Western Wednesday: The West Rides Again

It’s another Western Wednesday here on Dark Bits—Do you know where your horse is?

There’s no doubt the Western is on the trail to a comeback. I hope a major comeback. The Western Writers of America, in a recent issue of their superb member magazine, Roundup, cited the increase in percentage of Westerns being published over the past few years. In comic books, The Lone Ranger, Zorro, and Jonah Hex as well as others have brought the genre successfully back to four-color panel format. Jonah Hex and The Lone Ranger will soon be big screen movies, the former starring Josh Brolin (Hickok on The Young Riders) and the latter starring Johnny Depp as Tonto.

Across the pond, Robert Hale has increased print runs on a number of titles to meet a surge in demand, largely spearheaded by Welsh actor/writer Gary Dobbs’ (writing as Jack Martin) smashing of the company’s initial print run ceiling to become likely the best-selling Black Horse Western ever. My own Lance Howard January release, Coyote Deadly, sold out weeks in advance of publication and I believe New Zealand author Chap O’Keefe’s most recent Misfit Lil adventure did the same and immediately went to a second printing. Book Depository, a British company that offers free worldwide postage, sells out of Black Horse Westerns and the Thorpe/Ulverscroft large print paperback reprints of Hale’s titles nearly the moment they list. My recent paperback Lance Howard Western, Blood Creek, sold out within days.

So why now? Why the Western, especially Black Horse titles with their blending of traditional horse opera and boundary-pushing storylines?

Some of the renaissance of course is due to the upsurge in Western blog posts and awareness raising campaigns of the Yahoogroups Black Horse Western group’s projects, such as their acclaimed Where Legends Ride short story anthologies, their Black Horse Express online magazine (http://www.blackhorsewesterns.org/) with its Black Horse Author Days (inaugurated by writer Joanne Walpole) summaries and excellent news and articles. Blogs such as this one, Gary’s Tainted Archive (to which a huge amount of credit is due), Ian Parham’s Black Horse Western blog (Ian writes under the name IJ Parham), as well as a number of other Black Horse Writers’ blogs, have all kept the campfire burning.

Another part of the Western’s resurgence, in my opinion, has to do with the need for hope and heroes in these troubled times. The men and women who forged the West (even our more mythical Wild West) were strong, persevering, and faced down the odds, no matter how incredible. While history may have sanitized some aspects of the westward movement and its leaders, one thing can be accepted with certainty: these men and women were, without doubt, heroes. Flawed, perhaps, but human, and heroes nonetheless.

The Westerns we read through Black Horse are largely tales of the mythical West, yet still hold enough respect and reverence for the trials and truths of early settlers and cowboys and cowgirls as to make them not only one hell of an escape read, but a reassertion of spirit, of hope, of the glowing sunset at the end of the trail. They survived. And so can we, no matter the odds, no matter the bleakness of situation.

We need heroes. Superheroes and cowboys. If you haven’t read westerns, I encourage you to do so. Hale is now making new releases available through Amazon, AmazonUK and Book Depository. Check out the mentioned blogs and online magazines for excerpts and reviews. I’m sure you’ll find a horse to your liking. While you’re at it, mosey on over to my western page for more (www.howardhopkins.com/western-books.htm).

But most of all, give Westerns of try. Channel your inner cowboy or cowgirl. It’s time to saddle up and ride, pard…