In 2023, bestselling novelist Howard Weinstein and I founded Silverado Press, a micro-press that would publish western/historical fiction. The first two books we released were my short-story collection Byrd’s Luck & Other Western Stories and Howard’s Galloway’s Gamble 2: Lucifer & The Great Baltimore Brawl. Now we’re releasing our first book that wasn’t entirely written by one of us: Silverado Press Presents: Western Stories by Today’s Top Writers, Volume 1.
It’s an anthology of original western fiction by a curious (and intentional) mix of seasoned western writers and some newcomers to the genre (because no matter how many people try to declare that the western is dead, lots of folks still read them and want to write them).
The stories, I’m pleased to report, are uniformly terrific. That said, there’s incredible variety in subject matter and styles. The only constant is that each writer was asked to build a story around some real-life event from western history. The story, I told them, didn’t have to be about that incident, though it could be–but the incident had to figure into the story, to provide an actual place and time for the story’s happenings and to help readers learn some things about American history that they might not have known, in a painless and entertaining way.
And did they ever deliver. We have stories about the sinking of the steamship Arabia in 1856, the devastating Schoolhouse Blizzard of 1888, Utah’s Black Hawk War (1865-1872), the 1896 “Crash at Crush,” and many more riveting events. The lineup of contributors is equally impressive, including: Mary Fan, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Sharon Frame Gay, Steve Hockensmith, Del Howison, Nik James, Paul Kupperberg, Vonn McKee, Lisa Majewski, Jeffrey J. Mariotte (hey, that’s me!), Cheryl Pierson, L. J. Washburn and James Reasoner, Richard Prosch, Gord Rollo, and Aaron Rosenberg.
We have to think a young artist named Frederic Remington for the cover painting. Seems like he’s getting more popular all the time. Some day maybe he’ll be a big deal in the art world.
I have to admit that it’s a special kind of feeling–pride, mostly, but also wonderment and disbelief–to conceive of a book, reach out to a bunch of your friends and personal literary heroes, and make it come to fruition. I hope you’ll pick up a copy and enjoy the fresh, new, exciting tales inside.
A great big western-sized thank you to all the contributors, to my partner Howie, and to every reader who has or will support and read this great collection.
#Tags: adventure, anthology, books, short stories, Westerns, writing
