J.R. Sanders's Blog

The new trailer for my latest Nate Ross novel, Dead-Bang Fall, is now up on my YouTube channel here. Be sure to check it out – and while you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe!

Since October is National Roller Skating Month (yes, it’s really a thing), and today’s the anniversary of a somewhat well-known gunfight: A roller rink walking distance from the O.K. Corral in the 1880s? Yep. Imagine if the Earps and the Clanton/McLaury bunch had settled their disagreements with a skating competition instead of a gun duel. […]

In 1884, the city fathers of Dodge City came up with what they felt sure was a bang-up (and lucrative) way to celebrate Independence Day – stage a genuine Mexican bullfight. The resulting hullabaloo, including a deadly post-celebration gunfight in a Front Street saloon, is detailed in a couple of articles I did for Wild […]

Dead-Bang Fall, the second novel in the Nate Ross series, has been released by Level Best Books/Historia. Try as he might, private eye Nate Ross can’t seem to stay clear of Hollywood. His latest case, a penny-ante theft caper, turns deadly serious when one of the miscreants is murdered and Nate’s the prime witness. No […]

Many thanks to Ollie Reed, Jr. for this great review of Stardust Trail in the current (Winter 2022) issue of Western Way, the magazine of the International Western Music Association.For anyone interested, you can find the magazine online here (pdf download). And for the book, go here.

I had a great time talking with Richard Prosch for the latest installment of one of my favorite podcasts. You can give it a listen here. And don’t forget to tune in next week, and every week after that. You’ll be glad you did!

I’m pleased and honored to learn this morning that Stardust Trail is a Finalist for Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award for Best Investigator. Final awards will be announced on August 21st. Thanks to Level Best Books, to the judges, and congratulations to all the other finalists!

(Apologies for the earlier haywire message. Gremlins are buy today) I recently had a great time talking with Henry Parke – screenwriter, blogger, and Western Films Editor for True West magazine. Our interview and Henry’s terrific review of Stardust Trail are in the latest installment of Henry’s Western Round-Up, right here. Henry’s blog is one […]

The June 3, 1881 Sedan, Kansas Times-Star carried this brief item of local interest. Had the snake known what kind of fellow ten-year-old Willie would grow up to be, it might have held back out of professional courtesy. For unless he was stealing the strawberries, this may have been the only newspaper account ever mentioning […]

Wild West Magazine has placed a few of my previous articles online at their HistoryNet site. Read about roller skating in the old West (yes, it was a thing), the day the Katy railroad staged a head-on train wreck, the birth of the buffalo-hunting trade, and its sister trade: bone-picking, the train robbery case of […]