Every month the Black Horse Western group airs western related issues, whether they be on writing, books, magazines, comics, tv series or films. Here is round-up of some recent items including a lengthy rumination on the future of the western...

Western writer Jim Griffin on meeting a fan at a Book signing

I had a book signing session at the local Borders today. One of my sales was to a sweet little old lady, who was buying a book for her husband. While she was choosing which book to purchase, she was telling me and Jeff, the Events Manager at the store, that she was walking just ahead of Margaret Mitchell (author of GONE WITH THE WIND for those who need their memories refreshed) the day Mitchell was struck by a taxicab and killed.

She went on to say that awhile back, she was telling this story to her rabbi. Her rabbi's response? "If you'd been hit rather than Margaret Mitchell, we would have had a better sequel!"

Jeff told her she needed a new rabbi.

BHW review - Coalmine by Jack Giles

The man folks called `The Hunter' had been a mining engineer until he had been injured in a mining accident. Taking pity on him, Helga Rutger, the woman that he had jilted at the alter, found him work - supplying her father's fashionable restaurant with fresh game. It gave him a living and some sort of pride. But then came a message that was to take him on a trail of death and double-dealing and a confrontation with the Unions and their hired guns. Although coal mining plays a part in this story it's only the background to a fast paced tale of intrigue, violence and great characters.

Jack Giles tells part of his story in a series of flashbacks that'll soon have you wondering as to the true intentity of the man known as `The Hunter'. None of Giles' characters are there to make up numbers either, each has a part to play in this story of friendship, greed and revenge. The action is fast and brutal, the hired guns savagely evil.

But the part that has stayed with me the longest is the struggle one man has with how and when to tell his family he's dying, not realizing his wife has seen the changes in him and has kept quiet to let him hanf onto his dignity. Well worth tracking down a copy - recommended. Steve M

Should the Western modernize by tackling adult themes?

Steve: The first westerns I got hooked on were those written by the English authors known as the Piccadilly Cowboys; series such as EDGE, HERNE THE HUNTER, CROW and BREED. Extremely graphic in violence with sex occasionally being included. Some of the series explored the darker side of human nature. Some of these books carried a label stating they were adult novels.

I then found some American westerns also billed as adult novels so eagerly bought them expecting more of the same. Damn what a let down, series such as LONGARM and SLOCUM seemed low on action, a least violent action and had tons of sex (these days thankfully cut down a lot) and I felt cheated by the adult label. I guess the word meant different things in the UK and the USA at the time. So I stopped reading LONGARM and like. Years later, I tried these books again and enjoyed them for what they were (there's some very good entries in these series) as much as I enjoyed the more violent books and those that are probably classed as traditional. So have I mellowed as I got older, possibly. But I have come to appreciate more a much darker series too, MORGAN KANE, not as much violent action but a lot more human suffering and depressing topics.

Andrea: I dont particularly like, and never have, violence or bad language in westerns. In fact, if a book, or a film, is particularly violent I usually stop reading it or have to work around it! Sometimes I think it can be kind of "lazy" writing to just throw in violence, or bad language, and it becomes a bit boring! (Bearing in mind, of course, that the West was a violent place/time to live in, and this cannot just be ignored!) Maybe as a woman I have a different perspective, but I dont see why these things should add interest to anyone of any generation.

"Deadwood" would have succeeded even without the bad language, (maybe Ian McShane had more to do with it's success, but that is probably from a women's perspective too!!) As I said in an email earlier, I think the Western would benefit from a "broadening of its horizons" to include other topics, i.e. domestic violence. There is an excellent book called "The Homesman" by Glendon Swarthout concerning the pioneer women who broke, mentally, under the hardships of the West, and had to be escorted East by a "Homesman". Maybe, you would not categorise this book as a "Western", but a book set in the Old West. It does, however, highlight, according to one reviewer, the "valour of the men and women who went West, whether they survived or not." It is this kind of writing that will always be popular with the public, and it would be useful for western writers to take up these kind of issues in their writing, (in their own style of course!). I think people have just categorised the Western into the "cowboy/indian" story, but when presented with a Western done well, including all the human interest/passion and life the West had in abundance, they will love it as much as any other book/film.

