I wish Western novels were still as popular as Western TV series and movies. There are new ones like Django and 1883, and older series like Deadwood that ran for years. The movie The Ballad of Buster Scruggs performed quite decently for Netflix. Some movies like the movie version of Django, The Hateful Eight, Hostiles, and 3:10 To Yuma were critically acclaimed and some fared very well at the box office.

The reality is neither literary agents nor book publishers will take a chance on Westerns written by first time authors with no track record. But my first novel was a Western with very modest sales. No matter. I'm currently working on the sequel because a few other readers (including my wife) want to know what happened to one of the lead characters after the end of the book. I want to find out too.