Giveaway Winners and Wrap-Up for Legends of Western Cinema Week 2025

All good things must come to an end, alas, even blog parties as fun as this.  In this wrap-up post, you'll find the giveaway winners and a final copy of the post-gathering widget, in case you have any last-minute posts to contribute or are (like me) still catching up on all the amazing things people brought to the party this year!

First, the Giveaway Winners!

Prize 1:  The Man from Snowy River (1982) -- Crystan R.

Prize 2:  Australia (2008) -- Reid J.

Prize 3:  Quigley Down Under (1990) -- Crystan R.

Prize 4: a pair of wooden cactus earrings -- Cecilia

Prize 5: a set of "3D" cowboy stickers -- Daisy 

Prize 6:  a fridge magnet -- Gill J.

Check your email, winners!  I'll be emailing you in a few minutes to get your mailing info.

And here's that link-up widget one more time for your convenience:

Happy trails, my friends!  

Where in the West? Game Answers

Thanks for playing my party game!  Here are the answers:

1. The Mark of Zorro (1940) -- California

2. My Darling Clementine (1946) -- Arizona

3. Shane (1953) -- Wyoming

4. High Noon (1955) -- New Mexico

5. The Searchers (1956) -- Texas

6. Giant (1956) -- Texas

7. 3:10 to Yuma (1957 and 2007) -- Arizona

8. The Alamo (1960) -- Texas

9. The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) -- Texas

10. Chisum (1970) -- New Mexico

11. Pale Rider (1985) -- California

12. Young Guns (1988) -- New Mexico

13. Dances with Wolves (1990) -- Colorado

14. Open Range (2003) -- Montana

15. The Lone Ranger (2013) -- Texas

I know some of those were pretty hard!  Hopefully not all of them, though.  

Scores

VT Dorchester -- 8

Chloe the Movie Critic -- 5

Little Chronicler -- 2

It's Release Day for "Follow the Lonesome Trail"

Are you ready for some brand-new western fun?

I hope so, because today is release day for the wild west anthology Follow the Lonesome Trail!  This new collection boasts stories by Allison Tebo, Hannah Kaye, A. Hartley, Emily Hayse, Elisabeth Grace Foley, and Rachel Kovaciny (aka me).  My short story in this book is called "Safekeeping." 

When Allison Tebo first reached out a year or so ago and asked if I had any unpublished short western stories lying around looking for a home, I told her I didn't... but I had one in my head I would love to write.  The resulting story, "Safekeeping," is a story of second chances and hope.  A loner learns that he's inherited a poke of gold, but it's in the clutches of a greedy bartender, and he has to come up with a creative solution to get what's rightfully his.  Along the way, he helps out a whole lot of other people and just might find himself a place to belong.

Here's what one reader had to say about it:

You can buy Follow the Lonesome Trail as a paperback and ebook today!  It's also available for Kindle Unlimited readers.  And you can check out more reviews (and review it yourself once you've read it) right here on Goodreads.

If you're on Instagram, I invite you to join me there at 1pm (CST) for a live video chat where I will read the first scene from "Safekeeping" aloud to you -- and I might have time to answer a few questions, too.

If you want to know more about the other books I've written, you can check out this page on this blog or my author website.

(And if you're curious if we planned for Legends of Western Cinema Week to coincide with this book's release, the answer is no!  This book was originally slated to release in September, but it was ready early and we authors collectively agreed to release it early instead of making people wait for it.  So it's a coincidence, but I like it!)

My Tag Answers for Legends of Western Cinema Week 2025

Time for me to fill out our party tag!  

I'm going to put down the first western movie or TV show that comes to mind for these, and not agonize over whether they are the perfect example or not.  And I'll muse just a little on why each one came to mind for those prompts.

Cliff -- a tense cliffhanger Horizon: An American Saga, Chapter One (2024)  The ending of this movie is a series of cliffhangers, and I have been hanging off those cliffs for a year now with NO word on when they are releasing chapter two!  This is so agonizing!

