Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana revealed exciting news at our True Westerner celebration honoring them, on March 9, during Arizona’s Tucson Festival of Books. The party afforded them the opportunity to meet Michael Wallis, whose book, David Crockett: The Lion of the West, they both love. They love it so much, in fact, they announced they might make it into a script!
One Western literati we rubbed shoulders with at the party, Thomas Cobb, found out that week that he will be taking home the Spur for Best Western Long Novel, for With Blood in Their Eyes, at the Western Writers of America convention this June. Check out all the Spur winners and finalists at WesternWriters.org
Comeuppance for a savvy scribe: Mary Doria Russell has confirmed she was canned by Random House just as she was beginning her book tour to promote 2011’s Doc, her historical novel about Doc Holliday. But Random House’s loss became Harper Collins’s gain. Its division, Ecco, has bought the planned sequel to Doc (tentatively titled Epitaph) that follows him to the Gunfight Behind the O.K. Corral. Russell says the novel is due out in late 2014.
William R. Garwood, a long-time reviewer of books for True West, passed away March 12 of natural causes. A seasoned journalist, Garwood wrote novels featuring the Earps, the Clantons, Johnny Ringo, Kid Curry and Judge Roy Bean, among others, and he was one of the earliest members of the National Association for Outlaw and Lawmen History (now WWHA). He will be missed.
—Jesse Mullins
