THOSE PICCADILLY COWBOYS

During the 1970's and 1980's you could walk into any bookshop and the western section would be dominated with a group of British writers collectively known as The Piccadilly Cowboys and is this past week has spurred anyone to want to find out more about these writers and this golden period for British westerns could do no better than join The Piccadilly Cowboys Yahoo Group  - joining up is simplicity itself and George Gilman himself regularly takes part in the message boards, as does another of those Piccadilly Cowboys, Mike Linaker - got a question, get the answer from the horse's mouth so to speak.

PICCADILLY COWBOYS

 George G. Gilman and the Piccadilly Cowboys forum - it's a great group with an active forum populated by passionate fans of not only the Edge books but the other writers who made up the collective known as The Piccadilly Cowboys - Terry Harknett, Ken Bulmer, Laurence James, John Harvey, Mike Linaker, Fred Nolan and Angus Wells who wrote westerns in the 1970's and 80's under the names of George G Gilman, Charles R Pike, John J McLaglen, James A Muir, William M James, William S Brady, Charles C Garrett, John Harvey, Neil Hunter, Mathew Kirk, L J Coburn, J B Dancer, James W Marvin, J D Sanderson and Frederick H Christian. This forum is dedicated to those writers and their books.


Want to find out more then get the hell on over there!!!!

THAT BIG WESTERN NEWS - WE SPILL THE BEANS

Edge, the biggest selling British western series in history, the cult westerns that dominated the genre for more than two decades, are to return in eBook. The all new edition of The Loner, soon from Solstice Publishing ,will feature both a foreword from myself and an introduction from Edge writer and creator, George G. Gilman as well as all new cover artwork from Tony Masero, the man responsible for many of the original paperback covers.

This is just to test the waters but over the long term I would like to see most, if not all, of the books in digital print. We have ideas for themed volumes with eBooks containing several of the original westerns connected by a common thread, maybe a volume featuring titles selected by fans of the series, or even a volume featuring Terry's favourites. The possibilities are endless in repackaging and making this classic series fresh again - imagine we could do a volume called, Edge: Indian Fighter containing Apache Death and Sioux Uprising or Edge: At War containing the classic Civil War sequence. But I'm getting ahead of myself now - that's what happens when you're a fan!

Can you imagine what it must feel like for me, a lifelong fan of this wonderfully satirical western series, to be so involved in bringing the series to eBook and a whole new audience?

And boy, was I involved all along the line. Firstly securing permission from author, George G. Gilman (that’s, Mr Terry Harknett for those in the know.) to tout the long out of print classics around, to finding and securing a publishing deal and even preparing the original text for electronic publication.

It feels just wonderful.

Back in the day, Edge titles sold like the proverbial hotcakes – The Edge series ran from 1971 – 1989 and sold in excess of seventeen million copies worldwide. They were original and hard hitting and the first of their kind. Perhaps it was the fact that the author never read western fiction and was unfamiliar with the genre that made them so unique. Even today the books have their devoted followers and I count myself among them.

This is all so exciting and makes me feel like that teenage kid who used to read these books over and over until the pages fell from their bindings. Anyone new to the series and wondering what all the fuss is about will find the Archive the place to be - we will have features looking at the evergreen status of the character, we'll talk about the Edge and George G. Gilman websites, message boards and forums, we have an article from Terry on Writing Westerns. This article was originally published in US magazine, The Writer and was brought to my attention by Archive friend,, Keith Chapman a man who writes fine westerns himself as Chap O'Keefe.

Next I will reveal the new cover artwork and the Archive will remain on the cutting Edge for some time to come. A firm publication date for the first eBook is yet to be set, but it will be over the next month or so.

News will be broke here on the Archive.

TOLD YOU IT WAS BIG NEWS!