Gulch -- a cool ambush scene The Professionals (1966) A set of professional gunfighters and adventurers are on a mission to rescue a kidnapped woman, only to get ambushed by her captors when they've almost got her back to her husband.  The gunfighters and the woman are stuck in a desert-mountain pass, and the only way to escape is if one of them stays behind to hold off their enemies... who used to actually be friends with a lot of them.  Lots of excitement and emotional impact.

Canyon -- a big gunfight A Fistful of Dollars (1964)  Oh, that finale, with the lone, nameless hero coolly facing down three evil brothers and their henchmen -- it's positively iconic.  Then you add in this brilliant trumpet theme by Ennio Morricone and the music swelling behind it, the dust in the street, the slow walk toward certain death, the quiet courage with a secret smile in front of it... oh my heart, I love the end of this movie so much.

Mountains -- high stakes The War Wagon (1967) An ex-con gathers a team to help him steal an armored wagon full of gold -- and help him get revenge on the man who had him unjustly accused and sentenced and thrown in jail.  High stakes indeed.

Valley -- a beautiful romance Angel and the Badman (1947)  It's like a Beauty and the Beast retelling where the Beast ends up at Beauty's family home instead.  And when I say the ending gives me goosebumps and brings tears to my eyes, I mean that in the best way possible!

Desert -- a suspenseful plot 3:10 to Yuma (1957)  A desperate rancher agrees to ensure a sly outlaw gets on the train headed for the Yuma Territorial Prison, the outlaw spends the next day doing everything in his considerable power to get free.  The tension just ratchets tighter and tighter --it's masterful.

Forest -- themes about renewal The Rare Breed (1966)  This is a movie about second chances.  A widow gets a second chance at love, a father and son get a second chance at understanding each other, a discontented cowhand gets a second chance at career choices... and it's all revolving around a big Hereford bull intended to bring new life and vitality into a Texas herd.

River -- traveling to a new home Buck and the Preacher (1972)  Black pioneers trying to get to Kansas to start new lives as farmers... but a lot of people seem to not want them to get to do that.  It's the only movie I know of that's set during the real-life Exoduster migration, too.

Plains -- characters who are farmers Shane (1953)  Even though the title character is a gunfighter, he befriends a farming family and gets semi-adopted by them.  If they weren't farmers, he wouldn't have to protect them from people trying to push them off their farm, so the whole plot really revolves around the fact that they are trying to raise crops and animals, not graze cattle.

Mesa -- an animal central to the story The Proud Rebel (1958)  A sweet, unassuming sheepdog is the heart inside this sweet story about family, love, and sacrifice.  And the dog doesn't die, which is a total bonus!

Have you seen any of these?

"The Shadow Riders" (1982)

My best friend and I like to say that Cowboys Make Everything Better, and that sure has been true of The Shadow Riders (1982) for me.  I first watched it on my own last fall while laid up with an upper respiratory infection when we got home from my dad's funeral, and it was just the right kind of hope-filled western to boost my spirits.  I watched it again this summer with my husband after a crushingly stressful week, and it once again both soothed me and perked me up.  It has such a flavor of insistent optimism.  None of the main characters ever frets that they won't succeed at what they need to do, so the viewer never does either.  And that is so much what I need, sometimes.  Determined and confident cowboys.  Such good medicine.

I had watched The Sacketts (1979) not long before seeing this the first time, and I was absolutely tickled to see Tom Selleck, Sam Elliott, and Jeff Osterage playing brothers in a Louis L'Amour adaptation again.  Although I mightily enjoyed The Sacketts, most of my enjoyment there was due to having read all the Sackett books by L'Amour and liking how the characters were brought to life onscreen.  I haven't read the book The Shadow Riders yet, but man, do I like the movie!  (I'm not entirely clear which came first, actually -- the book or the movie?  I read somewhere that L'Amour wrote this story for Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott to star in, so did he write the book first, or just the storyline?  I haven't really dug around enough to find out.  If you know, please tell me!)  In some ways, I think this is a stronger movie than The Sacketts -- particularly in its ability to be enjoyed by people who don't know the storyline ahead of time.  I had to explain some backstory stuff and other things to my husband while watching The Sacketts because he got a bit confused by some of it, but such was never the case for The Shadow Riders.

