larry
Full Member
Posts: 113
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Post by larry on Nov 11, 2012 18:03:09 GMT
What are your favorites ? Of the big 4 currently running now,i guess im tied with Longarm,The Gunsmith,and The Trailsman. These books arent for everyone,but there are a lot of good stories in them.
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Post by john on Nov 11, 2012 18:05:20 GMT
I read the three series you mention. Sometimes, I go on long jags where I devour them. Then I get tired of the books and only collect them, adding them to the TBR pile to gather dust.
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Post by Steve M on Nov 11, 2012 20:23:19 GMT
What I like about them is the length. They are usually quick reads for me.
I collect all four series and probably like THE TRAILSMAN best due to the time period it's set in. (There's too many series/stand-alones set in the late 1880s these days)
LONGARM and THE GUNSMITH are very close seconds and SLOCUM is my least favourite.
I often wonder why I always put SLOCUM last - after all this was the series that first appeared of the four - and have come to the conclusion that it's had the biggest number of authors writing as Jake Logan, therefore it has the most inconsistency, mainly due to some authors not realizing Slocum was an outlaw (I haven't read them all so I don't know if at some point he changes his ways) and some don't seem to know which side he fought on in the Civil War, amoung other things.
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Post by limeyf on Nov 11, 2012 21:28:39 GMT
Thats what I was getting at in the other thread, on W.W.J. you would think that with a lot of writers there would be a "bible" on the character so that all the basic background stuff would stay in line.
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Post by limeyf on Nov 11, 2012 22:45:47 GMT
Just read my first sample of THE TRAILSMAN think I will read some more, thanks Steve.
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Post by benbridges on Nov 12, 2012 8:22:33 GMT
I'm an old fuddy-duddy where adult material is concerned. If the sex stems naturally from the plot, that's fine. But when it's shoe-horned in it tends (for me, at least), to disrupt what is usually an otherwise pretty good story. There's also a tendency to write the sex stuff tongue-in-cheek. I can't argue with their sales -- these people clearly know what they're doing, because the series have been around for years -- but for me, and I guess from a writer's perspective, I always think it could be done so much better and without necessarily insulting the reader's intelligence!
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Post by Steve M on Nov 12, 2012 14:14:12 GMT
Don't tell anyone, but I usually skip the sex scenes. Compared to when these series came out there is much, much less of this in the books nowadays, in fact some stand-alone westerns contain more.
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Post by guinnesskid on Nov 14, 2012 20:19:05 GMT
Don't tell anyone, but I usually skip the sex scenes. . Me too - must be getting old
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Post by john on Nov 16, 2012 15:29:31 GMT
I still read them if only because I think they're funny! Yes, I'm juvenile. Heh.
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Post by whizzer9 on Dec 14, 2012 13:49:28 GMT
Re the sex scenes, some years ago they dropped the sex from Longarm and the sales dropped like a hot rock. Naturally they put the sex back in immediately.
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Post by benbridges on Dec 15, 2012 12:33:18 GMT
See, I could understand the appeal of the sex scenes before the internet came along and made all that stuff easily available (ahem, so I believe!), so why do they still let the obligatory sex scenes slow down the action of an otherwise entertaining western? If you were to cut out the nookie, I would read them all. But as soon as the sex scenes come into play, it's as if the writer has nudged me and broken the spell of the story he was telling. I'm sure that sounds a bit too pretentious. Re the series bible, I'm sure that publishers must still provide them. Whether or not the author refers to it is another matter. I do remember when James Reasoner first started writing LONGARM he told me that the bible even included Longarm's middle name (which I now forget). That's how detailed it was.
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Post by john on Dec 15, 2012 18:28:01 GMT
Unfortunately, James lost the Longarm bible in a fire (if I remember correctly). I asked him a few things about the character, too.
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Post by rjrbob on Dec 16, 2012 20:48:17 GMT
I write the sex scenes and I skip them.
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Post by Steve M on Dec 17, 2012 15:15:13 GMT
I write the sex scenes and I skip them. ;D
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larry
Full Member
Posts: 113
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Post by larry on Dec 26, 2012 20:28:45 GMT
Reading Longarm #408 The Sins of Laughing Lyle today,another strong entry by Peter Brandvold.
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