Cribbed from my old discared Blog and republished here

six bits a day by Elmer Kelton ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2005 NOVEMBER 1ST MASS MARKET EDITION OCTOBER 2006 FORGE WESTERNS Six bits - seventy five cents A cowboy’s daily wage in the era this book is set This novel is a prequel to the authors previous works, The Good Old Boys and The Smiling Country. And I’ve not read either of those books so maybe this one is the best one to come in on the adventures of Hewey Calloway, a character who has been called one of thos most memorable characters in modern western fiction. To come in on a prequel is no handicap since by their very nature the author is writing about new characters or rather the early life of established characters, given them the adventures that will define their later selves. The author has to create the characters from the ground up for a prequel novel so I found the story easy to slip into. And what a story. This is the kind of gentle old fashioned western. There is little real violence but tons of action and the characters are so well realised that the readers gets sucked into the novel. This is a brilliant novel from one of the best western novelists working today. And after finishing it I was left gagging for more and I promptly ordered The Good Old Boys from Amazon. What more can one say.

THE WESTERN AWARDS - THE SPUR

The western Genre is a particular favourite of mine and one within which I write myself. So I’m reprinting the article here in the hope that it may drive interest in the genre. Visit the western writers of america website for more genre features. The following article is reprinted here from the Wester Writers of American website with kind permission of the author. Best Westerns of the 20th Century By Candy Moulton Roundup Editor It’s been done before, twice, in 1985 and again in 1995, both times with similar results in several areas. Nevertheless, as we sit on the brink of the 21st Century it seemed time to reprise the Best Western Survey. So with that in mind during the past year we asked WWA members to tell us what they thought. A panel of fifty-five individuals from twenty-two states and one Canadian province provided us with their votes for the best work and authors of the 20th century. On the lists were 83 authors, 112 novels, 122 nonfiction books, 86 films, 64 short stories, 41 television series, and 22 television mini-series. Several authors who wrote during the 19th Century also appeared on the lists, some of them garnering multiple votes, but they are not included on this year’s survey. There were two categories where the top vote getters were a landslide–Lonesome Dove for Best Western Miniseries, which also topped the same category in 1995, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown, for Best Nonfiction book, which led that category in both 1985 and 1995. Elmer Kelton, as he did in 1995, led the number of votes for Best Author, receiving twice as many as either Willa Cather or A.B. Guthrie, who followed him in the category. And he had two books on the list of Best Novel. No other author repeated among top choices in that category. Mari Sandoz had two nonfiction books among the top choices. Among the survey panel, there is little question that Dorothy Johnson is the best short story writer of the century. The Montana writer penned four of the top five stories in our survey. Some respondents returned their forms saying they did not like to complete such surveys, and in many cases they didn’t necessarily provide choices in every category. Several said their lists might change if asked to complete the survey at a later date. One included choices for Best Song: “The Strawberry Roan,” “High Chin Bob,” “El Paso,” “Tyin’ Knots in the Devil’s Tail,” and “The Tennessee Stud.” We didn’t have a category for “Best Western Poet” but know there are some fine folks who could make up such a listing. These are the survey results, listed in order of votes given.

Best 24 Best Western Authors Elmer Kelton Willa Cather A.B. Guthrie Louis L’Amour Dee Brown Dorothy Johnson Zane Grey Owen Wister Larry McMurtry Will Henry Max Evans Jack Schaefer Glendon Swarthout Mari Sandoz Wallace Stegner Norman Zollinger Don Coldsmith Richard S. Wheeler Loren D. Estleman Ernest Haycox Tony Hillerman Robert M. Utley Cormac McCarthy Benjamin Capps Best 21 Best Western Novels Shane (Schaefer) Lonesome Dove (McMurtry) The Big Sky (Guthrie) The Time It Never Rained (Kelton) The Virginian (Wister) The Shootist (Swarthout) Death Comes for the Archbishop (Cather) Riders of the Purple Sage (Grey) Monte Walsh (Schaefer) The Ox-Bow Incident (Clark) Hondo (L’Amour) All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy) Centennial (Michener) The Sea of Grass (Conrad Richter) Riders to Cibola (Zollinger) The Homesman (Swarthout) True Grit (Portis) The Searchers (LeMay) The Rounders (Evans) The Day the Cowboys Quit (Kelton) Call of the Wild (London) Best 12 Best Nonfiction Books Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Brown) Across the Wide Missouri (DeVoto) Charles Goodnight (Haley) Cheyenne Autumn (Sandoz) The Longhorns (Dobie) Old Jules (Sandoz) Undaunted Courage (Ambrose) Men to Match My Mountains (Stone) Triggernometry (Cunningham) Black Elk Speaks (Niehardt) And Die in the West (Marks) Pat Garrett (Metz) Best 10 Best Western Films Shane High Noon The Searchers Dances with Wolves Red River The Shootist Stagecoach Ride the High Country Unforgiven The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Best 5 Best Western Short Stories “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (Johnson) “A Man Called Horse” (Johnson) “To Build a Fire” (London) “Lost Sister” (Johnson) “The Hanging Tree” (Johnson) Best 9 Best Western TV Series Gunsmoke Bonanza Maverick Rawhide Have Gun Will Travel The Virginian Little House on the Prairie High Chaparral The Rifleman Best 8 Best Television Mini Series Lonesome Dove Centennial The Good Old Boys How the West Was Won The Sacketts Lewis & Clark The West The Rough Riders Western Writers of America, Inc., will permit reprinting of this article, in whole or in part, providing the full organization name is used as the source of the information. For permission to reprint, write to Candy Moulton, Roundup Editor, Box 29 Star Route, Encampment, WY 82325 The Panel: Judy Alter…………Texas Starley Anderson…..Wyoming D. L. Birchfield………Wisconsin Mike Blakely…………Texas Johnny D. Boggs…..New Mexico Matt Braun…………Connecticut Corinne Brown…….Colorado Larry K. Brown……Wyoming LaVerne Harrell Clark….Texas L.D. Clark……………Texas Rita Cleary………….New York Robert Conley………Oklahoma James A. Crutchfield….Tennessee Nancy Curtis…………..Wyoming Patrick Dearen…………Texas Stev Donev…………….California David Dortort………….California Fred R. Egloff…………Illinois Loren D. Estleman……..Michigan Max Evans……………..New Mexico W. Michael Gear……….Wyoming Charlie Goodman……….Texas Nancy Hamilton…………Texas R. C. House………………California Connie Hubbard…………Texas Charlie Hunt…………….South Dakota Kirby Jonas………………Idaho Elmer Kelton…………….Texas Gregory Lalire……………Virginia Page Lambert…………….Wyoming Steven Law……………….Missouri Preston Lewis…………….Texas Doris Meredith……………Texas Leon Metz…………………Texas Rod Miller…………….Utah Deborah Morgan………….Michigan Candy Moulton……………Wyoming Gary McCarthy……………Arizona Gene Mullins………………Texas P.G. Nagle……………….New Mexico John Nesbitt……………..Wyoming Nancy M. Petersen………Colorado Robert Randisi……………Missouri Dusty Richards……………Arkansas Joyce Gibson Roach………Texas Lou Rodenberger………….Texas Hazel Rumney…………….Maine Douglas Sharp………..Calgary, Canada Cotton Smith……………..Kansas Kathryn Swarthout………..Arizona Miles