Anyway, the story follows three brothers: Mac (Tom Selleck), Dal (Sam Elliott), and Jesse (Jeff Osterhage) Traven.  (Why does Jesse get a full name, but Mac and Dal only get what feel like half names?  Inquiring minds want to know.)  The film opens during the very end of the Civil War, with Confederate soldier Dal and Union soldier Dal just trying to get home to their Texas ranch again.  

I have to pause here and mention that my husband is a big fan of Sam Elliott.  And there's a moment when Mac and Dal first arrive home and are greeted by their father (Harry Carey, Jr.), but their mother (Jane Greer) isn't sure for a minute if Dal is who they say he is because a) he was reported dead during the war, and b) he's covered basically his whole face up with a bushy beard.  But when Dal says, "How're you doing, Mama?" she knows it's him because, as she says, "There's only one man in the world with that voice."  At that point, my husband completely busted up and was alternately laughing and crowing, "She's got that right!"  And he really loves to quote that moment now.

Anyway, as soon as they get home, they have to leave right away again because their two sisters and their brother Jesse have been kidnapped by white slavers, along with the woman Dal loves silently and deeply, Kate (Katharine Ross).  Off Mac and Dal go, determined to do whatever it takes to rescue their siblings and Dal's One True Love and whoever else might need rescuing.

Meanwhile, Kate is bound and determined to escape their captors and take all the rest of the kidnappees with her before they can be sold in Mexico.  And Kate is the sort of woman who doesn't get defeated easily.  I want to be friends with her.

Jesse gets free with Kate's help and joins back up with his brothers to plot how to rescue their sisters and Kate, and free the other captives -- the bad guys took a bunch of men like Jesse too to sell as slaves to Mexican silver mines.  (They're equal opportunity kidnappers, you see.)

The brothers enlist the help of their rascally Uncle "Black Jack" Traven (Ben Johnson), who steals every scene he's in.  I've been a Ben Johnson fan since I was 11 or 12, ever since I first saw Chisum (1970) -- I am always happy to see his name on the cast list for a movie, because I know I'll smile while watching it.  Even when he plays an antagonist, I still just want to hug him.

Of course there are lots of exciting altercations and narrow escapes and plot twists and such, including a sequence involving a micro-trope I love exceedingly much: people walking around on top of a moving train.  Even the first time I watched this, I was in no doubt of the outcome, though.  And that doesn't make this movie boring, it makes it comfortable and relaxing and downright fun.  For me, anyway!  It feels like a throwback to the westerns of the 1950s where everything is guaranteed to turn out all right in the end.  And I love that.

Maybe that old-fashioned vibe is partly due to The Shadow Riders being directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, who directed quite a few of my favorite old western movies, like The Rare Breed (1965) and Chisum (1970), plus episodes of so many great old TV westerns.  (He also directed The Blue and the Gray (1982), which I love very dearly, but that's not a western.  I still had to mention it, though.)

Is this movie family friendly?  Mostly.  Obviously, there's the whole human-trafficking plotline, but it's handled in a matter-of-fact way, shown to be a wrong thing that Must Be Stopped.  There's some mild cussing, consistent with a 1980s made-for-TV movie.  The violence is non-gory.  There's a bit of dialog innuendo about the fate the female kidnappees are headed for, and also a scene when we're introduced to Selleck's character where he's lying in bed kissing a woman and they get interrupted, but everyone is fully clothed and it is minimally suggestive.  I'd say it's fine for older kids and teens.

You can stream The Shadow Riders on Amazon, Tubi, and the Roku Channel, and also buy it on DVD and Blu-Ray.

This review is a contribution to this year's Legends of Western Cinema Week, which I'm co-hosting this week.

Where in the West? A Party Game

Western films sometimes take place in an amorphous "Old West" setting without naming a specific state or territory as their location.  Others take place over a wide swath of land, moving from one locality to another.  But sometimes, a western takes place in one particular state.  Today, I have rounded up fifteen westerns that do take place in one US state, and your job is to figure out which state goes with each of them!

