Western Wednesday: The Black Horse Rides into Bookstores

The Western is dead. Whoa, pardner, jest you stop that there cowflop jawin', because it t'ain't so. Rumors of its demise have, as they say, been greatly exaggerated, and those ready kill off the genre may need to saddle their yaps.

Not only are plans for the publicatoin of my "secret western" (I swear I will have news soon...) well under production, with two covers finished and reportedly awesome, but I just received a missive from writer Martin Gately in England about the expansion pf Black Horse Westerns in particular (you will soon be seeing Martin's excellent Homles/Lawrence of Arabia story in the all new short story anthology, Sherlock Holmes: The Crossovers Casebook, edited by yours truly for Moonstone books). Martin was browsing his local Waterstone's in Nottingham last week and stumbled across a new Western section. Martin reports: "Better yet Black Horse Westerns including one written by you [Howard Hopkins/Lance Howard] are prominently displayed... your book is right above True Grit!"

I have to admit, that's quite a thrill, for a better Western than True Grit would be hard to find. An honor, indeed, to be even shelved next to it. And the fact that a chain bookstore such as Waterstone's would be now carrying Black Horse books, even if it were to be only one store, is encouraging for those of us in their writing corral. Could it be the start of a trend, as BHWs have been mostly the domain of libraries and online sellers?

Who knows, but any new Westerns in stores is good news, though I am sure the naysayers will find negative things to point out. The trail to success begins with a single hoofprint.

There was one bit of oddness Martin also reported to me, which is both amusing and annoying at the same time: Bookstores, of course, are divided into sections and labeled as such. The horror section, he says, had a horror placard, and Sci Fi and Thriller had corresponding labels. The new Western section's placard, you might ask? Well...it was labeled under the title "Yee Haw". Hmmm. I wonder if perhaps that is all the Western needs, a new category listing. No longer will we have to ask readers to read our new Western; we might simply ask them to buy a copy of our Yee Haw. Hey, I write Yee Haws and am damn proud of it! Yeah. Yee Haw, dammit.

Speaking of which, my latest Yee Haw is nearly finished. No horsing around, here. It's time to make sure every bookstore gets a Yee Haw section, and I pledge to do my part...