Howdy friend,
I have a confession to make.
I’m a horse-girl.
You’re probably thinking Isn’t that a phase that 10-year-old girls go through? And you’d be right. I loved horses as a 10-year-old but it started before that and I haven’t quite left that phase.
In my future were long days of cattle herding on horseback, long nights of campfires and singin’ “Home On The Range”, and gun-slingin’ duels at high noon with outlaws.
Well, maybe not the duels at high noon. (I was a highly conflict-avoidant child.)
We didn’t have enough land to own horses, so I’d ride my stick horse out in our backyard. One year, I got pink cowboy boots for my birthday. I stole my brother’s red-felt cowboy hat and lassoed tree branches with my jump rope.
I blame my mom. She loved horses as a kid and sent me to a summer camp that taught me how to ride and care for the lovely creatures. (Love you, mom!)
It also didn’t help that we’d watch John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Bonanza, and Walker Texas Ranger every time we went to my great-grandparents’ house.
Kids can’t help that they want to be cool and wrangle cows like the gunslingers of the Old West.
Cowboys are cool!
Last week, my friend Noah J. Matthews released his debut novella, Outlaw Blood.
The main character wants to be a cowboy, too. But he isn’t a kid. He’s an outlaw.
Clye Galler is the last of his outlaw gang. Or so he thinks.
On the run from the law and the guilt that haunts him, Clye sets out to redeem his sullied name.
Turned loose with a posse of bounty hunters, Clye cuts a deal to capture his former blood brother in the Yeller gang. The lawmen want him alive for hanging–to satiate the town’s lust for blood.
Clye has enough skill with a pistol to make a lawman blush, enough power with sand to blind the keenest hawk, and a load of guilt heavy enough to sink a cathrahd to its knees.
In a western sandscape where honor’s everything, Clye is pitted against a conquering gang that has mercy only on those willing to give a finger in sacrifice.
Oulaw Blood is a Western fantasy book that has the feeling of those old Western shows that I watched with my great-grandparents.
For anyone who’s wanted to be a cowboy as a kid, this is a great book to read. It’s short, but it packs a punch when it comes to themes, description, and character. (Besides, you could get the book just because the cover is so cool!)
Not convinced yet?
I got to design the interior of the book, so you should get it just because you want to see how good of a job it did ;P
Buy Outlaw Blood by Noah J. Matthews here!
Thank me later, cowpoke.
Yeehaw,
R. J. Catlin
