There is not a single western fiction magazine on the print market, today, to my knowledge. No tales are devoted exclusively to the Old West and its cast of characters, the outlaws, Indians, pioneers, and gunmen who lived in the wild, wild west, exits today. I’ve been asked about starting a western fiction magazine, but to be quite honest, I’ve a lot on my plate these days and the thought of adding “Editor” to my titles isn’t that appealing. However, my love for western fiction and the genre keeps the option open.

I’m going to seriously consider it, but only if I can find enough qualified writers to supplement the magazine with some good stories. While I’ll contribute, I simply cannot be the sole writer. It just would not work. Besides, I have to believe that the readers would want some variety.

The magazine will have to sustain itself financially. I will not go much out-of-pocket on the project, so it will have to be carried by subscriptions and advertisements.

There really isn’t anything out there, today. The last true western fiction magazine, Far West, a California publication where I got my start writing western fiction, folded back in the 70’s, and since then, there hasn’t been anything around to take its place. Part of the problem is that there is a relatively small market for western fiction, and print media is so expensive. However, there are enough western fiction fans out there, that it is a viable operation as an electronic magazine.

I’ve put out some feelers, asking folks who visit the western fiction website what their feelings about a western fiction magazine are, and whether they’d be willing to subscribe, and whether they’d be willing to contribute. Time will tell. Keep looking in here to see the way the wind blows.

If you’ve any comments, give them here, but also consider taking the survey (see below). The more who take the survey, the more of a reality it will be.

I love to write western novels. I grew up reading Louis L’Amour and had the great pleasure of getting my first western fiction story publishing in a California publication, Far West, and being featured on the front page with L’Amour. I’ve gone on to write several western fiction books and stories, the latest being Bloody Wes Teague. This is the story of a man who was a lawman and who is now a rancher. He is confronted with an issue as old as mankind. Teague finds the lines blurred between vengeance and justice.

It is a love story, the story of a man and woman who fall in love and return to Wyoming to live out their lives together. But, their love story turns tragic and suddenly, they are both thrown into a whirlwind of violence and they struggle to survive.

It was an interesting book in a lot of ways. It didn’t start out to be a love story, but began with a romance between a man and woman. However, the love between them becomes  the driving force behind their survival. I loved doing the book.

Beginning a western is always easy. I like taking a strong character and placing him in a scene and “watching” him act out his role. In this story, my character literally took over the story. He took it in directions I had not planned and to an ending that I had not intended. I know that I have a great character when he or she does something like that. It means they are developed early and such that they have a reality that compels the writer to let them act according to his or her character traits.

I wanted the character to become a Christian by the end of the novel…but he didn’t. It just would not work. There was some serious thought on the subject of God and His will, but in the end, the main character remains ambivalent.

In my new book, Wearer of the Gold, a new Christian sci-fi novel, I wanted to set up a scene that clearly let the reader know this was another world. The objective is to go off-world immediately with the reader. I also wanted the reader to feel the tension and develop an interest in continuing with the story. (It is essential that you draw the reader into the story.) The scene opens like this…

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There are endless varieties of ways to open your story. Some writers love to open their book with an action scene, while others prefer setting the scene, decorating the stage as it were, with the landscape and/or the characters. James Michener did that a lot. Whatever you do, it must be an opening that makes the reader want to know what’s going to happen next. Read the rest of this entry »

In my new Christian Sci-fi book, Wearer of the Gold, I tried out some techniques that I’d never employed before in my writing. First of all, I had to have some exotic words. These words needed to be nearly impossible to speak, but not entirely. They had to be words that did not exist, or needed to exist for a meaning we do not have a word to describe. That was not an easy task, but I reasoned that if humans speaking English had a word, a very strange word not found in their language, what would we do? Well, we’d adjust it somewhat to enable us to pronounce the word, and we might even use the phonetic sound of the word to create the word in our language; or, in some instances, we may just render a word that we cannot say, into something we can say that has nothing to do with phonetics, but just meaning.

In later portions of the book, Wearer of the Gold, the main character, Cubal, meets an alien race. They are strange in many ways (including their love for human flesh). I had to have an unusual name for them, so I invented the name A’rkji.  This would be a name that could have come from the complete inability to say the real name of this species, phonetically speaking, “Abjt-ssha-katta-malibk-jlissi.” Thus, the shorthand version, A’rkji.

Here is a short scene from that section of the book Read the rest of this entry »