Phil: I too read the EDGE books and loved them. Recently I discovered a friend had the whole series of these and have started to re-read them. They are violent and the thing that struck me most on re-reading them was the sadistic nature of the hero. There was sex in the books but it was not overdone. Rape also figured largely... So how do you get a younger generation to read tales of the Wild West? What do they read now? I don't know about the USA but here it is all horror and magical themes. Youngsters identify with the bumbling hero in Harry Potter. Would they find the same interest in the gritty heros of western fiction? I like to think the western is a historical novel. Until mainstream literature treats it as such it will always be an uphill struggle to popularise Western Historical Fiction.

Karl: It's like asking how to get older people to listen to hip-hop and rap music, or to get young people to listen to big band jazz. True Believers always want to think that if they just repackage it, that it will suddenly appeal to a demographic far away from the traditional market. That approach never works.

The most likely crossover audiences for Westerns are people that like historical romances (western needs to have a strong romance plot or subplot) war stories (western needs to have lots of action) mysteries (mystery set in old West) knights-in-shining-armor tales w/ swordplay (since the knights/swords/horses > gunfighters/guns/horses parallel has been used a lot in the past) theoretically the hiphop crowd should like Westerns: they have: gangs, substance abuse, "painted ladies", outlaw behavior, settle disputes with guns, honor code, young men dying young, us vs. them mindset, fights over territory and riches, special clothes not too different from many western themes actually. Still I'd argue that while they may be a surprising number of parallels between westerns and hiphop culture I wouldn't expect that hiphop fans will start reading westerns. Certain things are an expression of a particular time and place and the generation that produced it. I'm not sure that any amount of repackaging can change that.

Alfred: If you have a look at the Round Up magazine from Western writers of America (December issue) there is a statement from Kathleen O´Neal Gear. She says that the Western is dead. It can only come to life again if a lot of things are changing. Beginning with the title covers of many paperback. They show mostly gunman, indians or similar scenes. If you consider this as historical literature the cover should change so that they are accepted by bookstores.

The western situation in Germany is similar. We have a series on the market called LASSITER, an adult western series with more than 1.780 issues since 1973. Many people do know only this, nothing else. Booksellers do not want to have adult westerns in paperback, they just reject it. That is why LASSITER is in brochure size and only available in drugstores, supermarkets and places where you buy your daily newspaper. But never in bookstores. Responsible purchasers in the book market have not grown up with westerns. They are of a younger generation and always arguing that their dad and grandpa read "this old stuff" - but they do not want it any longer. If you ask them for historical westerns, they do not know anything about it. And what they do not know, they won´t buy. Responsibles lectors in publishing companies in Germany have lost their interest in westerns, only with very few exceptions here and there. After more than 20 years the market has accepted sf and fantasy, but no westerns. Me and a few other writers are tyring to turn back the wheel of time. But it´s not easy, I can tell you.

Dave: I think now more than ever it's vital that our stories bring something new or fresh to the genre. After all, even a die-hard western fan like me gets a little sick and tired of reading the same old revenge or range war stories all the time. We need to engage readers old and new with new plots - but we have to do it carefully, and NOT at the expense of all the wonderful, traditional values we normally associate with the western genre. Now, whether you love them or hate them, adult westerns like LONGARM do at least offer something different, and if you ignore the obligatory sex, you can often find new and often imaginative variations on the theme. In fact, I sometimes think that if they cut out all the sex, they'd be left with the sort of westerns we really should be writing now.

Derek: Any genre needs to grow in order to survive. It might be fine for all the old hands to sit back and say "we like it just how it is" but that way lies an ever-decreasing readership and eventual extinction. I used to play in a country band and when we visited the traditional country and western clubs many of them demanded all the old songs and none of that new stuff. We obliged, of course, and everyone went happy. But there was a really sad and a real common occurrence at such clubs, and that was the fact that more nights than not someone would stand up and give a moving tribute to yet another elderly member who had recently died. The audience was getting noticebly smaller month by month, until eventually, the economics of the situation saw many clubs close altogether.

