The Secret of Devil's Canyon now available on Kindle

 

The Secret of Devil's Canyon is now available on Kindle. This was my 21st Black Horse Western and the 5th Nat McBain yarn.

 

This tale follows on directly from The Gallows Gang, in which Nat McBain and Shackleton Frost agree to work together to take prisoners to jail. It also has a sub-plot about bone-hunter Jim Dragon and his eternal conflict with Pierre Dulaine. I enjoyed this sub-plot so much that Jim returned in Incident at Pegasus Heights.

I've only just realized that like Bleached Bones in the Dust a key moment in the plot revolves around finding bones that have been buried out there somewhere....

When Mayor Maxwell and his daughter are brutally murdered, feelings in Bear Creek run high. Even when the killer is caught and sentenced to life in prison, the townsfolk demand a lynching. So Sheriff Bryce calls in Nathaniel McBain to spirit the killer away through Devil’s Canyon to Beaver Ridge jail.

 

At first, Nathaniel manages to stay one step ahead of the pursuing mob; but as he loses ground, he realizes he faces an even bigger problem: his prisoner could be innocent after all. . .

 

A dark secret about what really happened is buried in Devil’s Canyon. Will Nathaniel be able to uncover the truth before the mob reaches him?

It's now available from all good amazon stores.

Paperback version of Calloway's Crossing now available

When Trip Kincaid saved Milton Calloway’s life, Milton was so grateful he gave him his saloon at Calloway’s Crossing. But when Trip arrived to claim his property, the saloon wasn’t what he expected – it had in fact collapsed into a bubbling pool of mud!

Undeterred, Trip rebuilt the saloon. Within hours of opening, Ryan Trimble’s protection gang muscled in on him and his only compensation was the distraction his bartender, the beguiling Grace Theroux, provided.

Trip needed help to defeat Ryan and it arrived in the form of a mysterious gunslinger – but at what price? Before long, Trip faced the fight of his life to save not only the saloon but also himself and Grace.
 

  Available as a paperback and a download from all Amazon stores.

Gunfight in the Red Eye Saloon now available on Kindle.

Gunfight in the Red Eye Saloon is now available on Kindle.

I started writing this story with the intention of it being my next Black Horse Western, but it ended up being about 10% short of the required length for the series. I put it aside for a while and then came back to try to bulk it out, but I only ended up shortening it some more.

After several more failed attempts I decided to just leave the tale well alone and publish this as a Kindle title. This is the 6th Cassidy Yates's yarn, in which he rubs up against a fellow lawman he doesn't trust. . . .

Sheriff Cassidy Yates reckoned he’d foiled a bank raid in Monotony, but then he discovered that a safe deposit box had been broken into. Nobody knew what had gone missing, but Cassidy suspected that the robbery was connected to the infamous gunfight that had erupted in the Red Eye saloon two years earlier, an incident in which five men died.

Severin Lorde never paid for the crime he committed that day, but in a twist of fate he was appointed as the sheriff of Carmon. Cassidy was determined to prove that Severin had a murderous past, but to bring a fellow lawman to justice he will have to risk not only his life, but his faith in the law he has sworn an oath to uphold.

It's now available from all good amazon stores.

Bleached Bones in the Dust now available on Kindle

Bleached Bones in the Dust is now available on Kindle. This was my 20th Black Horse Western.

 

 

The inspiration for this tale came with the title, which sounded like it ought to have a story attached. So I started off and wrote about some old bones being found. Then I just carried on writing until I found out who had died, why he had died, and whether there were any more bones buried out there in the dust. . .

 

For twenty years, bounty hunter Montgomery Grant searched for Lomax Rhinehart, desperate to make him pay for an atrocity he committed during the dying days of the war.

So when Grant’s friend, Wallace Sheckley, told him that he had found Lomax, Grant followed him to Sunrise, but Arnold Hays and his gunslingers were holding the town in the grip of fear. Nobody would help him and worse Wallace had gone missing and Lomax was nowhere to be found.

With Arnold Hays the key to Grant finding out what has happened to both his friend and his enemy, he must turn to his gun to get the answers he needs. . . .

It's now available from all good amazon stores.

Riders of the Barren Plains now available on Kindle

Riders of the Barren Plains is now available on Kindle. This was my 17th Black Horse Western and the 5th Cassidy Yates yarn.

 

 

This novel heads back to the Barren Plains, a place that has featured in several of my stories. Like many of the Cassidy Yates yarns it has a split narrative alternating between him and another character. In this case the other character is the criminal that Cassidy is after, and writing about both the investigation and the attempt to evade detection was fun as it let me write about the side of the story that I don't usually cover.

