Jesse James

Jesse James

Is Jesse James a hero or a villain? Because all history is revisionist history, we'll never know for sure. For every book that comes out claiming Jesse to be a hero, there will be another portraying him to be a cutthroat killer who thought nothing of robbing and murdering to get his way. I spend a lot of time in the Kansas City area, and giving the wrong opinion can spring battles reminiscent of the Civil War. Jesse is either loved or hated. All I know is that legends make for good writing, and Jesse James has certainly brought the imaginations of many writers to the page. 

Here's a challenge. Read up on Jesse James and write a short story about him. Who knows, maybe it'll turn into a novel. But whatever you do, the research will be half the fun.

Jesse James Farm

 St. Joseph, Missouri History

Cactus Country Volume II

The second book in the Cactus Country Anthology series hits the bookstore shelves this week. It is also available through High Hill Press and look for it on Amazon soon. The editions that were sent out toward the end of 2011 were well received and we've been anxiously awaiting delivery of more books so that we could offer them to the public. There are 26 authors represented in this book, many of them are Spur Award winners and multi-published in the western genre.

If you're a fan of these authors, you should order your copy of Cactus Country II today...

Rod Miller

Dusty Richards

Jory Sherman

Donna Volkenannt

Delois McGrew

Brett Cogburn

John Nesbitt

Larry Sweazy

Lucia St. Clair Robson

Pat Carr

Eddie Owens

Troy Andrew Smith

Carolyn Steele

Mike Thompson

Claudia Mundell

Gail Burton

Ellen Gray Massey

Marilyn Smith

Connie Vigil Platt 

Don Johnson

James Griffin

Regina Williams

W. E. Mueller

Thomas Long

Billie Louise Jones

Where Did All the Cowboys Go?

Here's a row of faces than I'm sure most of you have not seen before. Some of them are good cowboys, some not so good. But is this what a cowboy looks like today? I don't think so. Here are the people I consider cowboys now.

Brett Cogburn

Dusty Richards

John Nesbitt



Jory Sherman



Johnny Boggs

Each of these men has lived as a cowboy, but their most important contribution to that name is that they write about cowboys. They keep the legend and myth alive with their prose. Cactus Country proudly published an anthology in the fall of 2011 and had a story in the book from each of these writers. Those stories, and thousands of stories like them, are what will keep the cowboy alive. And if you want to find out what names go with the faces of the row of cowboys I have at the first of this post, here is a link to a site that is loaded with information about the cowboys of our history.

 Famous Cowboys and Their Horses

Ernest Borgnine, a Great Cowboy.

I've been corresponding with a cowboy about western movies and western actors. We pretty much both vote for John Wayne as our favorite, but this past week we wrote back and forth about Ernest Borgnine. I've met Mr. Borgnine a couple of times, once when he was touring the country in his big motor home and stopped by a shop I ran, then again a few years ago when he presented Dusty Richards with his Wrangler Award at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. That was a star-studded event and I'd been told that Tom Selleck would be there, that's why I supported my good friend, Dusty, by buying that $150 a plate dinner. Sorry Dusty, it was Tom drove me to lose those 20 pounds. But alas, the big thrill of my evening, besides seeing Dusty win the Wrangler, was seeing Ernest Borgnine again. His smile made the evening.


This blog is dedicated to all things western, and what's better than an Ernest Borgnine western movie. The Wild Bunch is one of my favorites because it also starred William Holden. The movie opens with a group of aging outlaw's final score, a bank robbery. It's a rip roaring good action movie. Kind of violent for its time, but pretty tame now.

All in all, Ernest Borgnine didn't make a Searchers quality western, but actually there aren't too many of those. What Borgnine did in his career is have fun and keep working. And really, every western is worth watching. They show us another time and another culture and most of us baby boomers have at one time or another dreamed of being a cowboy.

Max Evans is the real deal.

Max Evans

I've recently been doing research on a western writer name of Max Evans. I'd heard the name of course, and knew he was one of the legends, but that was about all. After reading about him, I realized I knew more than I thought. He wrote books that I saw on the silver screen. Books that when they ended up as movies starred some of my favorite actors. And I'm sure you have caught on by now that movies are my thing, especially westerns. I'll do my John Wayne immitation for you if you ask. Please ask.

Anyway...back to Max Evans. Wow. What a writer. And he is truly one of those western wordsmiths that make you see the west up close and personal.  Some of Max's stories are set in more contemporary times, but they all deal with what the life of a cowboy is like. And through the eyes of a great writer, we can all be there.

