THE BLACK HORSE WESTERN WEEKEND IS GO

The first Black Horse title I ever read was Ladigan by Lance Howard - at first I thought this was an old book from maybe the fifties and given the retro cover design, who can blame me. After all there were no westerns at all in UK shops at the time. And the way I fed my western addiction was to buy books second hand - the owners of most of the local second hand shops would telephone me when they had a pile of westerns in and I'd get the lot. Ladigan came to me like that, tucked away amongst a pile of J.T. Edson and George Gilman paperbacks.

It's still one of my all time favourite Black Horse westerns - course I know now that Lance Howard, far from being a long dead author from the golden age of the oater is actually alive and well, and creating new books. Indeed Mr Howard, real name Howard Hopkins, is now a good friend of mine.

Now as time went on more and more Black Horse westerns came my way and I started noticing that the publication dates, far from being from decades past, were actually quite contemporary. And a visit the my local library turned up scores of the books. I was in heaven as I stood there in the library, a spinning rack before me holding dozens of the titles. I discovered more new authors - Chap O'Keefe, Jack Giles, I. J. Parnham, Sam Gort - all of which I now class among my friends.

Then when I discovered that the Black Horse books were actually current and published by the well respected British publisher, Robert Hale LTD, I started ordering titles from the library and must have gone through a couple of hundred books in a few years.

I decided to try writing one for myself, after all I had been writing with some limited success for many years, and so I promptly wrote and sent off a western. It came back "REJECTED" but there were some words of encouragement from Mr Hale. That helped, as I knew standard rejection letters and this wasn't one of them, there was hope there for future work. Keep at it, it seemed to say. And so I wrote The Tarnished Star, which was accepted and came out last June to some success.

I had arrived - I was now part of the Black Horse range and my pen-name, Jack Martin, could take its place alongside all my heroes who churned out the westerns for my enjoyment. I say, "my" because, - well pick up any Black Horse title and it's like the author is telling the story just for you, speaking directly to the reader and that makes for great entertainment. Another thing that gives me a kick is that I am now part of the entire Wild West mythos - a small part, granted but a part nonetheless. I have added to the tapestry of work inspired by that time of adventure, courage and hardship.

So enjoy these Black Horse western posts and if you fancy a good western adventure to counter the stresses of the modern day world, then visit your local library and try and few of these books...you won't be alone.