It's now available from all good amazon stores.

Jeff Steed rode into Carmon looking for work, but when he got caught up in a bank raid he found himself running from both Sheriff Cassidy Yates and the bank raider Blake Kelly. To escape from the net that was inexorably closing in on him he assumed the identity of a dead man. But as that man was the leader of a supply convoy, he had to undertake a hazardous journey across the Barren Plains to the silver miners at Bleak Point.

With the convoy being escorted by the lawman who had been trying to catch him and the bandit he double-crossed hiding out in the Barren Plains, can Jeff ever hope to survive?

Paperback version of The Last Rider from Hell now available

 

Staked out under the baking heat of the desert sun by Frank Chapel’s riders from hell is no way for any man to die. Only someone as resilient as Matt Travis had the courage to endure the heat and the vultures and survive. When finally he manages to escape a gruesome death only one thing is on his mind – revenge.
But his memory has been blasted to oblivion and he is even unsure of his own name. All he knows is that everyone wants him dead!
Justice must be done and Matt will be judge, jury and hangman. First, though, he must face up to the truth of his past and, that accomplished, lead begins to fly.

Available as a paperback and a download from all Amazon stores

Paperback version of The Ten Per Cent Gang now available

 

Sheriff Wes Creed has suffered yet another disastrous day. Earlier, Clayton Bell’s bandit gang raided a cash shipment bound for Lincoln’s bank. And while Creed fruitlessly pursued the bandits, the vigilante organization, the Ten Per Cent gang, calmly tracked and reclaimed the stolen cash. And for their trouble, the vigilantes retained their usual fee – ten per cent of the cash.
With the Ten Per Cent gang now threatening to enforce all justice in Lincoln, Creed realizes he has to slap them in jail, even if it means riding roughshod over every law in the land.
So Creed has no choice but to forge an alliance with the only man who hates the Ten Per Cent gang as much as he does – Clayton Bell.

Available as a paperback and a download from all Amazon stores

Sharpshooter McClure now available on Kindle

Sharpshooter McClure is now available on Kindle. Sharpshooter was my 18th Black Horse Western and I approached republishing it with some trepidation as I remember it fondly and I feared I might no longer like what happens to Mike McClure in the story.

 

 

With my stories I always try to ensure there’s a big moment at the half-way point in the novel. I also try to get in a good bit at the end of chapter one, chapter three and a third of the way in, but the half-way twist I tend to view as being the most crucial as it’ll hopefully ensure that the reader reads the second half.

I enjoyed the half-way twist in this story probably more than any other I’ve written because it was extreme, it delved into an area I hadn’t visited before, and I had no idea what it would be until I wrote it.

Up until that big moment Mike McClure had been on a roller-coaster of danger with cliff-hangers and his life constantly in peril and so at the half-way point he was again just about to be killed. It was then that I realized I’d written enough words to be at the middle of the adventure. So I wondered what the big moment might be that would turn everything on its head, but nothing obvious would come to mind right up until the moment Mike had a gun pressed to his head and the bad guy was about to pull the trigger. Then, without thinking and before Mike could find a way out of his predicament, I let the baddie shoot and that sent the book in a completely different direction than the one I had expected...

Sharpshooter McClure is now available from all good amazon stores.

More Six-shooter Tales now available on Kindle

A collection of six short stories, More Six-shooter Tales, is now available on Kindle.

 

 

Each story features one of my serial characters. I had the idea for this project when I republished Massacre at Bluff Point. It set me thinking about why I’d never written about Ethan Craig again and when I rummaged around on my hard drive I found a story I’d started called Return to Dirtwood. It was only a few pages long and it fizzled out without getting anywhere so I could see why I’d given up on it.

So I picked it up again to see where the tale would go, and it turned into a brief 10 page story. That got me thinking about other stories I’d started and abandoned, which quickly moved me on to an aborted Nat McBain tale. Nat spent seven years in jail, in both the real and fiction world, between Wanted: McBain and The Secret of Devil’s Canyon and in that time I’d intended to write a jail story, but again that tale fizzled out before it got started.

Again I picked up the idea and again I ended up writing a short story, which got me thinking about producing short tales for more of my other characters. The final result is More Six-shooter Tales.

