An Interview with Terrell L. Bowers

So, Terrell, what prompted you to become a writer?

My dad got me started reading Westerns. After about a hundred of them, I decided there wasn't enough romance or humor. Being a wit (perhaps only half of one) I tried to infuse more of a relationship between guy and girl. And, when I could add some humor, I did...
 
Read more of this interview at Avalon Authors

An Interview with Amos Carr

Q. Jill, great to have you here. I don’t know a lot about the western genre, so why don’t you start by telling us about your writing?

A. Well, I will be having two books published this year by the Black Horse Western imprint of Robert Hale. They are both around 50 – 60,000 words in length and should be a good read for any Western fans, old and new. I don’t have an agent, I simply approached Robert Hale directly and to date, getting a contract for my first and second ‘real’ books is my most memorable writing success, a lifetime’s dream come true....

Read more at Nikki Goodman

Westward Dreams - D M Harrison interview

Author D M Harrison always had the urge to write, but like many of us the duties of a working life tended to cut down on the time devoted to writing, however after taking early retirement Diana, (well what did you think the D stood for? ) found that she now had the time to devote to following her dream. There followed a learning curve which involved various creative writing courses and soon Diana found herself selling short stories to various magazines.


"I've had enough reject slips to paper a whole room (large size) A couple of the books were rejected and I worked on them again and sent the elsewhere and they were accepted. You have to persevere and believe in your own abilities. A writers group is good and reading out loud helps a lot."

Read more at Tainted Archive

Jill McDonald-Constable On Writing Westerns

Under the pseudonym of Amos Carr, Jill McDonald-Constable has written numerous westerns for the Robert Hale Ltd Black Horse Western series. A passionate writer for many years, she tells us why she loves the western genre and just how she ended up being given an Indian name herself.

Where did your love of Westerns come from?

I’m an outdoor girl, that’s probably why I like Westerns. I was brought up surrounded by animals, and spent more time with horses than with people, which may just be why I put so many ‘horsey’ details in my books. I loved watching Western films and series, but never read a Western book. I was always really rooting for the Indians though. I have spent all my life writing in various genres, but the way I finally broke into Westerns is a series of strange occurrences...

Read more at Robert Hale Book Blog

An interview with Peter Wilson

WESTERN fiction is a genre loaded with imagery and conflict; heroes and villains, lawful and lawless, from dust bowl towns populated by cowboys. In stark contrast, it was while looking over the rolling fairways of Furness Golf Club, that author and experienced sports journalist, Peter Wilson, first came up with the idea to write Westerns.

From their Ocean Road home on Walney, Peter gestured towards the golf course and said to his wife: “The Indians are coming!” and the throwaway comment went on to spawn a series of books, published by Robert Hale books of London as part of the Black Horse Western series....

Read more at North West Evening Mail

An interview with Matthew Mayo

Matthew P. Mayo may be a new name to many western readers but he’s been contributing articles, essays and reviews to magazines for a number of years. He’s also edited a couple of anthologies and has had a few short stories of his own included in anthologies too, both westerns and other genres. Recently he has been behind two westerns for major publishers and has more on the way...

Read the interview at Western Fiction Review

An interview with Nik Morton

Read the interview at Buddies in the Saddle.

An interview with Chet Cunningham

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?

In high school we had a test essay type. I didn’t really know the answer, so I wrote all the way around it. Got an A. So I said this writing is a great thing to do.

Did anyone encourage you to be a writer, and if so whom?

No one urged me to be a writer. Just the opposite. When I started college I flunked the English exam and was put in the remedial English class. The HEA of the journalism department said since I was in remedial English I couldn’t be a journalism major. I eventually got in by selling four short articles to the Portland newspapers...

Read more at Western Fiction Review.

An interview with Mike Stotter

Subsequent to the St. Louis Bouchercon, Stotter re-released some of his out-of-print fiction in both e-book format (available for download here) and paperback versions. It got me to thinking about the fact that most people know Stotter only as the editor-in-chief of Shots. Comparatively few realize that he’s also a writer of children’s books, Westerns, and crime fiction. So I decided to take him out to one of the London public houses and record a short interview for The Rap Sheet. We had a opportunity to discuss his work for the CWA, his longtime involvement with Shots, his work on non-fiction books, and his success in composing Western fiction--even though, as he readily admits, “the nearest I have gotten to the Wild West is Missouri.”

Read more at The Rap Sheet.

An Interview with Terry James

Q. Has your storytelling style changed at all between the writing of Shadows to Echoes to Ghosts, either by design, default or just experience, and if so, could you tell us a little about the how or maybe the why?

A. Yes, I believe my writing has changed and is continually changing. I used to write for the enjoyment of the story telling but these days I find the composition the more interesting part of the writing process. Therefore, I'd say my style has changed, and continues to change, because I want every story I write to be unique from anything else I've done...

