The western in fiction - the state of play

Western fans have a lot to look forward to over the festive period - not only will the new True Grit be lighting up cinema screens but Jan 1st 2011 will see the debut of the Black Horse Western eBooks. Four books in one bundle, that usually retail for around £12 each in hardcover, all for a measly £10. The Black Horse books are popular the world over but given that the hardcovers are largely aimed at British libraries, it is often difficult for readers outside the UK to get their hands on the books. And those that do often find the cost prohibitive.

For many years Robert Hale's Black Horse imprint has led the way in western fiction - indeed the British publishing house produces more westerns than anyone else, including the bigger American publishers. The Archive will be looking at the eBooks in more detail leading up to the publication and I do hope readers will support the books and buy one of the eBook bundles for by doing so they will not only be getting superb value for money but help to ensure that further Black Horse titles make it into the digital world.

"Anyone wanting to find out more about the Black Horse range and westerns in general I direct over to the archives of the excellent online magazine Black Horse Extra."

Just a few of the many titles in the Black Horse Library

Hale have said that they are moving fast here and that this bundle is the first of many, but they are open to feedback from the readers. What is the best way to sell western eBooks? Would readers prefer these bundled packages or individual titles? Would themed bundles be enticing? Would single author collections persuade readers to give the eBooks a go? Tell Hale who you're favourite Black Horse writers are by looking up their books on Amazon and clicking the box that states, I would like to read this book on the Kindle. And please leave a comment on this post and make your voice heard, shout out for the genre that is too tough to die.


"The fact that few bookshops stock westerns these days no longer really matters when there is such a wealth of material available electronically." The Western Reader Online.


The Archive is hosting another Wild West Monday on the first Monday in January with the emphasis on buying a western eBook and showing publishers what we want, proving how popular the western genre is in these troubled times. And it's not only the Black Horse eBooks we are pushing but westerns from all publishers which is something the Archive has always been proactive in - don't forget the classic Edge by George G Gilman is out there and available now (now that's a title that any western fan will love) and all of the online retailers have  extensive western eBook collections on offer - this last month I myself have bought over a dozen western eBooks and the memory of my Sony eReader is bursting with western titles.

Yep, there's never been a better time to be a western fan.

ROBERT HALE LTD

PUBLISHERS SINCE 1936

The respected British publisher is entering new territory and I believe all western fans will want to go with them. Indeed should go with them for only by showing our interest will we ensure that eWesterns don't suffer the same lack of availability as conventional western books.

Now before the more cynical of you ignore this post as just another self serving advert, I do after all write Black Horse Westerns as Jack Martin, then please consider that it is not only my own titles that I strive to promote but the genre as a whole, the genre that I love and grew up reading. And I have always promoted the entire genre as well as those spiffing little books by that Jack Martin chappie.

Let's ride together into this brave new digital world.

That genre curse

For years, probably since time began, we've been slotting everything into neat little genres - that one's a thriller, that's a mystery, this is a post-modern experimental abstract narrative (hey, that sounds clever) and this is horror. In the book world author's have long been arguing that there should be no genres and everything should be marketed as general fiction. The thinking behind this is that someone may be prejudiced against a certain genre and yet would enjoy some titles marketed in the genre if only they tried them. And not only books - it's the same with films and music.

I can see the point in the argument - for instance I don't really like country music, finding it too sweet for me and yet I absolutely love Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson. Merle Haggard Ryan Adams, Don Williams and Willie Nelson and yet all these guys are marketed as country. Even though there is a world of difference between the bite of Johnny Cash and the whimper of say, Kenny Rogers. So maybe it's not country music I dislike but a certain type of country music.

Another example - you won't find me dead watching a romantic movie and yet because Clint's in it I watched Bridges of Madison County and loved it, old softie that I am. The same thing with the Eastwood directed Breezy about a love affair between different generations. But old squinty eyes is one thing and I still don't think I'll be trying Barbara Cartland any time soon.