In each tale the central character faces a challenge they’ve never encountered before. So Ethan Craig finally heads back to his hometown. Nat McBain must face up to the truth of what going to jail will mean. Cassidy Yates is tempted to frame a man he knows is guilty although the court reckons otherwise. Fergal O’Brien has a rare romantic encounter. Marshal Devine must show his gratitude after his life is saved, and Jim Dragon must finally end his feud with Pierre Dulaine to defeat a common enemy.

I had fun writing these tales and they’re now available from all good amazon stores.

Take the Money and Run

The latest Fergal O'Brien novel is now available on Kindle.

 



 

This book is the first Fergal O'Brien adventure since 2014's The Ballad of Dayton Hyde. As with the previous books in the series, this tale includes several elements that don't often get featured in westerns: in this case, a Walter Mitty type bartender, a spiritualist who can talk to the dead, and match fixing in cricket.

 

The last element let me carry out a long-time desire to write a western featuring a cricket match, as cricket is the only sport I've ever followed. I've tried to do it several times before, but each time the plot idea was nothing more than some cowboys decide to play cricket. As there was no logical reason why they should do that, the story always fizzled out quickly.

 

In this case though I didn't set out to include a cricket match. The working title was Bunty the Bounty Hunter and involved a bartender who dreams about having an exciting life and who gets it into her head that Fergal is an outlaw who needs bringing to justice. Meanwhile Fergal is trying to rebuild his fortunes after losing everything in the previous book and sees an opportunity when he discovers the town of Paradise is staging a horse racing competition.

 

I completed the first draft, but I didn't like the horse racing scenes as all the dashing around soon became tiresome. I decided I needed a different contest and so for a while I toyed with lacrosse, which is something that the townsfolk might have played, but then finally I realized that this was my chance to use cricket.

 

When completed, I struggled with a title as I did so want to publish a book called Bunty the Bounty Hunter, but mindful that such a title was probably too silly even for a Fergal O'Brien novel I tried to find a cricket pun that Brian Johnson might have enjoyed. I finally settled on Take the Money and Run, a title which sums up Fergal's whole philosophy of life...

 

The book is now available from amazon.

  

Fergal O’Brien and Randolph McDougal have suffered bad times before, but when they walk into Paradise they are at their worst. Footsore and hungry, they don’t have a cent to their names, but when Fergal hears about a contest between the old and new parts of town, he sees an opportunity to rebuild their fortunes. The only trouble is, the contest is a cricket match and Fergal has no idea what cricket is.

Worse is to follow when Fergal and Randolph are victims of mistaken identity leading to Sheriff Merryweather suspecting they are outlaws. Then the fearsome gunslinger Tex Porter sets out to raid Paradise’s bank, which claims to be unbreakable.

If Fergal is going to complete his plan to make a lot of money quickly and then leave town, he’ll have to find a way to appease Sheriff Merryweather, defeat Tex Porter and, hardest of all, learn the laws of cricket.

Massacre at Bluff Point now available on Kindle

Massacre at Bluff Point is available on Kindle. It was my 15th Black Horse Western, and the third and final book featuring Ethan Craig.

 

 

Republishing my books on Kindle has brought up many surprises, and this was another one as I'd forgotten that I'd written three Ethan Craig books. At the time I now recall I'd intended to write more stories, but along the way Ethan just passed from my thoughts.

 

The intention was that he was an ordinary bloke with no special gun skills or ingenuity, but who somehow survives and wins through. The other intention was that each book would be very different. So Bad Day in Dirtwood was a gritty homesteaders defending their patch tale, while Six-shooter Bride was a light-hearted romance. This book was the wrongly accused man clears his name tale.

 

I guess, now that I think about it, that it was the variety and lack of a common theme that stopped me from continuing his adventures.

 

The book is now available from all good amazon stores.

 

Ethan Craig picked the wrong day to start working for Sam Pringle’s outfit. Within hours of joining up, Ansel Stark’s bandit gang bushwhacked the outfit at Bluff Point and Ethan saw all his new colleagues gunned down in cold blood.

He vowed to get his revenge, but before Ethan could get his manhunt underway his bad luck continued when for the second time he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and Sheriff Henry Fisher arrested him. His presumed crime was being a member of the very gang he’d sworn to track down!

With nobody believing his innocence and a ruthless bandit to catch, can Ethan ever hope to succeed?

Bad Moon over Devil's Ridge now available on Kindle.

Bad Moon over Devil's Ridge is available on Kindle. It was originally my 14th Black Horse Western.

 

 

 

As I mentioned earlier on this blog this is the fifth Cassidy Yates tale, but I labelled the fourth one as being the third McBain book, so this one is now labelled as Cassidy Yates, Book 4. I hope that's clear because I'm already getting confused.

