Rough Drafts
ROUGH DRAFTS
- Published May 13, 2013
- Written by Jesse Mullins
Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana revealed exciting news at our True Westerner celebration honoring them, on March 9, during Arizona’s Tucson Festival of Books. The party afforded them the opportunity to meet Michael Wallis, whose book, David Crockett: The Lion of the West, they both love. They love it so much, in fact, they announced they might make it into a script!
Rough Drafts by Jesse Mullins
- Published April 15, 2013
- Written by Jesse Mullins
Word has reached us that Oklahoma’s National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum will bestow its prestigious Western Heritage Award for nonfiction book on the 2012 blockbuster Geronimo (Yale University Press) by Robert M. Utley. The Western Heritage Awards—also known as the Wrangler awards—will be conferred April 20 in a gala event at the Oklahoma City-based institution. Other winners in the literary category include Jim Logan’s magazine article “The Other Trail,” published in Oklahoma Today’s March/April 2012 edition. Logan tells the story of 19th-century cowboys who drove countless herds to new markets hungry for beef. The honor for Outstanding Western Novel will go to D.B. Jackson for Unbroke Horses (Goldminds Publishing). Jackson’s tale involves the kidnapping of a young boy by three Civil War deserters—a degenerate band of misfits—who try to conscript the boy into their malevolent ways. The Wrangler for Outstanding Photography Book will go to National Geographic’s impressive work Greatest Photographs of the American West, edited by Rich Clarkson and James C. McNutt.
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In our next issue, I’ll bring you coverage of the Western Writers of America’s Spur Awards. I hope to see some of you—well, the scribes in our midst, anyway—at the organization’s annual convention, slated this year for June 24-29 at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The convention will feature panels on the Victorian West, songwriting, cowboys, Great Basin history and more.
—Jesse Mullins
Rough Drafts
- Published January 14, 2013
- Written by Jesse Mullins
If a particular literary mode in Western nonfiction wins high marks for achievement in the early part of this decade, it will be biographies. We’ve seen already that individuals whom we thought we knew inside and out can still be fodder for major bios: Quanah Parker in Empire of the Summer Moon, Geronimo in Robert Utley’s fresh narrative account
Rough Drafts
- Published March 18, 2013
- Written by Jesse Mullins
It’s hard to believe he’s been gone for a quarter of a century, but this year marks the 25th anniversary of the passing of novelist Louis L’Amour.
Rough Drafts
- Published November 05, 2012
- Written by Jesse Mullins
We’re approaching the end of a landmark year in Western book publishing, and the beginning of another. With so many great projects out there for us to scout for you, True West is dedicating more pages and more energy to our Western Books coverage than ever in our history.
Rough Drafts
- Published February 18, 2013
- Written by Jesse Mullins
The e-book phenomenon is bringing new riches for Western authors. “It was all the idea of publishers in New York that the public didn’t like Westerns,” says Velda Brotherton, author of the historical romance Wilda’s Outlaw (Wild Rose Press). “But in New York, they don’t know what is going on in the middle of the country—here in the ‘flyover zone.’ Out here, they’re popular.”
