A Big Day
Tomorrow, December 8, marks the publication of my new Forge hardcover, Anything Goes. My fifteen author copies arrived today from Forge. They look fine. The book was carefully packaged and its publication is announced on the Tor-Macmillan website. I am hoping for some good reviews.
It is the first print novel I have had published in three years, in part due to health and other troubles. So it means a lot to me. I love to hold the book in my hand, this new creation of mine, and the feeling runs just as deep as when I hefted my first novel, written for Doubleday, and could hardly believe this really was happening to me.
This is packaged as a western, which is how readers know where to look for me. The hero, August Beausoleil, is shown with a holstered revolver, which is odd, considering that he is a New York City theatrical impresario. But if that is what it takes to draw readers to my orbit, that is fine with me.
This is the story of a small, struggling vaudeville troupe hitting isolated mining towns in the Northwest in 1896. Such towns were starved for entertainment, and felt cut off from the world. They built opera houses and invited troupes to play in them.
This novel pursues a quest I began long ago, which was to free western fiction from the tedious gun fights and gunman themes that became rigid orthodoxy in western fiction. I wanted to portray the larger and richer West, and believe I succeeded. But I have failed to make a dent in the thematic orthodoxy of Western fiction, and my stories sell in small numbers compared to the giants of gunfight orthodoxy, which sell gunfight stories by the hundreds of thousands to readers who enjoy butchery and want nothing to do with a larger West.
It's not about lack of bravery or courage or determination, or any of those traits that settlers needed to put down roots in a new land. My hero, a theatrical entrepreneur, is as courageous as any twitchy-fingered gunman who murders thirty or forty of fifty anonymous cowboys in a typical gunman western. My stories are about something larger; what traits were needed to bring people safely into a new life in the vast, unrelenting West.
So, compared to the vast publishing success of traditional westerns, I have failed. The flood of gunman and killer stories continues unabated. But I have also succeeded. Some of my readers will come away from my stories knowing the West wasn't just about bullets.
It is the first print novel I have had published in three years, in part due to health and other troubles. So it means a lot to me. I love to hold the book in my hand, this new creation of mine, and the feeling runs just as deep as when I hefted my first novel, written for Doubleday, and could hardly believe this really was happening to me.
This is packaged as a western, which is how readers know where to look for me. The hero, August Beausoleil, is shown with a holstered revolver, which is odd, considering that he is a New York City theatrical impresario. But if that is what it takes to draw readers to my orbit, that is fine with me.
This is the story of a small, struggling vaudeville troupe hitting isolated mining towns in the Northwest in 1896. Such towns were starved for entertainment, and felt cut off from the world. They built opera houses and invited troupes to play in them.
This novel pursues a quest I began long ago, which was to free western fiction from the tedious gun fights and gunman themes that became rigid orthodoxy in western fiction. I wanted to portray the larger and richer West, and believe I succeeded. But I have failed to make a dent in the thematic orthodoxy of Western fiction, and my stories sell in small numbers compared to the giants of gunfight orthodoxy, which sell gunfight stories by the hundreds of thousands to readers who enjoy butchery and want nothing to do with a larger West.
It's not about lack of bravery or courage or determination, or any of those traits that settlers needed to put down roots in a new land. My hero, a theatrical entrepreneur, is as courageous as any twitchy-fingered gunman who murders thirty or forty of fifty anonymous cowboys in a typical gunman western. My stories are about something larger; what traits were needed to bring people safely into a new life in the vast, unrelenting West.
So, compared to the vast publishing success of traditional westerns, I have failed. The flood of gunman and killer stories continues unabated. But I have also succeeded. Some of my readers will come away from my stories knowing the West wasn't just about bullets.
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