 

This story features Sheriff Cassidy Yates's long-lost brother Emerson. That's long lost in that Cassidy didn't know he had a brother until I started writing this story. Emerson is everything Cassidy isn't.

 

The thing I enjoyed about writing this book was alternating the viewpoint character with each chapter. I've often told stories from the viewpoint of several characters, but in this case I maintained the strict discipline of having one chapter relate Cassidy's adventures while the next one turns to the newspaper correspondent, Nick Kearney, and then back again. Making sure the plot advances for each character at the same pace while leaving both characters in tricky situations was a fun challenge and it was harder than I expected. I'm fairly sure I haven't tried it again since.

 

The book is now available from amazon.

 

When Sheriff Cassidy Yates rode into Eagle Heights he never expected he would be in jail by nightfall on an unfounded murder charge. Although Cassidy answered the charge, it was only at the cost of implicating his own wayward brother in both this murder and the kidnapping of the dead man’s widow.

Against an escalating conspiracy of fear operating in the town, Cassidy gains the help of a young newspaper correspondent in his quest to find the real killer and the kidnapped woman. But with gun-toting ranchers and numerous hired guns standing between Cassidy and justice, can he prove his brother’s innocence?

Devine's Mission now available on Kindle

Devine's Mission is now available on Kindle.

 

 

 

After 2012 's Devine I knew that I would one day write about US Marshal Jake T. Devine again, although it took me a few years before I decided to let him ride again.

Once I'd decided to start writing I had the usual problem that I have with Devine of creating a worthwhile adversary. Marshal Devine is a brutal, no-nonsense lawman who doesn't sit around waiting for the end of the story so that he can shoot the bad guys. He just kicks down the door, abuses everyone in the room, and then blasts the bad guy between the eyes. If he's in a good mood he might vary the routine by spitting on the dead man's face and whistling, but otherwise it's hard to avoid him just wiping out everyone long before the plot can unfold.

So this time I outlined a plot with plenty of twists involving stolen gold and the fiendish plans of master bad guy Scorpio Blake. Then I started writing. Three pages into the story Devine decided he'd had enough of idle chatter and killed Scorpio, which slightly destroyed my outlined plot. So, I just carried on writing and decided to see where Devine would take things. As it turned out, I was surprised by the solution to the central mystery of what had happened to the stolen gold, even though the clues had been there from the moment I wrote the title on a blank page...

Anyhow, the book is now available from amazon.

When Lachlan McKinley raided Fairmount Town’s bank, the four-thousand dollar bounty that was posted on his head attracted plenty of manhunters, but everyone that went after him ended up dead.
Bounty hunter Jonathon Lynch reckoned he could do better. Lachlan was Jonathon’s step-brother and his mission was personal, but when he joined the hunt he soon discovered that all was not as it seemed and Lachlan may, in fact, be innocent. Worse, U.S. Marshal Jake Devine was also after Lachlan.
Devine is more likely to destroy the peace than to keep it, and so can Jonathon bring the guilty to justice before Devine does his worst?

Incident at Pegasus Heights now available on Kindle

Incident at Pegasus Heights is now available for download on Kindle.

 

This book features the return of Jim Dragon, who was a character in my 2011 Nathaniel McBain novel The Secret of Devil's Canyon. Jim was involved only in a secondary sub-plot, but I enjoyed writing about his battles with his rival in the fossil-hunting business, Pierre Dulaine. So I resolved at the time that Jim would return in his own adventure very soon, except I then promptly forgot about him.

 

So five years passed before I again turned my thoughts to Jim and I found that he was again searching for bones and then trying to hide them from Pierre, but this time he got involved in an even stranger search for the bones of a winged horse.

 

Clearly he couldn't find Pegasus and when the plot takes an unexpected twist and he starts looking for a live flying horse, it's even clearer that he can't succeed. So I enjoyed writing this one because I had no idea how it'd all turn out and how exactly a wagon came to be abandoned, on the top of a large rock, in the middle of a lake... 

The book is now available from all good amazon stores.

When fossil-hunter Jim Dragon is on his way to Bear Creek to sell his latest discovery, he goes to the aid of a woman in distress, Elmina Fay. Unfortunately, Pierre Dulaine takes advantage of the situation and steals his fossils.
Jim vows to reclaim his property and Elmina offers to help him, but only if he’ll do something for her. She has heard a tale about the bones of a winged horse being found nearby and she wants Jim to find Pegasus for her.
At first, Jim is skeptical about embarking on such a mission, but before long he discovers that the truth behind the tale is even stranger than he could ever have imagined.