To make it a little easier, here are the states that get used:

Arizona

California

Colorado

Montana

New Mexico

Texas

Wyoming

And here are the films:

1. The Mark of Zorro (1940) 

2. My Darling Clementine (1946)

3. Shane (1953) 

4. High Noon (1955) 

5. The Searchers (1956) 

6. Giant (1956)

7. 3:10 to Yuma (1957 and 2007) 

8. The Alamo (1960)

9. The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) 

10. Chisum (1970)

11. Pale Rider (1985) 

12. Young Guns (1988) 

13. Dances with Wolves (1990)

14. Open Range (2003)

15. The Lone Ranger (2013)

Important Note:  We are talking about the states where the films take place here, NOT where they were filmed.  Some were filmed at least partly on location, and some weren't, but for the purpose of this game, we are talking about where the story happens.

Put your guesses in a comment!  I'll reveal the answers at the end of the week, along with everyone's scores.  I'll put comments on full moderation today so that your answers will be kept secret while the game lasts.

(Yes, technically a couple of those take place in Territories instead of States, but we're just saying states for the sake of simplicity.)

2025 Legends of Western Cinema Kick-off + Tag

Welcome once again to Legends of Western Cinema Week!  I'm so glad you decided to join Heidi (of Along the Brandywine) and Olivia (of Meanwhile, in Rivendell...) and I as we celebrate the Wild West on screens big and small!

Whenever you post a contribution to this year's festivities, be sure to add your post's link to this widget, on any of the three hosting blogs.  Links shared this way will show up on all three blogs, making it easy for everyone to see what new things people have shared and to read their posts!

Please share posts with your tag answers there, as well as anything else you post for this event.  And remember, all your contributions for this party should be:

• about westerns, 
• appreciative and not derogatory, and 
• new posts (no fair just linking to old ones)

Speaking of the tag, here it is!  Share one or more movies or shows for each prompt:

Cliff -- a tense cliffhanger 

Gulch -- a cool ambush scene 

Canyon -- a big gunfight 

Mountains -- high stakes 

Valley -- a beautiful romance 

Desert -- a suspenseful plot 

Forest -- themes about renewal 

River -- traveling to a new home 

Plains -- characters who are farmers 

Mesa -- an animal central to the story

All you have to do is copy the prompts, paste them into a post for your own site, answer them, and be sure to add one of this year's buttons (find them all here) and as many photos as you want to illustrate your points. Then come back here and add the link for your post to that list widget above!

Giveaway for the 2025 Legends of Western Cinema Week

Here are this year's prizes!

You may notice a bit of a theme for the three movies I chose to give away :-D  All three DVDs are used.  They play okay in my DVD player, but YMMV.

Prize 1:  The Man from Snowy River (1982) on DVD (rated PG)

Prize 2:  Australia (2008) on DVD (rated PG-13)

Prize 3:  Quigley Down Under (1990) on DVD (rated PG-13)

Prize 4: a pair of wooden cactus earrings on nickel-free earing wires

Prize 5: a set of "3D" cowboy stickers

Prize 6:  a fridge magnet with a photo of John Wayne and the famous quotation "Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway."

Please comment on THIS post and tell me what your top 2 picks for a prize would be! I can't guarantee that winners will get one of their top choices, but I do try to match winners and prizes. If you already own one of the movies and don't want a second copy, please comment with that info too. 

 Enter the giveaway via this widget:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This giveaway is open WORLDWIDE. Void where prohibited. Winner must be 18 years of age or older, or have parent/guardian permission to share their mailing address. Not affiliated with Blogger, Google, the USPS, Hollywood, or the John Wayne estate.  I purchased all prizes myself for the purpose of this giveaway.

This giveaway ends at 11:59pm on Friday, August 29. I will have the widget choose five winners on Saturday, August 30, and share those winners here as well as email the winners to alert them. PLEASE use an email address you REGULARLY check to enter this giveaway! If you don't respond to my email about your prize by Saturday, September 6, you will be disqualified and I will choose a different winner for it. You've been warned.

You probably noticed that one of the ways to enter the giveaway is to participate in this week's party!  Check out my kickoff post for info on how to do that.

New Book Release Coming August 31!

Friends, I'm so sorry I haven't talked much about this until now.  My year has been extra-busy, and sharing things about my writing and books has gotten shoved to a back burner all too often.  But I'm grabbing some time to share this now!

