Thoughts on the Western Heritage Award

Greetings,

Last week, I finished up my reading and judging for the Western Heritage Award. This is the fourth year in a row I've been a judge, and the third year I've worked in the Western Novel category.

Sponsored by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, the Western Heritage Awards - the statue is called a Wrangler - are given out in a number of categories: Music, Television & Film, and Literary. Unlike the Spur Awards given out by WWA (which has sixteen separate awards related to literature), there are only a handful of possibilities in the Literary Awards, namely: Western Novel, Nonfiction Book, Art Book, Photography Book, Juvenile Book, Magazine Article and Poetry Book. I've long argued that there are too many Spur categories and having sixteen of them dilutes their impact and value, whereas the Western Heritage Awards continue to draw some of the biggest names in movies, television, literature and so on. Food for thought, perhaps.

Aside from the handful of books that were vanity-press published or those that simply didn't qualify as a Western, the entries this year were really quite good. In fact, making a final decision was quite difficult, which hasn't always been the case. Sometimes, there's been one book that stands out so clearly above the others that the selection process is simple.

Some of the authors who entered this year included Loren D. Estleman, Cotton Smith, Win Blevins, and Kathleen O'Neal Gear, among many other talented writers. (As an aside, let me note that Kathleen's book IT WAKES IN ME, had an absolutely gorgeous, sexy cover, and made me wonder how she managed to get that and a Western novel in the same package.)

I won't be indicating in this post who my finalists were, but I did want to note for any of the entrants who read here that I was very impressed by the quality of these stories. Some really great titles out there and I will be reviewing a number of them on this blog in the coming weeks. For now, let me conclude with my personal congratulations to all of you who entered. Your continued work in the genre, and your continued excellence, makes keeping the Western alive possible.

Regards,

Russell Davis

PS - I received an email from one reader in response to my review of Richard Wheeler's FIRE ARROW. She's a fan and was sorry that the character Skye was too rough for me. As a point of clarification, I wanted to note that he wasn't too rough for me as a Western character, simply not someone I'd want to spend time with drinking whiskey shooters and playing cards. :-) R.