Wanted: McBain now available on Kindle

Wanted: McBain is my fourth Cassidy Yates tale. I had some misgivings when I started to format this one for Kindle as I remembered it as being a weak tale. It didn’t go to large print, which I took as a sign that I’d missed the mark, but as it turned out, it wasn’t the stinker I thought it might be.

The problem is that I think this tale works less well as a standalone Black Horse Western, but better as a book that’s part of an on-going series. As such, the tale has less action and more talking than many I’ve written and is more about the conflict between two characters who used to be friends, but now find themselves on opposing sides. As the background to their situation is to found in previous books in the Cassidy Yates series along with the Nathaniel McBain series, most of the reasons behind their behaviour will perhaps be best appreciated by those who have read the other books.

The conclusion to this book marks an end to Cassidy and Nathaniel’s story that I started in The Outlawed Deputy. They both feature in more stories with Nathaniel’s next tale being The Gallows Gang and Cassidy returning in Bad Moon over Devil’s Ridge, but to date they have yet to meet again.

I should mention that I have just finished a draft of a story in which Cassidy and Nathaniel meet again after ten years apart, both in elapsed story time and in real time, and I had planned to send it to Hale in the new year. Hopefully Crowood might let me carry on their tale!

Anyhow, the book is now available from all good amazon stores.

Sheriff Cassidy Yates couldn't believe his eyes when he read the Wanted poster. His ex-deputy, and friend, Nathaniel McBain was both a wanted man and a member of Rodrigo Fernandez's ruthless outlaw gang.

 

There's nothing worse than a lawman gone bad, and Cassidy knows it’s his duty to arrest McBain. But when he finds him, McBain claims the Wanted poster is wrong and his true intention is to infiltrate Fernandez's gang and bring the outlaw to justice. Is McBain really working undercover?

Only one thing is certain: when Cassidy learns the full truth about McBain's plan, it will test to the very limit the strength of his friendship and his duty as a lawman.

Six-Shooter Bride available on Kindle

This western is available for purchase from today on Amazon.

I remember that I enjoyed writing this story, and looking back at it for the first time in ten years I can see why I had fun with this one. I usually try to bring in a big plot twist or have several seemingly unrelated sub-plots that ultimately all tie up together. With this one the plot is as simple as it gets.

 

Ethan and Amelia are two mismatched characters who at the start argue and are wary of the other person. Then they have to travel from A to B to meet a deadline, and on the way they face heaps of danger and adventure, which helps them to appreciate each other and grow closer. Frankly, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve read or seen that story I’d have, well, probably not very much as I usually groan and give up when I see where the story is heading.

In a way I wish I’d written more stories like this one that are straightforward and which give equal prominence to the leading man and leading lady. I think the reason I didn’t is down to the fact that this book didn’t go to large print, which suggested to me that I’d strayed too far from the usual types of western plot that I write. The even bigger clue that perhaps I’d got the emphasis wrong came with the change that was made to my suggested blurb. Here’s the final sentence that I wrote:

The one problem Ethan never expected to face is that he would fall victim to Amelia's charms and getting her to her wedding might just be the last thing he'll want to do!

Here’s what that was changed to. See if you can spot the difference.

There’s danger every step of the way in this gripping western.

The curious thing is that at first sight the romantic sub-plot suggests I’d strayed towards writing a chick-lit western that ought to have a cover featuring a cowboy who forgot to put on his shirt and pants. In reality, the only thing that gets hot is the flying lead and more bad guys bite the dirt in this book than in anything else I’ve ever written. Anyhow, the book is now available from all good Amazon stores.

Slammed in a jail cell after killing a man in a crooked poker game, Ethan Craig’s future looks bleak. Then a witness, Amelia Ash, comes forward and offers Ethan a way out. But there’s a catch. Amelia needs someone to escort her on a treacherous journey across bandit-infested country to her forthcoming wedding.

Ethan agrees to take her, but with raging rivers to cross and Buck Lincoln’s outlaw gang on her tail, it isn’t long before he realizes just how treacherous this journey will be. There’s danger every step of the way in this gripping western.

Devine's Law now available on Kindle

My fifth Black Horse Western is now available on Kindle.

 

This book is something of a marmite story (for the benefit of non-UK readers, marmite is a weird brown substance in a jar that some people are able to eat without vomiting and everyone else uses to ward off flies and vampires). It's one of the few books I've written where people have sought me out to tell me what they thought of the story, and sometimes that's been that they liked it and sometimes it's to tell me that they didn't.

