Steve Hockensmith's Blog

A while back, super-reader and writer Bob Byrne created an exhaustive guide to the “Holmes on the Range” series on the Black Gate website. I guess Bob recovered from his exhaustion, because now he’s updated it with more chronological info for the books and stories as well as entries for the HotR spinoffs Hired Guns and No Hallowed Ground. Check it out!

If you haven’t given my “Hired Guns” a shot (😜) now’s the time to do it! The ebook of the Western/action/thriller/“Holmes on the Range” spinoff is just 99 cents through April 1. Check it out!

How cool — I’m officially a top Western writer! I mean, I must be: I’m in the new anthology “Silverado Press Presents: Western Stories by Today’s Top Writers.” My contribution, “The Truest Story Ever Told,” gives readers a peek at what Oswin Diehl, Ira Hoop and C. Kermit Crowe were up to circa 1879. Check it out!

That writing machine Cthb Xokehcmht is at it again! Here’s the cover for his latest release, Ckahoan B Yahha-Tayhe (translation: Scandal in Chinatown). Of course, in America Cthb is known as “Steve Hockensmith,” and Scandal in Chinatown is The Black Dove (the third “Holmes on the Range” novel). But Azbooka-Atticus (Cthb’s Russian publisher) thinks Scandal in Chinatown will go over better with their readers, so I’m not arguing. I’m saying, “Дерзайте!” (“Have at it!”)

The latest issue of Black Cat Weekly, now available online, features my story “Shadow of the Badger.” It’s a look at Old Red Amlingmeyer when he was just Young Gustav — a Kansas farmboy who’d yet to hear of Sherlock Holmes. But just because his “deducifying” adventures are years off doesn’t mean he can’t get into serious trouble. Check it out!

From now through the end of the year, the Holmes on the Range ebook is on sale on Amazon for a mere 99 cents. Get ’em while they’re hot (and cheap)!

…unless you’re Russian, but I’m so excited I’m going to tell you about them anyway! In early 2025, Azbooka-Atticus Publishing Group will release the first three “Holmes on the Range” novels in Mother Russia! (That’s their cover for On the Wrong Track with this post.) Spasibo (“Thank you!”) to Azbooka-Atticus, the Van Lear Agency (my foreign rights agents) and Wolfpack Publishing for bringing my books to Russia with love!

Curious about the story behind Hired Guns and No Hallowed Ground? Bookseller/writer Scott Montgomery gets the scoop over on his blog, The Hard Word, in an in-depth Q&A! Check it out!

For one week the Hired Guns ebook is on sale for a mere 99 cents! Now you can get the novel Western Fiction Review called “terrific” for less money (way less!) than a Starbucks coffee! Check it out!

No Hallowed Ground, the rip-roaring Western adventure sequel to Hired Guns, is now available as an audiobook. Diehl, Hoop and Eskaminzim are trailing a gang of bank robbers…or so they’ve been told. The truth could get them killed — and tear the whole country apart! Check it out!