Looking for more from Sean McLachlan? He also hangs out on the Midlist Writer blog, where he talks about writing, adventure travel, caving, and everything else he gets up to. He also reproduces all the posts from Civil War Horror, so drop on by!

Sunday, September 30, 2012

A Sneak Peek At My Next Wild West Book

I've just received an advance copy of my next book for Osprey Publishing, The Last Ride of the James-Younger Gang: Jesse James and the Northfield Raid 1876. While I call this a Wild West book, I suppose it's really a Wild North book, since it chronicles the gang's ill-fated raid on a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Here's yours truly showing off a copy.
The interior is illustrated with about 50 period photographs. . .
. . .plus original color artwork.

This is my fifth book for Osprey and twelfth book in total. To see my other Osprey titles, click on my Osprey author's page. I'm currently writing a sixth and discussing future projects with them. It's a great company to work for! This title is already available for preorder and doing pretty well in the Amazon rankings considering it doesn't come out until October 23. Osprey titles tend to do well on preorder. Check out my post on why readers preorder books.

8 comments:

  1. Congrats! I like the cover. Jesse James is one of those legends we never tire of reading about.

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  2. That's awesome. Any opinions on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (book or movie)?

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    1. I've only seen the movie, although I'm interested in reading the book.

      WARNING!!!! SPOILERS!!!!
      (I never read spoilers until I've seen a movie)

      The movie is remarkably accurate in its historical detail, as far as we know the history. I'm sure the nitpickers could find a few errors. I didn't bother to watch the movie with the best source material at hand so I can't say what those are.
      Some people I know say it was too long and there were too many characters and detail, but that was necessary to tell Jesse James' complex story. Like a long book, a long movie is a good companion.
      Where I begin to disagree with the movie is when it fills in the blanks. I don't buy the hero worship with homosexual undertones I saw in the Robert Ford character. I also didn't buy the Jesse James as suicidal bit. This has been discussed by James scholars, mainly focusing on the fact that Jesse took off his guns before adjusting the picture. Some say he would have never taken his guns off unless he wanted to die and the Fords say they never saw him take off his guns before. The problem with the assassination story is that we only have the Fords as eyewitnesses and they changed their accounts several times. So. . .we can't say.
      All in all, I think it's one of the better historical epics out there and I recommend it to anyone who wants to get deep into a subject.
      As chance would have it, my wife and I just watched AGORA, about Hypatia of Alexandria, another well-made movie strongly grounded in history.

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  3. Congratulations, Sean! That one looks awesome.

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  4. Congrats on your newest book, Sean. I just tweeted about it.

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  5. Look like an awesome book. A very interesting topic. Congrats!

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