Western Lists

Graham asks below about mailing lists devoted to Western fiction. There are actually quite a few.

The largest (he said modestly) is WesternPulps, which is moderated by yours truly. The focus, as the name implies, is on Western pulp magazines, but topics tend to drift to other things Western-related, such as the ongoing discussion of why there's no evidence in Western movies of horses going to the bathroom.

Also devoted to Western fiction in general is Frontier Times, which does a better job of staying on topic. There's a lot of overlap between the membership of this group and WesternPulps, and we all get along fine.

The Black Horse Westerns list concentrates on the Western novels published by Robert Hale Ltd., although it occasionally touches on other Western-related topics as well. Many of the members of this list are Black Horse authors, so the posts tend to deal with writing most of the time, but membership is open to Western readers as well. I don't write for Hale, but I'm a member of this group and enjoy the discussions.

There are also some specialized groups, such as Longarm and Lone Star, devoted to those two series, and The Spanish Bit Saga Club, which discusses the series of historical novels by Don Coldsmith. Morgan Kane, the hero of a series of Western novels first published in Norway, has a list devoted to him. Louis L'Amour has at least five different lists. Other authors who write Westerns such as David Robbins, William W. Johnstone, and James B. Hendryx have lists devoted to their work. Search "Westerns" on the Yahoo Groups main page and there are a surprising number of hits. Anyone who's interested in Westerns ought to be able to find several lists that would be a good fit for them.