Read more at Joanne Walpole.

An interview with David Whitehead

David Whitehead was born in East London in 1958 and grew up loving westerns. He published his first book in 1986 and to date has published over 70 novels. He is best known as one of the Black Horse Western writers (Black Horse Westerns are an imprint of Robert Hale Publishers in London and the pre-eminent publisher of westerns worldwide) although David’s talent includes thrillers, romance and science fiction. I am pleased to present this exclusive interview with David Whitehead.

1: First, thanks for consenting to this interview! With 70 books to your credit I want to ask you up front what was your first book?

Read more at Dispatches from the Last Outlaw.

An interview with Tony Masero

'Jake Rains' is my first book to be published in hardback. Hale Books (aka Black Horse Westerns) were kind enough to let one of their cover artists have a try with the pen instead of the paintbrush and miraculously it was accepted and they let me do the cover art for my book as well.

Having painted Western book covers for four decades, it seemed about time to put something between the covers instead of on them. Over the years its meant a lot of visual research whilst doing the Edge and Steele series amongst others and that of course led to an interest in the era and also, like so many of my generation, as a youngster I was raised on a diet of both Western movies and comics...

Read more at Tainted Archive.

An interview with Chap O'Keefe

Free Book Reviews: What do you think readers will find most notable about this book?

Chap O'Keefe: Hangrope stands head and shoulders above the current crop of competitors! It has a fabulous story with – to this reader, at least – a completely unforeseen dénouement, vivid, lively characters and regular bursts of action which – and here's the important bit – STEM NATURALLY FROM THE PLOT and aren't just shoehorned in to beef things up a bit. I have, of course, read Chap O'Keefe for a long while now, but genuinely feel that this is his best to date!

Read More at Free Book Reviews

An interview with BH writer Peter Taylor

Teacher and prison lecturer Peter Taylor enjoyed western films when he was younger. So when he decided to switch from writing poetry to fiction, going way out west seemed the obvious answer. His first western was accepted and triggered a run of cowboy stories published on the Black Horse Western label.

That Sedgefield-born Taylor, 63, should write westerns is an odd thought. Even stranger is where some of the inspiration for his novels came – his teaching days in the Midlands...

Read More at Darlington & Stockton Times.

An interview with Chuck Tyrell

My first Western novel was Vulture Gold. I wrote it in 1979 and entered it in a Louis L’Amour write-alike contest. Didn’t win. Decided I wasn’t cut out to write fiction and continued as a journalist, magazine feature writer, copywriter, and corporate literature writer. I don’t remember why I dusted the manuscript off and input it (it was written on an IBM Selectric). But I sold it to Black Horse Westerns in 2004. It was published in 2005, and republished in 2011. It is now available in several eBook formats and in print. Originally, the book was about 70,000 words long. Now it is 45,000 or so...

Read more at Western Fictioneers.

A brief interview with BH author Colin Bainbridge

A retired careers advisor is making his name in the Wild West. Colin Bainbridge, aged 63, of Cottingham Drive, Moulton, Northampton, has had three Western novels published and has had another 10 accepted for publication.

Read More at Northampton Chronicle.

An Interview with David Whitehead

Born on the wild frontier of East London, David Whitehead always wanted to write. As a child his father would pass on his old western books and also record stories he'd invented himself onto a tape for his young son to listen to. And now that boy has become a man but that boyhood love of storytelling, and specifically westerns is still with him.

Read More at The Tainted Archive.

An interview with Chuck Tyrell

Charles T. Whipple’s Westerns are written with an old man’s wisdom filtered through a child’s wide-eyed sense of wonder. His stories ripple with the feel of folk tales and local legend, without losing the immediacy and realism of someone who’s been there. Whipple grew up in the American West, in a time when the pioneers had aged but were still living—at a time when a child dreamed as much of the 19th century as 20th.

Read part #1 and part #2 at Booklifenow.

Make it move the story: Howard Hopkins on Writing the West #2

Plot has always been the burr in my saddle. Has never come easy. I’ve read entire books on it and still there are days when plotting I’d rather sit on a hot poker.

Read more at Book Life.

Limitless Vista of Character & Story: Howard Hopkins on Writing the West #1

Each new novel by Howard Hopkins reminds me that the possibilities are endless, that anything goes — within the publisher’s guidelines, of course. Hopkins writes horror novels and Westerns, such as The Dark Riders and Pistolero, under his own name and Westerns as Lance Howard. His recent Lance Howard Westerns include Dead Man Riding, The Killing Kind, and the forthcoming Hell on Hoofs for Hale’s Black Horse Westerns line.

Read more at: Booklifenow.