James D. Best

For the last couple of decades, enthusiasts have lamented the demise of Westerns. The rest of the world went about their business, ignoran...

Available soon No peace After marriage, Steve Dancy has quietly settled in San Diego. He can hardly remember his days of wanderlust, a...

I love time travel. We’ve all experienced time travel whenever we’ve opened a book and been transported to another place and time....

Last night we rented Crazy Rich Asians based on the book by Kevin Kwan.  I had heard a lot of good things about the film, but I was disapp...

Steed and Peel J oe Bunting has a good article on literary foils at The Write Practice. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, John Steed and E...

Us Old Guys Don't Like Change I rented Man of Steel last night. When I saw it in the theater, I was disappointed. Actually, more t...

Many seem to believe if they just got a proper set of instructions, they could be a good writer. Many famous writers like Mark Twain, Georg...

Kimberly Turner published a piece on Lit Reactor titled, “ 7 Horrifying Ailments Named After Literary Characters .” I believe she missed a ...

Matt Haig posted an article titled “12 Years as a Writer” . It’s a lessons-learned piece. I especially like #11, which reads: “We like ...

Aspiring writers frequently agonize over words, sentences, and paragraphs. They want to get every piece of it right. Because they admire gr...

Western author JR Sanders posted to Facebook a link to “The Top 20 Literary Quotes About Short Stories,”  at Writers Write , a South Africa...

I object when computer generated imagery overwhelm the story. Actually, I've objected when CGI is substituted for storytelling. About.c...

Writer’s Digest is not my favorite source for writing advice. Actually, the magazine and companion website are not even on my radar. I ha...

Writer’s Digest did a piece titled, “10 Things Shakespeare Can Teach us About Writing Thrillers.” The ten tips actually help with any genr...

Previously I wrote a blog posting which questioned whether Western mash-ups worked. I personally dislike mash-ups because they rely too mu...

Looking for literary critiques of Western literature, I accidentally came across the article “Westerns” by Nicolas S. Witschi in Oxford ...

I’m not a purist. My own westerns are about miners instead of cowboys, my plots delve into the politics of the frontier, and my protagoni...

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,...

Superheroes are the polar opposite of a slice of life. Killing lifeless zombies, evil vampires, extraterrestrial aliens, or bad witches is ...

I don’t believe there are only seven basic stories types, or that all stories are about “a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to tow...