Where is this all heading?

Well recently I was involved in a debate on a western fiction forum and many people were moaning that westerns should actually be marketed as historical fiction. Westerns, they said, were not taken seriously. And again that is largely a valid point but whilst some westerns could indeed qualify as historicals I wouldn't be comfortable if any of my westerns were called historicals. I could get away with the title, Americana maybe but not historicals. Maybe that's a good alternative genre title to western - "Americana literature", but then that's too pompous. And reminds me of the time they started marketing horror as dark fantasy and that fell flat on its face. Most readers of horror fiction found that a little too pompous. And besides my westerns already have a sub-genre of their own, Taffy Westerns.

So I guess we are stuck with genre titles and people will miss much good work because they have a dislike of that specific genre. I'm not particularly keen on science fiction and fantasy and yet I enjoy Phillip Dick, Michael Moorcock, Robert Howard and it's the same with horror, the majority of it I avoid but I'm a huge Stephen King, James Herbert and Clive Barker fan. I don't like cozy crimes and yet I dig a lot of Agatha Christie and admit to a weakness for Lord Peter Whimsey.

I guess my preferred genres are the westerns and harder edged crime writing, and yet I regularly enjoy writers such as Tom Sharpe (god know what genre he's in), Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen.

So what I propose is that Archive readers make a pledge to try a film, book, album whatever, outside of their usual genre, pick a genre that you think you hate. You never know you may be surprised and discover some great work that will stay with you for life, maybe even change the way you think. And if you wish email me a short review ( garydobbs@hotmail.co.uk) and I'll post it here on the Archive.

NUFF SAID!!!!!!!!!!

NEXT ON THE ARCHIVE - MAY SEES CLINT EASTWOOD CELEBRATE HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY AND THE ARCHIVE, BEING HUGE HUGE FANS OF THE MAN, ARE CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF OUR SECOND FAVOURITE AMERICAN WITH THE ARCHIVE EASTWOOD MONTH. 80 FOR 80 - THAT'S 80 EASTWOOD CENTRIC POSTS COMING UP.

Make his day and be here for the entire Eastwood month.


"This is the Tainted Archive, the most powerful blog in the world and will waste tons of your time. Now I'm not sure if you've read it all. So it's time to get reading, punk."

MYSTERY BOOK BOUND WITH HUMAN SKIN FOUND AT CAR BOOT SALE

A Victorian pocket book bound with the skin of a would-be assassin has been found in a car boot sale.

The grisly find in Shepton Mallet, Somerset, came with a letter stating: 'I have only this morning discovered the long lost pocket book made out of the skin of the man who shot your father!'

The skin is believed have been taken off the back of a man who was executed after he tried to shoot a British major in the first Chinese Opium War of 1839.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239670/Tattooed-Human-skin-used-bind-Victorian-pocket-book-sold-car-boot-sale.html#ixzz0bMlg1QPa

IS THAT A GUN IN YOUR POCKET OR ARE YOU PLEASED TO SEE ME....

The gun a phallic image - well this book cover seems to think so. This is just one of the hilarious images in the 20 funniest spoof book covers HERE

The image below also brought a smile to my lips.

100 BOOKS YOU MUST READ meme

The BBC believe that most people will have only read six of the books in the following list. I was challenged by Joanne Walpole to list all the ones I have read and so I have done so, marking the titles that I have indeed read with a *. Seems this has turned into another of those memes and so I challenge James Reasoner, Bill Cryder, David Cranmer, Howard Hopkins and Charles Gramlich - apparently the way this works is you paste the list onto your blog, identify the titles you've read and tag five other people.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee*
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (not the whole book!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk*
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger*
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens*
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams*
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Graham
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens*
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell*
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown*
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy*
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens *
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov*
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy*
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens*
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker*
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome*
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad*
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks*
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams*
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl*
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo