JACK MARTIN BIO

The Tarnished Star a western novel by Jack Martin to be published next year by Robert Hale LTD/ Black Horse Westerns.

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• Jack Martin, or rather the genesis of the man, was born sometime in the early seventies.
  
  Spending so much time with my grandfather, the real Jack Martin, as a child I was exposed to westerns at an early age. On BBC TV in those days there was always an early evening movie on Saturday night that went under the collective, Saturday Night at the Movies. Usually the film was a western or war movie. And so the young me, after watching Dr Who and the Generation Game, would settle down with Gramps and watch the movie. I saw all the classic B-westerns and while my mates were worshipping the latest soccer sensation like Kevin Keegan or Joe Jordon or grooving to The Bay City Rollers, my heroes were the tall men of the range. Guys like the Duke, Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford, Audrie Murphy. I would request the Bonanza or Alias Smith and Jones annuals for Christmas. I'd spend my pocket money on a plastic sheriff's badge and six guns from Mel's- the local sell anything type shop from those halycon days.
  
  I walked the walk and I talked the talk.
  
  
  
  And so that's where my interest in the wild west came from. That and the fact I think I was Calamity Jane in a previous life.
  
  And into adulthood I kept my interest and this developed in a rabid study of the actual historical period, the real old west. And then when I started writing western fiction I decided to adopt the pen name of Jack Martin as a tribute to that man who was and still remains, a real hero to me.