JACK MARTIN NEWS

It may seem, at the moment, that I'm churning books out at the rate of two a week - I only wish that were true. However A Policeman's Lot (out next month) was actually completed in the first draft almost two years ago and Arkansas Smith which came out this March was also a year old by the time it saw print. Today I received an offer from Hale for my next Jack Martin Black Horse title - The Ballad of Delta Rose will see print sometime in 2011.

I wasn't sure how Hale would react to this one because it's very experimental and is my most hard-boiled western - I've messed with the general structure of the three act western and, I think, turned out an extremely different kind of western. There is no beginning, middle and end with Delta Rose - the book starts at the climax and then continues that climax for the remainder of the book. All that has gone before, to bring us to this point in time, is told off page, in the odd flashback or hinted at in speech. That kind of worried me but my usual reader, Anthony, who checks all my books though it was great. It worked for him and so I sent it off to the good Black Horse people.


Anyway head honcho John Hale, called the book - "An unusual and competently written story. Splendid."

I'm on cloud nine with those words - it's great to get such praise from a man who has been in the business for decades and knows the genre inside out. I feel that Jack Martin fans will enjoy this one and see it as a worthy and assured follow up to both Tarnished Star and Arkansas Smith.

Anyway that's it for Delta Rose for the moment, but I'll be telling you more about him when I have a firm publication date and a cover image to grace the Archive.

DELTA ROSE RIDING THE RANGE ...2011

Arkansas Smith is still available
The Tarnished Star is also available and will soon be published in a new large print edition.
And read my story The Gimp, along with 2o other stories of the Old West from some of the genre's leading lights, in the anthology A Fistful of Legends.