as planned. And they don’t.

Bruce Thorstad‘s frontier fiction is as far from the cliched western novel as Abilene is from Boston. Growing up in the northern Wisconsin towns in the 1950’s and ‘60’s his imagination was fueled by the dozens of TV westerns of that era. “Northern Wisconsin is big-woods country…it’s not the West, but it’s relatively unpopulated. I couldn’t look at a hill or a hayfield without mentally populating it with stampeding buffalo or attacking cavalry.”

E-Reads carries three “Gents” novels and a marvelous singleton entitled Deadwood Dick and the Code of the West.

Violent Sagas of the Old West

Richard Curtis — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:00:00 +0000

It wasn’t very long ago that the western was among the dominant genres read by men. Cowboys, the US Cavalry, pioneers, explorers, trappers and Indian fighters created by such stellar authors as Matthew Braun, Zane Grey, Elmer Kelton, Owen Wister, A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Terry C. Johnston and Louis L’Amour were the precursors of astronauts and other modern action adventure heroes. In few other categories could readers find men and women who personified the American dream and core values that forged our national identity.

The western fiction market is a fraction of what it used to be, but there is still a dedicated readership that finds thrills and satisfaction in tales of the West. Chet Cunningham’s Pony Soldier Series exemplifies the genre at its very best if not its very most violent. The first novel, Slaughter at Buffalo Creek, introduces a grief-stricken Captain Colt Harding as he sets out to wreak revenge on the Indian who killed his wife and son. The problem is, he has to team up with some of the vilest men in the west. These are The Pony Soldiers.

E-Reads carries five books tracking their adventures.

- Richard Curtis