On the other hand, the clubs that welcomed, say, line dancing with open arms (and a slapped Cuban heel) saw an influx of new blood. They grew stronger and prospered. Sure, a few of the old hands got a little grumpy and stopped coming, and a few of the bands had to learn new material... but nowadays the scene is very different. If you turn on a country music station how much country and western do you hear? Very little (this is all from a UK perspective, by the way). It's all modern country. It's all changed. Some say for the worse. Some say otherwise. But if it hadn't changed it would've been up there with music hall and snake oil salesman; just a little historic footnote.

Let's not beat around the bush. In fifty years time how many people are going to read traditional westerns? Not sure? Ask yourself how many people today would accept westerns the way they were written at the turn of the 20th century?

To my mind there are two problems. One is that we all know too much nowadays. Even those people who go through life not reading papers, watching the news, or surfing the web somehow pick up knowledge through osmosis. We know much more about what the West was like. We know more about the geography, the climate, the architecture, the weapons, the damage the weapons could do, the diseases, the sanitation. We have more information on the native Americans and what really happened to them. We have access to far more testimony from cowboys and soldiers and riverboat captains and horse-traders. We know how accurate different guns were and how unlikely some of the classic acts of gun-fighting were. We know, or can easily find out, what happened at the OK Corral or at Little Big Horn. We know what Buffalo Bill did and what he didn't do. We understand the economics of keeping a small town alive and we have a pretty good idea of what life must have been like for, say, a prostitute way out there in a tented city in the goldrush. We know how easily it was for people to get away with murder, and we know how easy it was to be murdered. We know about the animals and the disease and the life expectancy and the methods of making a living.

And in this modern world, to appeal to a new generation of readers who know all of this, too, we have to make our stories much more realistic and to encompass all of the above (and more). Now that's easier said than done. The beauty of writing a Western for me is in ... ahem... stampedes and bar-fights and shoot-outs and lonesome heroes coming along, winning the girl and saving the town. Just like the rest of you I love all that stuff. But even as I write such things I'm aware that it's the literary equivalent of singing an old song to an old audience.

And that's where the second problem lies. Most readers these days - this is the new generation of readers that we're talking about - want something a little more sophisticated plotwise. Look at how crime fiction has changed, the breadth of vision in the plots. This doesn't mean we can't maintain all of the old traditions but they have to be dressed up differently, there has to be new elements incorporating all those things we now know about and require. Sure there's still just the standard seven plots (or fifteen, or three, depending on what view you subscribe to) but these plots are like chord sequence: you can play them with a steel guitar, an old fiddle, and sing over the top of them in a scratchy nasal voice, or you can play them with the latest gear and a modern production... Time and tastes both move on.

Like it or not a future readership is going to require more sophistication, new perspectives, revelatory characterisation, and much more insight into reality. Whether they'll get that or even look for it in a western is debateable. To my mind it'll only happen when a mainstream writer happens to produce a western that sets the publishing world alight (much as Stephen King re-kindled the horror world back in the seventies when all sensible people said it was dead and gone for ever and a good job too) and then watch for all those other band wagon jumpers. Alas, I can't help but feel that we're all in an old comfortable club with a nice old band playing those sweet songs that take us back to the ancient spring of our youth. And I think we enjoy it there, too. I know I do :-)

Dave Whitehead on modelling

Having learned of my interest in the Old West, an elderly neighbour of mine offered to build me a replica Conestoga wagon (in miniature, naturally). And boy, did he make good on that promise!

Firstly, using cocktail sticks for wheel-spokes and thinly-sliced sections of drainpipe for iron tyres, he built the wheels, then fashioned both the body itself and the chassis from local Suffolk oak. I painted it, and my wife Janet made the bonnet. He did everything else. Eventually the wagon was assembled, complete with miniature grease bucket, water barrel, toolbox and even the tools themselves! As you can imagine, I was thrilled when I finally received the finished item, and so touched by his kindness and generosity. Now this same neighbour has promised to build me a replica Concord coach. Needless to say, I just can't wait ...

The Perfect western?

