Behind the Chutes

THIS IS A GREAT time to be a Western writer or reader. Never have there been so many talented and accomplished western writers to choose from. Our genre is healthy and vibrant despite the premature announcements of its passing.

However, we do have a major challenge ahead of us. There are few western readers and even fewer writers under the age of forty. This doesn’t bode well for the future of the western genre. So, I am making it a priority to do whatever I can to bring our beloved genre to a younger audience.

I challenge all of you to introduce one new reader to the western genre and, if you are a writer, to find, recruit, and mentor at least one author under the age of thirty-five. This is no easy undertaking, but I believe it is vital to the long-term survival of our genre. I hope you will join me. So, if you are an unpublished western writer or wannabe western writer under age thirty-five and would like a mentor, feel free to drop me a note with a short sample of your writing at dennis@ oghmacreative.com.

Now, for the announcement many of you have been waiting for, but before we get to that, I’d like to once again thank our fine panel of independent award-winning judges for selecting the winner and runner-up in our Second Annual Mustang Award for Western Flash Fiction.

L.J. Washburn is a talented western writer. L.J. received the Private Eye Writers of America paperback original award and the American Mystery award for the first book in the Lucas Hallam Mystery series, Wild Night. She also won the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for the short story “Charlie’s Pie” and was nominated twice more for her stories.

Richard Prosch’s work has appeared in Wild West, Roundup, Boys’ Life, and Saddlebag Dispatches magazines. He won a Spur Award from Western Writers of America for Best Short Fiction for his story, “The Scalpers.”

Therese Greenwood won the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for her story “Buck’s Last Ride” in Kill as You Go, her short story collection from Coffin Hop Press of Calgary, Alberta. She is a three-time Finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada’s Award of Excellence. She won the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Mystery Flash Fiction Contest and her short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

Thank you, judges, for taking the time to read and evaluate all the entries this year.

And now, the winner of our Second Annual Mustang Award for Western Flash Fiction is “Yellow Town” by Bruce Harris. Congratulations, Bruce! Also appearing in this issue is our first runner-up story “Lonestar Hate” by Brandon Barrows. Congratulations to you, too, Brandon. Unfortunately, we simply don’t have enough room in this issue for all five finalists, but the other three merit a mention as well. In third place was “Deadman’s Stand” by David Bowmore. W. Michael Farmer took fourth place with “A Man of His Word,” and Allison Tebo was a very close fifth with her story, “Blaze of Memories.” Congratulations to all of you.

You’ll notice we’ve added a new column this time out, “The Book Wagon.” It will be here that the newest member of our staff, Doug Osgood, a talented writer in his own right, will review a trio of Western books— fiction and nonfiction—for each new issue moving forward. He’ll give a short synopsis of each book, along with his overall impressions, then rate each on a scale of one to five gold nuggets. If you’re a Western writer or publisher and would like to submit a book for review, send your request to dennis@oghmacreative.com and we’ll get it set up on Doug’s reading list.

At last year’s Will Rogers Medallion Awards, outgoing Director Charles Williams mentioned to us how desperately we needed to add some Visual Humor to our lineup. It was a suggestion we couldn’t refuse. So in addition to “The Book Wagon,” we’re proud to present our other new feature debuting this issue, “The Punny Express,” a humorous, Western-themed cartoon strip written by Saddlebag Dispatches Associate Editor George “Clay” Mitchell and illustrated by Assistant Art Director Dylan Hale.

Finally, we’re proud to offer our latest issue of Saddlebag Dispatches. We have modern gunmen, heroic horses, classic rodeos, land-grabbing mobsters, two amazing Apache women, and much more. So, what are you waiting for? Turn the page, pull up a log to sit on, pour a cup from the camp pot, and get to reading.

—DENNIS DOTY Publisher