Piccadilly Publishing has already established itself as a favorite publishing house with western fans, and we are delighted to have David Whitehead here to tell us all about this vibrant publishing house.
By the end of 2012, Piccadilly Publishing will have issued no less
than thirty-one books, all but four of them westerns. Not bad for a
company that only began life in May 2012, and only came about at all
thanks to a chance remark by my friend and partner in this venture, Mike
Stotter.
“I know what I wanted to ask you,” he said right out of
the blue one day. “What do you think about bringing all the old
Piccadilly Cowboy westerns back as e-books?”
Hmmm. I had to think
about it for all of two, maybe three seconds. The possibility that we
could somehow bring all those hard-and-getting-harder-to-find books back
into ‘e-print’ was impossible to resist. It had all been so much fun
first time around, when Mike and I, then in our late teens, had taken it
upon ourselves to write to, then meet up with our idols. The
possibility of being able to recreate that period all over again was
immensely attractive.
The name of our company was never in doubt.
Terry Harknett, Laurence James, Angus Wells, John Harvey, and latterly
Ken Bulmer, Mike Linaker and Frederick Nolan, all became known as
‘Piccadilly Cowboys’ because that was the farthest west they’d ever
been. So ‘Piccadilly Publishing’ it was.
Now, we needed to get our writers on board.
Terry
Harknett’s EDGE and STEELE books were already being reissued quite
successfully by Malcolm Elliott-Davey, alias ‘Cody Wells’ – who himself
was to become an important part of our team as things progressed. But
Mike was still in touch with John Harvey and Elizabeth James, widow of
Laurence. And Mike Linaker was only too happy to let us give his BODIE
THE STALKER and JASON BRAND books a new lease of life.
Inevitably
we soon found ourselves widening the scope of our company. I had always
enjoyed the above-average MADIGAN westerns by my friend Keith
Hetherington, alias ‘Hank J. Kirby’, and so he was another writer we
went after very early on. Before long we added the likes of Frederick
Nolan, alias ‘Frederick H. Christian’, and even took it upon ourselves
to add some SF, and latterly, crime, to our monthly schedules.
But
our first love was and remains the western, and though we plan to
launch our ‘Piccadilly Crime’ series in earnest next year, we still see
ourselves very much as a publisher of westerns – specifically, series
westerns.
In those early weeks and months, however, there was
plenty of frustration and disappointment. In all too many cases it has
proven to be almost impossible to track down some writers and establish
who now owns the rights in their books. And I suppose, as new kids on
the block, many other writers or their representatives preferred to wait
and see if we really were serious about what we planned to do. But that
was fine. We expected to have to prove ourselves. And in May 2012 we
did. That was the month we published our first book, TRACKDOWN, by Neil
Hunter.
Now, it’s at this point that you expect me to add, “ ...
and the rest is history.” It isn’t, though. More accurately it’s still
history in the making.
Over the months we’ve added a number of
books and authors to our line-up, the idea being to vary our monthly
schedules as much as we can, and provide something for everyone. So now
we also have the tough-as-tacks Iron Eyes and more traditional Bar 10
books of Michael D. George, writing as ‘Rory Black’ and ‘Boyd Cassidy’
respectively. We have the Reaper and Shatterhand books of B. J. Holmes.
And sometimes it seems to Mike and I that we’re adding new writers and
series by the day.
The level of success our company has had has
been both surprising and gratifying. Western readers have embraced ‘the
brand’ and many of them now rightly feel that they are just as much a
part of Piccadilly Publishing as the writers themselves. I can’t explain
why this is, but my guess is that our readers know that we are every
bit as much fans as they are, so maybe they identify with us and
understand that we are genuine in our desire to bring the western back
to its old prominence, and of course to keep it attractive and
affordable in the process!
The distinctive look of our books is
really down to the aforementioned Malcolm Elliott-Davey. They do say
that water finds its own level, and Malcolm, Mike and I all found common
ground in our love of, and enthusiasm for, the genre. This is a very
good opportunity to thank Malcolm publicly for his incredible work,
because he more than anyone has really stamped the distinctive ‘look’ on
the PP product.
Although we started out as a reprint publisher,
we also inaugurated a series of stand-alone westerns under the general
title Piccadilly Publishing Presents, and it was under this banner that
we published, in September 2012, our first original book, SHERIFF OF
FRIENDLY by Paul Green. I’m proud to say that Paul again treated us to
an original novel in THE REVENGE OF CATO STREET (to be published in
November 2012). There are more original books to come throughout 2013,
including the western THE UNFORGIVEN by Black Horse Western favourite D.
M. Harrison, and another title from our rising star Paul Green, TRAIL
OF BLOOD. I was particularly pleased when we also added Thomas McNulty’s
ultra-fine western, DEATH RIDES A PALOMINO, to our list for 2013.
More
recently we’ve added some true heavyweights to our imprint. In November
2012 we publish our first western by Tony Masero. Tony needs no
introduction, of course, but I’ll give him one anyway. He is an artist
whose talent knows no bounds, and whose work established more than any
other the distinctive look of the original Piccadilly westerns of the
1970s and 80s. He is also a prolific writer, and has written horror,
science fiction and crime, in addition to a whole passel of fine
westerns. Tony’s first western for Piccadilly Publishing is DEADLY
MANHUNT, which is a sequel of sorts to his earlier BHW, JOHNNY DOLLAR.
It’s a fabulous book, much darker and grittier than his earlier
westerns, and I think readers will have a great time with it. Indeed, I
look forward to seeing many more of Tony’s all-new westerns appearing
under our aegis.
As if that wasn’t enough, we launch two more
series in December 2012 that will be of enormous interest to western
readers – Peter Brandvold’s critically-acclaimed ‘Lou Prophet’ yarns and
the ‘Storm Family’ saga by Matt Chisholm.
Colorado resident
Peter Brandvold can now lay claim to more than seventy westerns, under
his own name and the pen-name ‘Frank Leslie’. His series recount the
adventures of such colourful
characters as Sheriff Ben Stillman, Gideon Hawk (the Rogue Lawman),
Cuno Massey, Yakima Henry and Tom Navarro. PP will be issuing the first
six Lou Prophet westerns throughout 2013, with hopefully many more Peter
Brandvold titles to follow.
Matt Chisholm is another
legendary writer. At his peak, Englishman Peter Watts (to give him his
real name) was selling seven million westerns in the UK alone. A
prolific writer whose work also appeared under the names Cy James and
Luke Jones, he is now best-remembered for his long-running series
featuring Rem McAllister, but in addition to these books Peter also
chronicled the ongoing adventures of Joe Blade, Sam Spurr ... and of
course the Storm Family. Led by Will Storm, the family up-stakes and
undertake a dangerous cattle-drive in STAMPEDE, the first book of the
series. Later stories tell of the trials and triumphs of Will and his
kin.
For 2013 we are also immensely proud to welcome Terry
Harknett to the fold with no less than three non-western series –
Chester Fortune (the hard-boiled Los Angeles P.I.), Crown (Terry’s taut
series of police thrillers set in pre-1999 Hong Kong) and the Stephen
Wayne mysteries, which include some of Terry’s earliest work ... and
also some of his most difficult titles to find.
We do have many
other plans for company, but at the moment these are classified at an
‘Above Top Secret’ level. What I can promise is that we are all heading
for a long-overdue renaissance in popular western and action-adventure
fiction, and Piccadilly Publishing is proud to be part of the vanguard
making it happen.
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