Howard : My tongue in cheek answer is it must include a horse. Oh, sorry, Equine American to be PC about it. I am pretty sure the Hoss formed a union a few years back, and I don't need the grief of half a dozen Palominos picketing Robert Hale over species slights. I have a former member or two for that and Hale doesn't need to spend extra money of sidewalk cleaners. The horse. Where would the western be without this magnificent animal?

Cowboys would be forced to walk from town to town and since they'd have no bedroll or saddlebags conveniently carried that means like those Tennessee birds they're likely to come into town in dirty underwear and too tired to shoot. No change of clothes, no toiletries and no hardtack. Going without those maggot-ridden biscuits has to be some sort of a felony, doesn't it? Without a horse how would the lonesome cowboy ride off into the sunset wit the fair saloon gal gone good? He couldn't. Saloon gals don't care to walk, so the poor lonesome cowboy will forever remain, well, lonesome. And just who the devil would the lonesome cowboy talk to on those cold lonely nights on the trail?

C'mon, we all know those riders chat up their mounts. They'd be forced to talk to sheep. Ever tried having a decent conversation with an animal that goes "ba-a-a-a-a-ah" constantly? There's better ways of entertaining oneself. How would the cowboy ride into town hell-bent for leather to save the day? Again, no can do. Can you see Little Joe or Hoss Cartwright running into town on their own two legs? I think not. The dramatic impact just, I dunno, loses something. And what about all those scenes where the movie cowboy jumps from a second story and lands square in the saddle of his trusty mount? No telling what he might land on and what he might injure if that pony isn't there. Let's just say a hitch post isn't a comfortable stop and a cowboy with a two octave higher voice isn't particularly intimidating...

Karl: Things I hate to see in Westerns: cars, telephones, guns designed after 1900 (special exemption for "The Wild Bunch" movie) You gotta have horses, cattle, cowboy hats and guns.

Ian: My answer would be a bit more philosophical and would be change. Stories that have a feel of being a small part of the larger history moving from an untamed lawless chaos to a world of order, along with that inevitable feeling that change is not nessarily progress. Like Karl, Wild Bunch excepted, I don't like to go as far as cars etc, but I Iike ageing heroes who feel they are becoming a bit of anachronism in a world that's moving forward, but prove ultimately that when the chips are down they're the ones who have still got what it takes to do what a man's gotta do.

Tord: Dust. A low sun. Gun Oil. A game of cards. A lonely bottle of Whiskey. One pissed off marshal (alt. sheriff). A couple of bad-ass Outlaws. A deserted copper mine. Remnants of a saloon brawl. A hanging, or at least a noose somewhere. Saddle and a Winchester 44 (horse is optional). A strategically placed cactus. And not to forget the warmblooded senorita or a fresh country girl. Simmer for 150 pages and ther ya go....

Bill Fleming on meeting Roy Rogers

I met Roy Rogers at the opening of one of his restaurants. He set up a receiving line and said while he wasn't able to sign autographs he wasn't leaving until he shook everyone's hand who came to see him. He took time to speak to everyone and did not hurry anyone. My son was in a stroller at the time and Roy asked if he could hold him. He spent the rest of his time shaking hands with everyone and talking to everyone while holding my son. He kept calling him his little buckaroo.

There was no press around and no media to impress so it was obvious that it was from the heart. I remember thinking that this was the time celebrities started selling their autographs and here was a man who could probably buy and sell most of them being so gracious. He was a true gentleman. Someone to ride the river with.

THE BAD JOKE CORRAL

How many cowboys does it take to change a light bulb?

Gaby : Takes one cowboy to change a light bulb. He holds it up and the world revolves around him.

Derek: And it takes dozens of western fans to change a lightbulb - one changing the bulb and all the others reminiscing about how changing lightbulbs used to be so much more popular.

Howard: One to shoot out the light bulb and ten sacrificial outlaws to figure out how to dig out the fragments without getting electrocuted.

Tord: One spoiled dove to do the screwing and one to gather the posse to hunt down the one making these bad jokes.

Dave: A whole town-full. One to change the lightbulb, and the rest of the town - who have only ever been used to lantern-light - to wonder what in hell they do with it after that.

Martin: Then some young cowpoke comes along and shoots at it, smashing the bulb, which just happens to be the one and only bulb in the west!

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