There is a 1999 article about a movie called The Hi-Lo Country. It's made from a Max Evans book.
L.A. Times article about The Hi-Lo Country, 1999.
Watch this interview with Max.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=FixQwse20hM
The Rounders was one of my favorite movies. I loved Glen Ford in anything and Henry Fonda did some of his best work in westerns.

Max is also an artist. Here is one of his paintings. "Late For Supper."  Click on the link below to see more of his work.

Late For Supper

Ol Max Evans tells literary stories in paintings and drawings.

I ordered this book from Amazon today. I'll let you know how much I love it.

Max Evans (1990)

        Cowboy, rancher, trapper, prospector, artist, and for over forty years an eminent figure in Southwestern letters, Max Evans was born in Ropes, Texas, in 1925. He served in the infantry in Europe in WWII and published his first book, Long John Dunn of Taos, in 1959. Evans’s The Rounders (1965) and the film made from it, introduced him to Hollywood and associations with such directors as Sam Peckinpah, about whom Evans has written two seminal books. The author’s The Hi-Lo Country, 1961, also became a beautifully rendered movie in 1998.

        Evans is also author of The Mountain of Gold (1965), Bobby Jack Smith, You Dirty Coward! (1974), Bluefeather Fellini (1993), Faraway Blue (1999), and most recently Madam Millie (2002), a no-holds-barred biography of a Silver City, New Mexico, bordello keeper. He is co-editor of a book of short stories written by ranchwomen and cowboys, Hot Biscuits, (2002) that he worked for twenty years to collect.

        Max Evans lives with his wife Pat in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And if you want to meet this great artist and writer, he'll be at the WWA convention in June of 2012 held in Albuquerque this year.

New Cactus Country Books Released

Cactus Country has been working overtime to get both these books out. Dusty Richards just released the first novel in his new Frank Brothers Series with Outlaw Queen. This is a neat little story about a woman caught up in small town gossip, and the cowboy who lost everything to a greedy first wife. See how they both learn to love again while building a cattle empire.

$15.95 on Amazon
$13.95 direct from the Cactus Country Bookstore.
Cactus Country Bookstore

Brett Cogburn's short story collection, The Devil's Hoofprints. These western tales will keep you turning the page and dreaming about the old west.
$16.95 on Amazon
$15.95 direct from the Cactus Country Bookstore
Cactus Country Bookstore

And remember. When you purchase directly from Cactus Country, you pay no shipping. Please visit our bookstore page today.

Watch for the release of Cactus Country Volume II!

The True Cowboy!



I attended my first Western Writers of America conference because someone told me they'd heard Sam Elliott might be there. When I think of cowboys, I think of the actors that played them well. I think of John Wayne, I think of Henry Fonda, I think Tom Selleck and I think of Sam.

Looks like a cowboy to me.

But what is a cowboy, really? They don't always have the perfect mustache or the perfect kerchief around their neck. They don't always ride a tall horse with a tooled leather saddle. They sometimes don't even ride a horse at all. The F350 pickup truck looks like a mighty fine cowboy rig anymore. I drove a King Ranch edition Ford Expedition for awhile and called it my cowboy car. Even wrote a poem about it and called him Clem. But that didn't make me a cowgirl, or even close. Here's what Wikipedia says.

A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of special significance and legend. A subtype, called a wrangler, specifically tends the horses used to work cattle. In addition to ranch work, some cowboys work for or participate in rodeos. Cowgirls, first defined as such in the late 19th century, had a less-well documented historical role, but in the modern world have established the ability to work at virtually identical tasks and obtained considerable respect for their achievements. There are also cattle handlers in many other parts of the world, particularly South America and Australia, who perform work similar to the cowboy in their respective nations.

And below is a painting by Russell that is said to portray perfectly, the true cowboy.



I didn't get to meet Sam at that WWA convention. I think my friend told me he'd be there just so I'd go. But that's okay, I met someone much better. The western writer. Since that first WWA I've learned a lot about the west through the books of the many friends I've made who write about it. I've learned about guns and horses and cattle drives. And I think that most of these writers are the true cowboys of today, even though 75% of them don't own a cow or a branding iron. They travel the narrow back roads of America's western states in SUVs and Cadillacs now. They browse through the dusty book shelves of junk shops in the hopes of finding a rare edition western novel or a book on writing the west written by one of the first to the genre, or perhaps an old history book with descriptions and photographs of how it used to be. They're keeping the west alive, and in my opinion keeping the cowboy alive.

I sold Clem and bought Tootsie, a little red Mustang convertible. I thought maybe she'd make me young again. She's in storage now, and I'm traveling in my boring black little SUV to the Western Writers of America this June. Someone told me Tom Selleck might be there.