NEW RELEASE: UNDER WESTERN STARS

If short stories are my first and best love, then short westerns are that magical summer affair that seems all too rare and fleeting.

Firmly middle-aged, the heyday of western shorts was well before my time. Nowadays, new, quality western shorts show up once in a blue moon.

For the most part, they’re treasures dropped in from another time. An era when somebody like Elmore Leonard could dash off a yarn for the slick magazines and be paid a decent amount—and maybe even get a movie option out of the deal. A time when a man (or woman, for that matter) could feed a family of four on a monthly production schedule of four or five tales. 

Magic. 

Perhaps even then.

In 2020, besieged by a global pandemic and a contentious political climate, Western Fictioneers set out to rekindle that magic. We set out to tackle the darkness head on—with stories about the dead of night. 

In the shadow of the earth, under western stars, our characters lived and breathed, laughed and cried, slapped leather, spurred dirty broncs and rowdy mounts, and lit a bonfire for each of us who contributed. I’m surely not alone when I say that contributing to this collection was one of my summer’s high points. 

Now, as autumn leaves begin to blaze new color through the trees behind my house, releasing this collection to the world is even more of a joy.

ALL proceeds for the book go back to Western Fictioneers. None of us are being paid for the work we're doing. It’s truly a labor of love.

As a reader, you’ll find stories about family, lost and found. Tales of Civil War and reconciliation. Gunfighters. Bounty hunters. Small towns and cemeteries. You’ll find ghosts, real and imagined. Adventure and romance. You’ll make new friends and rekindle old flames. You’ll live under western stars, with a harvest moon overhead and laughter and suspense all around. 

Today, October 1, 2020, please click over to Amazon on the link below and join Easy Jackson, Jackson Lowry, Meg Mims, Gordon L. Rottman, Angela Raines, Clay More, Michael Newton, Big Jim Williams, Susan Murrie Macdonald, James J. Griffin, Jerry Guin, Ben Goheen, Barbara Shepherd, Charlie Steel, J. E. S. Hays, Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Edward Massey. Benjamin Thomas, Kevin Wolf, G. Wayne Tilman, and Terry Alexander for a night around the campfire.

Enjoy the magic.

Richard Prosch

Editor