On August 31, a brand-new anthology of short western stories is getting released!  Edited by Allison Tebo, it includes short stories by her, Hannah Kaye, A. Hartley, Emily Hayse, Elisabeth Grace Foley... and me!

My short story is called "Safekeeping," and it's not a fairy tale retelling :-o  Try not to faint.  It's about a fur trapper who inherits a poke of gold dust, but the gold was left in the keeping of a greedy bartender with no intention of handing it over.  

If you would like to join the launch team for Follow the Lonesome Trail, please fill out this form.

You can pre-order the e-book here on Amazon already!  And you can mark it as want-to-read on Goodreads right here.  We've even got some advance reviews on Goodreads already, such as this:

I'm really excited to be appearing in a collection along with these other talented writers!

Nonsensical Geometry: The Two Love Triangles of "Jane Eyre"

The central romance in Jane Eyre resolves happily. (Do I need to mark that as a spoiler? Surely not! Surely, if you haven’t read Charlotte Bronte’s triumph of a novel by this time, you’ve at least watched a movie version?) Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre overcome every obstacle, including those within themselves, to meet as equals at last in the eyes of all, marry, produce offspring, and live happily ever after. Good for them. 

Good for them, but bad for two other characters within the novel. Because Jane Eyre contains not one but two love triangles. And the trouble with love triangles is that, inevitably, someone will lose. Someone will have their heart broken. Unless it becomes a weird love quadrangle where the thrown-off would-be lovers end up together, which I suppose could end happily for all involved… but that’s not what happens in Jane Eyre. 

Two women lay claim to Edward Fairfax Rochester. One, as we all know, is Jane herself. Young, poor, fiercely intelligent, insistently independent, and resolutely conscientious Jane. She’s my favorite fictional heroine, and I haven’t adjectives and adverbs enough to describe how wonderful she is. Mr. Rochester agrees with me. He wants absolutely nothing more than to grapple Jane to himself with hoops of steel so they can never be parted. 

But someone stands between them. Someone with an earlier claim to his name, his person, his love. Bertha Mason Rochester, his wife. Though she’s now joked about as the madwoman in the attic in our insensitive postmodern world, Bertha bears the sad honor of being the losing side of the love triangle. Edward Rochester may have loved her once, or been willing to love her. But her family’s deceit and her own behavior drove such tender feelings far from him. He spent his adult life searching for someone to replace the mad wife he hid in Thornfield’s upper floors. Bertha had no such options—no one to replace the husband who shunned her. And when she learns, somehow, that Edward means to marry another, Bertha fights for her marriage the only way she can. She attempts to destroy her husband. But she destroys only herself, freeing Edward at last to marry the woman he now loves. 

As for Jane Eyre, two men also lay claim to her. Edward Rochester nearly wins her, only to lose her when the truth about his past destroys the future happiness he’d almost secured. Jane flees, eventually finding refuge with a trio of siblings who nurse her back to health and help heal her wounded spirit. 

One of these siblings, St. John Rivers, also desires Jane Eyre. Though he does not express a bodily, sensual desire for her, he wishes to marry her. St. John is preparing to embark on a missionary journey. In the time when this book takes place, missionaries did not expect to return home. Ever. Many of them packed their luggage in a coffin so that, when they inevitably died in their mission field, they would have everything they needed for their burial. That being the case, St. John knows he will probably never find another Englishwoman so suited to being his helper. Jane is intelligent, pious, quick to learn languages, and has a steady personality. If he could but convince her to devote herself to being his helpmeet, he could face any heathen horde with equanimity. 

St. John Rivers would probably grow pale and stern if told he’s made himself one point of a love triangle by demanding Jane Eyre marry him. He would insist he harbored no romantic feelings for Jane, and thus could not be part of any such nonsensical geometry. But it’s true, nonetheless. Like Bertha Mason, however, he must exit the story disappointed. Jane rejects his proposal with absolute finality, dashing this second love triangle to pieces. 

We sometimes groan about how often love triangles pop up in modern fiction. Maybe if modern writers could handle them as deftly and unprosaically as Charlotte Bronte, we wouldn’t be so tired of them.

(This post originally appeared in Femnista magazine on January 12, 2019.)