The late, great Ed Mell shows up on almost every page of True West magazine because he was my muse and my friend. We shared studio space in the...
Brothers From Another Mother
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To the Point
Secret Agent Man
A legendary screenwriter gets his final byline. In early 2003 my agent called me to tell me the Westerns Channel wanted to start running True West...
Dude Spotting
It’s harder to spot real cowboys than you might think. In my experience, nobody looks at a photograph of a welder and says, “That’s not a...
Finding Truth in All the Noise
Let’s celebrate seven decades of lively debate about our imperfect past. For the past seven decades we have been having a very lively...
A Moving Target
When I was a kid, the Old West was 50 years in the rearview, and today my youth is 50 years in the rearview—and—to be honest, more like 60! Yikes!...
O.K. Boomers
Wyatt Earp was a Boomer. As are most of the writers and historians arguing about him in this issue. Granted, the term Boomer has slightly different...
They Showed me a Good Time
Last May I had the privilege of visiting a whole slew of Jesse James history sites in the great state of Missouri. Thanks to the knowledge and...
Kit Lit & Fit
I am proud and excited to report we are publishing a very cool original article based on a chapter in Paul Andrew Hutton’s next book (page 24). As...
Action Jackson
The day I met a living legend On February 25, 2006, I got to have breakfast with a living legend. Joaquin Jackson, Texas Ranger and...
Bar None
The long-gone bars, honky-tonks and saloons I grew up in are more than memories. When I was on the women’s panel at the Tucson Festival of Books...
Kingman Kin
Here’s a classic film story that involves my hometown, Kingman, the Hotel Beale and my shirttail kin. As the story goes, Buster Keaton was...
One Legit Brit
New research changes the long-accepted story of how Jesse James cashed in his chips. We pride ourselves on telling the true stories of the...