2023 Mustang Awards Second Place Winner: Use Your Head by Brandon Barrows

The winners of the 2023 Mustang Awards for Western Flash Fiction have been announced. Brandon Barrows was a first runner up, second place overall, for his story, Use Your Head. The story can be read online for free here.

SMFS Member Publication News—JR Lindermuth

SMFS list member  J. R.  Lindermuth’s latest western short story, “Something for Nothing” is now online at Rope and Wire.  The story is available to read here.

SMFS Member Publication News: JR Lindermuth

SMFS list member  J. R.  Lindermuth’s latest western short story, “Dead or Alive is now online at Rope and Wire.  The story is available to read here.

SMFS Member Publication News: JR Lindermuth

SMFS list member  J. R.  Lindermuth’s latest western short story, “Charley’s Final Gift” is now online at Rope and Wire.  The story is available to read here.

SMFS Member Publication News: J.R. Lindermuth

SMFS Member  J. R.  Lindermuth shared on Facebook earlier today that he has another short story online at Rope And Wire. This one is titled “He-Who-Does Not Sing.

SMFS Member Publishing News: J. R. Lindermuth

SMFS Member  J. R.  Lindermuth’s latest book is a western with a mystery element to it.  As announced on the Sundown Press Blog where there is also an excerpt from the new book, Blake’s Rule is now available at Amazon in print and eBook formats.  

Synopsis:

Blake’s rule has always been to do what’s right…not what’s easy.

Range detective Sam Blake is after cattle rustlers—but when a beautiful woman is accused of murdering her employer, he has to step in and see justice done. Miriam had her reasons for the brutal killing, and though she’s not talking, Blake understands there’s more to this crime than meets the eye.

When the local sheriff, James Fremont, asks Blake to spirit Miriam and her two children out of town before a lynch mob comes for her, he agrees. But Cyrus Diebler, the influential rancher who is intent on seeing her pay for her crime, is not about to be stopped. He will go to whatever lengths he must to see her dead, though it means putting his own family in harm’s way.

As Blake and Miriam stay one step ahead of the relentless Diebler and his deadly henchmen, a relationship begins to build between them. When Blake learns the real story behind the murder, and the dark secrets of Diebler’s motivation to see Miriam dead, he vows he will protect her and her children at all costs—even if it means his own life.

Little Big Crimes Review: Pandora's Bluff by Gilbert M. Stack.

Little Big Crimes: Pandora's Bluff by Gilbert M. Stack.: "Pandora's Bluff," by Gilbert M. Stack, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, October 2016. I am very fond of Stack...