The biggest problem appears to be the ending and I understand the concern, but somehow no other ending felt right, and it still doesn't. So for those who I am about to annoy, all I can say is that the thing about the Wild West is that sometimes bad things happened to good people.

The book can now be bought from all good Amazon stores.

 Marshal Jake T. Devine’s law is simple. Nobody threatens him and lives. In his twenty-five years of law enforcement he’s always brought in his man with a bullet blasted between the eyes. So when Max Randall shoots his mouth off, claiming he knows a devastating secret about the wealthy rancher, Roy Cowie, he’s clearly spoiling for trouble – and gets it!
Roy Cowie calls in Devine to arrest Max and without provocation the brutal marshal slaughters Max’s entire family. In self-preservation Max heads for the hills with Devine and his deadly Peacemaker in hot pursuit. Even when Max gains an unlikely ally in Roy Cowie’s son, his chances of seeing another sunrise are slim.
Can Max survive long enough to reveal what he knows, or will the gun-toting marshal deliver yet another round of Devine’s law?

The Ten Per Cent Gang now available on Kindle

My 7th Black Horse Western The Ten Per Cent Gang has now been published on Kindle.

 

This book was meant to be a sequel to Death or Bounty picking up the story of what Nat McBain and Spenser O’Connor did next. As it turned out, those characters ended up being part of the supporting cast while the story of two lawmen took over.

Sheriff Creed and Deputy Fairborn are an inversion of the Cassidy Yates and Nat McBain dynamic in which Cassidy is a dutiful lawman and Nat struggles with following the right path. So in this story Creed is heading to the dark side while his deputy tries to tread a straighter path.

I'd always remembered this story as having the most plot twists I'd ever crammed into a tale, although when reading it through again it wasn't anywhere near as twisty as I remembered it. I guess that's because it's obvious that there is a twist coming and the real twist is that the twist is different to the twist that's implied. What surprised me more was the amount of action in the story. I usually try to ensure some action takes place in every chapter, but in this case around half the book is one, long extended action set-piece.


Anyhow, the book can now be bought from all good Amazon stores.

Sheriff Wes Creed has suffered yet another disastrous day. Earlier, Clayton Bell’s bandit gang raided a cash shipment bound for Lincoln’s bank. And while Creed fruitlessly pursued the bandits, the vigilante organization, the Ten Per Cent gang, calmly tracked and reclaimed the stolen cash. And for their trouble, the vigilantes retained their usual fee – ten per cent of the cash.
With the Ten Per Cent gang now threatening to enforce all justice in Lincoln, Creed realizes he has to slap them in jail, even if it means riding roughshod over every law in the land.
So Creed has no choice but to forge an alliance with the only man who hates the Ten Per Cent gang as much as he does – Clayton Bell.

Calloway's Crossing now available on Kindle

My 13th Black Horse Western Calloway's Crossing is now available on Kindle.

 

I enjoyed writing this one. At the time I was writing stories both for the Black Horse series and the Avalon series where for the former I crammed in plenty of action and for the latter I went for a more light-hearted approach. Calloway’s Crossing was one of the books where I tried to bring the two styles together, so there’s plenty of shoot-em-up action, but the plot’s not meant to be taken too seriously.

The book is also one of the few I’ve written where the leading lady has pretty much as big a role as the leading man, and again I enjoyed writing the scenes where they bounce off each other. Looking back, I wish I’d written more like this one.

Anyhow, the book is now available from all good Amazon stores.

When Trip Kincaid saved Milton Calloway’s life, Milton was so grateful he gave him his saloon at Calloway’s Crossing. But when Trip arrived to claim his property, the saloon wasn’t what he expected – it had in fact collapsed into a bubbling pool of mud!

Undeterred, Trip rebuilt the saloon. Within hours of opening, Ryan Trimble’s protection gang muscled in on him and his only compensation was the distraction his bartender, the beguiling Grace Theroux, provided.

Trip needed help to defeat Ryan and it arrived in the form of a mysterious gunslinger – but at what price? Before long, Trip faced the fight of his life to save not only the saloon but also himself and Grace.

Cassidy Yates Series: Box Set 1-3 now available on Kindle

The first three Cassidy Yates novels The Outlawed Deputy, The Last Rider from Hell and Yates's Dilemma have now been published as a box set on Kindle.

The book is now available from all good Amazon stores.