In the March issue of Frontier Tales, the online Western fiction magazine, you’ll find J. Daniel Camacho’s excellent short story “West of Eminence.” This is Camacho’s first publication in the Western genre, a piece of short fiction that crackles with humor and lively characterization.
Camacho’s brief story of Sheriff Kid Tunney and his deputy Mini Montana is set in the fictional town West of Eminence. As with many Westerns, this story hinges on the conflict between freedom and the rule of law, with the small desert town drawing the attention of an expanding federal regime.
The story takes a surprising turn that, for the attentive reader, is foreshadowed in Camacho’s deep characterization. Two simple lines indicate that the story is not going where the reader initially expected: “The sheriff rubs his mustache with his gloved knuckle. The deputy grips his reins tighter.”
I’m a reader of Western fiction, so I was happy to collaborate with Camacho on his project to develop “West of Eminence” for publication. Just last year I had chanced on a copy of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove in a Little Free Library, a book I simply couldn’t put down.
I confess to sometimes reading overly intellectual fiction. McMurtry’s novel about Captain Call and Gus driving their stolen cattle from Mexico into Montana reminded me that, to feel a story bone deep, character matters. There is something of Greek tragedy in a good Western story, where a hero’s hubris is his tragic flaw. Heroes like an aging sheriff in a frontier town called West of Eminence.
The publishers of Frontier Tales recognize the difficulty in publishing Western stories despite the genre being both traditional and contemporary. One of America’s most successful authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Cormac McCarthy, was celebrated widely before and after his passing.
To put it in Western terms, Louis L’Amour cantered so that Cormac McCarthy might gallop.
And so does Camacho in his use of satire and allegory, with the town West of Eminence and the coward turned sheriff.
If you love the Western genre and thirst for contemporary writing, then head on over to Frontier Tales for more writing like Camacho’s—smart, funny, gripping, and harrowing stories set in the place where worlds collide.