Western Wednesday

It’s another Western Wednesday, so saddle up your horse (or lover, if you are into that sort of thing…oh, wait, that reminds me of an episode of Bones where they had to determine who done it at a fetish farm where submissive males had to pretend to be horses. Won’t go into that, but there were riding crops involved…um, I digress…) and head out onto the trail with me.

A while back I mentioned I was experimenting with my latest western by writing it completely without a road map, just an opening idea, no character names or any sort of written synopsis or plot. It was tough going, though normally I use minimal plot sheets and only recipe cards with character descriptions anyway. I have a great admiration for writers who can write on the fly like that.

That book has now become my 32nd Lance Howard Black Horse Western sale. It’s called “The Killing Kind” and is a bit different from most of my previous books for the line and more like what I write under my own name. The novel relies much more on suspense and tension than out and out gunfights and complicated plot devices. The theme centers heavily around redemption, repentance, and second chances in life, as a young rancher with a secret past is forced to face his misdeeds when a man he thought dead shows up to take revenge. It pushes a number of boundaries for me personally because I wasn’t able to rely on certain western genre tricks to advance the plot, so I had to try different things. There are also some brutal moments, and what I hope will be something a bit unusual for a BHW, which I won’t give away here.

I think one of the things I really like best about the western is its versatility. It is sometimes hard convincing non-western readers that the westerns isn’t all cattle drives and gunfights, though of course there’s enough of those things to satisfy readers looking for that too. But when I say the western has “range” I don’t just mean for cows. The genre allows for so much more, right down to blending it with the supernatural and science fiction, as well as romance and mystery. The only limits it has are those of the imagination.

Which is why I urge readers who haven’t read them to give them a chance. My Lance Howard westerns can be found in or interloaned by most libraries, and there are plenty of other great authors working in the line (for more on Black Horse westerns check out http://www.blackhorsewesterns.org/ and westerns at http://www.halebooks.com/ ) Or sample a number of the authors in the Where Legends Ride anthology (from Amazon and other online retailers.) I think you might be surprised.