FAR WEST was another late Seventies digest magazine that had me thinking, "All right! Another market!" And like the other new digests from that era I've written about in this space, I never sold a thing to FAR WEST, despite submitting a number of stories. But I bought and read every issue I came across, including this one. You certainly can't argue with the bold claim on the cover: "America's Leading Western Fiction Monthly". Of course, it was also America's Only Western Fiction Monthly at that time, but that doesn't sound as impressive.
Louis L'Amour is the only author in the first issue that readers are likely to recognize, but as time went on FAR WEST featured stories from some other well-known Western writers, such as Matt Braun, R.C. House, Wayne Barton, John D. Nesbitt, Bill Gulick, W.L. Fieldhouse, Michele McQuaid, Kit Prate, Earl Murray, and Mel Marshall. There were reprints from S. Omar Barker and James Warner Bellah. It was a good magazine during the three years or so that it lasted. I would have liked to contribute to it, but that wasn't to be.
5 comments:
There was also a pulp called FAR WEST STORIES and other variations of the title in the late 1920's and early 1930's. Published by Street & Smith, it was a companion to WESTERN STORY.
I have several issues of the earlier FAR WEST but none of the more recent title. Distribution in the late 1970's must have been poor.
Their failure to include you no doubt led to their demise.
I've missed previous installments, then, and shame on me...FAR WEST is the only latter '70s digest I'm aware of.
Ah! I see...not other western digests, but indeed other mayfly (or at best octopus-lifespan) digests, such as ESPIONAGE and MYSTERY MONTHLY...did you ever place anything with FIVE GREAT ROMANCES? The one issue I've read through had a Very creditable romantic crime story...as I tend to put it, something that would be not at all out of place in a contemporary AHMM issue, only with more sex in it. Not a way to put me off.
Todd, I barely remember seeing a few issues of FIVE GREAT ROMANCES at the check-out stand in the grocery store, next to TV Guide and the crossword puzzle magazines. Never picked one up. If I had, I might well have sent something to them. I looked it up and see that it came out in the mid-80s, a time when I was desperate for work and not selling much of anything except an occasional story to the porn digests.
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