James D. Best

No Peace starts at   del Monte Hotel in Monterey (photo circa 1880s) In a previous post I wrote that I had started the next Steve Dan...

Still from The Great Train Robbery The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale  partly takes place in New Jersey. Oh yeah, and Thomas Edison is a ...

In high school, I read every Ian Fleming James Bond book. I liked them, but  wasn't  motivated to read them a second time until rec...

At the time of this writing, Inferno by Dan Brown has nearly 5,000 Amazon reviews for 3.9 stars. Since I thought this was a poor novel,...

You can buy innumerable books about how to write fiction. I have bookshelves full of them. Some help, but most are regurgitations of the sa...

I haven't read a Stephen King book in a couple decades.   11/22/63  reminded me why I used to read King’s books as soon as they were p...

The Western Writers of America reviewed The Shopkeeper in the August issue of the organization's Roundup Magazine . Best, James D. ...

Characterization is a crucial aspect of fiction. We know this because it's drilled into us at school, in workshops, and in all the how-t...

Open Range The movie Open Range started me thinking about plot pacing. Westerns films are supposed to be action/adventure, but Open Ran...

Westerns were hugely popular for over a hundred years and then the genre suddenly fell into disfavor. Not only were Westerns popular in the ...

I asked myself this question as I tried to figure out why the Western genre had been relegated to a couple of obscure shelves in most bookst...